Coronavirus. Food and Drug Administration photo.

Updated August 19, 2023

As I originally wrote this, most of the world had shut down on account of the coronavirus outbreak. Plenty of people are wondering about where God is in the modern plague of Covid-19.

We might as well wonder about God in modern plagues, plural. After all, Covid-19 isn’t the first plague outbreak in this century. Remember MRSA? SARS? H1N1? And maybe I’ve forgotten some. In any case, seasonal flu kills more than any of them.

Common and facile responses seem to divide into three groups:

• Some Christians always come out of the woodwork to proclaim that this or that crisis is God’s judgment on whatever sin most upsets them. We hear from them with every major hurricane or other natural disaster.
• Some Christians quickly answer that a loving God wouldn’t send a plague or other disaster. They don’t know where it came from, but it can’t be from God.
• Atheists and agnostics quickly agree with whoever says that God did send the plague–if, of course, he exists. After all, trouble shows he’s just a mean, rotten bully and not worth acknowledging.

Surely, we can do better than that. We can look in the Bible and see that God did send plagues. Biblical plagues surely demonstrate God’s judgment. And yet the Bible proclaims that God is love.

Every syllable of Scripture perfectly expresses God’s love, even the ones we don’t like. So let’s start this examination of the coronavirus outbreak by looking at some of the biblical plagues.

Some biblical plagues

The Fifth Plague on Egypt / Joseph Mallord William Turner (1800)

• Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go. God sent ten plagues. –– Exodus 7-12
• God proclaimed the blessing of the law for obedience and the curse of the law for disobedience. The curse included plague. –– Leviticus 26:25, Deuteronomy 28:21-22
• The people complained about the manna God provided in the wilderness and demanded meat. God provided meat but also sent a plague. –– Numbers 11
• Korah’s rebellion ended when the earth swallowed him and his followers. Then the people blamed Moses for killing God’s people. God answered with a plague that killed another 14,700 people. –– Numbers 16
• Another plague in the wilderness killed 24,000 people. –– Numbers 25
• David took an illegal census. God gave him his choice of consequence. David preferred three days of plague, which killed 70,000 people. ––1 Chronicles 21
• Punishment for national apostasy culminated in the Babylonian captivity, but God also sent plagues. ­­–– Jeremiah 14, 21
• Signs of the end times include plague. –– Revelation 6, 11, 16

I could go on, but these are enough to show that God does send plagues. Of course,  the Bible doesn’t enumerate all the plagues that frequently happened over the centuries. Psalm 91 makes this promise to anyone “who dwells in the secret place of the most high”:

You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you. –– Psalm 91:5-7 NASB

Every description of God’s judgment declares or shows his grace nearby. God’s intention for these plagues is not punitive but redemptive. Study those chapters and look for the grace. It may be hard to detect, but it’s there.

Covid-19—and tyranny?

Christ Judge, detail from Last Judgment, 1585, by Jean Cousin Younger

Now think of some of the government actions in the wake of the pandemic. On orders from governors and mayors:

• Schools shut down, and even children’s playgrounds.
• Gyms, barbershops, restaurants––and churches­­––were ordered closed.
• Millions of people were thrown out of work.
• People were ordered to stay at home.
• Meetings of more than ten people were banned—even funerals and weddings.
• People were not allowed to visit loved ones in the hospital or nursing homes.
• As a result, many people died all alone.
• In the few activities still allowed outside the home. people were ordered to stay six feet apart from other people.

Taken out of context, these orders seem like government overreach. Tyranny like this country has never known before. It would seem like people ought to respond with outrage and civil disobedience.

But no.

In hindsight, it appears that some of these measures may have been excessive, based more on fear than science, but no one had hindsight at the beginning of 2020. Everyone realized that this modern plague justified drastic steps. Similar drastic measures were put into place in the flu pandemic a hundred years earlier. Sooner or later, plagues end. So has the pandemic phase of Covid-19 .

What does all this have to do with God?

The Resurrection of Christ / Noel Coypel, 1700

Executive orders disrupted all of life to combat an invisible enemy. In the same way, God sends plagues to combat an invisible enemy that’s even more pervasive and insidious than viruses: sin.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam had the choice to obey God or the serpent. He obeyed the serpent, the devil.

By that choice, the devil became the ruler of this world (John 12:31, 14:30. 16:11). He is the “god of this world who has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel . . . ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). He intends only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10).

Sin and death entered the world through Adam’s rebellion. For what is sin but the human insistence that we know better than God what’s good for us? God uses drastic means to rid the world of sin and the devil. One way or another everyone dies in the process.

The end of someone’s biological life is not the final end. Once God has done all that’s necessary to destroy the devil, the final judgment happens. Some verses of Scripture make it sound like nearly everyone but a select few will go to hell. Others make it sound like nearly everyone will go to heaven.

Jesus, by the way, spoke more than anyone else in the Bible of people going to hell. However many or few end up there, it’s real.

Now think beyond the death of all those who have died of any plague, biblical or modern. As they became ill, they suffered pain and terror for a while. What is that momentary pain and terror compared to the unending joy of heaven or horror of hell?

I am not fool enough to think that I understand the coronavirus outbreak in the plan of God’s judgment. But from this brief Bible survey, I am certain that he sent it. And sent it with a redemptive purpose.

What more explanation does anyone need?