God “Sent” the Virus?
Troy J. Edwards
I
ran across yet another Facebook post expressing the idea that the current
Covid-19 virus was “sent” by God. Let's look at a familiar passage of Scripture
that can be used to teach this:
2 Chronicles 7:13-14
13 If I shut up
heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land,
or if I send pestilence among my people;
14 If my people,
which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will
forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
It
would almost appear from this passage that those who claim that God “sent” the
corona virus have a Biblical case. However, the Hebrew word for “send” is “shalach.”
The Hebrew scholar, Gesenius, explains, “Shalach is rendered by Gesenius,
‘relax, loosen, let go, especially one who has been in any way detained; give
over into the power of anything.’”
“Shalach”
(send) is the same word used in Psalm 81:12 where we read, “So I gave them up
unto their own hearts’ lust” or, as the Unlocked Dynamic Version renders it, “I
allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do” While I don't agree with how Dr.
Jack Blanco's paraphrases all Scripture, I believe that his paraphrase of 2
Chronicles 7:13 is much more consistent with how the passage should have been
translated:
“Whenever I hold back the
rain or let locusts eat the harvest or let sickness come on my people to
discipline them....” (The Clear Word)
If
God is the direct cause of sickness then Jesus should have went about
inflicting people with it while He was on earth. Instead, we are told that He
went about healing them from what SATAN brought upon them (Acts 10:38; Luke
13:16; Matthew 12:22-28).
After
giving the list of numerous curses that would come upon His people for
disobedience, God concluded in Deut. 31:16-18 that it would be His abandonment,
the lack of His protection, that would bring about the pestilences that people
would suffer. It is only in this sense that we could call any pestilence a
judgment. However, as God told Solomon, prayer and repentance would move God to
heal the land and restore His protective presence.
No doubt that
promotion of abortion, homosexuality, etc. plays a hand in Satan's ability to
inflict these things upon mankind. Yet, rather than blaming God for this, let's
pray in warfare against this thing. Warfare includes repentance of sin, but it
also includes taking authority against satanic assaults. We will never do the
latter if we continue to claim that the corona virus came from God's direct
hand.
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