This is not a time for simple, feel-good messages. These are serious times, and they call for serious action. This is a pandemic like we have never experienced in our lifetime. In fact, not only in our lifetime, but I am not aware of any time in history where between 1 1/2 billion to 2 billion people have been quarantined in 150 countries.
My purpose is not to rehash the information that you hear from the media all day long. My natural inclination — and I know that it is the natural inclination of all Bible-believing Christians — is to ask the question, “Lord, what are you teaching us? What is God teaching us in the middle of this crisis? In the middle of this global panic, what is God saying to His people? What are the lessons that He wants His people to learn from this?”
It is important that we ask questions in times of crisis, whether a personal crisis, a family crisis, a national crisis, or one like today’s global crisis. Wherever we are, whenever you get to a crisis, you must always ask the question, “God, what do you want to teach me?”
In these inexplicable times in which we live, there’s only one place where you can find an answer to these questions, and it is in the infallible Word of God.
In the book of Joel Chapter 2, the first thing Joel warns us of is this: This crisis and whatever crisis we’re facing is a minuscule example of the crisis that’s going to be in the Day of Judgment, the dreadful day that the Bible talks about. I’m sure some of you are probably thinking, “Well, wait a minute, Michael. This is not a time to talk about the coming judgment. Michael, this is not the time to speak of the future judgment and doom and gloom.”
I don’t want to do that, trust me, but I believe the prophet Joel would want to say to us, “Yes, but this is God’s loving wake-up call. This is God’s loving warning. This is God’s gracious invitation to everyone at the sound of my voice. This is God’s merciful alarm bell.” For if we are not prepared to deal with a small virus, what are we to do when we face the Day of Judgment?
Joel Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2 read, “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm in my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming and is close at hand. A day of darkness and gloom; a day of cloud and blackness like dawn spreading across the mountain, a large and mighty army comes such as never was of old nor ever will be again in the ages to come.”
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Youssef
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