In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. David Jeremiah delves into the prophetic implications of COVID-19. Exploring both biblical and contemporary perspectives, he examines whether the pandemic might be seen as a harbinger of the end times. Touching on scriptures from the Olivet Discourse and Revelation, listeners are guided through the signs that Christ indicated would herald His return, offering insights into how current events may align with biblical prophecy.
The recent global pandemic had many Christians pondering whether COVID could be a sign of the end times. Were you among them? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his series, Where Do We Go From Here? with a look at what Jesus said about the signs of his return and the end of days. To introduce today’s timely message, Pandemic, a Biological Prophecy. Here’s David.
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Well, I think all of us would have to say the most global thing we’ve ever experienced in our lifetime was COVID. It touched everybody, everywhere. And many people thought perhaps this was the beginning of the end because of a universal pandemic. Of course, it wasn’t, and it isn’t, but it could have been the beginning because these kinds of things show up in the prophetic Scripture. And we’re going to talk about that today and tomorrow as we discuss Pandemic, a Biological Prophecy. Most of us are inquisitive when it comes to the unknown things of the future. The Bible tells us a lot. It doesn’t give us all the answers that we want. But it certainly gives us everything God intends us to know. And the Bible speaks of pandemics. I remember when COVID came, I gave a message in a very special service at our church about what the Bible says about pandemic. And some of that will be in this lesson today, along with a lot of other things. So for these next two days, today and tomorrow, we’re going to talk about that subject. What does it mean when the world experiences a universal pandemic? During this month, we have a special resource that we want to make available to all of you who will help us with a gift. It’s a 30-day Bible study we just finished. It’s just come off the press. I have one here in my hands at the studio. It’s a paperback book, 176 pages, a little bit larger than normal, and it answers critical questions about prophecy in the Bible and God’s promises for the future. The questions at the end of each chapter are for personal or group study, and this is only available from Turning Point during this month. When you send a gift of any amount to Turning Point and ask for this resource, we’ll send it to you right away. We ask you to do the best you can, but whatever your gift, if you will just say, please send me the book, Understanding Biblical Prophecy, and I’m thinking in my own heart, you’ll want to get started in studying it. You can do it in a month or you can spread it out longer, but it’s important information to help you get your arms around the scriptures on prophecy. Well, here we go with part one of Pandemic, a Biological Prophecy. On January 11, 2020, the first COVID-19 death was reported in Wuhan, China. Two months later, on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic after the virus had spread to 114 countries and nearly 120,000 people, killing more than 4,000 people in those early days. U.S. stocks tumbled, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 10%, its biggest one-day percentage drop since 1987. Broadway theaters went dark, movie theaters emptied, and hospitals filled up. The National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, all suspended their seasons. And for the first time since its inception in 1939, college basketball’s March Madness tournament was canceled. And for the first time since 9-11, and only the fourth time ever, Disneyland closed its gates. Let’s take a step back. What exactly are pandemics? And what does the Bible say about them? Since this is a modern word, you shouldn’t expect pandemic necessarily to appear in the Bible, but the scriptures have other terms that describe the same thing. In fact, there are six ancient words in the Greek and Hebrew language that describe what we would call a pandemic. And those words are used 127 times in the Bible. So the Bible is full of this subject. Throughout the Bible, we see repeated examples of God using pandemics or diseases to accomplish his divine and sovereign purposes. In Exodus chapter 9, the Lord allowed an infectious skin disease to sweep over Egypt. It was the sixth plague, and it was epidemic in nature. Every single Egyptian, young and old, was affected. When King David sinned against Israel, the Lord sent a plague upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time. Second Samuel 24, 15 tells us about that. 70,000 men lost their lives in that pandemic. The Bible also teaches that Satan can send plagues. Did you know that? We know from the biblical story of Job that Satan can afflict humanity with terrible diseases. And in the Gospels, the Lord Jesus Christ warns his disciples that pestilences will be one of the signs of the last days of human history. These ravaging illnesses will shake the world, seeking to awaken and warn people about the eminence of Christ’s return to judge and to reign. And in the book of Revelation, the Lord warns a dozen times about terrible pestilence and plagues coming to the nations as part of his judgment of sin. Prior to the second coming of Christ, all of this will take place. And this period is known by Bible scholars as the Great Tribulation, the most devastating period of divine judgment in human history. So what does this mean? Well, my youngest son Daniel works for the NFL network and he’s become acquainted with many of the football players in the league. Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic was announced, one of his high profile friends who watches Turning Point on television came to him and said, Daniel, ask your dad if the coronavirus is in biblical prophecy. And I ended up preaching a whole message in answer to that question. Have you asked yourself that question? Does it mean anything, set against the larger scale of history? And if so, what does it mean? During the last week of his life, the Lord Jesus left the temple in Jerusalem with his disciples. hiked down the Kidron Valley, climbed to the top of the Mount of Olives, the city of Jerusalem spread out before them, shimmering in the sun. And that’s when the disciples asked Jesus about the last days, prompting Jesus’ most comprehensive teaching on the events related to the end of time. We call this the Olivet Discourse. It’s called that because it took place on the Mount of Olives. It’s recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here’s how Matthew records it. Now, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Jesus privately saying, tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming? and of the end of the age. And Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many, and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet, for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in various places.” All these are the beginning of sorrows. Now this passage is so extensive that many people have called it the mini apocalypse. The broad outline of the prophetic future is given to us here by Jesus. It’s his overture to the book of Revelation. And his disciples ask him three questions. If you listen carefully, you pick them out. He was asked this, when will these things be? What will be the sign of your coming? And what will be the sign of the end of the age? Beginning in Matthew 24 and verse 4, Jesus answered those questions. He answered questions two and three in the main body of the chapter, but he didn’t answer the first question, which was, when will these things be answered? But in verse 36, he said this, but of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Sometimes you hear preachers like me, hopefully not me, but like me, get up and say they know when Jesus is coming back. How many of you remember he was going to come back in 1988? I got 14 books from the same author telling me he was coming back in 1988, but he didn’t come back. Then he was going to come back in 90. And then they said they miscalculated. And before you know it, you just lose all interest in it because it’s just a big scam. We don’t know when Jesus is going to come back. And the Bible says Jesus himself didn’t know when he was going to come back when he was on this earth. He said only the Father knows that. That’s why I can’t tell you the exact time of the second coming. How many people have erred in making these misguided predictions about that? But what I can tell you is this. In answering the disciples’ second and third question, Jesus gave us some key signs that point to his second coming, or as he put it in verse 30, the sign of the Son of Man. Here are the six things that Jesus said would happen as his second coming began to draw near. If you have your Bibles, you can just read them, but let me list them for you. There would be deception by false Christs. There would be disputes and warfare among nations. There would be disease and famine worldwide. There would be deliverance of believers to tribulation. There would be defection of all false believers, and there would be the declaration of the gospel to the whole world. These six signs cover the first three and a half years of the seven-year tribulation period, and they coincide with the prophecies of the book of Revelation. But while these signs will be fulfilled in the seven-year tribulation period, they will not start on a dime. How many of you know that? They will build up over time. According to Jesus, the generation that sees these signs will also see his second coming. Matthew 24 says this, now learn the parable from the fig tree. When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near at the door. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. What Jesus said was when these signs begin, they will fulfill themselves within a generation. When you see these signs, if you’re living at that time, you will see the coming of Jesus Christ when these signs are full blown. Now, if you follow my teaching over the years, you know I’ve always believed the Bible predicts the return of Christ for the church. and that it could happen at any moment, that there aren’t any signs for the rapture. This event is known as the rapture of the church. Then there will be seven years of global tribulation. And the last half of that global tribulation is called the great tribulation, a unique outpouring of God’s wrath. And when that period concludes, Jesus Christ will return with his church to put an end to global conflicts and pandemics and to judge evil and to establish his thousand-year reign. So there are no events that predict the rapture. Without any sign, without any warning, Jesus Christ will return to gather his saints and take them to heaven. So you’re wondering, perhaps, as some people would, and naturally so, if these six signs are not the signs of the rapture, and after the rapture, we’re going to heaven, what do we care about these six signs? Because future events always cast their shadows before them. And God’s people should be Bible students. And Bible students should be interested in prophetic passages. And when we study those prophetic passages, we should learn to spot the signs of the times. Recently, I clipped something. This story helps me understand how to put all this together, so listen carefully to the story. Dr. John Walvoord used to share this illustration of how the signs of the times relate to the rapture and the second coming. He pointed out how there are all kinds of signs for Christmas. There are lights everywhere, decorations, Christmas trees, music, even Santa in