Is COVID-19 God's Judgement on America?

I've heard certain people claim that plagues, like COVID-19, are a judgement of God on America. They have the mistaken idea that the Bible was written to us twenty-first-century believers as well as to the people of earlier times. But is our modern world so important?

Certainly we should be expecting Christ to return. He urged his disciples in Luke 21:28 (BBE) to be watchful. "But when these things come about, let your heads be lifted up, because your salvation is near."

I personally remember how the false prophet of a house church I attended figured that Canada was mentioned in Holy Scripture. Psalms 72:8 (BBE) was his proof text. "Let his kingdom be from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth."

Canada does stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Saint Lawrence River to what could be called the ends of the earth. Little did that scripture twister know that this wasn't a precise description but hyperbole.

People need to recognize that the Bible is centered around the Middle East. That's because it's where God's nation of Israel and the Christian church began. Of course it doesn't ignore people in surrounding lands. Christ commanded his disciples in Matthew 28:19 and 20 (BBE) to, "Go then, and make disciples of all the nations, giving them baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: Teaching them to keep all the rules which I have given you: and see, I am ever with you, even to the end of the world."

Some folks will argue that God punishes nations. That was true in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Christ fulfilled the law and the prophesies concerning his incarnation. Luke 16:16 (BBE) explains, "The law and the prophets were till John: but then came the preaching of the kingdom of God, and everyone makes his way into it by force."

The whole purpose of redemption was, is, and will always be about God giving his son a people. We read in 2 Corinthians 15:28 (BBE) that Christ will someday submit himself to the Father. "And when all things have been put under him, then will the Son himself be under him who put all things under him, so that God may be all in all."

It really doesn't matter which nation we come from. A time will come when Christ will judge the entire human race in one massive sentencing session. Empires come and go but the gospel continues until that last sheep, metaphorically speaking, is brought into the fold.

On Thursday, if Jesus doesn't come first, I hope to post about God and a cure for the CCP virus.

I Still Call It Dominion Day

In spite of the Canadian Government calling Canada's day of confederation Canada Day, I still like the old name much better. We Canadians used to celebrate Dominion Day before Pierre Trudeau's Liberals gave it the tacky name it now has.

The word "dominion" is used many times throughout the Bible. Genesis 1:26 (BBE) tells how God gave us the job of managing his creation. "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, like us: and let him have rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every living thing which goes flat on the earth.'"

The founders of Canada wanted to keep this thought in the minds of the citizenry by inscribing Psalms 72:8 on the base of the Parliament building. The Bible in Basic English renders the verse as, "Let his kingdom be from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth."

This also was a reminder to Canadians that Christ is the ultimate king and our laws are based on his teachings. Sadly, people ignore and reject him, making up their own laws.

We also read in Psalms 145:13 (BBE) that God's dominion is eternal. "Your kingdom is an eternal kingdom, and your rule is through all generations."

And what a joy it is that death has no power over our Master. Romans 6:8 and 9 (BBE) states of him, "But if we are dead with Christ, we have faith that we will be living with him; Having knowledge that because Christ has come back from the dead, he will never again go down to the dead; death has no more power over him."

Because he rose from the dead, we also rejoice in the promise of our own bodily resurrection. Revelation 20:6 (BBE) promises, "Happy and holy is he who has a part in this first coming: over these the second death has no authority, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will be ruling with him a thousand years."

I personally suspect that people want to erase biblical knowledge from the citizenry so that they'll only trust in human dominion. We read countless times in the Bible how those attempts failed. This is one point I hope to make in my book called You Think You're Going to Heaven?On Thursday, I'll post about American liberty and the freedom we believers have in Christ.

On Thursday, I'll post about American liberty and the freedom we believers have in Christ

CONTEXT IS CRUCIAL WHEN READING BOOKS.

Everybody knows how to read a book, right? If that's so, why do so many people come up with different ideas of what the Bible says. I believe it's because they don't read verses in the context of the rest of the passage.

The minister of a cultic house church that I attended for more than fifteen years certainly was guilty of this. One example of his misreading was Deuteronomy 33:17. "His glory is like the first born of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh." Brother Herald, as i referred to him in my book, assumed this meant America and Canada. He reasoned that since the United States has ten times the population of Canada, they must be Ephraim. Canada was, according to his warped understanding, Manasseh.

Brother Herald also reinforced this belief with Psalm 72:8. "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." Since Canada stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the Saint Lawrence River to the high Arctic, he assumed that it was a prophecy about the nation.

Another of Brother Herald's off-the-wall notions was that God would fly weak Christians to a city of refuge in the Nahanni Valley. He claimed that Revelation 12:1 to 6 justified this belief. "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, in order to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a male child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days." From the metaphorical language, the meaning of this passage is the story of Christ's incarnation, not some future event.

Thanks to John MacArthur, Hank Hanegraaff, Alistair Begg, and many other biblically astute teachers, I know the proper way to read the Bible. Like any literature, it has cultural contexts, literary devices, symbolism, and similar attributes which need to be understood. Cherry-picking scriptures and forcing them into one's own notions does violence to the text and misleads naive believers, such as I was at one time.

I wrote extensively about that house church in my newly-published memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.