A text to the question, “Do you think this is an end times plague?”

David: I think this is an end time deception. Protestant America is reaping what it has sown. It has sown the wind and is reaping the whirlwind. God has loosed our old enemy from the Dark Ages. Revelation 17:8. Happy Sabbath!

Carroll: Can you explain the deception? What do you mean they reaped the wind?

David: Hosea 8:7. Protestantism is in apostasy. America was the protector (for it) with a U.S. Constitution that was civil and Protestant. It was civil in that it had no state religion blessing its laws or controlling its laws. It was a Protestant document in that it separated religion and state, it gave the people freedom, it gave the power to the people, and it was based on self-government. It was everything opposed to papal despotism. The Bible and Bible Christianity was our religion, which, through conversion and the Spirit’s foundation of self-government, was the only way that so much liberty could be entrusted into the hands of the people. The people had to be new creatures in Christ. They had to be pure. They had to be self-denying. They had to have the God of Abraham and Moses and David and Paul for their God. Only He was all wise and a God of justice and mercy. The love of that God expressed in the damnation of God’s own Son as a shelter for Adam’s precious race would make them love Him, His immutable Law, and all law.

Persecution would cement that covenant and produce strong minds and good consciences. It would produce fidelity to their government’s righteous laws and to one another. Marriage would be strong. Family would be strong. Society would be strong and the nation would be strong. The only Bible Christianity has been Protestantism since the days of the apostle John. 1John 2:18 says that the church’s foe was already in the church. In Acts 20:28-31, Paul gave a similar warning. But America has completely given up its only connection to the Creator, and our protection against Satan.

Now for the deception: “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee…” (Deut. 28:15).

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be [judged] who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2Thess. 2:11,12).

“Then shall that Wicked [one, the son of total depravity] be revealed…: even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” (vs.8-10).

“Whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” (vs. 2:8).

But read the whole chapter of Deuteronomy 28 to get a feel for what’s coming to our once peaceful, peace-making nation. It will cause us to get serious about eternal things. All in all it will be good for us. His promise is: “I will make a man [and woman] more precious than fine gold; even a man [and woman more precious] than the golden wedge of Ophir.” (Isa. 13:12).

Carroll: I don’t understand…. You think the virus is a deception? It seems more a curse. Thanks for all that. I’ll read it over again tomorrow. Thanks.

David: it is a curse, yet not a plague, as in last plagues. The curse is in the fact that is represents a new and greater manifestation of Satan’s foothold on humanity. That is a bad thing. But remember that god is allowing it for our submission to Him, for those who will accept the punishment for their iniquities. Read Leviticus 26. It was the precursor to Deuteronomy 28. Especially note verses 39-42.

This is the crux of God’s method to save. If we turn away from the good life that He gives in return for our obedience and love, then He turns away from us. But there is only one other spiritual being that we can turn to besides Jesus. And that other power devours his children. But we don’t want self-sacrifice and self-abasement. So we leave the self-effacing, self-forgetting, pure God for the self-satisfying, self-important, self-gratifying, impure god. And the “only true God” (John 17:3) lets us go. He mourns over our separation like Samuel mourned over his permanent separation from King Saul (1Sam. 15:35).

But to all who have desired to know God He promises that the separation isn’t forever (Leviticus 26:44). Yet they still must endure a long service to the devourer and separation from the life-giver. We see this many times in sacred history. Adam spent 130 years without enjoying the blessing of raising an heir of righteousness by faith and reconciliation with the God of peace. He was so stunned by the results of his sin and its punishment. Finally he resolved the change of relations with the God who he learned he needed more than life; and he submitted to the consequences. He trusted God to help him do better in raising his family. So he knew Eve again. Their child Seth grew up in a strict, godly home, and married a godly wife. He had a son who he raised in strict godliness. 235 years after being expelled from God, Adam, and Eve and their righteous community in the mountains could finally, fully reconnect with the God of heaven (Gen. 4:25,26; cf Gen. 5:3,6).

It was a high day. And Adam literally lived happily ever after because he learned the great lesson in life—obedience to the “only wise God” (Jude 25) is the only way to real happiness. In the back of his mind Adam could never forget the loss of his first two sons and his world going awry, but the God of love was his again and that helped his painful losses. God wrote His Law into Adam’s heart, He gave Adam a new heart and put His Spirit into Adam. (Eze. 36:25-31).

Redemption is messy business. It involves a lot of pain and self-loathing. For a long time it’s a lose-lose situation, but in the end it’s a win-win situation. “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to [your name], and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.” (Isa. 40:1,2).

That is the gospel that Jesus preached when He begin His ministry (Mark 1:15). After 600 years of punishment under foreign rule, some of the Jews were humbled and hungry for the God of Abraham. They came to God’s Son and got Adam’s reconciliation and joy like Adam got when he came to God’s Son.

If we can be corrected and humbled, then in the middle of all the horrific troubles, we will be able to exclaim, “It’s our God!”