Monthly Archives: March 2020

Is Coronavirus Divine Judgment?

Reflection.

Just recently I was conversing with a Facebook friend when the subject of the Coronavirus  epidemic and divine judgment came up.  He noted that some people were saying it was God’s judgement and, being an earnest seeker after truth, he was questioning it.  I’d actually been thinking of writing something along these lines so his comments spurred me to action.

How do we understand God’s judgement?

The Bible does talk about God’s judgement being tangible and active.  ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth’ (Romans 1:18). This shows that God’s wrath is being revealed now, as it is in the present tense.  But the question we have to ask is how does it manifest itself?  The following verses give us the context.  We see that God has done plenty to make himself known through his creation.  But mankind, in its lack of wisdom, has rejected him and have sought to worship the created rather than the creator (Romans 1:19-23).

Paul, then writes something that we might find surprising: ‘Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,  because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.’ (Romans 1:24-25).  Whereas we make the assumption that increasing sin leads to judgement, Paul paints a picture of God’s judgement being manifested in increased depravity!  This may be an uncomfortable for some, particularly those who comment: “God made like this” when confronted with certain sins.  But essentially that attitude is a product of God’s active and tangible judgement!  The verses that follow explain this:  ‘For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error’ (Romans 1:26-27).   So yes, God’s judgement is active in the present time, it’s just not always in ways we might expect!

  What about all that freaky stuff we read about in the book of Revelation?

A casual look at on Facebook quickly establishes that various Christian’s are associating the Coronavirus epidemic with various parts of the book of Revelation.  However, that assumes the book is linear in its narrative.  I think there’s a very good argument for that not being the case for the following reasons.

The first is that if we take that view, then an awful lot of the book wouldn’t have had any meaning to the people who first received it.  That seems extremely unlikely given that the book uses imagery and an emphasis on certain numbers which would have been extremely relevant and understandable to those people.  Prophecy can have a second layer, for example many Old Testament prophecies, although relevant to people of their time, also point to Christ.  So the main purpose of the central section of the book, where the seven seals are opened followed by the seven trumpets, is most likely to be an overview of world history.  It draws the reader’s attention to situations which were relevant to the first century Church, yet continue to resonate with God’s people in each generation!

The danger with a ‘Historicist’ interpretation of the book is that there is a tendency to try and fit historical events to certain seals or trumpets.  An interesting observation is made in Richards Bewes’ book ‘The Lamb Wins’.  He mentions a friend  who was reading through Revelation without the aid of any commentaries.  His friend noted: ‘This doesn’t read like a continuous sequence.  The writer keeps going back on his tracks.  He seems to stop, and then begin to cover virtually the same ground all over again.  And yet…  Each time he resumes, it’s almost as though he sees the same familiar picture through different coloured spectacles’.[1]  This is what is called a ‘Resumptive’ interpretation of the book.  We see many of the same events from different angles as it were.  This is probably the best way to understand Revelation as it draws our attention to the fact this is a ‘fractured’ world’.  There are wars, ecological breakdown disease and persecution of the Lord’s people.  But this is  not uncommon to people and Christians in any day and age.  So no, I don’t believe the Coronavirus epidemic is specifically prophesied in Revelation.

So does God judge at all in this day and age?

We have already noted from Romans 1:18-32 that he does.  Indeed, certain sins can lead to personal consequences.  But before we start seeing such events like 9/11, the 2004 tsunami and Coronavirus as God’s wrath and judgement on the sins of those who lost their lives, let’s see what Jesus said about these kind of events.    When questioned about an atrocity that the Roman governor Pilate had carried out, Jesus referred to a local building accident that claimed the lives 18 residents of Jerusalem.  His answer was that neither of these events was direct judgement, but rather a wakeup call for people to consider their spiritual state before God (Luke 13:1-5)!

We live in a fractured and damaged world which is damaged by the curse of mankind’s sin (Genesis 3:16-19).  Jesus said  that: ‘There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven’ (Luke 21:11).  And Christians are just as likely to be caught in the crossfire of suffering as anyone else!  In the book of Job, when God withdraws his protection and Job suffers, his friends think it’s because of some terrible sin.  But we see behind the scenes and know that there’s a purpose to this.  In the end Job acknowledges God’s justice and sovereignty.  There may often be purposes behind suffering that we, like Job, will never fully understand.

