Covid Lockdown: Where is All This Leading to?

Picture by Nick Bolton, Unsplash.

You may be wondering what the Covid crisis is coming to. Would it really slow down on May 15 or in September or December this year so General Community Quarantine (GCQ, a milder quarantine form) could be safely put in place and life can slowly go back to normal--or would it just trigger a second wave?

What do we do if government says it's safe to go out? Do we believe it even if the number of positive cases are still on the rise (or doesn't show any downward trend), or do we opt to quarantine ourselves further? If we do, will that solve the problem for good? If we make it the "new normal" will it guarantee our safety?

I know a lot of questions are running in people's minds.

Where is God?

Would God intervene soon and stop it to save us--as if Covid were the work of the devil and God would soon rebuke him for it and come to our rescue? Or is this the direct work of His hand? Why does God seem to be quiet and doing nothing? Doesn't he know that many are already afflicted or dying?

No doubt this crisis is known to heaven--I mean God is well aware of it. It's not as though he's been caught unaware and is just now preparing some remedies for it, like what governments are doing. Nope, all this has been on heaven's drawing table, being long planned and prepared for. In fact, this is all his handy work. God wants everything stopped, especially the church. 

This is nothing new. He had done it a lot of times in the Old Testament. He stopped worship in the temple of Jerusalem by having it razed to the ground to ashes and willed that his people be exiled to Babylon. Worship was stopped a long time. He also planned against Israel (the northern kingdom) to have it fall into the hands of Assyria, exiled there and never to come back. Not a single northern Israelite survived that exile.Worship was stopped for good.

When his people no longer do what pleases him, God rejects them. This character of God has been observed several times in Scriptures and he will never change. He will always do it when his people disobeys. Church has become too comfortable with the ways of this world. It has been doing ministry in man's effort and in the ways and standards of the world. Nothing about it is supernatural. There is no manifest Presence accompanying it, unlike how the manifest Presence was always there in Jesus' and the apostles' ministries. Always. 

God's Ministry

Evangelism and signs and wonders were inseparable partners. You see it plainly in the bible. God's work cannot be done faithfully unless in God's ways alone--the way Jesus did it. Man's effort and ways may seem to do it, but it builds nothing but man's empire made to look like God's Kingdom. This is why genuine church--the church Jesus talks about which is without spot or wrinkle--does not exist yet. That's the only genuine church. The rest are garbage. That church existed awhile in the book of Acts in its fledgling form but was aborted when man's religion took over.

Just having the bible does not mean you are in the right. A lot of the lost are bible bearers and pride themselves in being bible-based. James said, be doers of the Word and not just hearers, deceiving yourself.

What we see are poor imitations, fakes even, mere religious organizations that drift farther from God as they grow in number. As long as ministry is not done in the supernatural ways of Jesus, it is garbage, even if it uses the bible. The rebellious Israelites in the Old Testament and the religious order in Jesus' time all had the Scriptures but they were rejected. 

So God is also putting a stop to church today because it is rejected. It's no accident that Covid 19 is here and has halted almost everything on earth. Now we see the church unable to do anything--even hold a church service on Sundays. Much less do any mission or church planting. It can do nothing, zero, and let no one underestimate what God is doing. He wants church stopped and if you defy that by continuing to meet together physically, you will suffer the consequence. Many are asking why some pastors and Christians were hit by Covid 19 when they held church. Wasn't their faith supposed to protect them from the virus? 

The Israelites also did not believe Jeremiah when he said that anyone who stayed in Jerusalem would die or be taken prisoner. But they didn't believe that God would let it happen because they were his people and God's temple was in Jerusalem. But what they didn't realize was that God had rejected them. They also didn't understand when Jeremiah told them that God's will was for Israel to surrender to the enemy. They thought the right thing to do was stay and fight. They didn't realize that their unwillingness to surrender was a direct disobedience of God's will. 

Don't Go Back the Way You Came From

And those who dare go on doing church as usual will suffer the same things because they are defying his will. These are crucial times. These are the last days and God will no longer let human effort reign in church. No more man's religion and standards. God wants man's church to stop and anyone who goes against this defies his will. What we need to do is retreat back to our homes and enclose ourselves, do nothing but reflect on God's Word and ourselves and ask God what he really wants. 

I remember the old and young prophets in 1 Kings 13. God specifically told the young prophet never to go back the way he came but to go on ahead. But the old prophet tricked him so that he went back and took the same way he came from. He died. 

