On The Brink Of A Global Pandemic: “All Of Humanity Under Threat”

Can it be stopped?

Jesus said in the last days “there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors.”

The head of the World Health Organization says the world now stands on the brink of a global pandemic. She is urging governments and health professionals to act quickly to stop of a terrible plague that could cost many lives, given how horrific past pandemics have been. “The 1918-19 pandemic of “Spanish flu” killed around 2.64 million Europeans, according to a French study, which says that despite its name, the pathogen probably originated outside Europe,” reports Agence France Presse.

Excerpts from remarks by Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general: “Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world. For the first time in history we can track the evolution of a pandemic in real time. Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behaviour. All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans. Countries should remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia….Based on assessment of all available information and following several expert consultations, I have decided to raise the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5. This change to a higher phase of alert is a signal to governments, to ministries of health and other ministries, to the pharmaceutical industry and the business community that certain actions now should be undertaken with increased urgency and at an accelerated pace.”

HEADLINES TO TRACK:

• Swine flu: ‘All of humanity under threat’, WHO warns: The World Health Organisation has warned that “all of humanity is under threat” from a potential swine flu pandemic and called for “global solidarity” to combat the virus
• WHO warns global swine flu pandemic imminent
• Swine Flu Case in Spain May Point to Global Pandemic, WHO Says
• Vice President Biden: Stay Off Subways During Swine Flu Panic World Health body raises alert to level 5, one notch short of full pandemic
• Mexico orders economic shutdown; pandemic imminent
• Swine Flu: face masks will not stop the disease spreading, experts warn
• White House rejects Iran deadlines

Love in a Time of Swine Flu

“A man’s spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?“

Proverbs 18:14

The history of humanity is the history of sickness, disease, and death.  When sin came, death came, and sickness remains the leading agent of death.  The horseman of pestilence has visited plagues and pandemics upon humanity throughout the centuries.  Even in the age of modern medicine and the conquest of so many diseases, the very real risk of pandemic remains — and we feel it in our souls.

The outbreak of swine flu now dominates the headlines and news programs, with at least 150 deaths in Mexico already recorded even as the disease is now confirmed around the world.  For many years medical authorities have warned of a coming influenza pandemic — a modern plague — that could kill on a magnitude similar to the 1918 outbreak that killed over 100 million persons worldwide.

Writing in The Atlantic in 2005, Michael Specter called influenza “Nature’s Bioterrorist.”  As Specter explains, “A pandemic is the viral equivalent of a perfect storm. There are three essential conditions, which rarely converge, and they are impossible to predict. But the requirements are clear. A new flu virus must emerge from the animal reservoirs that have always produced and harbored such viruses–one that has never infected human beings and therefore one to which no person would have antibodies. Second, the virus has to actually make humans sick (most don’t). Finally, it must be able to spread efficiently–through coughing, sneezing, or a handshake.”

Is this outbreak of swine flu the harbinger of a hellish pandemic?  It is far too early to say, and there is no justification for jumping to that conclusion.  Nevertheless, it is a clear warning.  Even in a normal year 36,000 Americans die of the flu.  We are made of fragile stuff.

Experts on pandemics suggest that the question is “when” and not “if” this threatened pandemic will come.  Michael Specter offers a sober warning: “Infectious-disease experts talk about pandemics the way geologists talk about earthquakes; the discussion is never about whether ‘the big one’ will hit.”

The public discussion about swine flu and the threat of a breakout pandemic should prompt Christians to think seriously and soberly about what all this means.  Biblical Christianity has much to say about disease and sickness, and the Christian tradition is rich with thought about how Christians, churches, and pastors should think of sickness, disease, and death.

At the onset, we must remember that sickness and death are part of the curse.  Every single disease and malady can be traced back to Genesis 3 and humanity’s fall into sin.  Adam and Eve were the first humans to taste life and, after their sin, they were also the first to taste sickness and death.  While only a few sicknesses can be traced to specific sins (such as sexually transmitted diseases), in reality the whole enterprise of sickness and death is rightly traced to sin, both individual and corporate.

The New Creation that is coming will know no sickness and death, for the curse is reversed in Christ.  Yet, even as we await the coming of the Day of the Lord, in this life will all know the pangs, pains, perplexities, and perniciousness of disease.  We are headed for death.

Nevertheless, as should be thankful for modern medicine, and the invention of both antibiotics and antiseptics.  The germ theory of disease is a relatively recent human achievement, and the widespread use of effective antibiotics dates back only to the midpoint of the last century.  While thankful for these medical advances, we are reminded that humanity will never finally triumph over disease and death.  The curse is beyond our power to reverse.

