Pestilences in Divers Places

SallyF · Post by **SallyF** » Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:49 pm

Superstitious humans - for thousands of years past - have attributed natural disasters to numerous versions of God as punishment for their sins.

Will Christians recognise the outbreak of Coronavirus in Communist China as (another) beginning of the Apocalypse of the Jehovah/Jesus/Holy Ghost version of God â€¦?

SallyF · Post by **SallyF** » Wed Feb 19, 2020 2:35 pm

Sooo â€¦

Some version or other of emotional "God" sent the coronavirus.

It's the will of this "God" that humans die of the virus.

But Donald Trump is stronger than this version of "God" â€¦?

Christianity is not only absent of evidence for all the magic and make-believe and resurrections â€¦

It continues to be replete with Christians making absurd and delusional claims â€¦

In my view.

SallyF · Post by **SallyF** » Thu Feb 20, 2020 5:08 am

This looks like a complete lack of faith to me â€¦!

We're praying â€¦

But we don't REALLY trust Jehovah/Jesus/Holy Ghost to protect us from the coronavirus â€¦

Because, you know, none of them has proven trustworthy in the past when it comes to answering big issue prayers â€¦

So we'll just wear our backup plan â€¦

And pray anyway â€¦

Just in case â€¦.

Mithrae · Post by **Mithrae** » Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:45 am

SallyF wrote: It's the will of this "God" that humans die of the virus.

But Donald Trump is stronger than this version of "God" â€¦?

Interestingly, the election of Donald Trump against all odds is perhaps yet another 'sign' of the end according to some Christians and Messianic Jews. As I put it in a 2018 thread requesting help with debunking some of these ideas:

The so-called 'Revelation 12 sign' of September 23rd last year was laughably unconvincing - even besides the arbitrary count of Virgo's stars it would have been "a great sign appeared in heaven" (12:1) which no-one actually saw in heaven, and wouldn't even have noticed without trawling through some astronomy software with a fine tooth comb. Nevertheless this passage in a book otherwise focused on the 'end times' has the curious feature of describing Jesus - a male child who â€œwill rule all the nations with an iron scepterâ€� (12:5) - as an infant, who is taken away and protected during those final seven years.

In ancient Judah there was also a boy born to be king who was taken away and hidden, to be revealed and crowned in the seventh year: Joash the son of Ahaziah (2 Kings 12).

There's a tale of two kingdoms here - the larger northern kingdom of Israel and that southern kingdom of Judah - and it goes back to the time of Elijah. Of all biblical prophets, Elijah is the one most associated with the end times: Despite Paul's insistence that the wages of sin is death for all men, Elijah is one of only two reported characters who never yet died on this earth, the other being Enoch, and just as Enoch is cited in the penultimate New Testament book of Jude, the final book of the Protestant Old Testament declares that "I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes" (Malachi 4:5).

