A worldwide, altered mindset has fully blossomed. All nations are bound up in fear. It is fear that seems to have a life of its own. It is paralyzing the freedom of action and movement of the most liberty-loving, liberty-endowed people to have lived upon the planet.
Our nation and the nations of the world have throughout recent history been on a collective course of anti-God thinking. It seems they’ve arrived at the same time at the destination to which such a course couldn’t do other than lead.
The COVID-19 or coronavirus is but the vehicle that has brought us swiftly to the end of this journey into madness. Every national governing body and the people they either rule with authoritarian dictatorship or govern democratically are bound tightly by an entity so infinitesimal as to require a microscope to detect it.
A worldwide, altered mindset has fully blossomed. All nations are bound up in fear. It is fear that seems to have a life of its own. It is paralyzing the freedom of action and movement of the most liberty-loving, liberty-endowed people to have lived upon the planet.
Fear is the symptom most manifest in this pandemic that sprang, apparently, from the center of perhaps the world’s most massive dictatorship. The fear continues to grow, not abate, despite all of the many draconian measures foisted on us by bureaucratic “medical experts” entrenched within government. “Shutdown” seems to be what these demand, no matter that this outbreak doesn’t come anywhere near the virulence of the various strains of flu that assault and kill hundreds of thousands each year.
It is, I think, a legitimate pondering to think on Paul’s warning about those who forget God, or turn against the Creator of all things. The apostle, under Holy Spirit direction, has some rather relevant wisdom for our current situation, in my view.
We’ve considered that wisdom many times within these commentaries. We are forewarned that when a person or people turn their thoughts from the governance of God toward doing what is right in their own eyes, the ramifications are dire. The ultimate results are…well, let’s let the Apostle Paul tell us once more:
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1: 29–32)
We back up to one verse before this list of accusations to see where all the rebelliousness leads.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. (Romans 1:28)
We think of these chilling, scriptural warnings as applying only to the most egregious sins—in our “looking through a glass darkly” view of things. Homosexual activity is the sin we most associate with God’s condemnation here. But, these represent things much more profound. These are characteristics of the whole of lost, sinful humanity as time progresses deeper into human history. These are, no doubt, things that prompted the Lord to end, then start things again, with the Flood of Noah’s day. These are the characteristics of the generations since that are going to bring about God’s final judgment and wrath during the Tribulation.
Certainly, in one way or the other, this generation exhibits these characteristics so anathema to the God of Heaven. We have witnessed these get worse, just as Paul predicted. “Men and seducers have grown worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
I believe just the last five years of the corrupt political process and all attendant to it prove Paul’s prophecy as moving toward fulfillment. The evil manipulations and collusion at the highest levels of America’s supposedly patriotic intelligence agencies make the point vividly and graphically.
The argument could be made that the great fear gripping the nation and the world is the result of pulling away from God at every level. Because of this virus that is nowhere near as virulent as the flu bugs that assault each year, the globe is suffering from a paralysis that has altered normal life as it’s been known to this time.
In effect, the global mindset has been altered. I think this has been done supernaturally. Most now act and interact from what Paul calls in the KJV a “reprobate” mindset. There is, observably, the inability of governments and peoples throughout the world to think straight in this COVID-19 matter. The collective fear that makes everyone act contrary to reason it has brought about is the true contagion that infects the planet. We’re continuing to see the rise of this altered mindset.
God’s prescription for the reprobate mind is as follows:
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. (Isaiah 1:18–20)
