Pandemic means "pertaining to all people." The word "dem(os)" means people. "Pan" means "all."
The COVID-19 crisis is a real problem for all people.
People are dying.
The COVID-19 death rate is over 2%. Death comes to men more than women, the obese more than the thin, the older more than the younger, and those with pre-existing health conditions more than the healthy among us.
Americans are freaked out.
Don't be.
Realize that a pandemic typically leads to a God-demic.
It is possible to see God at work, even in a pandemic.
When we feel out of control in an unpredictable situation without a solution to change our situation, fear and anxiety abound.
But God is in control. God is unchangeable. God is never taken by surprise.
One of the advantages of knowing Christ - while at the same time being a student of history - is that both things - history and Christianity - bring a sense of calm to any current situation.
The world has been here before.
In ancient times, mankind never presumed the power of life and death.
In modern times, we wrongly think we have the power of life and death.
But Jesus said...
"I hold the keys of death and the grave' (Revelation 1:18)The reason we're in a panic is that we wrongly believe we hold the keys to life and death.
We do not.
Mankind has never been the One in authority over life and the grave.
Jesus Christ holds those keys.
And a pandemic leads people to a God-demic.
The Kingdom of Jesus Christ is being built, and the gates of hell shall not prevail.
17 comments:
Wade,
If you had COVID-19, I’ll bet you’d want medicine that Science produced by taking antibodies from recovered victims. Science is not miracle healing by Jesus, but it sure beats nothing.:)
Yep, Rex, you are correct.
So, Wade, what do you think, "beginnings of birth pangs"? I know nobody knows when the end will come and there have been pandemics and all the sorts of global strife mentioned in Matthew 24, but it sure seems that the depravity of the world is a lot worse than it has been in the past 50 years or so that I can remember. And there has never been a time when the Gospel was preached throughout the world as it is today.
I personally think that the church will continue to be present during the Great Trib and that serving Christ during that time of desperation will be an amazing thing. Maybe today's crisis is just a sample.
Right now, our first responders and our medical professionals in the hospitals need our help so we need to pressure politicians to give them protection so that they can stay well and serve the sick. This is a critical need, as I am informed by my family who are medical people, so their crisis is real and their journey is now dangerous for them without the help of the whole nation behind them, with political support and with prayer.
In another difficult time in another land under siege, King George VI, the present Queen of England's father, spoke to the nation and quoted from a poem these words:
"King George VI quoted in his Christmas broadcast in 1939 to the Commonwealth:
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.”
These words were written in a poem popularly called 'The Gate of the Year' written by
Minnie Louise Haskins. HER name for her whole poem was 'God Knows'.
some background on the poem, this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gate_of_the_Year
WADE,
your comment reminds me of the twenty-third Psalm, of the Lord Who shepherds us beyond our fears from death into life.
I do think we need to stand up for our first responders now who are under siege and in need of help lest they perish from our neglect. I think we need to take a stand for their sake, yes. It seems the right thing to do in the midst of the present chaos.
We need to pray without ceasing also: For those who are vulnerable and innocent, and therefore dear to the heart of Our Lord. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. God have mercy.
When are you going to address the huge firings this term at SWBTS? They practically have no Bible faculty left. You discussed the firings last year, but you didn't run a follow-up when sbts alumni and Dockery were brought in (into a school under a supposed tight budget). I hope that the silence is broken when the press release comes out using covid-19 as a pretext. And if you don't address the draconian firings then, perhaps it will come up when Greenway fills the newly vacated chairs with his cronies in the late summer.
Agreed, God alone holds the keys to life and death. No need to worry or fret.
Pandemics have been in the world before, but none like this plandemic.
Seeing how GOV is handling it in extreme, unheard of measures that extremely violate individual liberties makes it more clear the risk of severe illness is extremely low. Add to that Dr. Fauci's report ( https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387 ) specifying case fatality rate is probably at .1% like severe flu (which the mainstream media is conveniently overlooking - no pandemic) and one can be further assured we have a situation similar to when I used to point and say "look at that wabbit over there!" to my young kids knowing they'd turn and look, giving me the chance to grab a big bite of their ice cream cone. :)
"The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” Frank Zappa
"“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.” David Rockefeller
"“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” David Rockefeller
The Rockefeller foundation laid this plandemic out point by point in their blueprints for police state many years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4Wo1XZQV2A
Ken
:
Wade--my grandma had lived through horrific poverty, the accidental killing of her own sibling, and a starving parent trafficking her. Then she got to live through the First World War, the Spanish Flu, getting dusted out of Oklahoma. They headed to California but Arizona turned them back. After a time in tent city out at Hobbs NM they moved to East Texas, in time to live quite near the New London School when it exploded. Around that time a tornado killed family members. All that plus the Great Depression followed by WW2 followed by the death of my Grandpa. She was in company housing on the Kirby Lease in East Texas and had to find a place, and a way, to live.
And all she would say was they prayed for years for revival and after all that, it came bigtime in the 1940's through the early 1960's.
Better hold onto the reins and glue down in the saddle. We could be headed for a real revival, even in spite of or maybe because of this boomer doomer.
linda
Amen, Linda.
Ken,
You've given me much to think about. Thank you.
