Is COVID-19 the ‘Strong Delusion’?
Is COVID-19 the ‘Strong Delusion’?
By Bud Hancock
Introduction
Surely there are few people in the civilized world that have not now been acquainted with the so-called ‘pandemic’ caused by a virus that medical science has named Coronavirus, that is said to cause the disease named COVID-19. This event has been with us now for nearly a full year. When it began, little was known about the ‘coronavirus’ and the information that was given to the public was sketchy and constantly changing. I have questioned the event, in my own mind, many times since it became public, and have closely followed the information about it and the ways that our world have changed since it began.
The So-Called Experts
We have been more or less trained since childhood to listen to, hear and accept the proclamations of those educated members of the medical field, who, if they are licensed physicians, have taken an oath to ‘do no harm’ and to place the welfare of their patients first and foremost. Since the ‘pandemic’ began, many of those ‘medical experts’ have made statements regarding the virus, its level of contagion, its effects and the survival rate/death rate that a person can expect after contracting the virus. One paying attention to these people will remember that their proclamations seldom stayed consistent for very long, changing as the winds (political in nature?) blew in one direction or the other.
The agencies charged with controlling and preventing such outbreaks of disease, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as other similar organizations around the world seem to be the ones who cannot keep their stories about this virus straight or consistent. At the outset, we were told, in hysterical terms, that this is the worst viral outbreak since the great Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918, that is reported to have killed more than 50 million people worldwide. When that historical event occurred, worldwide travel was nothing compared to what it is today. At that time, there were no jet airplanes that could circle the globe in hours, nor were there many great steamships that could easily and safely cross the oceans, so that lack of ability to travel far and fast should have made that pandemic easier to control, and the fact that we now have that worldwide capability for travel is what, we are told, makes this virus so much more deadly.
We have also been told that this virus is not ‘airborne’ but that it can be carried in droplets that are spread by breathing, talking, coughing or sneezing. We are told that we MUST wear masks, which by the way have been proven to be of little effect against this virus, indeed ANY virus due to the size of the critter versus the size of the pores in most masks. We are told we must stay at least six feet away from other people to ‘avoid the spread of the virus’. We are told that we must stay out of crowded places, and the owners of places where crowds gather must close their doors and eventually lose their businesses. Parents are told that their kids must not go back to their schools and that their children must be home-schooled or participate in ‘virtual teaching’ at home. In some states, people are being told that they must wear masks even in the privacy of their own homes when only their family members are present. Seriously?
Who Should We Believe?
It seems that nearly every day, certainly every week, much of what we were told early on is now ‘outdated’ and replaced/updated with ‘new’ information, much of it contradictory to the earlier proclamations. The result is that Americans, indeed the entire world, are kept in a state of ‘flux’ in their beliefs regarding this virus. The human tendency is to fear anything that is not well-known, or well understood, especially when the ‘experts’ we have always been taught to respect and whose words we have been told to heed seem to deliberately stoke that natural fear with predictions of the additional hundreds of thousands of deaths that this virus will surely cause if we do not comply with their demands to ‘stop the spread’.
Thus, what The United States has now become is a nation not only influenced by, but controlled by, FEAR. Now, those of us who are Christians, who know what God has said about fear, know that God is not the author of fear; in fact, He commands us to ‘fear not’ multiple times in His word. Why does He so vigorously instruct us in that respect? It is explained very well in the first letter of the Apostle John, wherein he states that God is love: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (I John 4:8 KJV). Later in that same 4th chapter, John says: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love” (I John 4:18 KJV). One may surmise from the words of John that, because there is no fear in love, and God IS love, then there is no fear in God, nor does He allow fear to enter His presence.
God desires to fellowship with His family, not to be separated from them for any reason. When Christians allow fear to enter into their lives, into their minds, and control their actions, even their entire lives in some cases, they are allowing that fear to separate them from the God they claim to love, worship and obey. If that acceptance of fear becomes habitual, they may find themselves believing and obeying anything they hear or read, whereas, a resistance to that fear will bring the strength needed to refuse the lies and deception and will produce the ability to enjoy, in complete freedom, a close fellowship with God.
