News reports are filled with daily updates on the Chinese coronavirus, which is infecting tens of thousands and causing jitters the world over. It is wreaking havoc on travel worldwide as nations are guarding their borders and travelers are quarantined.
World financial markets are being hammered. The scare is affecting the price of oil and other commodities.
It’s amazing what just the response to a viral outbreak can do.
The coronavirus gets its name from its corona-like appearance, such as seen in a solar eclipse. This virus is a large, hardy, and sprawling family of pathogens.
Birds, cows, pigs, horses, and dogs all get infected with their versions of the virus.
Yahshua prophesied that pestilences such as this would climax in the latter days because of a world sick with sin, Matthew 24:12. He warned in Matthew 24:7: “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” Pestilence means any deadly infectious malady, according to the Greek.
This prophecy of Yahshua ties in with His pale horse prophecy of Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and the grave followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
Pale represents disease, and death from disease and starvation. But note also the tie to beasts. The reference is speaking more than of a direct attack by ferocious animals. Hunger and death are a result of plague.
The prophet Ezekiel echoed the warning about coming diseases with animals also a part of the mix: “So I will send you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave you; and pestilence and blood shall pass through you…” 5:17.
Why are animals included with sickness and death in these prophecies? It is a fact that most flu-like viruses originate in animals from the Orient, mostly China.
When the Scriptures talk about deadly diseases, they need not be brand new pathogens. They can also be mutations of existing viruses. That is why annual flu shots are not always effective as there are viral mutations that render them unfazed by a particular vaccine. Immunologists can only take their best shot at the virus strain that they project to be dominant each flu season.
Hijacking Pathogens
There are untold trillions of viruses in our world. Viruses are both hijackers and parasites. They do their dirty work by commandeering cells and inserting their own genetic material into them, deactivating the cell’s natural DNA or RNA and replacing it with their own.
The cell’s machinery, having been taken over by the virus, starts cranking out duplicate viruses.
Coronaviruses are also stealthy. They can swap genes, making them more easily interchangeable. These gene-swapping mutations happen when different viruses infect the same animal simultaneously.
A group called EcoHealth Alliance, which studies the origins of viruses, says that viruses bind to a human cell through a receptor. Humans have cell receptors similar to bats, which are known carriers of the corona virus.
The present coronavirus outbreak was reported to have started in a Chinese seafood market which also sold processed meats. Those meats included donkeys, pigs, camels, foxes, badgers, rats, hedgehogs, and reptiles.
Scientists suspect that the corona virus was acquired from an animal sold at that market.
A study of the genetic code of the novel 2019-nCoV coronavirus revealed that the new virus is most closely related to bat SARS-like coronavirus samples from China, initially suggesting that the bat may be the origin of 2019-nCoV and that the bat virus might have mutated before infecting people.
But researchers found that the coronavirus might also have come from snakes. Not only do Chinese eat bats and snakes, rats, dogs, donkeys, oysters and shrimp, but they also sometimes eat such unclean meats raw.
Laws Against Eating Some Animals
As our Maker and Designer, Yahweh Almighty gave us His dietary laws for a good reason. To protect our health He commanded only certain meats be eaten. The clean food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are designed to keep us not just undefiled in a religious sense but physically healthy.
We know about the heavy metals concentrated in oysters, clams, shrimp, lobster, and some bottom-feeding fish prohibited in Yahweh’s laws. But what is not so well-known is the viral danger of certain unclean creatures.
In Leviticus 11:43 Yahweh says, “Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby. For I am Yahweh your Elohim: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
We face consequences when we sin by breaking the clean food laws. And one result is viral disease that becomes pandemic. The metaphor is now complete.
Evils of sin work like viruses, commandeering hosts and inserting bad thoughts into whoever is receptive.
Then those infected go on to infect others with sinful ways and the cycle continues.
Yahshua said in Mark 7:21 “For from within, out of the heart of men” comes sinful behavior. If you let sin bind to you it will change you from the inside.
The virus of sin has overtaken the world we live in. The prophet Jeremiah in 17:9 wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
He Gave Us Defenses
Yahweh doesn’t leave us defenseless when it comes to viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. And neither does He leave us without a way to overcome the sin virus that so easily besets us, as Hebrews 12 tells us.
