Wasting a Pandemic

As we enter what appears to be the tail end of the Coronavirus pandemic, I have a sinking feeling that an opportunity has been lost. To most people in the world, COVID 19 is an airborne disease that migrated from animals to people and caused untold devastation to human life, economies, and familiar ways of life. But Christians, who know we have a Sovereign God and that there are no “accidents,” need to consider the Divine significance of a such a world-wide killing disease.

If the pandemic was an expression of God’s will, what was His purpose in allowing/sending it on the entire planet?

It’s really quite simple . . . and quite sobering.

The answer is found in the book of Revelation. There, in that most mysterious apocalyptic literature, it says: “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands so as not to worship demons and the idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders, nor of their witchcraft, nor of their sexual immorality, nor of their thefts” (9:20-21).

Whether COVID 19 is a harbinger of the plagues in Revelation, we do not know. But it shines a light on the Divine purpose of plagues that has gone completely overlooked. World-wide pandemics contain a metamessage from God. A “metamessage” communicates something in addition to the message or event itself. The metamessage contained in the plagues mentioned in Revelation—that the world needed to repent of their idolatry, murders, immorality, etc.—went unrecognized and unheeded. I fear this has started happening to us as it relates to COVID 19.

Writing from a North American perspective, we do not have the kind of idol worship to repent of like the book of Revelation mentions (at least not the physical kind), but we definitely have our idols—people and things into which we invest our time, money, love, and devotion.  However, in our day of abortion and genocides, we (and the rest of the world) have no lack of murders, sexual immorality, thievery, and witchcraft. Instead of realizing that God has allowed COVID to alert us to change course and turn to Him, evil appears to have been on steroids during the past year.

It is one thing when those who do not know Christ fail to get the message, but quite another when God’s people don’t get it either. COVID 19 will soon fade into memory like smallpox and the bubonic plague. Such a lack of understanding is not good: “As in the days of Noah, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away . . .” (Matt.24:37-39).

We are living in a day when we—believer and unbeliever—are not understanding what God is doing under our very noses. Believers have been more concerned with politics and keeping the machine of church life running than running to God to seek His face. We have been more focused on our “right” to publicly gather for worship, than asking God why He made it so difficult for us to do so. Could it be that He feels about us like He did about the church of Laodicea? Have we grown so lukewarm that He finds our worship nauseating?

I am afraid that we, the Church, have become as blind as the world. We are talking about all the wrong things, up in arms about all the wrong issues, making ourselves odious to half the population that need the Savior.  

Take a moment and grieve our blindness in not recognizing the hand of God in this, not repenting for the sins which prompted God to afflict the planet. With the ongoing fall of many high-profile church leaders, the Church can claim neither innocence, integrity, nor righteousness to our sinful culture. Ongoing strife, immorality, and abuse lays under the carpet in many churches across the land. Yet, we have not repented. Have we even thought to take a thorough inventory of our personal lives during the pandemic? Or are we in the same spiritual state we were in before it came upon us?

“As in the days of Noah” – They missed the building thunderheads of judgment because they did not understand what God was doing. We are in danger of doing the same. The rain is starting to fall from the sky. It is not the time for believers to simply open our umbrellas and go on our merry way as if nothing is happening.

Rev. Mark Barnard serves as president of Blessing Point Ministries which works to heal churches that have been wounded by painful crises. Mark is coauthor, with Dr. Kenneth Quick, of The Eighth Letter: Exploring Jesus’ Letters to the Seven Churches and Discovering What He is Saying to Yours.