By Rufaro Manyepa • March 11
I can’t think of anything that has produced more fear in recent years than the coronavirus. It dominates the headlines and has brought panic to supermarket aisles, as we fight over the remaining rolls of toilet paper.
The way we as a society respond when we are afraid reveals something powerful about ourselves.
In ancient times, when calamity struck, men would turn en masse to the gods or the priests. The gods, they believed, were in control. Catastrophe meant they were unhappy and needed to be appeased.
As humanity entered the Enlightenment, men became less inclined to beseech the gods during times of crisis. Instead, they turned to themselves. Especially in America, this was the age of self-reliance. If a flood, disease or fire hit, they would stoically accept the losses and do whatever they could to rebuild and move on.
Times have again changed. Facing crisis, most men today are once again quick to turn to the gods. Not Zeus or Jupiter. Today, we turn to the government and experts.
We saw this in the United Kingdom last month, when we were hit with unusually heavy flooding. News broadcasts continually insinuated that this was the government’s fault, without explaining exactly how. Locals affected by the flooding appeared on television, explaining that the government wasn’t doing enough to help them.
In the past, victims of flooding may have tried to appease the river gods, or waited for the waters to recede before digging in and trying to repair the damage. Today, the people look toward London, waiting for the government to step in and fix it.
In our modern worship, we believe that our governments can solve anything. Therefore, if something has gone wrong, the government could have solved it but didn’t. It’s their fault. To stop the flooding, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson should have banned plastic bottles, or something.
The same thing is happening with coronavirus. In country after country, men blame the government. The media is full of accusations. Why didn’t we do more here or there? Why did you make this or that cut? Some of this, no doubt, is media bias against certain governments. But I think there’s more going on. The media can only use this tactic because the public accepts the basic assumption that governments can and should fix every problem.
They should fix it by looking to “the experts”—another core part of modern worship. Experts have the solution to all our problems—if only people would listen. But when it comes to coronavirus, the experts can’t give clear answers. Will this get worse? How much worse can it get? What can I do to guarantee I won’t get it? The experts don’t have any good clear answers.
The government can’t fix it, and the experts cannot help. The panic we see in our headlines is society experiencing a crisis of faith.
Maybe this will kill no more than a particularly bad flu. Maybe it will be much worse. But aside from taking common sense steps of quarantine and advocating good hygiene and hand washing, governments and experts won’t have much of an impact on where it goes from here. As China and Iran show, there are things governments can do to make this worse. But they can’t make it better.
The foundations that we trust in are exposed as sand. It would be like the ancients asking their priests, “How can we appease the gods and stop the plague?” only to be told, “No idea; hopefully it will go away soon.” When our normal support structures have failed, we panic.
The cover of our latest print magazine states: “Coronavirus in Prophecy.” Even those who don’t know much about the Bible know that it talks about plagues and pestilence. But the question of whom we trust gets to the heart of why the Bible makes those prophecies. Jeremiah 17:5 states, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.” If we look to men to solve our problems—whether in the form of man-made religion, as almost all are, or governments, experts or even our own selves—we’re under a curse. Mankind cannot solve the biggest problems facing it. Only God can.
This is why God sends plagues. “It pains God to know that the suffering is about to get much, much worse,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in his latest Trumpet article. “It grieves Him to consider the diseases and other horrors soon to be visited upon Earth. But it is all part of His plan to teach man the absolute necessity of obeying His law.”
God can solve disease pandemics—and all our problems. Mr. Flurry wrote that soon “Jesus Christ will accomplish what the most brilliant doctors, scientists and other experts have utterly failed to do: He will bring lasting peace and perfect health to all men, women and children.” But to do that, we must invest our trust in Him. When He says, This action is causing you to be miserable, stop doing it, we must trust and obey Him.
The Bible says that disease pandemics will get worse in order to stop our looking to men—to teach us that only God has the solutions.
“God is teaching men even as they rebel,” writes Mr. Flurry in his free booklet Daniel Unlocks Revelation. “They are learning that man cannot rule himself—only God can bring men peace, prosperity, happiness and joy.” God rules, and man cannot. Mr. Flurry called that lesson “the greatest lesson mankind could possibly learn.” And God is teaching us that lesson, right now, through the coronavirus.
Saudi Arabia has launched what could end up being one of the worst oil price wars in modern history, and American oil and gas companies could be caught in the cross fire. With fears about a coronavirus epidemic effecting demand for oil around the world, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) met in Vienna, Austria, on March 6 to propose that total oil output be reduced by 1.5 million barrels a day to prevent oil prices from dropping too fast. Yet Russia refused to cooperate with opec and cut its oil production. This refusal prompted Saudi Arabia to announce that it would not be cutting oil production either. Instead it would increase its oil production by 2 million barrels per day.
