What is the truth about the coronavirus that began in Wuhan and has swept across China, infecting tens of thousands of people and killing hundreds every day? There are worrying stories about what is happening on several cruise ships where people are confined to their cabins. In other countries, including the USA and Britain, there are also indications that the infection is spreading.
Are we seeing the beginnings of a global pandemic? This is the big question facing health authorities as they struggle to trace the contacts of those who have already been infected. But the coronavirus is not the only plague that is striking the world today. There is an even greater threat to the lives of millions of people in Africa.
Newspaper reports say that a vast plague of billions of locusts swarming across large areas of East Africa is of ‘biblical proportions’. We don’t know what this phrase means because nowhere in the Bible is there a definition of the size of a plague of locusts. We do know, however, that plagues of locusts can have a deadly effect. It was a plague of locusts that struck the Egyptians when Pharaoh refused the request of Moses to let the people of Israel go. And we know that in the Book of Joel a great swarm of locusts invaded the land of Israel, which the prophet saw as a judgment upon their sinfulness.
Locusts are not the only kind of plague described in the Bible. There was a plague that swept through Jerusalem in the time of King David, when 70,000 people died. This was said to be due to David’s own sin of pride in counting the size of his army. But there was also a plague that swept through the army of Assyrians laying siege to Jerusalem when, according to Isaiah, 185,000 men were killed overnight (Isa 37:36). This must have been a virus many times more powerful and contagious than the coronavirus that has hit China.
The big question facing us in this age of scepticism is, does God send plagues upon the world?
The Purposes of God
The big question facing us in this age of scepticism is, does God send plagues upon the world? Isaiah and King Hezekiah, who went into the Temple to pray for God to protect Jerusalem from the invaders, would undoubtedly have answered ‘YES!’ to that question when they saw the remnant of the Assyrian army retreating from the land. Even those who do not like to think of God sending judgment upon sinful people can recognise that God can use things like plagues and natural disasters to work out his purposes.
'The Tower of Siloam' by James TissotThe nearest we get to an answer to this question in the teaching of Jesus is where he responded to questions about the 18 people who died when a tower block in Jerusalem collapsed. He said “Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:4-5). Jesus recognised that the righteous as well as the wicked get caught up in disasters; so, in that sense, we are all at risk when a plague strikes. But we cannot conclude that God is punishing the specific people who fall foul of the disaster.
Luke records Jesus’ teaching on the Tower of Siloam in the context of interpreting the significance of what was happening in the world at that present time (Luke 12:54-59). Jesus said that people were able to forecast the weather by interpreting the direction of the wind, but they were unable to discern the signs of the times – of what God was doing and what he was saying. Let’s apply this teaching to what is happening today.
Opening Blind Eyes
Today the Chinese authorities are trying to analyse what caused the plague. They believe it started in a wet market in Wuhan where all kinds of live animals are sold, including bats, which the Chinese eat. The bats are said to be the source of the coronavirus. I remember on my first visit to China back in the 1980s, being astonished at the things the Chinese eat! – everything from ‘sea cucumber’ (which is a slug from the ocean bed) to a dog that I saw a man skinning in the market. But the Chinese authorities ought to be less concerned about the precise origins of the plague and more concerned about its spiritual significance.
I have watched the spread of Christianity in China over the past 30 years with amazement. The faith and fearlessness of believers in the face of brutal persecution is something that rarely gets reported in the West. There are now estimated to be nearly 250 million Christians in China, which is four times the total population of Britain, and that number is increasing exponentially every day! The massive growth of Christians is in the underground churches, which are constantly being disrupted by the police, their leaders imprisoned, their Bibles burnt and people tortured. There is a cost to being a Christian in China.
The Chinese authorities ought to be less concerned about the precise origins of the plague and more concerned about its spiritual significance.
The ‘Three-Self’ churches are officially approved by the Communist Party, but their preachers are carefully monitored – preaching about the resurrection of Jesus or his Second Coming is forbidden – they are not allowed to have house church fellowships, or to evangelise children, or baptise anyone under 18. Government officials, police and teachers are forbidden to be Christians. This is why so many millions of believers defy the law and gather in unregistered fellowships.
From all that I know of the Chinese underground church leaders, they will be teaching their people that the plague now sweeping China is a judgment that God will be using to shake the Chinese authorities – to recognise the injustice, cruelty and wickedness of their regime. Maybe as the Chinese economy is hit it will shake the Communist Party and open eyes that are blind. It could also shake many other nations!
Plague in Britain
So, the plague may not be direct judgment on those who are falling sick – but it does represent a warning to China as a nation – and to the whole world.
But is there not the same spiritual blindness in Britain today to our sinfulness? A report published last week by the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) shows that we have a plague of sexually-transmitted diseases among young people in the UK, where a new STI is diagnosed every 70 seconds! Gonorrhoea and syphilis were virtually wiped out last century, but in the past decade cases of gonorrhoea have increased by 249% and syphilis by 165%.
All this comes during a time that our education policy has been directed to giving explicit sex teaching to children in state schools; from September there will be increasingly less scope for parents to withdraw their children from such classes. Surely this amounts to child abuse and deserves the judgment of God.