The ability to keep you healthy required phenomenal design and forethought . Unless it worked well from the beginning of life, a requirement that rules out evolution, viruses, bacteria, and other destructive agents would have won, and we would not be here to marvel at such amazing abilities in our bodies.
White blood cells or leukocytes are on constant patrol and looking for pathogens. When they find them they begin to multiply and send signals out to other such cells to do the same.
These defense cells first must identify either friend or foe. Once a foe is detected, the leukocyte must rapidly locate and overtake the invader. Then it engulfs the germ, destroying it. This search out and destroy mission is repeated by these soldier cells many times in their lifespan.
Yahweh the Designer
King David wrote in Psalm 139:14, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Our miraculous bodies have been endowed with many defensive systems that protect us from invading pathogens.
Our skin is the first line of defense. Antibodies in our tears, saliva, mucus in our noses and lungs, and the lymphatic system all work to stop and destroy invaders.
Immunity is strongest in adulthood as by that time we have been exposed to many pathogens and developed more immunity. That is why teens and adults tend to get sick less often than children.
Amazingly, each immune system can recognize invading bacteria, viruses, and toxins. Once an antibody has been produced, a copy remains in the body so that if the same antigen appears again, it can be dealt with more quickly. Therefore each system has an immunological memory and learns from every attack.
The miracle of the immune system could only have happened under a Creator. With no plan, with nothing guiding and perpetuating them, the immune systems in animals, plants, and humans would have been a complete impossibility no matter how many billions of years passed in development.
If the many instructions that direct an animal’s or plant’s immune system had not been preprogrammed in the organism’s genetic code when it first appeared on earth, the first of thousands of potential infections would have killed the organism.
The large amount of genetic information governing the immune system could not have accumulated in a slow, evolutionary sense.
Obviously, for each organism to have survived, all this information must have been there from the beginning. It had to have been created.
Nothing Created Everything?
Scientific advancements have shown that evolution is an even more ridiculous theory than it seemed in Darwin’s day. It is a theory without a mechanism. We may see related things but believing one came from the other without knowing how is pure fantasy, and it leaves unanswered the big question,WHY?
Scientists can’t explain even basic issues, and if they settle on one way things “may” have developed it is still purely a guess. Evolution is a mish-mash of guessing games and figure juggling. Not even appeals to long periods of time will allow simple organisms to “jump gaps” and become more complex and viable. In fact, long periods of time not only don’t help evolution’s issues, they make the theory even less likely.
In his book, In the Beginning, Walt Brown observed,
“Research during the last several decades has shown that the requirements for life are incredibly complex. Just the design that we see around us clearly shows a designer. One scientist sees design as an elephant in the room: It takes up an enormous amount of space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And we have to swear it isn’t there.”
Yahweh Has the Last Word
Yahweh denounces the atheistic scentists who avow the theory of evolution in spite of its mountainous impossiblities.
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Majesty; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew Elohim, they glorified him not as Elohim, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools…” Romans 1:20-22.
Do you claim to be the only “True” church on the planet? You sound similar to “The Watchtower Society” to me. If someone does not follow what “You” teach’ does that mean they’re lost?
We do not claim to have all the truth, we are simply following the scriptures are close as we can. We believe that Yahweh’s people are scattered all over the world. We are simply trying our best to live our lives in accordance to His will. We do not believe that the “One true church” is any one group, rather it is comprised of Yahweh’s believers all over the world.
@Bruce YRM promotes obedience to the commandments in the Bible and Faith in Messiah (Rev 12:17, 14:17). That’s a big difference vs what the JWs teach. Ephesians 4:5 says there is one true ‘faith’–that is not the same thing as what the JWs teach, who say they are the one true ‘religion.’ The true faith is comprised of a body of believers vs being limited to within the realms of a religion. Shalom.
I thank and praise the LORD for your ministry. I found your Ministry by accident, or rather did the LORD guide me? I prefer to think so. I could tell early on by watching your video, “Signs of the End” that your outreach was from a Jewish perspective recognizing that Jesus or Yahshua was and still is the Messiah and is to come again! There is nothing wrong with addressing our Lord as Jesus or Yahshua which both have the meaning of Savior or Messiah. Perhaps to Gentiles who have received Salvation through Yahshua and thus have become Christians or… Read more »