The whole world is reeling in between two major epidemics – the epidemic of Covid-19 and the epidemic of the fear of death. The nations of the world are doing whatever possible to fight Covid-19. What we are facing globally has never been seen in the entire history of mankind. Yes, pandemics have happened in the past and millions of people have died in those pandemics. World Wars have happened and millions have died in those too.
But the present crisis has occurred at a time when human civilisation is at its glorious peak in every way. As a result, like never before in history, the whole world is getting to know everything that is happening in the farthest corners of the world in moments. Statistics, speculations, possibilities, feelings, videos, pictures are going viral to add fuel to the epidemic of fear. The governments of nations are trying to curtail this pandemic, with the right intentions, in ways that the human race has hardly seen before – lockdowns, social distancing and so on. Warnings and recommendations about practice are being spread all across the virtual and real world to inform the people of the world, as to how to escape from Corona virus. Surely, it has reached every nook and corner of the globe. But unfortunately, the world has not yet found a cure or a vaccine for this disease and so the impending doom that stares at the face of every man is real.
God is giving His final warning to the human race. The Bible is very clear – there is an end to the human race in its present form. I do not say that this is the end but it is the final warning that God is giving, before the end. God had decided an end even before He created the first human couple. God created every human being in His image. (Read the forth coming article – In God’s Image) He knew that the human race would reject Him and go their own ways. He also know that in spite of knowing prior, he would be grieved at every rejection that he would face from His most prized creation. I also choose to believe that God did not know the intensity of the grief of His heart, that He would go through, until He went through it. But still He allowed it. The day that man chose to reject God, a horrible virus called sin had caught hold of the human race. Sin is everything that we do according to our own will after rejecting God’s will for us. And the consequence of the virus of sin is death – death in three forms –
- a spiritual death, death of the spirit, which is separation from the God who created us – This happened the day that Adam and Eve sinned.
- a physical death, death of the body which is the end of this physical life on earth –this is the death that diseases like Covid, cancers, heart attacks, accidents and suicides can do to man.
- The final death of the body and soul in hell, which has already been prepared for every person who leaves this world with the virus of sin.
That means the virus of sin is yet to accomplish the final death in man. Many people have died and their bodies have gone back to dust. But at the time of their death, depending on whether they died with the virus of sin or not, their souls are still alive in two different places prepared for them, waiting for this age to be completed. 2000 years back, God created a vaccine for the disease of sin. The Word of God clearly shows that the living God is Triune – three persons in one Being – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Please read this in detail in the next article.) The vaccine that God had planned for the virus of sin was the Second Person in the Triune God. God sent His Son Jesus, who was part of the God-Head, to be an ordinary man with no additional power, majesty or splendour. Jesus went through the same sufferings and temptations that all men go through, if not worse. But He demonstrated a life of obedience by living exactly in accordance to the plans of His Father in heaven, with the help of the power of the Holy Spirit. He won a victory over the virus of sin and was declared sinless. Even in His death, He obeyed God His Father as He went through the worst humiliation that a person could ever go through.
But His death was going to be the long-awaited vaccine against the virus of sin, that man desperately needed. Jesus was apparently crucified by the religious authorities of the Jewish nation for no crime that He had committed. But in reality, Jesus was crucified by God, because Jesus, in obedience to His Father’s plan, had taken upon Himself, the sins of the entire human race, up to the last sin of the last human who would live in this age. And God His Father, who is truly holy and truly just, poured His entire wrath and anger against the sin of humanity, on His Son Jesus and thereby accomplished justice for all the crime, man had committed against God.
And this was the vaccine: So for God loved the world that He gave His Only begotten Son that whoever keeps on believing in Him, will not perish but have everlasting life. That means, when somebody really believes in Jesus, he is actually confessing that he is a sinful man because of the strong conviction that he has had about his sinfulness. He believes that Jesus took his sins on the Cross and suffered the punishment of the wrath of God, that he was supposed to get. He believes that the blood of Jesus shed on the Cross has cleansed all his sins and has reconciled him with God the Father. But that is not all – he also believes that he is no longer alive but rather He is also crucified with Jesus Christ by faith. And the life that he has from then, is the life that Jesus is living inside Him. He hates his old sinful practices and when the old temptations come knocking at his door, he runs and hides behind Jesus, who He believes is the one who lives inside him. When such a man’s life starts changing and he sees the Jesus life inside him, he does not forget from where he was picked up from, but rather keeps himself humble and hidden behind Jesus. He runs away from the temptation of thinking that he has now become worthy.
As he puts his trust in the grace and power of God, God delivers him from the snare of the enemy. Believing in Jesus is not a one-time event but becomes a way of life and an every-day, every-moment experience for him. So for this man, further life is all about Jesus and living in obedience to the will of God as revealed to him by the third person of the God head, the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit gives him power to endure the trials, temptations and sufferings that he has to go through in the remaining journey of life. During this period, he surrenders completely to God as God moulds him and changes him into his likeness. He is set free from the fear of physical death. Death has lost its sting because he knows from the Word of God that when he keeps on believing till the end of his life and when he leaves this life with Jesus as His Lord, there is a different place that God has prepared for those who die in Jesus.
