Covid 19 is a plague. Yes I do believe it was manmade. Many of the characteristics of this terrible disease defy the knowledge base for all previous covid viruses. The way it acts and mutates. How it attacks people differently, killing one but barely being noticeable by another. Everything about this particular virus says it was designed with an intent in mind. Regardless of how it "got out", someone is responsible for it. In late 2019 a virus began to invade the homes of the people in Wuhan China. Suddenly people fell ill with a nasty respiratory illness. Many began to die. What did the Chinese government do about it? Hide the evidence of course. Stop investigations by international health groups, naturally. Don't warn the world you had an oops if that is what it was. Instead point people to a wet market where your peasants sold their goods. Blame it on bad food.
Now whatever China did or didn't do, it was still bad, but then that is what one should expect from a brutal communistic regime that has no regard for human life. Plagues come on humanity for many reasons. Somehow though we never seem to think it a consequence of our actions. Thousands of years ago when plagues were loosed and thousands died those affected blamed their gods. The Bible even tells of the Almighty God of Israel loosing plagues on Israel in response to their worship of pagan idols. The people would cry out to God and ask for forgiveness and the plague would receive a cure. This plague is different from those previously experienced around the globe in that it is clearly manmade or at least man manipulated. Nonetheless it is still just a plague.
The longest running plague to ever exist is smallpox. There are records from India that go back 1500 years BC. Smallpox was finally declared eradicated in 1980 by the WHO. Smallpox was far deadlier and far more contagious than Covid 19. This isn't to minimalize the deaths of any person who died as a result of the disease but it is estimated that smallpox took over 500 million lives in the last 100 years alone. During different smallpox outbreaks the people took all different approaches to try to stop the killer. Everything from isolation or quarantine of the sick to actually placing those infected on islands together until everyone on the island died. Then the entire island would be burned in hope of eradicating the deadly virus. Eventually through a series "accidental" discoveries the knowledge of vaccines developed and the plague was finally conquered. It only took 3000 plus years.
The plagues of Israel stopped immediately when the people went to their God to repent and worship Him as God. We often quote out of context for the most part 2 Chronicles 7:14. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face. The failure of the believers has often been to omit verse 13. In context then:
2 Chronicles 7:13-14 NKJV (13) When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people,(14) if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
It is God who shuts up the heavens from raining and God who allows the locust to devour the land and God who sends a pestilence or plague upon the people. I have never been a proponent of saying God kills people to punish them. I don't believe He does. What I do believe is that because of sin man has loosed all kinds of demonic creations from their prisons and they were meant to destroy anything that sins against God. It is only by the mercy and grace of God that they are forbidden from getting to us. See the first couple chapters of Job and you will see the picture of how God Himself places a hedge of protection around us, down to the individual. When men refuse to acknowledge Yahweh as God and choose other gods for themselves then The Almighty can no longer hold back the avengers of sin. They are loosed upon the fallen. He says that if He shuts up heaven. This was in direct response to the Baal worshippers that declared that Baal was in charge of the weather conditions not God. If God commands locust to devour the land it is because man gave his credit for crops to foreign gods instead of to the one who created the seed to begin with.
When God tells Solomon that He will send pestilence it is another thing altogether. The Hebrew word for send is shalach which carries the connotation of loosing something that is already wanting to go in a certain direction. Like a greyhound that is standing in the gate to race after the rabbit. The dog is going to go eventually it is only waiting for the gate to allow it to run. God is just holding back the plague which already knows what it wants to do and is driven to do. God gives very straight forward instructions to His people on what to do in the case of any of these things. Humble themselves. We don't have the answers. We are ultimately responsible for sin and need a redeemer. We cannot do it on our own. No amount of effort will relieve us of the charge. It takes a supernatural intervention to stop the consequence of sin. Thus Jesus Christ and His cross. Pray and seek His face. Yes turn to the Almighty creator of Heaven and Earth as your God and object of worship. Hold no other gods before Him. Change from our wicked ways. How quickly some plagues could have been stopped if mankind would have just gone to God first. We took 3000 plus years to get the answer to smallpox. Many other viruses took hundreds of years to develop cures for. Often times the cures came through men of God or the Hebrew people. Many amazing coincidences made possible that which seemed impossible.
Could it be that the church didn't lead on this one? Instead of cowering in our houses maybe we should have met together and prayed. This time we actually shut down church all over the world. We kept people from seeking God in the houses of God. The church joined in and many today still keep their doors shut. Sadly many turned to other gods like science and government to find their answers. The answer has always been there. It is the Cross of Calvary. By His stripes we were healed. Does that mean we would have just been miraculously healed all at once. Not necessarily. During one plague Moses was told to fasten a bronze serpent to a pole and lift it up before the people. Whoever looked upon the serpent with repentance in their heart was healed. If the church would have followed God's suggestion may be God would have sent a bronze serpent in the form of a true vaccine very early on. Or maybe we would have given us some other answer that all men would have known it was His answer to our failure that brought our healing. James 4 tells us that friendship with the world system and reliance upon it makes us at enmity with God. I guess what I am saying to the church is , when are we going to start passing the test? When are we going to do what we say we believe?
Hey we are as much in the soup here as anyone else. We shut down for a 3 months because we were told to. We continued to do things online but it wasn't the same. The in person anointing is so much more powerful. We could have and should have stayed in faith about the whole thing at the same time we could have used some common sense caution. So what do we do now? Ignore "science"? I'm not being critical of science. Science does what science does. It ignore God and looks for answers in what it can see and understand. I get it. But the church has a higher calling and a higher responsibility to mankind. We know the answers to life's problems and the plagues that come upon us. It is time the body of Christ begins to be what it was designed to be, a beacon of light to the world. Doing this requires a putting away of self and maybe a little sacrifice. We are the answer to a world gone mad but if we continue to show little to no strength we will just be another wayside group of the fearful. God gives answers to those who trust in Him.
Just a thought from a frustrated pastor.