Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
This month’s newsletter is divided into two parts.
Gerhard le Roux writes:
“As we experience the horrors unfolding of the Covid19 virus in South Africa, I am reminded of a wonderful little e-book that I read by John Piper, well-known founder and senior teacher of DesiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The book is called “Coronavirus and Christ”. I would like to use the opportunity of this month’s newsletter to share a few thoughts with you.
Why did God allow the Corona / COVID-19 virus? Although the book as a whole was a great blessing to me and is freely available on the internet, I will try for the sake of this newsletter only to focus on the 6 answers from John Piper, together with a closing prayer. I purposefully did not add or take anything away, so as to give you full insight in the answers that John Piper had to offer.
1. “God put the physical world under a curse so that the physical horrors we see around us in diseases and calamities would become a vivid picture of how horrible sin is. In other words, physical evil is a parable, a drama, a signpost pointing to the moral outrage of rebellion against God.
Why might that be fitting? Because in our present condition, after the fall, blinded by sin, we cannot see or feel how repugnant sin against God is. Hardly anyone in the world feels the horror of preferring other things over God. Who loses any sleep over our daily belittling of God by neglect and defiance?
But, oh, how we feel our physical pain! How indignant we can become if God touches our bodies! We may not grieve over the way we demean God every day in our hearts. But let the coronavirus come and threaten our bodies, and he has our attention. Or does he? Physical pain is God’s trumpet blast to tell us that something is dreadfully wrong in the world. Disease and deformity are God’s pictures in the physical realm of what sin is like in the spiritual realm.
And that is true, even though some of the most godly people in the world bear those diseases and deformities. Calamities are God’s previews of what sin deserves and will one day receive in judgment thousand times worse. They are warnings. They are wake-up calls to see the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of sin against God.
Would that we could all see and feel how repugnant, how offensive, how abominable it is to treat our Maker with contempt, to ignore him and distrust him and demean him and give him less attention in our hearts than we give the style of our hair.
We need to see this and feel this, or we will not turn to Christ for salvation from the ugliness of sin. We may cry out to escape the penalty of sin. But will we see and hate the God-demeaning, moral ugliness of sin? If we don’t, it will not be because God has not provided vivid portrayals of it in physical misery—like the coronavirus. Therefore, God is mercifully shouting to us in these days: Wake up! Sin against God is like this! It is horrible and ugly. And far more dangerous than the coronavirus.”
2. Some people will be infected with the coronavirus as a specific judgment from God because of their sinful attitudes and actions.
The fact that all misery is a result of the fall—a result of the entrance of God-diminishing sin into the world—does not mean that all individual suffering is a specific judgment for personal sins. For example, Job’s suffering was not owing to his particular sins. The very first sentence of that book makes this clear: “Job . . . was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1).
And as we saw earlier, God’s own people experience many of the physical effects of his judgment. The apostle Peter put it like this:
It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” (1 Pet. 4:17–18)
For “the household of God,” this judgment from God is purifying, not punitive—not punishment. So not all suffering is owing to the specific judgments of God on specific sins. Nevertheless, God sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject him and give themselves over to sin.
Examples of Specific Judgments on Specific Sins
I’ll give two examples of specific judgments on specific sins.
In Acts 12, Herod the king exalted himself by allowing himself to be called a god. “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last” (Acts 12:23). God can do that with all who exalt themselves. Which means we should be amazed that more of our rulers do not drop dead every day because of their arrogance before God and man. God’s restraint is a great mercy.
Another example is the sin of homosexual intercourse. In Romans 1:27, the apostle Paul says, “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.” That “due penalty” is the painful effect “in themselves” of their sin.
This “due penalty” is just one example of the judgment of God that we see in Romans 1:18, where it says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Therefore, while not all suffering is a specific judgment for specific sins, some is.
Let Every Soul Be Searched
The coronavirus is, therefore, never a clear and simple punishment on any person. The most loving, Spirit-filled Christian, whose sins are forgiven through Christ, may die of the coronavirus disease. But it is fitting that every one of us search our own heart to discern if our suffering is God’s judgment on the way we live.