the mall. But Thanksgiving can sneak up on you. There are no real signs for Thanksgiving. Dr. Walvoord noted that the second coming of Christ is like Christmas. It will be preceded by many very specific signs that Scripture outlines. The rapture, however, is like Thanksgiving. There are no signs for its coming, yet if it’s fall and you begin to see the signs of Christmas everywhere, what do you think? Thanksgiving has not arrived, but it’s on its way. The signs for Christmas actually also tell you that Thanksgiving’s not too far away. The signs for the second coming are appearing all around us today. What that means is if the second coming is Christmas, the rapture is Thanksgiving, so the rapture couldn’t be too far away. These signs are not particularly about the rapture, but they’re particularly about the second advent, and there’s only seven years between those two events. Let me circle back once more to the big question on many of our minds. Is COVID-19 a sign of the rapture? No, because there aren’t any signs for the rapture. The rapture is a signless, imminent event. But is this pandemic a sign of the second coming of Christ? Probably, I can’t say with certainty that it is, but neither can I say that it’s not. It could well be early evidence of number three on Jesus’ list of six signs in Matthew 24, disease and famine worldwide. As I mentioned earlier, some of the tribulation signs could spill over into the final years before the rapture. Jesus said this pestilence, watch this, would arrive like birth pains. This means it will increase in frequency and intensity in the time leading up to his return. In other words, as the end approaches, we should expect infectious disease outbreaks to be more frequent and more intense and have impact on more people and be more deadly. That’s what’s happened. We’ve had pandemics before. I remember when this whole thing came out, they listed them all. They went back to SARS. They went back to HIV. They went to all the pandemics, all of which were really serious. I remember a couple of them that have happened in my lifetime, and people were saying, this could kill all of humanity without the proper response to it. But it didn’t. And it went away, and then this happened, and there’s been nothing like this in your lifetime or mine. So while coronavirus may not perfectly qualify as a prophetic sign, it is a sign. It’s hard to see the world so convulsed by an event without looking at it through the lens of the scripture. Even if COVID-19 is not a sign of the future, it’s a sign today, a reminder of things we too easily forget. Four lessons came to my mind when regarding that. Is this a sign of the future? I can’t say that it is and I can’t say that it isn’t because I don’t know when Jesus is going to come back. Here’s some lessons I learned and perhaps you learned them too. This is a sign of the vulnerability of all of us. We’re all more vulnerable than we like to think. According to most experts, the elderly and those with an underlying health condition were the most vulnerable to this virus. But as time progressed, we discovered that everyone was vulnerable, including celebrities. We sometimes think they live in a bubble, but they don’t. I remember in the early days, Tom Hanks got it, Rita Wilson got it, Rachel Matthews, Charlotte Lawrence. They were some of the first who got infected with the coronavirus. And then, of course, as you go through the list, it wasn’t just people in Hollywood. NBA stars Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, Marcus Smart, the vice president of Iran got it, the wife of the Canadian prime minister got it, the mayor of Miami got the virus, and as we all know, the president of the United States got the virus. We’ve been led to believe that with enough money you can protect yourself from things like this. No longer. Money can buy you a test, but it can’t buy you a cure. And we’re all vulnerable to these super plagues. No one is safe. No one escapes the possibility of infection. We know that now, not just because we’ve read it somewhere in a magazine. We know it because we’ve lived through it and we’ve experienced it and we’ve watched it unfold right in front of us. So that’s a really important lesson for us to file. Number two, This whole pandemic has taught me a lesson about the credibility of the Bible. Let me explain what I mean. For more than 50 years, I have been teaching and studying the Bible. I’ve never failed to be astounded by the events of the tribulation as they unfold in the book of Revelation. And I believe them, even though it seemed kind of outlandish to me, I believe them just because they’re in the Bible. But now these apocalyptic events seem to be knocking at our door, and the prophets no longer seem like outlandish prognosticators. They seem like people who are telling us what we should know and what we should understand. The prophet Ezekiel predicts a coming war in which Russia and its coalition armies will try to destroy the nation of Israel. I believe that will happen in the early days of the tribulation. And when God intervenes, the evil coalition will be destroyed by monumental convulsions on the earth, by military confusion, by calamities and fire and brimstone and finally major plagues. And the Lord predicts in Ezekiel 38, 22, I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed. It will take seven months to bury the bodies from that bloodshed. I remember reading that in Ezekiel and thinking, that’s outlandish, that’s unbelievable. So many people are gonna die that it’ll take them seven months to bury all the people that died during that pandemic. Try to imagine it, unburied bodies everywhere causing a sickening stench and a malignant plague. As I saw the pictures of the body bags and temporary morgues being utilized to care for those who died in New York City, I thought of what Ezekiel said. It’s not that the pandemic was fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecies, but it was serving as a faint preview of what’s ahead. In other words, what we thought couldn’t possibly happen in a sophisticated world like you and I live in, it happened. In Revelation 9, 18, we’re told that a third of the earth perishes by various plagues caused by dynamic forces. In Revelation 11, another part of the prophecy of the tribulation, two supernatural witnesses have power to strike the earth with all plagues so often as they desire. That warning isn’t limited to pandemics, but let’s just say I have a greater understanding of how the tribulation events will take place. When you read these sections of the Bible, read them carefully and prayerfully, and look for emerging trends, the events of Revelation no longer seem implausible to me. Indeed, they seem to be impending. They seem like they could happen. Who could ever have believed that the world could be strangled to a stop by a plague. But we watched it. We saw it. We witnessed it. It frightened us. We didn’t know where it was going. But COVID-19 has taught me that everybody’s vulnerable and it’s taught me that the Bible is credible. You better believe it. The Bible knows what it’s talking about. It’s not talking about something you don’t know. Here’s the third lesson that we should take away from this. The uncertainty of life. Contagions remind us of the uncertainty of life. Did you expect your schedule to be wiped out for an entire year before this happened? Were you prepared for your children to be shut out of their classroom? For your vacation, your wedding to be canceled, for your workload to shift to your kitchen table? No one expected to stay away from church for weeks or months. How terrible for those who were laid off or whose businesses failed. Few people had their pantry stocked with sanitizers, masks, and toilet paper. Who could have known? Earlier in this message, I mentioned the patriarch Job. Do you remember how he explained the sudden deconstruction of his life? Here’s what he said. My days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good. They pass like swift ships, like an eagle swooping on its prey. Or Job 14, 1 and 2, man who’s born of woman is a few days and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and fades away. He flees like a shadow and does not continue. How uncertain and how precious are our days? I took that away from this. I don’t have any guarantee, nor do you, that I will have tomorrow. I have only the day that God has given me, and how precious is that day. How important should it be for us to give thanks to God for the days he has given to us as his gifts? So I’ve learned about the vulnerability of everybody. Nobody’s safe from this. I’ve learned about the credibility of the Bible. I’ve learned about the uncertainty of life, and I’ve also learned about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. The virus points us to Jesus. As he was preparing to finish his earthly work and return to heaven, he told his disciples this, “‘These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.'” Notice, Jesus didn’t say, in the world you will have tribulation, and I have overcome tribulation. No, he said, in the world you will have tribulation, I’ve overcome the world. He doesn’t just overcome the event. He overcomes the environment in which the event happens. He doesn’t just overcome tribulation. He overcomes the world in which tribulation happens. That’s incredible. He comes to us in the midst of the struggle when the battle is almost unbearable and the circumstances are impossible. And with the voice of absolute certainty and strength, He speaks to us of peace and bestows encouragement and raises our morale and fills us with strength And he says, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. I don’t know about you, but I found Jesus in a new and special way during COVID-19. I found out that he was enough, that no matter what was going on that was frightening and we didn’t have any answers to it, we had one answer and his name was Jesus. And when we talked to him, he helped us and we got through this. because we believed and counted on the one who has promised never to leave us or forsake us. Amen? Amen. Amen. And did you know God is still doing the same thing he’s always done? He is Jehovah Rapha. He is the Jehovah who comes to help us in every way. And even though we look to the future and what the Bible says is going to happen genetically, what’s going to happen in the pandemic of the future, we know that nothing will ever happen without God being in charge. And He will be superintending it all, making sure it is exactly what He wants it to be for His purpose. We’ll have more about this biological prophecy when we meet together tomorrow. Wednesday and Thursday, we’re going to talk about a financial prophecy, and then on Friday, a theological prophecy. All of these things are helping us get focused on the future and remind us that the time is short for us to do the work of the Lord, and we need to be doing it with all urgency. I hope you’re doing that. And thank you for listening to Turning Point on the radio to prepare your heart and strengthen you in your walk. Let’s do this together as we go forward.
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For more information on Dr. Jeremiah’s series, Where Do We Go From Here?, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly Turning Points magazine and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That’s davidjeremiah.org slash radio. Or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s new book, Understanding Biblical Prophecy, a 30-day Bible study. It’s a powerful resource, and it’s yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, available in a variety of handsome cover options. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue, Where Do We Go From Here? on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