At the same time, Christians have honored Christ by ministering to the sick.  As Thomas C. Oden reminds us, “Christian ministry prays in good conscience for healing, although it does not tempt God by making faith contingent upon a particular healing.  Ministry never prays that sickness or pain be increased.  Ministry consistently is on the side of fighting affliction, not increasing it.  Meanwhile, it does not view pain as an absolute evil out of which no good could ever come.”

Martin Luther, no stranger to sickness, taught his congregation to use medical means, but to place trust in God alone.  “Rather you should go on in simple faith, and when you are in danger and trouble, you should use whatever means you can, lest you tempt God.  But if you find that these means, which God has created to dispel danger or sickness, supply neither the desired help or the remedy, then cast your care and your life on God and commit yourself to the direction of His wisdom and goodness.”

Sickness should prompt the Christian to yearn for eternity.  As the Apostle Paul explains, “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” [1 Cor. 15:53]  Until then, Christians will suffer all manner of maladies ranging from the mild to the deadly.  Our bodies cry out for the glory that is promised to believers in Christ.  Until then, we cough, sniffle, choke, collapse, suffer, and die.

The Christian’s confidence is in Christ alone.  We trust that God has a purpose in our suffering, and that this purpose is perfect, even if yet undiscerned.  As Luther assured his flock, “If God wants to have you sick like this, what He wants will certainly be better than what we want.”

Luther ministered in a time of plague and epidemic.  He provided a model of the pastor who never leaves his people.  He also urged his people never to leave the sick.  In 1527 the Bubonic Plague came to Wittenberg.  Luther sent his students home, but he stayed to minister to his congregation and the city.  He called for others with responsibility, especially pastors, to do the same.  Cowardice in ministry is a denial of Christ, Luther warned, for “whoever wants to serve Christ in person would surely serve his neighbor as well.”

In Geneva, John Calvin taught his pastors to visit the sick as a primary duty of “a true and faithful minister.”  As Calvin explained, “the greatest need which a man ever has of the spiritual doctrine of our Lord is when His hand visits him with afflictions, whether of disease or other evils, and specially at the hour of death.”

Calvin taught the faithful minister to offer suffering Christians the consolation of Christ, lest they be overwhelmed by the fear of death and judgment.  On the other hand, if the sick person is not “sufficiently oppressed and agonized by a conviction of their sins,” the pastor should speak to them of the justice of God, “before which they cannot stand, save through the mercy embracing Jesus Christ for their salvation.”

In the end, sickness points to sin and sin points to our need for Christ.  Luther, Calvin, and all true ministers of Christ know that sickness and death point to our need for a Savior.  Even as Christians seek to minister to the physical needs of the sick, the spiritual need is even more urgent.  Each tiny germ shows us our need for the Gospel.  Every cough is a reminder of coming judgment.  Our confidence is placed only in the ministry of the Christ our Physician, “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.”  [Psalm 103:3]

Christians will, sooner or later, be called upon to show the love of Christ in the midst of sickness.  Perhaps we will minister out of Christ’s love in a time of swine flu.  If so, we do well to remember Luther’s summary of the best prescription in the face of disease:  “My best prescription is written John 3:16.  ‘God so loved the world.’  This is the best I have.”

Not Even Close? — Is America Becoming a Post-Christian Culture?

Newsweek magazine’s cover story, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” [April 13, 2009] continues to evoke controversy and conversation, and much of it is illuminating.  Now, Stephen Prothero of Boston University enters the fray with an incisive commentary that throws a few punches.

Writing in today’s edition of USA Today, Prothero asserts that almost all the warnings about an increasingly secular America are overblown and mistaken.  “Not Even Close,” is the headline of his response.

Prothero is no amateur when it comes to observing religion in America.  Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, Prothero is also author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t. He is one of the most informed observers of the American religious scene, and his analysis is always worth careful attention.

When it comes to the Newsweek cover story by editor Jon Meacham, Prothero goes after both the analysis and the data Meacham cites.  First, Prothero suggests that most readers of the American Religious Identification Survey [ARIS] study undertaken by Trinity College in Hartford misread the data.  While the most recent ARIS study does indicate a significant increase in secular Americans, Prothero insists that most of these citizens are not so secular as they appear.

Even as the trend line for Christianity may look “disturbingly like the Dow Jones of recent memory,” he insists that, “the fact of the matter is that only a small portion of the “nones” are truly secular.”