My friends, we have only a life time to accept the vaccine against sin. Covid-19 will reek havoc and many of us will meet death by it but one day, the human race may find the much-needed vaccine. But that will not stop anything. Death will continue. But one day, when God starts pouring His soon-coming wrath on this world, that will be the worst that mankind will ever experience in this age that we live in. The day that we meet with bodily death, our time to receive this vaccine is over. Each of us is free to reject this vaccine but when we meet death after continuing to reject this vaccine, then we only have a dreadful time of waiting in the place prepared for us, in pain, agony and dread about the day when we will stand in front of God for judgment, after which we would be thrown into the hell fire for rejecting the costly vaccine that God had made for us.
Scientists across the world are striving to find vaccines and treatment for Covid-19 and will surely succeed one day. Man, out of his great wisdom, also succeeded to get a vaccine against the virus of sin. This vaccine is called religion. Religion is man’s attempt at reaching God. But the irony is that, in this endeavour, man creates his own god. His primary intention for creating this god is so that this god will always give him what he wants; this god would deliver him and protect him from all dangers; and this god would deliver him from all his troubles. This god is prohibited from interfering in his life of sin. Every religion including the religion of Christianity, with its many denominations is man’s creation. Each religion has given its god a name and the Christian religion has given its god the name of Jesus Christ. The true Christ, the Son of God did not come to start a religion. Many denominations were started in accordance to the God-given revelations of many saints of God but none of them ever strived to start a new denomination but rather to proclaim the truth about God. There are religions who do not believe in any god. In such cases, man himself becomes his god. Many people exalt money, possessions, sex, entertainment, pleasures and ordinary men and women, as gods. Religions and its gods and denominations and its external rituals were all made by man in an attempt to reach God.
Get this straight, my dear friends – religion cannot save mankind from this ultimate death. None of the above gods that we have created to dance like puppets before us and to grant us our wishes, can save us from that death. Whatever good works that we have done, how much ever money that we have given to the cause of these created gods, will not save us from this ultimate death. Even the created god named Jesus of the Christian religion, who is expected to jump around like Alladin’s genie, will not be able to save us. But the one living God, who created all of us, has clearly shown in His Word, the truth of who He is and what He has done. In that living Triune God, God the Father so loved each of us, even though we were not worth being loved, and send His Son Jesus Christ two thousand years back to become sin for us. God the Son obeyed His Father and became the ultimate vaccine for the virus of sin. Those who truly believe in Him in repentance, absolute surrender and obedience to Him, the third person of the Triune God, the Holy Spirit, will dwell in him to lead him in holiness for the remaining years of his life.
But life on earth does not go on forever. There is an end to this age. Jesus repeatedly said that He would come back in the end of this age with all those who left this world having truly cleansed themselves with His blood. All those who died in Jesus, will come back to life with new glorified bodies, to live and reign with the glorious Jesus on this earth, for a thousand years and then further on, in the new earth and new heavens that would descend down. But all those who rejected Jesus, the Messiah will also rise up from the dead at the end of the thousand years and stand in front of the Almighty God in judgment and give an account for their lives and finally be thrown into hell fire where their body will not die but be continuously burnt in that everlasting fire. (Read Revelation 20 and 21 and Mark 9:43-48) That is not God’s desire for any man or woman but we have to choose where we would go in eternity, in this life itself.
Jesus told his disciples about what the signs of His coming and the end of age was going to be. He told them how in the end of this age, God will pour down his final wrath on those who are living on earth, ignoring the true vaccine that He made for man. This last tribulation will be the worst that man would have ever seen in the history of mankind. I believe Covid-19 is not that wrath but it is the final warning that God is giving man. With this Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns, God is giving man time to look into his own life. But plagues and pestilences far worse that Covid are soon going to descend on earth very soon. Once that starts, there is no more hope and God’s vaccine will then no longer be available.
If you are from the Christian religion, beware of the many deceptions, false doctrines and false teachings that the devil has spread across the world over the last 2000 years through false prophets that glorify wealth and our earthly lives. These teachings subtly turn us away from the simple yet powerful gospel into a disguise of godliness but denying its power. This false gospel and even the work that we have done for God (if you are a missionary or pastor or preacher or church leader) can give us a false assurance to salvation. Our works for God also cannot save us. Remember the power of the gospel is only when the person believes in the true gospel, dies to himself and believes that Jesus lives in Him and thereby allows the Holy Spirit to empower him to live a blameless life. The power of the gospel is only when the person who believes lays down His life to share in the sufferings that our Lord went through.
As you read this, if you have never had a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, let this be your time. Repent and believe in the gospel for the kingdom of Christ is very near. Die to your self and let Christ be the Lord of your life. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. NO ONE CAN REACH THE FATHER BUT THROUGH ME. Jesus also said, “DO NOT FEAR THOSE WHO KILL THE BODY BUT CANNOT KILL THE SOUL (Persecutors of those who believe in Christ, viruses, cancers, other illnesses, people who hate you). BUT RATHER FEAR HIM WHO IS ABLE TO DESTROY BOTH SOUL AND BODY IN HELL.”
We have very little time left. Some of us may have never responded to this amazing love. Some of us may have responded at some point of time but then gone back into our old filth. Some of us might have responded but over a period of time, have become proud and arrogant about the new life that we have, or the works that we do, or have done for Him. All of us are in the same boat and we are in need of God’s mercy. May we respond to God’s love by believing in the one whom He send to deliver us. May we keep on believing and learn to live hidden in Jesus. May His mercy and His deliverance rescue us from the soon-coming wrath of God over the whole of mankind who rejected Him and His love and make us heirs to the next age that God has prepared for those who believe.