In my recent Christian Response to Covid presentation Greg Deuble reminded us of how Christians throughout the ages responded to various plagues, epidemics and pandemics.
And ever since the start of this latest pandemic many others have also presented and written on the Christian response.
For example, an article from the gospel coalition talks about 4 Lessons from Church History starting with the so-called Plague of Cyprian in the 3rd century AD.
The Bishop Cyprian, who the plague was named after, asked:
What credit is it to us Christians if we just help Christians?
Anyone can do that.
We have to help not just the household of faith, but everyone.
Another bishop, Dionysius of Alexandria, recorded how:
Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.
Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.
The death rate of this plague is believed to have reached 5,000 people per day, lasting more than 10 years!
In the 16th c., during another outbreak of the Black Death plague, Luther and his pregnant wife, Katharina, remained in the city to care for the sick. Luther cited Matthew 25:41–46 as his guide:
“I was sick and you did not visit me.”
According to this passage [said Luther] we are bound to each other in such a way that no one may forsake the other in his distress but is obliged to assist and help him as he himself would like to be helped.
When it was over the Black Death was the most deadly pandemic in human history, estimated to have killed 30 to 60 percent of the entire European population.
And then in the 19th century, during the cholera pandemic, the famous English preacher Charles Spurgeon is said to have visited the dying, even his opponents. Looking back he wrote:
That man, in his lifetime, had been wont to jeer at me.
In strong language, he had often denounced me as a hypocrite.
Yet he was no sooner smitten by the darts of death than he sought my presence and counsel....
If there ever be a time when the mind is sensitive, it is when death is abroad.
This pandemic lasted almost 2 decades and killed millions.
In an online presentation last year the Distinguished Professor of History Dr. Philip Jenkins observed that:
“We are almost returning to a historical normal for the Church.
Through human history, plagues and diseases and epidemics have been an absolutely normal feature of life.
For those of us who have grown up in the last 100 years, this was something that happened in other eras and in other places.
Normality has returned.
The Church has to deal with what has historically been its normal situation.”
So my friends, let’s get back to that Christian normal mindset but this time reminding the world about the great Gospel-resurrection hope we will wake to from the sleep of death. Let us break the bonds of fear, especially the fear of death, typical of our fallen human state. Don't let fear creep up on you and make you feel bad for feeling fearful or, even worse, make you chastize others for similar feelings.
Instead, let's continue to remind one another of the words of the ancient prophets, like Isaiah 26:
And ever since the start of this latest pandemic many others have also presented and written on the Christian response.
For example, an article from the gospel coalition talks about 4 Lessons from Church History starting with the so-called Plague of Cyprian in the 3rd century AD.
The Bishop Cyprian, who the plague was named after, asked:
What credit is it to us Christians if we just help Christians?
Anyone can do that.
We have to help not just the household of faith, but everyone.
Another bishop, Dionysius of Alexandria, recorded how:
Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.
Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.
The death rate of this plague is believed to have reached 5,000 people per day, lasting more than 10 years!
In the 16th c., during another outbreak of the Black Death plague, Luther and his pregnant wife, Katharina, remained in the city to care for the sick. Luther cited Matthew 25:41–46 as his guide:
“I was sick and you did not visit me.”
According to this passage [said Luther] we are bound to each other in such a way that no one may forsake the other in his distress but is obliged to assist and help him as he himself would like to be helped.
When it was over the Black Death was the most deadly pandemic in human history, estimated to have killed 30 to 60 percent of the entire European population.
And then in the 19th century, during the cholera pandemic, the famous English preacher Charles Spurgeon is said to have visited the dying, even his opponents. Looking back he wrote:
That man, in his lifetime, had been wont to jeer at me.
In strong language, he had often denounced me as a hypocrite.
Yet he was no sooner smitten by the darts of death than he sought my presence and counsel....
If there ever be a time when the mind is sensitive, it is when death is abroad.
This pandemic lasted almost 2 decades and killed millions.
In an online presentation last year the Distinguished Professor of History Dr. Philip Jenkins observed that:
“We are almost returning to a historical normal for the Church.
Through human history, plagues and diseases and epidemics have been an absolutely normal feature of life.
For those of us who have grown up in the last 100 years, this was something that happened in other eras and in other places.
Normality has returned.
The Church has to deal with what has historically been its normal situation.”
So my friends, let’s get back to that Christian normal mindset but this time reminding the world about the great Gospel-resurrection hope we will wake to from the sleep of death. Let us break the bonds of fear, especially the fear of death, typical of our fallen human state. Don't let fear creep up on you and make you feel bad for feeling fearful or, even worse, make you chastize others for similar feelings.
Instead, let's continue to remind one another of the words of the ancient prophets, like Isaiah 26:
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