Prothero also takes aim at my comments as recorded in Newsweek:

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham begins his cover story with a series of quotations from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who offers the same sad story of Christian declension that American Christians have been telling since roughly the moment the Pilgrims first clambered over Plymouth Rock. “The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered,” Mohler says. “The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.”

Prothero then describes my comments as more “timeless rhetoric” than “timely analysis.”  Ouch.  His earlier paragraph sets the context for this charge:

What makes this secularization angle plausible is the fact that it aligns quite well with the desires of atheists and evangelicals alike. The so-called new atheists want to see Christianity on the retreat because to them, religion is poisonous idiocy. But born-again Christians like the faith-on-the-run story, too, because it makes their centuries-old call to re-Christianize the country only more urgent.

In other words, America’s (very few) atheists want Christianity to be in retreat because they see it as false, dangerous, and anti-progressive.  The evangelicals, on the other hand, are always looking at America only to see it as a nation in spiritual decline.

There is more than a little truth in Prothero’s observations.  Atheists are suddenly very hopeful about the secular trends and evangelicals are habitually prone to jeremiads about Christianity in cultural retreat.  Nevertheless, there is more to this story than Prothero allows here.  He points to this himself when he writes:

What the rise of the “nones” shows us is not how American Christianity is declining but how it is changing. The data tells us that Christians are increasingly likely to describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious, that they are increasingly wary of labels and institutions, and that they identify their faith less and less with “organized religion” and more and more with the personal power of Jesus himself.

Prothero is most concerned with the cultural reality of American Christianity.  When he looks to the United States, he sees a Christian nation.  Not, mind you, in the sense of those who argue for a unitary Christian society, but in the sense that America certainly is Christian, rather than, say, Jewish or Buddhist.  Christmas is a national holiday, not Passover, and Christianity remains “a vital political force” both on the right and the left.

In one of his keenest observations, Prothero relates that when he discusses the “Christian America” question in his classes, evangelical Christians describe America as a multicultural nation of religious diversity while non-Christian students see the nation as pervasively Christian.  As he writes, “my Jewish students tell me you have to be blind (or Christian) not to see that this is a Christian country.”

Well, in that sense, they (and Professor Prothero) are certainly correct.  American public culture is suffused with references to the Christian Bible.  Most American politicians identify, in one way or another, as Christians.  And, Prothero asserts, “the United States today has more Christians than any other country in human history.”

So, with whom do I agree, Stephen Prothero or myself?  Actually, both.  I do not argue with the basics of Professor Prothero’s analysis.  In the sense that he speaks of the influence and presence of some form of Christianity in America, he is surely right.  No one should argue that the atheists and agnostics are about to overrun or outnumber the Christians in this nation.

But my own concern is very different than that of Professor Prothero.  The Newsweek article rightly quoted me on the analysis of a Post-Christian turn in the culture.  I not only stand by those comments; I would gladly expand upon them.  The real issue here is that I define Christianity in very different terms than those of either the ARIS study or Professor Prothero’s minimalist use of the term.

My concern lies less with cultural influence than with the vitality and integrity of Christian witness.  My comments may sound elegiac, and in some sense they are, but my concern is with the very trends Prothero himself identified.  The transformation of American Christianity into just a Christian-branded “spirituality” is part and parcel of my concern.  My central concern is evangelism, not cultural influence, and my definition of Christianity is unapologetically tied to an embrace of the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”

The doctrinal declension of Christianity in America is writ large.  The great institutions of Christian learning of eras past are now largely bastions of secular worldviews, even when these institutions are still classified in some way according to a tie to Christian truth in the past.  Such is also the case with mainline Protestantism, where theological liberalism has redefined Christianity as something other than historic biblical Christianity.

My concern is less with a Post-Christian America as a cultural reality than with Post-Christian America as an evangelistic and missiological challenge.  What Stephen Prothero sees as Christian (in some sense, at least) I see as what may best be called a “Post-Christian Christianity.”

But then, my concern is that of a Christian theologian committed to the Gospel of Christ as the only message that saves sinners.  Professor Prothero writes from a different perspective, at least professionally, and his concern is the fact that America sure looks Christian to non-Christians.

Stephen Prothero’s contribution to the conversation about a Post-Christian America is insightful, stimulating, and timely.  There are more angles to this question than we have yet seen.

