What is the connection between the current pandemic, the control over all humanity through technology, and the ancient plans of the enemy of our souls? Looking back into biblical history will help us understand the events unfolding before our eyes.
Three thousand years ago, King David decided to take a census of all the men of fighting age. It was one of his greatest mistakes ever, and it cost the lives of seventy thousand Israelites who died in a plague that lasted three days. Joab, his nephew and military commander, was a man that often needed to be restrained from reckless actions but even he had warned King David against the move, saying: “May the LORD make His people a hundred times more than they are. But, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? Why then does my lord require this thing? Why should he be a cause of guilt in Israel?” (1 Chronicles 21:3; see also 2 Samuel 24:3).
Joab knew that taking a census was dangerous business, and he likely recalled the strict rules given by Moses for counting the people: “When you take the census of the children of Israel for their number, then every man shall give a ransom for himself to the LORD, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them… The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when you give an offering to the LORD, to make atonement for yourselves” (Exodus 30:12,15).
What is the principle here? Counting the people was not just an issue of pride (like some suppose regarding David), but rather was also connected with control over them. This even greater danger is for human leaders to become all-knowing about their subjects, thus intruding into a realm reserved for the omniscience of God. After all, the true number of such things is for God alone to know – including the hairs on our heads and the stars in the sky (Matthew 10:30; Psalm 147:4), something that a later mention of the story of David’s census even hints (1 Chronicles 27:23). By the way, to this day many Middle Eastern grandparents do not count their descendants due to a superstitious fear of inviting disaster.
David was a man after God’s own heart, but his blunder revealed the winning recipe for being struck with a plague. He took a census for the wrong reason of wanting to know too much about his subjects, while likely ignoring the requirement to pay a half-shekel ransom per person as a humble acknowledgment that he was treading in territory belonging ultimately to God himself. Therefore, it should not surprise us that his actions resulted in a plague.
Current world leaders have “improved” on his blunder, by exploiting a plague as an excuse to push measures far more invasive than a mere census. Instead of learning from the mistake to avoid the consequences, they have manipulated the pandemic (the biblical consequence) in order to make the mistake even greater! Believers can reasonably differ on the severity of the current pandemic and the appropriate response to it, but all of us should have noticed by now that many "solutions" proposed by the powers-that-be are pure evil and are leading towards the complete control over humanity foretold for the time of tribulation (Revelations 13:15-18). Whether we will be around to face that test or not is a passionately debated question, but the fact that humanity is being taken in the wrong direction should be clear.
This is the beginning of Satan’s final campaign to ensnare all people. He seeks to control human beings by monopolizing all information about them, thus attempting to compete with God’s omniscience. His strategy focuses on forcing everybody into a position where he can identify those who refuse to deny the God who created them. A foretaste of the Mark of the Beast is already present in China’s surveillance state and social credit score, a model that many other countries may soon follow.
By the way, the mark on the hand and the forehead are planned diabolically as a direct counterfeit of the command: “Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes” (Deuteronomy 11:18). It is no accident that these are the same places on the human body being discussed today.
During the height of the first COVID-19 lockdown, I noticed powerful lines in the song “Is He Worthy?” which has been the anthem of countless believers: “Is anyone able to break the seal and open the scroll? The Lion of Judah who conquered the grave. He is David's root and the Lamb who died to ransom the slave. From every people and tribe, every nation and tongue, He has made us a kingdom and priests to God to reign with the Son.”
Suddenly I saw the passage that inspired these words (Revelations 5:1-10) in a new light. Many believe that this scroll is the deed to the earth handed over to Jesus, but the same Greek word most often describes the Book of Life later on in the same book (17:8; 20:12; 21:7). This concept of a list of those with eternal life is also found in other passages (Exodus 32:32, Malachi 3:16, Daniel 12:1, Psalm 69:29). Could it be that the enemy is making a last desperate effort to harm those whose names are written in the scroll, and perhaps is even trying to peek inside himself by forcing everybody into a position of having to choose? I believe that this is exactly what is happening.
We can do nothing to stop events foretold for the end of time, nor is it our role to try. People who are under Satan’s dominion may be shaping current world events, but ultimately they and their master will fail utterly in the attempt to control all of humanity including those that belong to Jesus. In the end, we know that Jesus alone will open the Book of Life with all of our names, for He alone is worthy. And, thanks be to God, no plague or pandemic will accompany that final census count since we are covered by the ransom of the blood of the Lamb.
Photo taken from Flickr.
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