Corona virus -- The Day of YHWH?

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1970’s there has been a growing fervor over the expectation for the coming of messiah or the return of Yeshua, depending on one’s perspective.  Essentially all of the books and predictions during the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s have proved to be wrong.  The excitement over these modern predictions is inappropriate on several counts.

·      Throughout the New Covenant writings two warnings predominate: 1) The Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night; 2) You do not know the day or the hour of His coming, so always be prepared.

·      At the end of the Olivet Discourse (Mat 24:1-44), Yeshua asserted that he had told his disciples all of the signs of the coming great tribulation so that when they saw those things starting to happen, his coming would occur during the life of that generation.

·      Among the many prophesies concerning the day of YHWH in the Hebrew bible, Amos stated the following: “Alas, you who are longing for the day of YHWH, for what purpose will the day of YHWH be for you?  It will be a day of darkness and not light; as when a man flees from a lion and a bear meets him, or when he goes home, leans on a wall, and a snake bites him.  Will not the day of YHWH be darkness and not light, even gloom with no brightness with it?”

Revelation chapter 8 sets forward a series of predictions about natural disasters that would happen before the start of the great tribulation:

·      1/3 of the earth, 1/3 of the trees, and all of the grass would be burned.

·      1/3 of the seas would become blood, 1/3 of the sea creatures would die, and 1/3 of the ships would be destroyed.

·      1/3 of the rivers and springs would become foul, and many people would die because of it.

·      The light from the sun, moon and stars would be diminished by 1/3.

Without debating whether these signs are primarily literal or symbolic, the obvious question is this: How could such things happen and almost nobody recognize the hand of God in judgment?

PANDEMIC

A pandemic is a disease that affects substantially all the population of a region or country.  As of March 22, 2020, the COVID-19 virus is present in 186 countries with 339,243 confirmed cases and 14,703 deaths.  The totals are certainly much greater today.  I have listened to and read what medical doctors, epidemiologists, and other experts had to say on this topic.  Apart from the common sense actions to avoid exposure and subsequent infection, several assertions were made:

·      There is no proven treatment for this infection and currently no vaccine.  No vaccine will be available for general distribution for at least a year and probably longer.

·      It is possible that no truly effective vaccine will ever be developed; it is possible that COVID-19 will simply disappear as did SARS or that it will become a seasonal affliction like colds or flu.

·       COVID-19 is not the first nor will it be the last wild animal virus to pass on to humans.  Such outbreaks from wild animal viruses will be our future.

The first two bullets are simply a realistic assessment of what has transpired over the past 20 or 30 years; the last bullet describes the consequences of what humans have themselves done based on the following:

·       Maybe, global warming may have made the environment more conducive to viral propagation.

·     People have increasingly destroyed natural habitats of wild animals and moved into those locations.  As a result, wild animals and people abide more closely together than had been common previously.

·       People in some urban areas are increasingly using wild rather than domesticated animals for food.  COVID-19 may have originated from a wild meat market in China.

Whether or not this virus has a greater mortality rate than other virus outbreaks, a person may be exposed and become a carrier and infectious without any symptoms for 20 days or more.  Because generalized testing for this virus is not yet possible in any country, asymptomatic carriers provide the primary mechanism for transmitting it to others.   As a result, this virus has spread to almost every country (186 out of 196 at last count) in the world in less than 3 months.  Official numbers for mortality rates versus total numbers for infection range from 1% to 3%; however, nobody know how many asymptomatic individuals are present, so the actual mortality rate is certainly lower that the apparent mortality rate.  The primary cause for the panic response observed throughout the world is not the mortality rate but the exponential rate of contagion that has overwhelmed available medical facilities with critically ill people in many locations.

CONSEQUENCES OF COVID-19

Quarantine/Lockdown.  When the infection was detected in China, the initial official reaction was to block any report on the situation.  After it was too late to prevent propagation of the virus to other regions, China first imposed quarantine and then total lockdown of the province where it originated.  It was too late – the virus had already propagated beyond that province due to tourists who had been there and then returned to their region or country of origin.  As the infection spread from one country to the next, each country first closed their borders, imposed quarantine on citizens returning from abroad, and finally varying degrees of lockdown on everyone.  Where I live, lockdown has been imposed on all but the most important businesses and services.  The expected duration of lockdown is unknown – initially several weeks but potentially many months.

Economic Impact of Lockdown.  As long as lockdown is in effect, only grocery stores, gas stations, pharmacies, and medical service continue in operation.  That means manufacturing and other services mostly remain unavailable.  As a result, a substantial proportion of the populace, probably much more that 25%, are now unemployed for the duration of the emergency.  Governments have promised low interest loans for businesses and unemployment compensation for individuals who qualify.  (I do not.)  But consider, this is right at the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, right at the beginning of planting time for most crops.  I have never been a large-scale farmer, but I have grown much of my own food for nearly 30 years.  Planting the wrong variety or planting at the wrong time is an invitation for crop failure.  Additionally, a major plague of locusts is now underway across eastern Africa, the gulf states of the Arabian peninsula, and much of India.  This promises crop failure throughout those regions if the locusts cannot be destroyed.  (Note: During the flu epidemic of 1918 - 1920, the last wave of the flu occurred during late summer - fall of 1920 in the US.  Because so many people were sick most crops were never harvested, and the few crops that were harvested never were transported to market.  The result was famine just as the epidemic came to an end.)

