Throughout history the Author of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 has unleashed, among other things, “pestilences” on the church and those nations that house her.  Because both churched and unchurched people have sin as a foundational principle of their lives, the ravages of God’s wrath have repeatedly fallen on both groups.  In some cases the curses came as epidemics, meaning diseases that were confined to certain geographical areas.  At other times they came as pandemics which encircled the planet.  History records that the Lord has inflicted such epidemics and pandemics as small pox, the bubonic plague, pneumonia, the black death, syphilis, cholera, the H1N1 virus, the Spanish flu, HIV, polio, and  God’s latest attack, the coronavirus.

As of this day (4/19/20) the United States has lost over 40,000 of its citizens. Thousands more are infected with the virus and many more victims are expected to die.  Those who believe Matthew 24 and Revelation 6 were not surprised by the arrival of this latest death-dealing punishment from the Lord for Jesus had prophesied that such would be forthcoming in Matthew 24:4,5. As is always the case when catastrophe strikes, there is a cause. Proverbs 26:2 warns that “the curse without a cause does not come” either to individuals, families, geographical areas, nations or the world.  Curses upon mankind have always had a cause just as God’s sowing and reaping law dictates. Regardless of the type of curse, the cause is man, specifically man’s rejection of God’s Word.  He makes this clear in the Leviticus and Deuteronomy chapters referenced above, as well as in His definition of sin as found in 1 John 3:4: “To transgress the Law (His Word/Truth) is sin, for sin is the transgression of the Law.” Simply put: GOD PLACES CURSES ON SINNERS–WORD REJECTERS.  This includes Satan-deceived “SINNERS SAVED BY GRACE.” As the Lord makes clear in His Word, HE IS THE ONE WHO SENDS THE CURSES.  The question that should be asked now is what causes man to sin? Why does man, especially Christian man, reject the very Truth he claims to believe?  The majority of people in self-proclaimed “Christian Nations” claim to be “Christian.”  Such nations are as likely to be the focus of God’s wrath as non-Christian nations because they are one in the same in the eyes of God.

Back to the question: what causes Christians to sin? In Matthew 24 Jesus tell us that the cause of church sin is false religion (vss 4,5).  Note that the first warning He issued to the future church concerned false prophets who would convince the people to follow them.  Operating under the power of Satan, they would profess that He (Jesus) was the Christ, then, having gained acceptance among the people, would deceive “many” (actually 99%) of them.  Jesus said that “few” God seekers would enter God’s kingdom (Mat. 7:13,14), but that “many” would follow the devil’s false prophets unto destruction. This meant that false prophets would be very successful.  To see how successful, look in a phone book under “CHURCHES. The Scriptures tell us that their success was being observed soon after the establishment of the New Testament Church in 31 A.D.  Within a generation of her founding the apostles were struggling to keep her from coming under the sway of false religion. In 68 A.D. Paul chastised the Galatian Church for having embraced a perverted version of God’s gospel (1:6). One will notice that all of the New Testament writers had to fight with fury in order to keep the churches from falling into Satan’s religious abyss. By the beginning of the first century all of the original apostles were dead.  Within a generation of their deaths all of the churches had succumbed to Satan’s false universal religion known as Catholicism.  History has shown that God was right.  Only a few stalwart souls continued to stand their ground.  They paid a terrible, though glorious price for doing so.  The Catholics’ persecution culminated in the Inquisition in which an estimated 50,000,000 people were put to death, many of them God’s true saints.

Jesus foresaw the demise of His church and warned in Matthew 24 that, following her apostasy His Father would send such curses as wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes as warnings. His “voice” would tell her to return to Him.  His warnings fell on deaf ears.  Today He calls out to those in the churches to come of them and embrace Him.  The results are the same as their ministers continue to preach their heathen-based gospel.  In Revelation 6:2 Jesus identifies the leader of the church’s false prophets as the rider on the white horse–Satan.  This “angel of light (truth) was already conquering God seekers and would continue to conquer them through his “ministers of righteousness” (1 Cor. 11:13-15).  Jesus knew that Satan’s light would be a perverted version of His Father’s light. This is what Paul was warning the back-sliding church about in Galatians 1:6-9.  Paul’s fellow apostles continue to warn the church today.  Our success rate is even worse than his.  Jesus knew this would be the case, which is why He promised that “… where two or three are gathered togather in My name, there I will be among them.”  L.J.