If we come to Christ, we can know that our suffering is not the punitive judgment of God. We can know this because Jesus said, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). It is discipline, not destruction. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb. 12:6).
3. The coronavirus is a God-given wake-up call to be ready for the second coming of Christ.
Even though the history of the Christian church is littered with failed predictions of the end of the world, it remains true that Jesus Christ is coming back. “Men of Galilee,” the angel said at Jesus’s departure, “why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
At his coming, he will judge the world:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. (Matt. 25:31–32)
For those who are not ready to meet Christ, that day will come suddenly like a trap:
Watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. (Luke 21:34)
Birth Pains
Jesus said there would be pointers to his coming—like wars, famines, and earthquakes (Matt. 24:7). He called these signs “birth pains” (Matt. 24:8). The image is of the earth as a woman in labour, trying to give birth to the new world, which Jesus would bring into being at his coming.
Paul picked up this imagery in Romans 8:22 and referred the birth pains to all the groaning’s of this age—all the miseries of disaster and disease (like the coronavirus). He pictured us in our diseases as part of the labour pains of the world. We groan as we wait for the redemption of our bodies at the coming of Jesus, when he will raise the dead and gives us new, glorious bodies (Phil. 3:21):
The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:21–23)
Stay Awake!
My point is this: Jesus wants us to see the birth pains (including the coronavirus) as reminders and alerts that he is coming and that we need to be ready. “You . . . must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matt. 24:44).
You don’t have to be a date setter in order take seriously what Jesus says. And what he says is unmistakable: “Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. . . . Stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come. . . . And what I say to you, I say to all: Stay awake” (Mark 13:33–37).
The message is clear. Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake. And the birth pains of the natural world are meant for this message. But, oh, how many people are not awake! For all their frenzied activity, they are sound asleep in regard to the coming of Jesus Christ. The peril is great. And the coronavirus is a merciful wake-up call to be ready.
The way to be ready is to come to Jesus Christ, receive forgiveness for sins, and walk-in his light. Then you will be among those who
are not in darkness for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light. . . . So then . . . let us keep awake. . . . For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thess. 5:4–10)
4. The coronavirus is God’s thunderclap call for all of us to repent and realign our lives with the infinite worth of Christ.
The coronavirus is not as unique as a call to repentance. In fact, all-natural disasters—whether floods, famines, locusts, tsunamis, or diseases—are God’s painful and merciful summons to repent.
We see this from the way Jesus responds to disaster in Luke 13:1–5:
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
Pilate had slaughtered worshipers in the temple. The tower in Siloam had collapsed and killed eighteen bystanders. One disaster was the fruit of human wickedness. The other was apparently an accident.
The Meaning of Calamity—for You
The crowds want to know from Jesus, “What’s the meaning of this? Was it an act of God’s specific judgment on specific sins?” Jesus’s answer is amazing. He draws a meaning from these disasters that relates to everyone, not just the ones who died. In both cases, he says, “No, those who were murdered by Pilate and those who were crushed under the tower were not worse sinners than—you.”
You? Why does he bring up their sin? They weren’t asking for his opinion about their own sin. They were curious about the others. They wanted to know what the disasters meant for the victims, not for the rest of us.
That’s what makes Jesus’s answer amazing. In essence, he said that the meaning of these disasters is for everyone. And the message is “Repent, or perish.” He says it twice: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (13:5).
Merciful Call While There’s Time
What was Jesus doing? He was redirecting the people’s astonishment. The astonishment that prompted these folks to query Jesus is misplaced. They were astonished that people were murdered so cruelly and crushed so meaninglessly. But Jesus says, “What you ought to be astonished at is that you were not the ones murdered and crushed. In fact, if you don’t repent, you yourselves will meet a judgment like that someday.”