Understanding the Islamic Revolution

(Focus on the Family Broadcast – Part 1)

On part one of a two-part series of broadcasts, Dr. James Dobson today discussed Inside The Revolution and said author Joel Rosenberg reminded him of the “sons of Issachar,” described in the Bible as “men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” He added: “I recommend the book and hope that people will get a copy of it [and] understand that revolution and what’s going on.” He recommended that people watch the Epicenter documentary film on DVD that he and his daughter recently viewed. He also encouraged people to learn more about how they could be a part of The Joshua Fund, an educational and charitable organization to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus.

In light of the rising threat of Radical Islam — and particularly the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and the U.S. — Dr. Dobson specifically urged his millions of listeners to:

• pray for the President of the United States and our leaders in Washington to have wisdom and courage to effectively confront this crisis and protect our families;
• pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the nations of the epicenter, that the Lord would intercede and be merciful “because we are facing some very, very difficult days”
• pray for the spiritual revival of our nation, and participate in the National Day of Prayer;
• learn “10 ways to show the love of Christ to your Muslim neighbor” (adapted from Inside The Revolution)

The Problem of Unanswered Prayer

S. Lewis Johnson Message of the Week

Jesus promises his disciples in John 15:7, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.” But, how do we square this text with the universal experience of unanswered prayers? Listen as Dr. S. Lewis Johnson in the first of his two part message “The Problem of Unanswered Prayers,” adeptly examines three ways in which believers are prone to error with regards to prayer.

The Problem of Unanswered Prayer
Part 5 of an 8-week series on Prayer

How to be Courageous in Your Convictions

Podcast: Download (8.7MB)

LISTEN NOW: [audio:http://www.thechristianworldview.com/audio/TCW042509pod_hour2.mp3]

Who would have ever thought that a beauty pageant would turn into a national controversy when a question about same-sex marriage was asked to Miss California by a homosexual judge?  Miss California courageously gave a biblically correct answer rather than a politically correct one and it resulted in her losing the crown.

Meanwhile, Rick Warren, well-known evangelical leader and pastor of Saddleback Church in San Diego, recently stated he had apologized to the gay community for his previous support of Proposition 8, the successful 2008 California ballot initiative that defines marriage in that state as between one man and one woman.

In Hour 2, we’ll discuss why a young woman has the courage to state her convictions while an experienced pastor folds on the same issue.

Video of Today Show segment on Miss USA pageant controversy

The Shack and the Skill of Discernment

Podcast: Download (8.7MB)

Guest: Tim Challies, author, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment

Is The Shack, the wildly popular NY Times bestselling novel, really the second coming of John Bunyan’s beloved allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress?  Are its non-orthodox representation of God and other spiritual themes a legitimate way to reach a certain demographic?  Or, is The Shack actually a spiritually confusing work of fiction that is to be anathema amongst Christians?

This Saturday in Hour 1 or The Christian Worldview, we’ll get a “two for one” when Tim Challies, editor of the popular blog Challies.com, joins me to discuss his book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, and how to apply that discernment in understanding The Shack.  You can read Challies’ review of The Shack here.  We will also take your phone calls on The Shack, a book that continues to arouse heated debate amongst Christians.

On Fundamentalism: Why We Need to Know History

Need to Read – April 2009

The Rape of Solomon’s Song (Part 4) [MacArthur]

April 16, 2009

The Rape of Solomon’s Song (Part 3) [MacArthur]

Forever in Blue Jeans [George Will]

April 15, 2009

The Rape of Solomon’s Song (Part 2) [MacArthur]

Full Scale Noah’s Ark Built in Hong Kong [Wall Street Journal]

April 14, 2009

The Rape of Solomon’s Song [MacArthur]

April 10, 2009

Secular Liberalism as Consensus [Rod Dreher]

April 4, 2009

EPICENTER CONFERENCE 2009 [Webcast]

April 3, 2009

Obama Throws America Under Bus at G20 [Bill Wilson]

Europe Got Obama — Now What? [V.D. Hanson]

April 1, 2009

Our Problem is Immorality [Walter Williams]

Morning Bell: The G20 Threat to Economic Recovery [Heritage.org]

President Obama Says “No More Bailouts” [Heritage.org]

No Truth Without Love, No Love Without Truth

The church’s engagement with the culture involves a host of issues, controversies, and decisions–but no issue defines our current cultural crisis as clearly as homosexuality. Some churches and denominations have capitulated to the demands of the homosexual rights movement, and now accept homosexuality as a fully valid lifestyle. Other denominations are tottering on the brink, and without a massive conservative resistance, they are almost certain to abandon biblical truth and bless what the Bible condemns.

