The worldwide response to Covid is creating two angry, divided, and judgmental camps; the ‘vaccinate if you care about others’ crew, and the ‘I have a right to my own body’ brigade. The ugly result is that vaccine tribalism has ironically become its own pandemic.
In a desperate attempt to save our ‘rights’ or physical health, the triple threats of fear, hatred, and selfishness infect us like never before, and compound an already dire global problem.
What started as a physical pandemic has become a spiritual one that was already wreaking havoc and becoming ‘the new normal’ long before Covid first stretched its menacing tentacles towards the four corners of the globe.
Fast forward to the present day, and instead of seeking the cure from God through turning away from evil and putting our faith in Jesus, we’ve sought to heal ourselves and only made matters much worse on both fronts.
Forewarned but not forearmed
When I first started writing for Christian Today in 2016, I wrote many articles on that very alarming predicament, including what God had revealed through the Bible and my dreams was soon coming upon us because of our spiritual sickness.
Such articles are still available to read on the Christian Today website, such as ‘Be alert AND alarmed!’, ‘Fables, fairy tales and the Valley of Vision’, ‘Where did the Watchman go?’ and ‘The fierce urgency of now’ just to name a few (see all articles at: https://www.pressserviceinternational.org/tim-price.html). Unfortunately, those warnings of soon-coming global trouble fell on deaf ears.
More shockingly, it appears that God’s warnings are still falling flat.
Back then, like now, we lived in a world which mostly partied. And a Church which often did the same, albeit in seemingly more ‘respectable’ and ‘accepted’ ways; too often living for self and pleasure rather than God. Like he did so often in the Bible, God warned us for years that global trouble would come if we rejected His will, way, and patience.
Some say it started on 9/11; a tragic day that made the whole world tremble. For a while churches in the US, Australia, and around the globe were full. People realised their morality and that there was a God in Heaven who, one way or another (misfortune or time), we’d all return to one day.
Suddenly we had 20/20 vision on life, and good and evil became realer than the heroes and villains from our fairy tale childhood stories.
A crippling disease
Since then, multiple other ‘shakings’ rocked our world; terrorism, financial crashes, and an increase in the severity, scope and duration of natural disasters. Suddenly the old ways were failing; Science was questioned, societal norms like gender and marriage attacked, and facts weren’t ‘facts’ anymore. Now few are liked, less have good friendships, and few can be trusted; most shockingly those supposedly ‘entrusted’ to lead us.
The ground of our hope, ironically ‘ourselves’, failed us. Now the latest vaccine-response warfare has continued our abysmal run. We continue to trust in ourselves and misdiagnose the problem; putting concern for our physical welfare above the real problem; our spiritual health. Whether we realise it or not, the pandemic that started long before Covid; our own sinfulness and rebellion against God, continues to kill us in more ways than one.
A spiritual vaccine for a spiritual problem
The solution to our global problem is simple but it requires humbling ourselves in the same way we did for a fleeting moment after 9/11. The answer to mankind’s pandemic of sin has always been to look away from itself to the only genuine ‘antidote’; Jesus Christ.
Jesus once came to Earth as a man. More than anyone he knew the sin that was plaguing people around him. He knew that the world was as desperate then as it is now, and that it couldn’t save itself. Instead of being overcome by the pandemic of fear, selfishness and hatred around him, he did what only God Himself could do; die on a cross; taking the punishment we deserved for disobeying an almighty, loving, and perfect God.
Although our sins killed him, God the Father raised him to life again because no sickness or death could hold him down. Now that he has the antidote to our sins, he waits to be gracious to a world he loved enough to suffer and die for. Years ago we ignored the warnings of the Bible and the dreams he gave. Yet Jesus still holds the vaccine that can cure our real problem; a heart that doesn’t want God, a mind that disbelieves, and a life that loves evil.
The spiritual vaccine is called turning from a lifestyle of wilful sin, and believing that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for our lost and spiritually dead state. If we’ll take it, we’ll be freed from the controlling power of sin, and forever protected from the final consequences of a sickness that has plagued mankind ever since the beginning of the world. Instead of an eternity in nightmarish Hell-fire torment, we’ll be with Jesus forever in paradise; a place where no sickness or sorrow can infect, spoil or spread.
The real question
If we refuse this spiritual vaccine, be warned that God has shown that things much worse than Covid will come upon this planet in the future. And our eternal life will be unimaginably worse than anything we’ll face in this lifetime.
‘To vaccinate’ or ‘not vaccinate’ is the question, but not for Covid. Our true dilemma causing all other dilemmas is our deadly spiritual state; that is the REAL sickness we all face, the antidote to which we must accept before it’s too late.
Tim is currently a youth pastor in California. He loves God and has a heart to see people know Jesus and His will for their lives, and the time they’re living in.
Tim Price’s previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/tim-price.html