From this, I infer that God has a merciful message in all such disasters. The message is that we are all sinners, bound for destruction, and disasters are a gracious summons from God to repent and be saved while there is still time. Jesus turned from the dead to the living and essentially said, “Let’s not talk about the dead; let’s talk about you. This is more urgent. What happened to them is about you. Your biggest issue is not their sin but your sin.” I think that’s God’s message for the world in this coronavirus outbreak. He is calling the world to repentance while there’s still time.
What Does Repentance Mean?
Let’s be more specific. What does repentance mean? The word in the New Testament means a change of heart and mind. Not a superficial change of opinion, but a deep transformation so that we perceive and prize God and Jesus for who they really are. Jesus described the change like this:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Matt. 22:37)
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matt. 10:37)
In other words, the most fundamental change of heart and mind that repentance calls for is to treasure God with all that you are and to treasure Jesus more than all other relations.
Why Would Jesus Threaten Us with Perishing?
The reason Jesus said that we all likewise would perish if we don’t repent is that we all have exchanged the treasure that God is for lesser things we love more (Rom. 1:22–23), and we all have treated Jesus as less desirable than money and entertainment and friends and family. The reason all of us deserve to perish is not a list of rules we have broken, but an infinite value we have scorned—the infinite value of all that God is for us in Jesus Christ.
Waking Up to Our Suicidal Preferences
Repentance means waking up from the suicidal preference of tin over gold, foundations of sand over solid rock, games in the gutter over a holiday at the sea. As C. S. Lewis writes:
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
The “infinite joy” Lewis mentions is the experience of seeing and savouring and sharing the worth and beauty and greatness of Christ.
Roused to Rely on Christ
What God is doing in the coronavirus is showing us—graphically, painfully—that nothing in this world gives the security and satisfaction that we find in the infinite greatness and worth of Jesus. This global pandemic takes away our freedom of movement, our business activity, and our face-to-face relations. It takes away our security and our comfort. And, in the end, it may take away our lives.
The reason God exposes us to such losses is to rouse us to rely on Christ. Or to put it another way, the reason he makes calamity the occasion for offering Christ to the world is that the supreme, all-satisfying greatness of Christ shines more brightly when Christ sustains joy in suffering.
Gift of Desperation
Consider, for example, why God brought Paul to the point where he despaired of life:
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8–9)
Paul does not view this experience of desperation as satanic or random. It is purposeful. And God is the one whose purpose is mentioned: this life-threatening experience “was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (1:9).
This is the message of the coronavirus: Stop relying on yourselves and turn to God. You cannot even stop death. God can raise the dead. And of course “relying on God” does not mean that Christians become do-nothings. Christians have never been do-nothings. It means that the ground, the pattern, and the goal of all our doings is God. As Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).
The coronavirus calls us to make God the all-important, pervasive reality in our lives. Our lives depend on him more than they depend on breath. And sometimes God takes our breath in order to throw us onto himself.
The Meaning of Thorns
Or consider God’s purpose in Paul’s painful thorn in the flesh:
To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Cor. 12:7–9)
Paul was blessed with great revelations. God saw the danger of pride. Satan saw the danger of truth and joy. God governs Satan’s strategy so that what Satan thinks will ruin Paul’s witness actually serves Paul’s humility and gladness. Paul gets a thorn in the flesh—a “messenger of Satan.” And a messenger of God! We don’t know what the thorn is. But we know that thorns are painful. And we know that Paul asked three times that Christ would take it away.
But Christ will not. He has a purpose for this pain. Namely, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9). His purpose is that through Paul’s unwavering faith and joy, Christ would shine as more valuable than health. Paul’s response to this purpose? “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses” (12:9).
Gladly! How can this be? Why is Paul willing to embrace his thorn with gladness? Because his greatest goal in life is that Christ be magnified in his body whether by life or by death (Phil. 1:20). To see the beauty of Christ, to cherish Christ as his supreme treasure, to show Christ to the world as better than health and life—that was Paul’s joy. A beautiful poem called “The Thorn,” by Martha Snell Nicholson (1898–1953), ends like this:
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.
