The Recipe: COVID 19 and Understanding the Ongoing Plan of God

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XFQs64-4cI&feature=youtu.be

“If we have been through so much, God must have something special for Rwanda.” (genocide survivor)

Introduction

This article is written because I believe that most Australian Christians[i] are living and praying with an unbiblical set of assumptions about the coronavirus crisis. Since prophecy is essentially testifying to Jesus as revealed in scripture in relation to contemporary events (Rev 19:10) this article tries to be faithful both to the book of Revelation[ii] and to the sovereign hand of God revealed in history. This isn’t an easy task for the gravity of the subject matter is well out of my depth. To digest this message it will help to keep in mind what a commentator says about the 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse. “This is not a description of God’s will for the world, but a description of a world about which God has a will.” (I. Paul). In other words, not everything that God wills is pleasing to him. Our point of reference isn’t the coronavirus or anything else, even in scripture[iii], but the cross, which according to the prayers of the apostles was “predestined” by God (Acts 4:28). The most beautiful fruit came from the most unjust and horrendous suffering. Nothing has changed.

The Recipe

“The Recipe” refers to my conviction that God has revealed the process by which he unfolds his plan in history to achieve his high purpose of glorifying Jesus (Col 1:16)[iv]. The necessary kingdom truth, “the greater the suffering in the will of God the greater the consequent glory”, is true first for Christ (Luke 24:26[v]; John 12:27-33), then for his Church (Rom 8:17; Eph 3:13[vi])[vii]. The sovereign Lord works to this pattern ensuring that the Bride of the Lamb will be thoroughly beautified and come to be filled with his glory forever (Eph 5:26-27; Rev 19:6-7; 21:9-14). We will limitlessly radiate the greatness of the Lord and the matchless splendour of his wisdom throughout eternity (Dan 12:3; Matt 13:43[viii]). In the midst of the crisis of today, our Father is ceaselessly about a beautifying work (Isa 60:7, 13, 19, 21), and from the angle of eternity, this work must itself be beautiful. Sharing in the anguish of the cross, it may not feel good, but it is a refining work of unparalleled goodness and wisdom. To put this slightly differently, the will of the crucified-resurrected Lamb under which we live (Rev 5:6; 6:1ff) is uniquely an all wise all good calling for unlimited spousal submission – no matter how difficult (cf. Mark 14:36). The inhabitants of the ancient world, including the readers of apocalyptic books of scripture, understood that the more severe the portent from heaven the more intensely the will of God/the gods needed to be sought. This is an understanding the Western Church has largely lost[ix].

Failing to understand that between the First and Second comings every time is apocalyptic time, our spiritual state of ignorance about “The Recipe” fits this description of the people of God. “Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned.” (Hos 7:8). Our repentance and faithfulness have been half baked. We are a Bride whose devotion to her Husband has been half-baked because we have mixed with the cultural values around us. The Lord wants a Wife totally loyal to himself so she can be totally radiant. No one who believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus should doubt that the Father is totally serious about glorifying the Bride, and that this applies to the history of the Church beyond the cross.

Inconceivable?

That “The Recipe” covers the entire “present evil age” (Gal 1:4) is central to the structure of the book of Revelation. Whilst John’s visions occur in chronological sequence, the 7 seals + 7 trumpets + 7 bowls (chs. 6-16) at the heart of God’s plan should be understood as simultaneous. They together testify to an ascending series of crises which culminated in the Return of Jesus. Like the signs Jesus spoke of in advance of his coming and the end of the age (Matt 24:3ff.), wars, rumours of wars, famines and earthquakes, persecution of Christians, false prophets and Messiahs and signs in the heavens they recur through all generations. The world is always in a disastrous state being judged and saved from heaven!

My conclusions are rather frightening. There is nothing in “The Recipe” which excludes COVID19 from being the first of a succession of pandemics that will encircle the globe. The present circumstances could lead to the end of the boom capitalism and globalisation as we have known it. Nothing in God’s way of working prohibits the end of Western civilisation as we have known it. I am not being speculative nor prophesying, simply saying that according to the scriptures such things could happen for they are compatible with “The Recipe”. Things of this magnitude have happened multiple times before. If you are unconvinced from scripture the testimony of history is persuasive.

Various Christian writers have helpfully recently talked about the loving and self-sacrificial actions of the Early Church during the plagues of the second and third centuries. Few however have mentioned that under a “perfect storm” of adverse climate change, economic and military decline and advancing persecution of believers each of these plagues persisted for 15 years. As the Church became irresistibly ascendant the Roman Empire was gradually being unstitched in advance of its fall. These two elements of Church growth and civil decline are not incompatible, apparently, they were just what doctor Jesus ordered!  There is yet one aspect of “The Recipe” which has become crystal clear and demands a mention, the rise of “the beast” (Rev 13).