Anonymous,
I'm out of the loop at SWBTS. Most of my contacts were fired long before Greenway got there. :)
RB,
As you may - or may not know - I believe Matthew 24 was fulfilled within a generation after Jesus spoke His prophecies that fill that chapter. Too much to discuss here, but would encourage you to listen to The Two Covenants or my series on Revelation and/or Daniel.
That said, RB, I believe OTHER Scriptures teach of the coming of Jesus to establish fully His eternal Kingdom, a future general resurrection of the dead, and a final judgment.
Thanks for that, Wade. I WILL search for the series on Revelation and Daniel. Maybe that will reveal some of your thoughts on those other Scriptures that you do consider to be teaching the coming of Jesus to establish His eternal Kingdom. That should be interesting to see your thoughts and interpretations. I lean toward considering His resurrection as being the establishment of His eternal Kingdom on earth, but still, will look forward to learning more from your perspective.
I did remember your position on Matthew 24 from previous posts after you mentioned it but thank you for bringing it to my attention.
"The COVID-19 death rate is over 2%. Death comes to men more than women, the obese more than the thin, the older more than the younger, and those with pre-existing health conditions more than the healthy among us."
some thoughts on the 'stats' and ways to look at them
there ARE subsets where the 'average' shows up higher than the TOTAL average of the general population, yes
but TO BE FAIR, is that average SLANTED ?
when I was teacher, I had different ways of evaluating my work from looking at unit tests where I felt I had done my best to prepare my students
1. One way was the total average: add up all of the grades and divide by the total and get a measurement that gave me some concept of 'average';
2. But upon reflection, and knowing I had in my classes students with 'special needs' and 'learning gaps' and 'homelessness (living in shelters)', and with different learning styles and preferences;
I decided to find a more HONEST WAY of evaluating the strength of my work by calculating NOT JUST THE 'MEAN', BUT ALSO THE 'MODE' AND 'THE MEDIAN' of the WHOLE CLASS,
and then looking at the sub-groups I had identified as calling from me some consideration of ways of best teaching them based on their specialized situations.
3. I did a lot of learning about my work, where the weaknesses were and the strengths and I was able to ADJUST my technique professionally on what a closer look at 'grades' revealed once my 'averaging' was directed away from 'slanting' positive or negative, and all the extra evaluation paid off for the ones I worked for: my students
4. By the time I retired, I had it that 'mean' averaging that was 'slanted' was NOT a fair measurement of my work or the student's work;
and avoiding making decisions and evaluations based on 'slanted' averages did in the end pay off with being able to be more intent on what my goals really were.
Did I want an 'average' that made ME look good, as a classroom teacher, even though the mean grade average was slanted upward unfairly because of a handful of gifted students while the greatest number of the class had not done so well?
Or did I want something more:
did I want to be honest with myself about whether or not I was evaluating my work and the children's achievements FAIRLY, according to the REALITY of the actual situations of my student's great range of abilities and strengths and weaknesses.
I chose the better way.
OBJECT: Be careful of saying 'oh, it's not so bad' because the mean average tells us not to get so worried;
when if we took a closer look at the sub-groups and applied a better evaluation that revealed what was REALLY going on, we would see just how much trouble some of those were in for whom we were RESPONSIBLE TO HELP.
Are we 'averaging' the wrong way in evaluating this pandemic's effects on our country?
Have we overlooked some better ways of examining what is going on, and then taken steps to address the results so that the more vulnerable populations have as much chance to survive as the strong?
If a teacher can take the time to set aside the 'slanted' favorable mean average, and take a closer look at what is really happening,
then maybe our country can find a better way to evaluate and address the work of fighting this pandemic so that the WEAK, the VULNERABLE, the front-line first responders and medical staffs, also have as much of a chance as the rest of us.
I hope this gives people something to think about. We can do better, a lot better.
I think it would be the right thing to value our weaker brothers and vulnerable sisters as much as we value our selves and our own.
For me personally, the medical front-liners and a son with severe medical challenges are the bulk of my family, and you bet I think we can do better.
http://www.preearth.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1184
"The data from nextstrain.org
The March 28 2020 data shows the existence of 2084 different varieties of COVID-19 worldwide. It also shows the existence of 341 different varieties of COVID-19 in Iceland.
The 341 varieties/genomes from Iceland prove that the virus already existed in Iceland prior to Wuhan.
The 2084 varieties/genomes worldwide prove that the virus already existed worldwide prior to Wuhan.
So, COVID-19 existed last year, and the year before, and the year before,...
People have probably been getting sick from various vareities of Covid-19 for decades.
Possibly, people have been dying of various vareities of Covid-19 for decades, only in the past it was called, the flu, or pneumonia, or similar. Since, sequencing of the RNA was not done, and tests for the Covid-19 strain did not exist, no one knew it was Covid-19."
https://coronacircus.com/2020/04/03/when-fear-and-reason-collide/
Conclusion
"It is our belief that this information, that is very easy to find, as everything else that we are publishing on our website, will soon become common knowledge. In the “post-mortem” phase, when the fear has dissipated, and when looking back on the crisis, people will realize how utterly irresponsible public health authorities (and the press) have been.
They may revolt, and that might be the plan."
Trump and evengelicals are totally tied together for better or worse the die is cast
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