The scientific prophets of our age paint a very troubling picture of the next five months. The novel coronavirus has already infected nine-million people in the United States and killed 230-thousand since March of 2020. With winter coming, combined with a regular increase in seasonal flu cases, current projections put this country’s death toll between 400 and 600-thousand by March1.
Those numbers may seem like abstractions on a page. But in a real sense, we all know someone who has struggled with or perhaps died from COVID-19. The other personal reality is frustration after seven months of disruption to our daily lives. Church, school, sports, jobs, movies, and restaurants have all changed or become something we remember more than experience. We wear masks, touch elbows, wash and sanitize our hands, socially distance, and we are all completely sick of it. This makes me think of the book of Revelation. No…seriously.
Any time there is a national crisis, some of our religious friends will stand up and yell, “It’s the end times! This is fulfilled prophecy! Run for the hills! But don’t forget to tithe first.” Of course, this is a complete misreading of Scripture. The things revealed to John were designed to comfort oppressed Christians by declaring Jesus and his people are ultimately victorious. Revelation is not a book of secret codes designed to tell us the exact date of the second coming. Jesus and Paul both tells us, it is a fool’s errand to even guess when it will occur (Matthew 24:36; I Thessalonians 5:2).
This does not mean the message of Revelation is irrelevant today. God’s vision to John has incredible relevance today. The book was written to Christians suffering persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire, “to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.”-Revelation 1:1. One of the things they would suffer was death from what we would call a pandemic. In chapter six, when the fourth seal is opened, a pale horse with a rider named Death comes, “to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.”-Revelation 6:8. The word pestilence is translated in some Bibles as plague. In fact, 70-years after Revelation was written five million people died from an infectious disease (Smallpox or Measles) and in 541-542 an outbreak of bubonic plague killed 25-million people!
Through all this suffering, Christians are reassured by visions of the throne room of God, the victorious Lamb, and Christians resting in heaven. John asks one of the men standing around the throne, “Who are these clothed in white robes?”-Revelation 7:13. The answer is clear, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”-Revelation 7:14. Christians will endure tribulation, but we go to heaven and experience unimaginable joy and comfort! Read verses 15 through 17 for yourself. But know they end with God wiping away all tears.
There is no doubt, John was writing about a period of tribulation unique to the time of the Roman Empire. But tribulation is something all Christians face. Here is what Robert Harkrider says in his commentary on the book, “the ‘great tribulation’ represents all periods of time, for never has tribulation been entirely absent from the church.”
We are undergoing a tribulation unknown to Americans in the last 100-years. It will take patience, endurance, and faith. Christians are never told we will be exempt from hardship in this life, “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”-Acts 14:22. No matter how frustrated we become with the safety measures brought on by this pestilence, we must, “not grow weary of doing good,”-Galatians 6:10.
We must never stop serving God, his church, and sinners who need to hear the gospel. Again, words from Revelation apply, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer…Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”-Revelation 2:10. God is good. Jesus wins. If we endure, we will reign.
1 https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/04/key-coronavirus-forecast-predicts-over-410000-total-us-deaths-by-jan-1.html
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