In an already oversupplied global market, Saudi Arabia’s announcement caused Brent crude oil prices to plunge 31 percent to a low of $31.25 a barrel, its steepest single-day drop since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
It only costs $9.90 for Saudi Arabia to pump a barrel of crude oil out of an existing oil field, while it takes Russia $17.20 to do the same thing. So the Saudi government figures it can survive low oil prices much longer than Russia can.
But the heart of this dispute revolves around America’s oil and gas companies.
On February 18, the Trump administration announced economic sanctions targeting Russia’s largest oil company. The reason for these sanctions is that Russia is helping Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro bypass United States sanctions by transporting his oil for him. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have been retaliating against the Trump administration by refusing to cut oil production. Since most U.S. oil wells have a break-even point of $36.20 a barrel over their production life, American oil and gas companies (which rely heavily on expensive hydraulic fracturing techniques) cannot turn a profit when oil prices are this low.
The U.S. has also passed sanctions against companies involved in constructing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, saying it is a “tool of coercion” to make the European Union more dependent on Russian gas.
“The Kremlin has decided to sacrifice opec+ to stop U.S. shale producers and punish the U.S. for messing with Nord Stream 2,” the president of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow told Bloomberg News.
Saudi Arabia’s response probably pushed prices far lower than Russia expected. These low oil prices may hurt Russia’s economy more than they hurt the U.S. economy, and could actually boost the U.S. economy overall. But in the short term, they will likely hurt U.S. oil and gas companies. In Russia’s geopolitical calculus, anything it can do to prevent America from becoming a net energy exporter strengthens the Kremlin’s influence over nations like Venezuela and Germany. So for the time being, Russia seems willing to suffer through low oil prices to prevent America from developing its oil fields to the point where it can start offering nations an alternative to Russian energy.
The most important player in the complicated world of energy politics is Germany. The U.S. is sanctioning Russia’s largest oil company in an effort to reduce Russian influence in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Yet Germany wants to develop closer energy deals with Russia as a means of reducing its reliance on the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato) was started back in 1949, its basic purpose was to protect disarmed Germany and other European countries from the Russian-led Soviet Union,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in the September 2018 Trumpet issue. “Nord Stream 2 binds Russia and Germany together in a way that undermines nato. In fact, though Russia and Germany will not say so, this pipeline project is clearly intended to wreck nato. … Many elite Germans feel their nation has now gotten all it can from the U.S. and they are ready to move on.”
Unlike the Russian economy, the U.S. economy is not particularly dependent on oil. So as long as Germany supports America, the worst that is likely to happen from Russia’s oil price war is that U.S. energy companies may have to shut down their hydraulic fracturing operations for a while until oil prices rebound. But if Germany’s desire for cheap Russian gas brings about a German-Russian alliance against the United States, things could get bad quickly.
International relations expert George Friedman gave a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in February 2015. He explained that the U.S. government actively works to prevent a German-Russian alliance because the combination of German technology with Russian natural resources could create a Eurasian power bloc with the capability to challenge America’s position as the world’s lone superpower.
The Trumpet and our parent magazine, the Plain Truth, have proclaimed for 80 years that Germany will lead a final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. And the Bible reveals that Russia will play a key role in Germany’s rise to power.
A prophecy in Ezekiel 27 describes a trading power called Tyre that exchanges merchandise with many nations. “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Now you, son of man, raise a lamentation over Tyre, and say to Tyre, who dwells at the entrances to the sea, merchant of the peoples to many coastlands, thus says the Lord God: “O Tyre, you have said, ‘I am perfect in beauty.’ … Tarshish did business with you because of your great wealth of every kind; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech traded with you; they exchanged human beings and vessels of bronze for your merchandise”‘” (verses 1-3, 12-13; English Standard Version).
Tyre was the commercial heart of the the Middle East and is a type of a major financial power rising now in Europe. Since the people of Tubal and Meshech settled in Russia, this is a prophecy about German and Russian merchants working together to create a great mart of nations. If Russia is prepared to hurt its own bottom line and sell oil at reduced prices just to hurt U.S. oil and gas companies, it shows that the Kremlin truly is waging a somewhat secret war against America—and Germany is prophesied to help Russia in this endeavor.
For more information on why deepening cooperation between Germany and Russia is a sure sign of future conflict, read “Germany and Russia’s Secret War Against America,” by Gerald Flurry.
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