A Certain Beast

Our present troubled climate should assist us in understanding the circumstances under which the rise of “the beast” is certain[x]. In a war-like state of emergency democratic government across the world have increasingly stipulated the living and working conditions, rules of association and mobility of their citizens. Under normal circumstances such legislation would be intolerable. This points to there being no limit to what the general population would submit to if the world was plunged into decade after decade of disaster. It’s no accident that “the beast” appears in Revelation 13 as the saviour-lord for a devastated planet. This coheres with the foundations of the Roman Empire, when after dreadfully troubling civil conditions Augustus was declared “Son of god”[xi] and “Saviour of the whole world”. Within Revelation “the beast” should almost certainly should be seen as the antitype of a resurrected Nero[xii], after whose death the civil wars which rocked the Empire threatened its very survival. Having survived this “mortal wound”, literally, “plague of death” (Rev 13:3, 12)[xiii], the beast moves with resurrection-like power to provide healing for a world in chaos. As believers during the first three centuries were called to submit to such terrors (Rev 13:10)[xiv] we should learn such trusting submission now.

Spirituality

Whilst it has always been true that apocalyptic conditions are needed to understand apocalyptic messages, the false peace that Western Christians have passed through since WWII has obscured this truth. The message of Revelation has been ignored, treated as fantastical, applied to some future time, or sensationalised in such a way that the gravity of its message has not been experienced. Today however Church as we have known her is being stripped of the garments of prosperity, privilege and influence in which she has trusted (Rev 16:15 cf. 3:17) [xv] In this hour the Spirit of the Lord is working to lift people out of being consumed by their own personal existential crises to share  the cosmic eternal perspective of the Lamb and fully commit to engagement in his war (Rev 17:13-14)[xvi].

Key to this transformation is a new level of the godly fear of the Lord. A sharing with all the saints and holy angels in the reverence that the divine majesty deserves (Rev 19:5)[xvii]. Scripture is clear about the inner outworking of God’s outward actions, “My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.” (Isa 26:9) The sharper our insight into the Lord’s judgements in the world the more elevated will be our adoration and obedience from within (Rev 15:2-4) [xviii]. God’s holiness and worthiness for our unconditional service cannot be divorced from the justice of his judgements. Outwardly a paradox, but really in union with the blameless Lamb of God (1 Pet 1:18), it is those who sin the least who will fear God the most. In the days ahead I believe we will witness a concentration in the Spirit and a period of many answered prayers. But all is not well.

Schism in the Church

When Jesus prayed so tenderly for the manifest oneness of the Church (John 17) Judas was still a part of the Twelve, and as a group they were not yet pruned of competition and ambition (Luke 22:24). Only the shaking of the cross and the shock of the resurrection ended such infantile aspirations. We must accept that the divine plan which sifts the world through shaking (Heb 12:27-29) sifts the Church too. Of the 7 churches in Revelation only 2 were uncompromised by their culture (Rev 2-3). Nothing has changed. Whilst those hoping for the soon demise of consumer Christianity are overoptimistic, I already see two sorts of people manifesting around us. Those “held together” from the outside by their materialism and idolatry e.g. trust in insurance, superannuation, income, health, government etc, or those sustained from the inside by the indwelling life of Christ, hope’s only glory (Col 1:27).

Tragically but necessarily, every major move of God from the time of the Protestant Reformation to the present has polarised the people of God[xix]. The following verse speaks powerfully to what I am witnessing. “I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, 19 for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.” (1 Cor 11:18-19). The emerging schisms in the Church are not about doctrine but about the active purposes of God in history. There is a developing separation between apostles, prophets and evangelists on the one hand, “pioneer” ministry types, and pastors and teachers on the other hand, “settler” ministry types[xx]. There are the cautious personalities who want to return as soon as practical to the best of what we have known in the past, and there are the excited future-looking men and women of God listening ever more intently to what the Spirit is saying to the churches in a state of constant kingdom alertness (Rev 2:7, 11etc.)[xxi].

At the bottom of things, as a friend said recently, the backward-looking status quo folk are saying, “Jesus don’t come!”, whilst the future-oriented are praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).   Since the former cohort are likely to be insensible to hearing God, I expect a breakout of repentance to come from the latter group. There is coming upon these people: not only a darker shadow of the cross but the brighter light of the resurrection (2 Tim 1:10). There is coming an infectious unutterable resurrection joy (Luke 24:41; 1 Pet 1:8) which will make the canned joy of consumer Christianity irrelevant.[xxii]

Conclusion

The COVID19 crisis contains within it the potential, under God’s sovereign hand, of raising up a renewed form of Western Christianity[xxiii]. A renewed faith which recognises that compared to “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8) the possible dissolution of civilisation as we have known it, with the possible Return of Christ in our lifetimes, is not the “new normal” but the normal established ever since the Lord returned to heaven. What we are looking forward to is not something as small as a comfortable life here and eternal pleasures hereafter[xxiv], but a whole new creation. In the meantime, we should not try to make anything happen. This is a time of seated stillness and rest with the sovereign Lord upon his glorious throne (Rev 7:17). In this rest we will not be idle but sharing in his present activities: interceding for the saints (Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25) ruling the world (Rom 5:17) and drawing forth praise (Rev 5:8). “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

“Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.” (Rev 14:12)