- OUR FAITH AND THE CORONAVIRUS -

Our Faith and the Coronavirus…

Inspired by comments originating from Westminster Theological Seminary, here are some thoughts for your consideration:

Time magazine has declared that “Christianity offers no answers about the Coronavirus.  It is not supposed to.”

When people say that God in the teaching of Christianity has no answers, it seems to me that they haven’t read their Bible, because the Bible does speak about these sorts of things very deeply.

        When we learn about God in the pages of scripture, we find that must use such wonderful words that He is infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, and unchangeable among many other terms to begin to understand Him.

        Infinite means that there is no beginning and ending to God – He is “from everlasting to everlasting” as the Bible declares. He is omnipresent, which means He is everyplace.  “Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” as the Psalmist declares.  That means He is right at the bedside of every person who is suffering with the virus right now.  He is with every doctor that’s doing treatment, He’s with every nurse that’s risking her health to bless someone else.  Because God is eternal – He’s not bound by time.  And, He is “omniscient” – He knows all.  He knows the end from the beginning.  Which means He can already tell us what the statistics are going to be at the end of this virus.  It has been well said that there is no passage in the Bible which says God panicked when He realized what happened.  On the other hand, there are many stories and examples showing His purposes fulfilled.

        The Bible teaches us that God declares the end from the beginning because He is sovereignly ruling over all things and He’s not only infinite and eternal but He is unchangeable.  That means that His utter goodness, His utter power, His complete holiness, His majestic ruling sovereignty – they never change.  Consequently, what we are experiencing now with all of the challenges and difficulties – they are utterly underneath the rule and purposes of God.  “that people may know…I am the LORD and there is no other.  I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD…” as Isaiah 45:6-7 declares.  We are sometimes allowed pain because when all is well, we tend to forget God and trust in our idols of wealth.  We sometimes need to be reminded that we are small before a sovereign God, and need to look to Him alone for true satisfaction in life, every good gift, and indeed our Salvation.

        And when you see that kind of a God, and you read the Bible you discover that the Bible tells us that God made the world good, from its opening pages in Genesis.  And man rebelled and there is sin and we are in a fallen and broken world.  And one of the things a fallen and broken world is going to have according to the very beginning of the scriptures is that men are going to feel pain and suffering.  They’re going to know labor and difficulty and they will experience death.  We are in a fallen and broken world. 

        And so, when these difficulties come, that is part of what it means to be in a world that has turned its back upon God. 

        As you run through the pages of scripture from the history books, the prophets, the gospels and through to Revelation, we are told that God uses such things as famine, war and pestilence or plague as well as animals being released into the natural order of men to bring about sometimes His holy judgment and other times to cause men to be humble to seek for God’s grace and blessing. 

        By reading God’s word, we know that we are not in paradise yet.  Heaven is yet to come.  We are in a broken world.  We need a Savior.  Redemption is beginning our hope, but eternity is when all things will be made new.  In the meantime, there will be war, famine, and pestilence.  There will be blood, sweat, tears and death. 

        But in the midst, we have the eternal, infinite unchangeable God who is our “rock”, the one who give us our promise, who sent us the Messiah who gives us hope for today and indeed for eternity.

        And, we discover that our Lord is always with us, calms the storms, forgives and offers us life in Him.  We learn that by receiving and following Jesus we have the way to God the Father and life forever with Him in fullness of wellness and joy in a new heaven and earth.

        In the meantime, Jesus calls us to faith in Him.  “Let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me..” (John 14)  Jesus asks us in Luke the 18^th chapter, “…when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”  And from Matthew 24, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”  We need remember that those of us who have received, love and follow Him - that we are “bought with a price” and that He has promised to be with us “to the end of the age.”

        So, the Bible has a lot to say about these things.  I would urge my friends who are reading Time magazine to stop for a minute and read the Bible instead, and find hope and life in Him “who loved us and gave Himself for us.”

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