Within a few short years, a major dividing line has become evident–with those churches endorsing homosexuality on one side, and those stubbornly resisting the cultural tide on the other.

The homosexual rights movement understands that the evangelical church is one of the last resistance movements committed to a biblical morality. Because of this, the movement has adopted a strategy of isolating Christian opposition, and forcing change by political action and cultural pressure. Can we count on evangelicals to remain steadfastly biblical on this issue?

Not hardly. Scientific surveys and informal observation reveal that we have experienced a significant loss of conviction among youth and young adults. No moral revolution can succeed without shaping and changing the minds of young people and children. Inevitably, the schools have become crucial battlegrounds for the culture war. The Christian worldview has been undermined by pervasive curricula that teach moral relativism, reduce moral commandments to personal values, and promote homosexuality as a legitimate and attractive lifestyle option.

Our churches must teach the basics of biblical morality to Christians who will otherwise never know that the Bible prescribes a model for sexual relationships. Young people must be told the truth about homosexuality–and taught to esteem marriage as God’s intention for human sexual relatedness.

The times demand Christian courage. These days, courage means that preachers and Christian leaders must set an agenda for biblical confrontation, and not shrink from dealing with the full range of issues related to homosexuality. We must talk about what the Bible teaches about gender–what it means to be a man or a woman. We must talk about God’s gift of sex and the covenant of marriage. And we must talk honestly about what homosexuality is, and why God has condemned this sin as an abomination in His sight.

Courage is far too rare in many Christian circles. This explains the surrender of so many denominations, seminaries, and churches to the homosexual agenda. But no surrender on this issue would have been possible, if the authority of Scripture had not already been undermined.

And yet, even as courage is required, the times call for another Christian virtue as well–compassion. The tragic fact is that every congregation is almost certain to include persons struggling with homosexual desire or even involved in homosexual acts. Outside the walls of the church, homosexuals are waiting to see if the Christian church has anything more to say, after we declare that homosexuality is a sin.

Liberal churches have redefined compassion to mean that the church changes its message to meet modern demands. They argue that to tell a homosexual he is a sinner is uncompassionate and intolerant. This is like arguing that a physician is intolerant because he tells a patient she has cancer. But, in the culture of political correctness, this argument holds a powerful attraction.

Biblical Christians know that compassion requires telling the truth, and refusing to call sin something sinless. To hide or deny the sinfulness of sin is to lie, and there is no compassion in such a deadly deception. True compassion demands speaking the truth in love–and there is the problem. Far too often, our courage is more evident than our compassion.

In far too many cases, the options seem reduced to these–liberal churches preaching love without truth, and conservative churches preaching truth without love. Evangelical Christians must ask ourselves some very hard questions, but the hardest may be this: Why is it that we have been so ineffective in reaching persons trapped in this particular pattern of sin? The Gospel is for sinners–and for homosexual sinners just as much as for heterosexual sinners. As Paul explained to the Corinthian church, “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” [1 Corinthians 6:11].

I believe that we are failing the test of compassion. If the first requirement of compassion is that we tell the truth, the second requirement must surely be that we reach out to homosexuals with the Gospel. This means that we must develop caring ministries to make that concern concrete, and learn how to help homosexuals escape the powerful bonds of that sin–even as we help others to escape their own bonds by grace.

If we are really a Gospel people; if we really love homosexuals as other sinners; then we must reach out to them with a sincerity that makes that love tangible. We have not even approached that requirement until we are ready to say to homosexuals, “We want you to know the fullness of God’s plan for you, to know the forgiveness of sins and the mercy of God, to receive the salvation that comes by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to know the healing God works in sinners saved by grace, and to join us as fellow disciples of Jesus Christ, living out our obedience and growing in grace together.”

Such were some of you . . . The church is not a place where sinners are welcomed to remain in their sin. To the contrary, it is the Body of Christ, made up of sinners transformed by grace. Not one of us deserves to be accepted within the beloved. It is all of grace, and each one of us has come out of sin. We sin if we call homosexuality something other than sin. We also sin if we act as if this sin cannot be forgiven.

We cannot settle for truth without love nor love without truth. The Gospel settles the issue once and for all. This great moral crisis is a Gospel crisis. The genuine Body of Christ will reveal itself by courageous compassion, and compassionate courage. We will see this realized only when men and women freed by God’s grace from bondage to homosexuality feel free to stand up in our churches and declare their testimony–and when we are ready to welcome them as fellow disciples. Millions of hurting people are waiting to see if we mean what we preach.

Next Page »