Feb 21, 2005
God’s Viral Vengeance
Earlier this month, New York City health officials announced they had detected a new strain of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The virus has triggered alarm among researchers because it has two deadly features: resistance to nearly all drugs used to treat it, and stunningly swift progression from infection to full-blown AIDS.
When the news broke, the virus had only been detected in a single male subject.
The infected man is reported to be gay and in his 40s. He tested negative for HIV in May 2003, then tested positive in December. Investigators believe he probably contracted the virus in October when he engaged in unprotected anal sex with multiple partners while using crystal methamphetamine.
The onset of AIDS usually occurs more than 10 years after initial HIV infection. In the New York case, the time lag appeared to be just three months.
Spurred on by the report of the new strain, medical officials in San Diego say a resident in that city may be infected with the same aggressive and highly drug-resistant strain of HIV. "The person's HIV has a similar molecular makeup as the patient in New York City," said Dr. Nancy Bowen, the San Diego County public health officer who held a press conference about the finding.
Since the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, I’ve noticed that the virus primarily strikes people who participate in immoral acts. For every baby afflicted with AIDS from poor sanitary conditions, there are over a thousand men who get it from sleeping with prostitutes or members of their own sex.
The sin connection is so strong it should come as no surprise that the new strain was first noticed in a man who took drugs and engaged in unprotected sex. Even by the twisted moral standard of the gay community he was committing an immoral act by failing to practice "safe sex."
The HIV virus seems to be specially designed for making certain brands of sex very unsafe. Because it is a very weak virus, there are only a few ways it can be passed from one person to another. There is no indication that AIDS can be transmitted through close contact like the flu or cold virus.
The sinister nature of HIV virus does not come from its molecular structure. It actually has a rather simple genetic makeup. What make the virus so deadly is its ability to mutate every time researchers find a new drug to treat earlier strains.
Governments and health organizations around the world have spent a huge amount of money on efforts to combat AIDS, with only limited results. I’ve come to believe that medical science is struggling with a higher power. There is no cure for AIDS because God has determined that there should not be one.
I know for me to suggest that AIDS is a judgment from God will send my critics into a frenzy, but like it or not, some type of vengeance is at work. If the good Lord is trying to get people’s attention, at some point, it to would be wise listen to Him.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen the definition of sexually transmitted diseases go from one extreme to the other. For many years, syphilis was the most deadly disease spread through sexual contact. It could be treated with penicillin. In the early '80s, herpes came on the scene. It remains incurable, but people can live with the symptoms. Right on the heels of herpes came AIDS - we all know the result of that disease is death.
The advancement of sexually related diseases fits as the partner of end-time prophecy. As we get closer to the tribulation hour, the more we see the wrath of God poured out in greater severity. Because you can’t digress beyond the point of rapid death, the end must be near.
-- Todd
The End-Time Mantra
The pattern is becoming ever more established. There is developing an end-time mantra, chanted by those who hate our Christian perspective with a vengeance. The last US presidential election seems to have been the catalyst that galvanized the rage pulsing hourly into e-mail we receive.
Somehow, the hatred links those of us who hold to the pre-trib rapture view of Bible prophecy to President George W. Bush and a perceived ruination of society, culture, and, particularly, the global environment.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate what I mean is to insert here a number of excerpts from various e-mail messages I received just last week.
One e-mailer wrote:
“Jesus never said a single word about gay marriage or abortion, but He spoke endlessly about justice, compassion, and tolerance. Are you aware that the Bush budget literally takes food away from starving children in order to fatten the pockets of billionaires? You evangelicals have elected a president who robs the poor, tortures prisoners, kills innocent Iraqis, and facilitates the wholesale destructions of God’s beautiful creation by greedy entrepreneurs. Jesus said, 'Thy kingdom come ON EARTH as in Heaven.' It is a sin to ignore poverty and injustice today, because the rapture is coming tomorrow.”
Another wrote:
“I believe that only God knows enough about the end times to speak about them. The God I believe in is more concerned about the way we treat each other down here than anything else. This vengeful picture of God which you paint seems to be coming out of a Stephen King novel, and I can only recoil from it. If such a vengeful God does exist, than I can't believe in Him, and I understand why many people would refuse to believe in Him.
Yet another:
This site proves beyond a doubt that a little knowledge can be extremely dangerous. What morons you all are. I feel sorry for my children who will have to endure a society corrupted by the 'Good Ole USA'. All I've got to say to you is 'Haliburton'.”
And, another:
“I was directed to your website after reading a recent article by Bill Moyers explaining how the Bush administration is justifying its anti-environmental agenda because the destruction of our natural environment is seen as a factor in the supposed return of Jesus Christ. I find this reasoning to be insanely self centered, and am personally horrified that followers of this perverted 'rapture' world scenario are willing to turn a deaf ear to the wholesale destruction of our resources because they think it might bring about some kind of personal salvation. .[Expletive deleted!] This is the most egotistical nonsense I have ever heard, and cannot believe anyone would twist the story of a man trying to bring tolerance and understanding into people's hearts into such a tragic countdown of suffering and destruction…”
Well…You get the picture. I could fill numerous columns with this growing mantra that George W. Bush and evangelical, rapture-preaching, Bible-believing, literalist Christians are tied together by a cabalistic bond of insane determination to bring on Armageddon and the end of humankind.
And those represent the mantra as suitable for presentation in primetime cyberspace. You should get a load of the raw –and I mean RAW--e-mail verbiage we can’t include!
It kept going through my mind as I received e-mail after e-mail: "There must be some end-time dynamic here; this mantra isn’t a collaboration of people in cahoots –consciously, at least—with the sinister forces of Ephesians 6:12." Then it came to me: the Apostle Paul’s words prophesying about the characteristics of end-time man: “Know this also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall…have a form of godliness, but will deny the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:1-2, 5).
Every e-mail of this order –and, there were many—said that their Jesus would never speak in such condemning terms, but would only speak loving words for the poor, the helpless, the downtrodden, and especially the hurting environment, whose impending demise is being brought on by George W. Bush and we evangelical, rapture-preaching radicals' support for him, which got him into office for the second time in the first place!
I wrote back to a few –a very few of the nicer ones—trying to explain from God’s Word that yes, Jesus IS love. He loves them – and all the rest of us—so much that He came to die on the cross at Calvary so that we don’t have to spend eternity apart from His Father, the only God there is, who loves us with all His great heart. Sin, I tried to explain, must be judged, according to God’s Word, who is Jesus, himself. He took that judgment for us if we will but accept forgiveness through that grace gift.
The message never seemed to sink in, or get through, or whatever it takes to penetrate the barrier that blocked understanding. The end-time mantra seems ingrained, thoroughly saturating. We who take the Bible literally and believe that Jesus is indeed coming for His Church at some point in human history, are the hold-up to global progress. –Oh, yes, that is we, in conjunction with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Haliburton, are responsible for all that ails the world.
The mantra is growing, and it becomes increasingly credible to believe that when Christians vanish, there will be an ecstatic gush of ebullience for a time. Many, through their e-mail messages, have expressed their longing for our departure. The left behind will then set about to pick up the mess they believe we have made of the place, and will get on with their preferred form of godliness. Soon, however, they will, tragically, learn that the power behind that form of godliness is not the god of Heaven, but the god of this fallen world system.
Not wishing to leave on such a note of sadness, I suggest we who name the name of Jesus and claim the power of His resurrection get busier than ever proclaiming the God-ordained message that counters the devil’s mantra. “Jesus Saves!”
--Terry