Today the world's Jews live overwhelmingly in the USA and Israel - over four-fifths of all Jews between them - and of these countries the larger and more northerly has seen some quite striking parallels with the reported history of the biblical northern kingdom. The ruler when Elijah came on the scene was king Ahab:
- 1. Ahab ruled for 22 years, while from the time Bill Clinton â€œcame on the national stageâ€� as governor of Arkansas in 1979 to the end of his presidency in 2001 was 22 years (he'd served as Arkansas Attorney General for two years before that, and he held no office for two years 1981-83)
  2. Ahab had a strong wife who helped direct the course of the nation, as with Bill Clinton
  3. Ahab was criticized for letting one of Israel's worst enemies Ben-Hadad go free (1 Kings 20) and amazingly, it was widely publicized in 2014 that on the very day before the 9/11 attacks Bill Clinton had told an Australian audience that he â€œcould have killed bin Ladenâ€� if he'd been prepared to sacrifice hundreds of civilians in the operation
  4. Ahab's rule was marked by scandal and perjury, having Naboth falsely accused and killed (1 Kings 21), while Clinton himself was impeached for perjury in 1998
  5. Ahab's rule ended three years after that scandal, just like Clinton's
  6. Ahab's wife continued on in the capital after the end of his reign, as did Hillary Clinton
  7. The second ruler after Ahab, and his primary successor â€“ his son Joram, after the two-year reign of another son â€“ ruled for 12 years, while from the time Barack Obama â€œcame on the national stageâ€� as a national senator in 2005 (he'd previously served in the Illinois state senate) to the end of his presidency was also 12 years
These parallels are intriguing at the least. The ruler after Joram was unrelated to them, King Jehu:
- 8. Jehu was a leader, but not a politician or member of the royal family
  9. As a commander of the army, Jehu had been a supporter of Ahab's family, before turning against them
  10. Jehu's progress towards the capital is described as being â€œlike a madmanâ€� (2 Kings 9:20)
  11. After Joram was out of the way, Jehu's memorable showdown was against Ahab's wife (who perhaps hoped to become queen in Israel just as Athaliah did in Judah)
  12. In his bid for the kingship, Jehu had received the support of religious 'conservatives' such as Elisha and Jehonadab the Recabite (cf. Jeremiah 35)
  13. Despite that, Jehu himself was not a righteous man; for example in rounding up the priests of Baal, he personally offered a sacrifice in Baal's temple before killing them all (2 Kings 10:25)
Again, these seem to be quite interesting points of comparison with Donald Trump. Last but certainly not least, it's worth noting that the primary reason for Jehu's anointing (by Elijah's successor and presumably at his command) was to get rid of Baal worship: And in July or August of 2015, just a month or two after Donald Trump announced his candidacy and for the first time in god only knows how many centuries, another temple of Baal was destroyed; the 2nd century Temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra, destroyed by ISIS.

This 'Jehu prophecy' about Donald Trump had actually been hinted at by some Christians from at least as early as September 1st of 2015. We don't need any kind of mathematics for the odds on whether or not Trump's victory was mere coincidence: Around the time that the temple of Baal was destroyed and some Christians were noticing some biblical parallels, the bookies' odds on Trump's presidential hopes were around 18 to 1, one sixth of Ted Cruz and one twentieth of Hilary Clinton.

It was Jehu who also killed Ahaziah the father of Joash, more or less marking the start of the period in which the infant king of Judah was taken away to be revealed in the seventh year, as in the curious imagery of Revelation 12.

So by implication - taking all those earlier parallels with Clinton, Obama, Hilary and Trump himself as mere confirmation of interpretation - the fulfilment, the fact that Trump did end up winning despite such long odds, suggests that we can be ~94.4% confident that this was a prophetically significant fulfillment, and the seven years of Judah's king will soon come to pass.

Obviously 1 in 18 isn't nearly as impressive as the 1 in 100+ for heavenly 'signs' outlined in post #19, nor arguably the more general preconditions outlined in post #16. But, playing devil's advocate, the convergence of multiple 'signs' or lines of evidence towards the single conclusion of Jesus' return around 2024 would be cumulative... despite the irrelevancy of the COVID-19 disease.

SallyF · Post by **SallyF** » Sat Feb 22, 2020 2:31 pm

Researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ) have said they are just days away from testing a new vaccine for coronavirus, or COVID-19, on animals.

Key points:
The UQ team's vaccine will undergo animal studies within the next week
This will be followed by CSIRO testing in Victoria
Their efforts are part of a worldwide race to develop a coronavirus vaccine
Paul Young, head of the university's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, said a team of 20 UQ scientists had been working around the clock to speed up the vaccine building process since the outbreak of the virus. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-22/ ... s/11991456

Putting aside whether or not the Coronavirus was sent by "God" as yet another punishment for human "sin" â€¦

Certain humans have been using scientific methods and working, working, working â€¦

And achieving RESULTS â€¦!

While OTHER humans â€¦

Moscow Orthodox Church Prays for Salvation From Coronavirus

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/01/ ... rus-a69068

Do we place hope in science or "God" ...?