COVID started 5 years ago this week. We missed a major opportunity to preach the Gospel during this time, but it's never too late to learn the most important lesson from COVID.
Hey, welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. March 11th. So what was that? That was Tuesday. This last Tuesday was the five-year anniversary of COVID.
Why do I say March 11th? That's the day that Donald Trump had that address to the nation with the two weeks to flatten the curve stuff. It was on March 11th. I distinctly remember.
Do you remember?
Do you remember that whole time? Do you remember that period in general? So to honor, celebrate, recognize, to never forget the lessons from COVID-19, I prepared a segment that we're gonna do on tomorrow's show on SiriusXM
with 13 lessons from COVID. My 13 biggest COVID lessons. We're not gonna go over all of them here. It's going to take like an hour, but I can just run through them quick. First lesson, the power of TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. Number two, the lengths people will go to not admit they were wrong. It's quite astounding actually, but it's so wild. If you just do it, it'll feel so much better.
Just try it like one time, just admit you're wrong. It has this huge buildup, like no, it's going to be so painful, and then you just do it and you feel great. And then you can do it all the time and it feels way easier. The power of I'm just doing my job. Maybe no words have ever justified more evil than, well, I'm just doing my job.
Fourth lesson, no common sense ever allowed at all. Fifth lesson, and this is kind of a practical one, is lab leaks are very common. There's about one a day. We average about one in America, one lab leak, one every day or two. We have a lab leak across the country. The sixth lesson, I should probably reorder these for tomorrow's show, is political correctness
is of greater value than common sense. Political correctness is of greater value, was at least of greater value. Seventh lesson, people will hide information, hide it, rather than admit they're wrong. It's just this general lack of curiosity and lack of humility that people have. I should probably move that one over too. Lesson number eight, the elites hate you.
They think you're really stupid. Ninth lesson was the power of propaganda, whether it's Chinese or American variety. Number 10, the impulse of we have to do something. It's very strong. the bad thing. People get very comforted by doing something. Number 11 is a general questioning of government competence. This would be the
institutions that have lost their credibility. Good, they deserve to have it lost. Number 11 is the authoritarian impulse inside many people. Number 12, how fragile our culture is, especially work ethic. And just really all social relations standards that we have. It was really on a knife's edge and something shook it.
I'm gonna write that down, that's a good line. So I'm going to shook it. And a lot of people haven't recovered. COVID really broke a lot of people in a lot of ways. So those are the 12, but then I have a 13th. And this is the most important one.
And this is the one that I want to go into more detail here. And that is people are very scared of death. People are terrified of death and dying. Now we live in an atheist culture today. And this is what happens. It's one of the consequences of that.
Is that people believe this is all there is. It's just evolution anyway. We're just a bunch of chemicals. A bunch of random chemicals, and anyway, all right, so that's all that's we just randomly got here and we'll just die and that's the end of it and people are very scared of that. I just came across this from C.S. Lewis, this may be an aside but
I'll do it anyway. C.S. Lewis, this is from the case for Christianity, he said supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind, in that case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me as a by-product the sensation I call thought.
But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to atheism and therefore I have no reason to be an atheist or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought. So I can never use thought to
disbelieve in God. Pretty good. But don't think about that. Just you're an atheist. We're all atheists now. There is no God and there is. I shared this story many times during COVID of Martin Luther. In 1527, there was a terrible plague in his city. And you know, these plagues back then, they killed like 50% of the town. The COVID deaths, it was like 0.2% of the population.
It wasn't like 0.2, it was 0.2% of our population. Imagine if COVID killed 50% of the population. And this plague was so deadly in Martin Luther's town in 1527, that church leadership was telling him to leave, get out of Dodge. And he wrote this letter to people. He said, you wish to know whether it's proper for a Christian to run away from a deadly plague. It's a very long letter, and there's a lot of nuance in it, but let me just quote this one line.
If it be God's will that evil come upon us and destroy us, none of our precautions will help us. Everybody must take this to heart. First of all, if he feels bound to remain where death rages in order to serve his neighbor, let him commend himself to God and say, Lord, I am in thy hands. Thou hast kept me here.
Thy will be done. I am thy lowly creature. Thou can kill me or preserve me in this pestilence in the same way as if I were in fire, water, drought, or any other danger. If a man is free, however, meaning he has no responsibilities, and he can escape, let him commend himself and say, Lord God, I am weak and fearful.
Therefore I am running away from evil, and am doing what I can to protect myself against it. I am nevertheless in thy hands in this danger, as in any other which might overtake me, I will be done. My flight alone will not succeed of itself because calamity and harm are everywhere. Moreover, the devil never sleeps.
He is a murderer from the beginning and tries everywhere to instigate murder and misfortune. I believe the church missed a massive opportunity during COVID to save a lot of souls. There's a lot of fear. People are willing to do anything
to avoid this molecule that might float and get me. And we could have alleviated a lot of fear by talking to people about the afterlife. Now, Christians, many Christians,
I think, missed this in themselves. Because a lot of this, because we live in it, well a lot of this because church doesn't really talk about important things, but many churches, but we've lost sight because we live in the atheist culture now that we're not just bodies. That's what the atheists think is we're just bodies with chemical reactions.
