Is the COVID-19 virus a sign of the end times?
Part 1
Amid this global pandemic, there are many questions. But the one that I hear the most is whether this virus outbreak is a sign of the end times, as prophesized in the Bible.
The verse in 2 Chronicles 7:13 is often thrown about as affirmative proof to this question, as it reads “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people” (ESV)[1]. People have read that verse and ticked off recent disasters to fit the bill: Australian wildfires fueled by a lack of rain, a locust outbreak in Africa, and this coronavirus. A perfect fit? Well, not really as I see it. This logic strikes me as like the saying that death comes in threes. When someone close to you dies, you start to count, and sure enough, before long there are two other deaths, proving your point…sort of. Except that death in our world is rather continuous, and you could have stopped at the next death and said they come in twos, or kept on counting until four, five, ten, or whatever number you choose. Similarly, every year you could search the globe for fires, famines, droughts, earthquakes, diseases, or whatever disaster you seek, and it is likely you could find events to fit into that verse.
When you look at the facts, new diseases are not all that uncommon. Thinking back the past few decades we have had H1N1, HIV, SARS, MERS, Legionnaires Disease and outbreaks of Ebola. Yes, this outbreak has caught more attention due to its rapid spread and the way it has effectively shut down the world economies. It has been described as a once in a century outbreak, the worst since the Spanish Flu of 1918. That does show how this one is particularly bad, but to put it in Biblical context, if it is indeed a once in a century event, that means there have been about twenty since Jesus’ time!
While I do not see this pandemic as a clear mark of the impending end of the world, I also caution you to not dismiss it entirely. I have a few observations connected to the pandemic that I do think could usher in end times, which I will delve into in my next post.
[1] Arguably this verse in context is not meant to be a prophesy for our time.