In Loss, Gain
Paul embraced loss, in part, because in the loss, Christ was more fully gain:
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. (Phil. 3:8)
This is what it means to repent: to experience a change of heart and mind that treasures God in Christ more than life. “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you” (Ps. 63:3). This was Paul’s faith. It was true in life and death. In life, because Christ is the sweetness of every pleasure, and better than them all. And in death, because “in [God’s] presence there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11).
The coronavirus pandemic is the experience of loss—from the smallest loss of convenience to the greatest loss of life. And if we know the secret of Paul’s joy, we may experience the loss as gain. That is what God is saying to the world. Repent and realign your life with the infinite worth of Christ.
5. The coronavirus is God’s call to his people to overcome self-pity and fear, and with courageous joy, to do the good works of love that glorify God.
Jesus taught his followers to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). What is often not noticed is that being the salt of the earth and the light of the world in this way was the more salty and the more bright because the good deeds were to be done even in the midst of suffering.
Brightness in the Darkness of Danger
Jesus has just said, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11–12). Then, without a break, he says, “You are the salt of the earth. . . . You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–16).
It is not mere good deeds that give Christianity its tang and luster. It is good deeds in spite of danger. Many non-Christians do good deeds. But seldom do people give glory to God because of them.
Yes, the danger in Matthew 5 was persecution, not disease. But the principle holds. Deeds of love in the context of danger, whether disease or persecution, point more clearly to the fact that these deeds are sustained by hope in God. For example, Jesus says:
When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:13–14)
Hope in God beyond death (“you will be repaid at the resurrection”) sustains and empowers good deeds that hold no prospect for reward in this life. The same would hold true for good deeds that put us in danger, especially the danger of death.
How Peter Applied Jesus’s Teaching
The apostle Peter, more than any other New Testament writer, picks up the explicit teaching of Jesus about good deeds:
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Pet. 2:12)
And Peter makes the same point about good deeds in the face of danger. He says, “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pet. 4:19). In other words, don’t let the possibility, or the reality, of suffering, stop you from doing good deeds.
Christ Died to Create Good Deeds in Danger
Peter links this new kind of life with the death of Jesus for our sins: “[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). Because of Christ, Christians put sin to death and pour themselves into the good deeds of righteousness.
Paul makes the same connection between the death of Jesus and the zeal of Christians for good works: “[Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).
Paul also makes it plain that these good works are aimed at both Christians and non-Christians. “As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10). “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” (1 Thess. 5:15).
Christ Magnified in Risky Kindness
The ultimate aim of God for his people is that we glorify his greatness and magnify the worth of his Son, Jesus Christ. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20, my translation). God glorified in everything. Christ magnified in life and death. This is the great, God-given goal of human life.
Therefore, one of God’s purposes in the coronavirus is that his people put to death self-pity and fear, and give themselves to good deeds in the presence of danger. Christians lean toward need, not comfort. Toward love, not safety. That’s what our Saviour is like. That is what he died for.
Example of the Early Church
Rodney Stark, in his book The Triumph of Christianity, points out that in the first centuries of the Christian church the “truly revolutionary principle was that Christian love and charity must extend beyond the boundaries of family and even those of faith, to all in need.”
Two great plagues struck the Roman Empire in AD 165 and 251. Outside of the Christian church, there was no cultural or religious foundation for mercy and sacrifice. “There was no belief that the gods cared about human affairs.” And “mercy was regarded as a character defect and pity as a pathological emotion: because mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it is contrary to justice.”
Therefore, while a third of the empire was perishing from disease, physicians fled to their country estates. Those with symptoms were cast out of homes. Priests forsook the temples. But Stark observes, “Christians claimed to have answers and, most of all, they took appropriate actions.”
The answers included the forgiveness of sins through Christ and the hope of eternal life beyond death. This was a precious message in a season of medical helplessness and utter hopelessness.
As for the actions, large numbers of Christians cared for the sick and the dying. Toward the end of the second plague, Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria wrote a letter, extolling the members of his church:
Most of our brothers showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy.