Some people even, like those who admit we're a soul, they still put the emphasis on the body. We're a body that happens to have a soul, but the truth is we are a soul that happens to have a body. Now if you think we're just a body, then you'll do whatever it takes to keep the body safe from harm, safe from breathing in bad air, safe from that COVID molecule, because it's all you have. But I think people learned, I hope people learned, that you can cling to something so tightly that you end up losing it.
And people cling so tightly to life, they lost the ability to live, or at least, in many cases, to live a life worth living. So people are terrified of death. And honestly, some people should be, because you're going somewhere.
But if you're a Christian, you shouldn't be terrified at all. And I wish five years ago, but now is also a good time. I wish people use this as an opportunity to get right with God, so that death is instead something you look forward to. 2 Corinthians 5, Paul said, Being always of good courage, always,
and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." How great is that? The verb here is to be of good cheer, to be happy. We are of good courage. For we know that if the earthly tent which
our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We're clinging to our tent. When we have this incredible house in heaven waiting for us. We've quoted Philippians 1 a couple times recently. Paul said, For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor. Yet what I shall choose I cannot tell, for I am hard-pressed between the two.
Living or dying, I'm hard-pressed between the two. Having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to remain in the flesh is more needful for you." I think it would be a valuable thing in the church to focus more on our yearning for heaven. The scripture I want to talk about today, though, is in the story, is in 2 Kings 7. Pretty amazing story here.
So you have Elisha and he says from the Lord that tomorrow at this time a bit of flour is going to be like nothing. It's going to be super cheap. And the king and all the people are like, what? You're talking about how can that possibly be? Because they were surrounded by the enemy.
There was a siege on the town and the city, and everyone was starving. There was no food. Let's jump to verse 3. Now, there are four leprous men at the entrance of the gate, because they couldn't go into the city because they had leprosy. And the one said, they said to one another,
Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say we will enter the city, the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. It's like, what are we doing? What are we doing just sitting here? Let's pick something. I mean we sit here and die or we can go there and like give it a go.
So the leopards say now therefore come let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. Those are the people who are surrounding the city. Let's go then. If they keep us alive we shall live and if they kill us we shall only die. If we stay here we die. If we go there the worst that can happen is we die. So they got up and they went to the camp of the Syrians. And it says they went to the outskirts of the camp,
which means they went all the way to the other side. They went through the whole camp. And to their surprise, it says here, no one was there. They left. All the enemy left. And the people in the town didn't even know it. People in the city didn't know it. Why did they leave? For the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians
to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses, the noise of a great army. So they said to one another, look, the king of Israel has hired against us, the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us. Like this is like such a huge army. It's not even Israel.
Therefore they arose and fled at twilight and left the camp intact, their tents, their horses and their donkeys, and they fled for their lives. That's all terrifying.
It was.
And when these lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent and ate and drank, and carried from it silver and gold and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they came back and entered another tent and carried some from there also, and they went and hid it. Then they said to one another, Hold on, we are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we remain silent.
If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore, come, let us go and tell the king's household." So there's a couple wonderful lessons here. First of all, they got up and they went and they tried and it worked out for them. There was a ton of food there and they were able to eat and drink to their heart's desire. And then when they started to hide things for themselves, they're like, wait, no, this is wrong.
Let's go tell the king what happened. So they had a conscience about them to do the right thing, even in this time. And the story here is about once the symbolism is once you know the gospel, you gotta go tell people about it. Go tell people the good news. And this is what Charles Spurgeon did
with this scripture here. He said, if you're not a believer right now, if you're not a Christian, if you're not saved, you're like the leper on the outside, outskirts of the city, you will die. COVID, no COVID, whatever, you're going to die.
Nothing you can do about that. You will die. Spurgeon said, if you remain where you are, you will perish forever. If you go over to Jesus, you will only die on this earth. You will die here, but then you will go to heaven and live forever. Spurgeon says you will not perish if you trust him.
On the contrary, you will find treasure far richer than you can imagine. Spurgeon actually says you will find treasure far richer than those poor lepers found in the deserted camp of the Syrians. May the Holy Spirit give you the boldness to go to Jesus immediately, and you will not believe in vain.
I just wish there was this message that was preached more during COVID. Go to Jesus immediately, you will not believe in vain. Then when you are saved yourself, share the good news with others. Don't be shy. Tell the king's household first and join in fellowship with them. Then proclaim the good news everywhere.
May the Lord save you before the sun goes down tonight. I pray for a true Holy Spirit-led revival in our churches first. Wherever it happens, one element of that, I think, would be not fearing death. Like my favorite hymn, it is well with my soul and Lord haste the day hurry up when the faith shall be sight. The clouds be rolled back as a scroll, the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend even so it is well with my soul. I think COVID exposed a lot of things in our world exposed that things are not well with our souls. Let's get that right and one element of that would be not fearing death. I
Would love to be more articulate on this topic if you have any Insights that you can share with me. I'd love to hear it My email Slater radio at gmail.com Send me a note on I'm not fearing death and then the proper Christian perspective on that I look forward to doing some more research on it as well. But if you have any insight that can send me in the right direction, I'd love that.
Slaterradio at gmail.com. Mikeslater.locals.com is my website. We have, we put these up a little bit earlier on that website. We have, we put these up a little bit earlier on that website. Commercial free and a transcript as well.