There are times God tells us never to go back the way we came from. Don't do the same things because he's leading us somewhere we haven't been before--and especially when he is opening us up to a new level of faith, to new dimension of the Spirit. To the "new normal" of a supernatural, end-time ministry. But the lure and trick of old traditional ways will always lure us to go back doing the same old things God has trashed away.

Dead Works

All their live streaming and online preaching and worship are useless. They're just doing the same things again which God wants stopped. Do you think God closed the church so we can do church again online? He closed it because he wants us totally undistracted by church noise and busyness so we can focus on his Word and hear his voice clearly. We have to wait for the Word to be released from his mouth, the Now Word for this season. Like how the apostles waited for the gift of the Father and didn't do anything until it happened. That's what the church needs to do, not do live streaming or showoff online. We have to stop and be still to know HE is GOD.

When he releases it, the church should move forward. It will involve tremendous radical faith to do so in these crucial times, and for sure it has nothing to do with church as usual. It has to do with turning the world upside down. It will be supernatural.

Medical Force

People see how nothing works today. Medical science seems to fail, winning battles only here and there, but unable to come up with a sure remedy except claim a vaccine is on its way. When exactly, they can't say. Everything seems as good as guess work. Nothing's definite. And we see doctors and nurses themselves falling victim to Covid. DOH itself worries that we might severely lack medical professionals and staff soon, or if any would be left to man the hospitals. 

This is serious. This is dead serious. And when will it all stop? Or will it? 

Government

The government is also lost. It's losing a lot of funds and apt facilities to put the sick and the dead. The crisis is clearly outrunning it and they cannot cope. It doesn't know what else to do. Even its officials are testing positive--and those supposed to have been cured are again testing positive. The virus can recur. 

Government has nothing to offer at this time as remedy. They have no answer and are themselves wondering if there is an answer. They just try to look confident in public to prevent panic. But you can sense what's really happening if you just have honest common sense.

The Church's Situation

So now, here's the situation of the church. It has been dependent on what man can do, relying on medical science and government for too long for its ministries. However, church has not learned how to depend on God's supernatural ways or how to operate in it. They don't know how to tap on that resource but has mastered how to network with medical practitioners and government. 

But now, these two seem to be losing the battle. Government and the healthcare sector don't know what exactly is happening much less deal with this mysterious disease. Where would the church turn to now? And as the situation worsens, people would look for someone or something to turn to when they see that medical and government institutions are no longer dependable. 

They'd turn to the church as a last resort.

But what can church do for them? Fact is, it does not also know where to turn to? It can pray, but its prayer has long been powerless. It often cannot even effect healing for simple colds and fever or headaches or toothaches. It's own pastors are mostly sickly and depend on maintenance medicines. And doesn't it also turn to doctors, medicines and the government when helping sick people? 

Church can share inspiration to desperate people using the bible, but people desperately need more than that in these critical times. Pastors can talk about how Jesus helped the needy and the sick, but when was the last time church made the lame to walk or the blind to see again using God's power alone? When did it multiply bread and fish to feed thousands? It needs donors for its feeding programs and medical missions (it does not know Jesus' supernatural way of multiplying resources), but where can you find donors when everyone is either catching the virus or hiding from it? When was the church really Jesus-like miracle-wise? 

Learning the Hard Way

Church never invested serious time learning the supernatural ways of God but instead invested in developing networking and coordination skills with institutions and accessing material resources for ministry. Now that everything that can be shaken is being shaken, it cannot access God's supernatural provisions. It's at a loss how or where to start.

The church will find itself helplessly in a corner, with nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to--which is exactly where God wants it to be now. Cornered and helpless. Desperate and with no answers. Imprisoned in a box and able to do nothing (church folks love claiming they're not confined in a box. Well, they are now, and God is making it clear to them). Church is kept where it has no other option but to seek God and His supernatural power ALONE.

When your plan A, plan B and plan C have all failed and become useless as garbage--and you find yourself at a dead end--you turn to God finally. FINALLY! You beg him and never stop until you get a powerful breakthrough. You wait and wait until you get the Word straight from his mouth, the Word that will trigger awesome signs and wonders and heal Covid 19. And you stop doing church as usual, which is man's ideas about church and worship. This is what we must do. Seek God with all our hearts and seek his hand. Seek his supernatural signs and wonders.

Then we will know that HE is GOD. We will understand deeper that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God!