Putting to Silence the Ignorance of Emperors
Over time, this countercultural, Christ-sustained care for the sick and the poor had the effect of winning many people away from the surrounding paganism. Two centuries later, when the Roman emperor Julian (AD 332–363) wanted to breathe new life back into the ancient Roman religion and saw Christianity as a growing threat, he wrote, in frustration, to the Roman high priest of Galatia:
Atheism [i.e., Christian faith] has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans [i.e., Christians] care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.
Relieving God-Sent Suffering
There is no contradiction between seeing the coronavirus as God’s act and calling Christians to take risks to alleviate the suffering that it causes. Ever since God subjected the world to sin and misery at the fall, he has ordained that his people seek to rescue the perishing, even though he is the one who has appointed the judgment of perishing. God himself came into the world in Jesus Christ to rescue people from his own just judgment (Rom. 5:9). That is what the cross of Christ means.
Therefore, the good deeds of God’s people will include prayers for the healing of the sick and for God to stay his hand and turn back the pandemic, and that he would provide a cure. We pray about the coronavirus, and we work to alleviate its suffering the way Abraham Lincoln prayed for the end of the Civil War, and worked to end it, even though he saw it as a judgment from God:
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
God has his work to do—much of it secret. We have ours. If we trust him and obey his word, he will cause his sovereignty and our service to accomplish his wise and good purposes.
6. In the coronavirus God is loosening the roots of settled Christians, all over the world, to make them free for something new and radical and to send them with the gospel of Christ to the unreached peoples of the world.
Connecting the coronavirus with missions may seem like a strange idea, because in the short run, the coronavirus is shutting down travel and migration and missionary advance. But I am not thinking short term. God has used the suffering and upheaval of history to move his church to places it needs to go. I am suggesting that he will do that again as part of the long-term impact of the coronavirus.
Persecution as Missionary Strategy
Consider, for example, how God moved his people out of Jerusalem, on mission, into Judea and Samaria. Jesus had instructed his disciples to take the gospel to all the world, including “Jerusalem and . . . all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). But by the time of Acts 8, it seems the mission was stalled in Jerusalem.
What would it take to move the church into mission? It took the death of Stephen and a consequent persecution. As soon as Stephen was martyred (Acts 7:60), a persecution broke out:
There arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. . . . Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. (Acts 8:1–4)
That’s how God got his people moving—with martyrdom and persecution. At last, “Judea and Samaria” were hearing the gospel. God’s ways are not our ways. But his mission is sure. Jesus said so. And his word cannot fail. “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations” (Matt. 24:14). Not “may be proclaimed.” But “will be proclaimed.”
Setbacks as Strategic Advance
We may think the coronavirus outbreak is a setback for world missions. I doubt it. God’s ways often include apparent setbacks that result in great advances.
On January 9, 1985, Pastor Hristo Kulichev, a Congregational pastor in Bulgaria, was arrested and put in prison. His crime was that he preached in his church even though the state had appointed another man as pastor whom the congregation did not elect. His trial was a mockery of justice. And he was sentenced to eight months in prison. During his time in prison, he made Christ known in every way he could.
When he got out, he wrote, “Both prisoners and jailers asked many questions, and it turned out that we had a more fruitful ministry there than we could have expected in church. God was better served by our presence in prison than if we had been free.”
This is often God’s way. The global scope and seriousness of the coronavirus is too great for God to waste. It will serve his invincible global purpose of world evangelization. Christ has not shed his blood in vain. And Revelation 5:9 says that by that blood he ransomed “people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” He will have the reward of his suffering. And even pandemics will serve to complete the Great Commission.
A Closing Prayer
Father,
At our best moments, by your grace, we are not sleeping in Gethsemane. We are awake and listening to your Son’s prayer. He knows, deep down, that he must suffer. But in his perfect humanity, he cries out, “If it is possible, let this cup pass.”
In the same way, we sense, deep down, that this pandemic is appointed, in your wisdom, for good and necessary purposes. We too must suffer. Your Son was innocent. We are not.