Essentially all manufacturing has come to a halt in those areas affected by this virus, which now includes almost every country in the world.  This affects the laborers in those industries directly, but it also impacts all of their suppliers and everybody else all the way to retail outlets.  If the lockdown conditions last for several months, the worldwide economy could collapse.  Local availability of food and other essential products will last only as long as stores remain in warehouses.  Once those are gone, there will be no more without restoration of manufacturing and farming functions.  From the standpoint of food, most locations of the world can produce a harvest just once a year for most crops.  Modern food suppliers get around this limitation by a combination of storage and importing food from other regions of the world.  If the supply chains get broken, it will require time, perhaps much time, to rebuild them.

If you are an investor, you have witnessed the public response to this anticipated reality.  Vast amounts of capital have vanished overnight as the stock markets have crashed.  Those who managed to extract themselves from their stock positions either have chosen to hold cash or to pursue a “flight to safety” – government bonds, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or some crypto currency.  All of these “safety” strategies depend on the assumption that the world order we have known will be restored at some point in the not too distant future.  This may never happen.

Financial Markets.  Governments of the world are all aware of this, and most of the developed countries are promising financial aid to now unemployed workers and now shut down businesses.  The world bank has promised availability of a huge amount of cash to permit restarting the world economies.  All of this is fiat cash – ink on paper.  The real value of this cash is no more than that of the paper with the ink on it.  In reality the monetary system throughout the world is a house of cards.  All of the largesse of the central banks comes at the cost of more national indebtedness.  Yet presently, essentially every country has a national debt that is many times its GNP, and debt service is often one of the biggest items or the biggest item in yearly national budgets.  When people lose confidence in their national currency, this house of cards will collapse.  Unfortunately, the “hard” currencies – gold, silver, etc., and even the crypto currencies – will not be any real answer.  The value for all of these “hard” currencies is determined by what someone is willing to give in exchange for it.  Under the circumstance of world-wide economic collapse, chaos will reign in most places, and perhaps every place.

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

Is this present pandemic the hand of God, or is it the result of natural conditions mostly created by us ourselves?  Consider the four predictions from Revelation chapter 8 that I started with:

·      1/3 of the earth, 1/3 of the trees, and all of the grass would be burned.  Last year vast areas of forest and grassland were burned by wildfires.  Even more were destroyed intentionally by slash-and-burn ranchers and farmers.

·      1/3 of the seas would become blood, 1/3 of the sea creatures would die, and 1/3 of the ships would be destroyed.  Large sections of the oceans have been designated as dead zones because they have become so polluted that they can no longer support any life.  The so-called red tide has been observed during summer in many parts of the world.  Commercial fishing has run several species of fish once abundant to near extinction.  After the British Petroleum well rig in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, the massive oil slick looked like clotted blood floating on the water.

·      1/3 of the rivers and springs would become foul, and many people would die because of it.  Both human sewage and industrial waste have so polluted the vast majority of rivers, lakes, and streams so they can no longer safely be used for drinking water.  Industrialized countries do purify their drinking water, but animals and people in poor countries are out of luck.  (Note: Revelation also predicts famine.  If farmers of the northern hemisphere are unable to plant their crops in the next few months, famine will result.  If most of the farmers in the southern hemisphere cannot harvest their crops during this same time, there will be no backup reserve.)

·      The light from the sun, moon and stars would be diminished by 1/3.  This literally is happening in places where the smog is so thick that the sunlight remains dim at mid day.  When I was still traveling for work, I can remember that each time the plane lifted off, I could see a brown stain above every major city.  Additionally, the eruption of a single super volcano could impact the atmosphere world wide, and this affect could last for years.

Except for volcanism, we humans have done all this to ourselves.  We are only experiencing the consequences of our own combined greed and selfishness.  God promised that he would visit the iniquity of the fathers on the sons up to the third and fourth generation.  This is literally happening today.

Are we seeing the hand of God?  In antiquity right up to around 200 years ago, every natural disaster and every epidemic outbreak was attributed to divine judgment for some misdeed.  They knew nothing about plate tectonics or microbes and viruses.  They did not connect cholera with the polluted water they were drinking or the black death with rat and fleas.  Today we connect everything with natural causes (or conspiracies).  Thus, the corona virus presumably came from a wild animal, and it infected one or more people at a live animal meat market.  It spread due to the shortsightedness of first the Chinese government and then that of the WHO (World Health Organization) as well as that of every government of the countries now affected.  But these are not causes, just the instrumental means by which the disease arose and was propagated.  The wild animal, whichever one it was, did not create the virus.  The ineffective actions of the governments allowed but did not cause the spread of the infection.  So what was the effective cause?

Anyone familiar with the content of the book of Revelation knows that it predicts the rise of a worldwide government headed by a brutal dictator.  The chaos that would result from a global economic collapse and famine is a scenario that would foster the rise of such a government.  If this is not the end of global human society as we have known it, then it is a wakeup call from the hand of God.  The scope of natural destruction caused by us has not yet reached that predicted by Revelation chapter 8, but it could in short order.  Thus, maybe we have some time left.  Do you think we humans will learn our lesson?   The book of Revelation indicates repeatedly that the mass of humanity does not, and I think that this will be the most probable scenario.