In his book ‘The Problem of Pain’ CS Lewis wrote: ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures,  speaks in our conscience, but shouts in  our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’[2]   One day Jesus will come again to judge the world.  So rather than seeing the Coronavirus epidemic as being the direct judgement of God, lets see it as a major spiritual wake up call!

 If you are interested we can send you a free booklet called ‘Where is God when Things go Wrong’ (See our Any Questions? page).  There is also a series on the Book of Job called  ‘The Storm Breaks’ that can be accessed on the Sermons section.

[1] Richard Bewes, The Lamb Wins!  A Guided Tour through the Book of Revelation (Fearn, Christian Focus Publications, 2000) 17.

[2] C.S Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperCollins, 1996) 91.

 

 

The Songs of Ascents: Psalm 133

Scriptural Thought for the Month
When Brothers Dwell in Unity

When I worked in a music shop one of my jobs was to make sure all the guitars were in tune.  I did this by tuning each one to a well tuned piano.  However, there’s another way I could have done it and that would have been to tune one guitar to the piano and then to tune each guitar to the guitar I had just tuned.  But the problem would have been the last guitar tuned would be in tune with itself, but not necessary with the first guitar that was tuned!  Unity requires consistency.  If the songs of ascents represent the various aspects of the pilgrimage up to Jerusalem, this one represents the necessary of unity!  The pilgrimages would have been made up of extended families as in Luke’s Gospel where Joseph and Mary take Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover and are unaware that he’s stayed behind, thinking that he was among their friends and relatives (Luke 2:41-52).  So the stress levels could have been quite high!  But it’s necessary to arrive for worship in the right frame of mind!

The first thing to note is unity is a good thing.  Now we might think that’s obvious, but Cain fell out with Abel over worship (Genesis 4:1-16) and Abraham and Lot separated due to disagreements between their herdsmen (Genesis 13:2-13).  The point is unity doesn’t come naturally and the first verse of the psalm emphasises this.  ‘Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity!’  The use of the word: ‘Behold’ emphasises that unity is an unusual thing!

David, the writer, now wants to illustrate the nature of this unity.  In Exodus 29:7 and 30:22-33 we are given an account of the ordination of Aaron as high priest.  Oil was poured on his forehead, but the psalm makes it clear he was drenched in stuff.  In other words the blessings and benefits that unity brings spreads among the Lord’s people as they are not limited.  Our worship is not limited to a Sunday!  The Sunday service is worship, but so is the ‘Church Members Meeting’.  Yet people often treat them as two totally different things in the way they conduct themselves.  I have a feeling church meetings would be very different if we regarded them as worship!  David then gives another example of the way this blessing of unity is not limited with the example of Mount Hermon.  Hermon was a large mountain whereas, the mountains surrounding Jerusalem were not.  Yet David uses the picture of the dew falling on them both and not being limited to one or the other.  There is something very refreshing about dew soaked mornings and  David is conveying unity among God’s people is refreshing.

Lastly, David points out the way true unity is found.  The examples throughout the psalm speak of unity as coming from above and when we come to the second part of verse 3 we see that real unity comes from the Lord.  The Hebrew word for the Lord here is ‘Yahweh’ illustrating unity is found in God’s covenant nature, in other words within his Law.  Tracy and I have a friend who’s been very involved in the General Synod of the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Council.  But a while ago she resigned.  The reason for this, as far as we can make out, is that whenever a subject was being discussed and she wanted to apply scripture, people were saying something like: “that’s all very well, but we want to listen to people’s experience”.  Getting back to my guitar illustration, the leadership of the Church of England seem more concerned about being in tune with a particular group of people, rather than scripture!  But real unity can only be found in God’s Word!  But what is rather interesting is that the Lord has: ‘commanded the blessing, life for evermore’ (v3).  It’s not just the Lord gives it; he commands unity and the blessing that goes with it from and for his people.

In the end real unity is found in God’s Word.  The churches in Galatia had embraced Jewish teaching and probably had a superiority complex because of that.  But the Apostle Paul pulls the rug from under them.  ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise’ (Galatians 3:28-29).   Unity and reconciliation are only found in the ‘Word’ and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ who is the centre of all Scripture!

Would you like to listen to a sermon on the passage? When Brothers Dwell in Unity.