Yet with him in our less-than-perfect humanity, we too cry out, “If it is possible, let this cup pass.” Do quickly, O Lord, the painful, just, and merciful work you have resolved to do. Do not linger in judgment. Do not delay your compassion. Remember the poor, O Lord, according to your mercy. Do not forget the cry of the afflicted. Grant recovery. Grant a cure. Deliver us—your poor, helpless creatures—from these sorrows, we pray.
But do not waste our misery and grief, O Lord. Purify your people from powerless preoccupation with barren materialism and Christless entertainment. Put our mouths out of taste with the bait of Satan. Cut from us the roots and remnant of pride and hate and unjust ways. Grant us capacities of outrage at our own belittling of your glory. Open the eyes of our hearts to see and savour the beauty of Christ. Incline our hearts to your word, your Son, and your way. Fill us with compassionate courage. And make a name for yourself in the way your people serve.
Stretch forth your hand in great awakening for the sake of this perishing world. Let the terrible words of Revelation not be spoken over this generation: “Yet still they did not repent.” As you have stricken bodies, strike now the slumbering souls. Forbid that they would remain asleep in the darkness of pride and unbelief. In your great mercy, say to these bones, “Live!” And bring the hearts and lives of millions into alignment with the infinite worth of Jesus.
In Jesus’s name, amen.”
I hope these answers were as insightful and a blessing to you as it was to me.
May the Lord bless you and keep you. As a dear departed brother in Christ used to end off his letters, “Pressing on!”
Elmane le Roux writes:
“We hope that you are all well. Here in Onseepkans, we are thankful for the Lord’s protection so far as we minister to the people around us. We really experience the Lord working in our lives and in those of the people around us.
There is a young man who is a psychiatric patient that lives in the community close to us. His mother and father are alcoholics and cannot give him the proper care and security that he needs. He also has no one who can make sure that he regularly takes his medicine. If he does not take his medication he walks around deranged and makes trouble until the police would take him to a psychiatric hospital in Kimberly. There, getting his medicine and food regularly, he would get better and function well again. However, after a while at home, when he returns from the hospital, because of insufficient care, he would just relapse again. Just before the lockdown, he was sent home from the hospital.
One day he came to ask us if we could not help him with something to eat. We gave him a meal. Ever since that day, he comes two to three times daily for meals. We encouraged him and told him that we will give him food if he will take his medication. This motivates him to take his medicine often and on time. When He receives his food, he is grateful. It means so much to him that he no longer has to be uncertain where he would find his next meal. It is wonderful to see what a change the Lord has wrought in his life during the past few weeks.
This reminds me of the scripture verse in Matthew 25: 34-36 which says, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink... Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ....The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
I would also like to share this testimony which really blessed and encouraged us. Many years ago in 2016, we had an outreach with a team from Môreson Mission. During that time, we did door to door visits in the three communities of Onseepkans. While reaching out in the community the closest to us, one of the team members, Lydia, met a married lady with four children. She really had a spiritual need and Lydia reached out and shared the gospel with her. Afterwards, Lydia invited the lady to visit the mission.
A few days later she came and met us. This was the first of many visits that she made over the years. One of her sons needed spiritual help and we send him to Môreson Mission. He stayed there for a long time. Spiritually, it meant a lot to him.
Recently, she walked past on her way home after she went to the police station. She had problems with her eldest son who was drinking and making things difficult at home. She shared the difficulties and struggles that she had at home. I could encourage her and share with her that many times the Lord also wanted to work in our own lives through the difficulties that He brings across our paths. I also shared with the lady how important it is that she must make sure that her heart is clean before the Lord so that the He would hear her prayers for her son. The lady asked if we could pray together. She wanted to offload the sins that were standing between her and her Lord. She prayed and poured out her heart. Afterwards, she was so relieved and grateful that she could unburdened herself. She went home with a happy and grateful heart.
A few days ago when we went to distribute the vegetable food parcels in the community, her family also received a parcel. We could see on her face that the Lord did something special for her.”
May our Lord bless and keep you.
Gerhard, Elmane and Children at Onseepkans Mission