What I am saying is that the decisions we make: who and what in the government, in the media, we listen to, even who and what we hear in everyday conversation, and as a result, who and what we obey, will be the decisions that affect not only our fellowship with God, but our very survival in times of great peril. It is absolutely imperative that we take any information we get regarding this ‘viral pandemic’ and compare it closely to what God has already said in His word. Please read the first eight verses of Psalm 91, and listen from the perspective of a true believer, and allow it to influence your beliefs and thus your decisions. In verses 1 and 2, the believer, the one who makes the decision to ‘dwell in the secret place of the most high’, to ‘abide under the shadow of the Almighty’, to say of the Lord “He is my refuge, my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust” ‘, is given great and precious promises that are then listed in verses 3-16. Note especially in verse 3 that the writer mentions a ‘noisome (calamitous, perverse) pestilence’, and in verse 6, the pestilence that walketh in darkness’ and ‘the destruction that wasteth at noonday’. The coronavirus, a pestilence that causes COVID-19, the virus that has led so many people, even Christians, to walk in fear, is covered under these promises. A true believer who knows where the secret place of the Most High is and has learned to make his habitation there, should not ever let fear determine any action that he takes, ever.
As I shop in the stores in my area, (and I do NOT wear a mask). I see fear on the faces of most of those who are giving such heed to the commands that are contradictory to what God says. It is getting to the point where that spirit of fear present on or around so many people can actually be smelled, and it is abhorrent.
Of course, many of those I encounter are likely NOT true believers in Jesus Christ, so we cannot expect obedience to God’s word from them, but I am appalled when I see so many claiming to be God-fearing Christians who allow the state, or the so-called medical experts, to determine whether they can actually gather together with like-minded believers and freely worship in an atmosphere of faith, which is indeed a right granted to us from God, and supposedly guaranteed under the first
amendment to the US Constitution.
True Belief Brings Obedience to God
We are reaching a point in this nation, indeed in the world, where people will be making choices that are life-altering and may determine whether they will be able to ever live on this earth again in a free country. It has become very clear that the intent of this push to comply with what are likely illegal and unconstitutional commands has a specific intent. Satan is the author of evil, and there is nothing he will not do to gain the power and control over humanity that he has always sought.
An evil spirit, using one of Satan’s most powerful weapons, that of deception, has established a stronghold over many nations in the world with the introduction of the Wuhan virus, and through the deception that has been accepted as ‘truth’, or ‘fact’, and has caused many millions of people to walk in the fear that God instructed us to avoid. That fear has led many to even question the truth of God, His very existence. Many already have, and are continuing to, separate themselves from God’s word and the very presence in that secret place where there is safety , peace and protection. Because Satan hates all people, but especially those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord, that acceptance puts a bullseye on us and will usually lead us to a place where we will be required to put our faith to a test. Will we believe God and His word, which is truth, or will we believe what the world and its lying agents tell us to believe and accept?
When Does Deception Become Delusion?
We know from scripture that the Antichrist will not be revealed until the Church has been raptured (2 Thess. 2:1-8 KJV), so many might ask, why should we be concerned about the strong delusion that Paul mentions in verse 11 of that same chapter. Please notice in verse 7-8 that “the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he that now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed…” So, even though the Antichrist has not yet been revealed as ‘that wicked’, or the flesh and blood human man who will allowed Satan himself to possess his earthly body, the mystery of iniquity, or the hidden supernatural force of lawlessness, that force or power that Satan has as the ‘god of this world’, is now at work and has been since the fall of man. But, the influence or control that the force of lawlessness has over the human race grows continually worse from one generation to the next, and now seemingly, from one day, week or month to the next.
The acts of senseless violence, burning, looting, vicious attacks against defenseless people, a total defiance of law and order (lawlessness) that we have witnessed here in the US, and other places around the world since the Wuhan virus was unleashed gives proof that we are seeing a new generation of humans that have no moral values, no love, no empathy and no remorse, and seemingly no conscience, allowing themselves to be controlled by an evil force to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10 KJV). Others wear the colors of the new LGBTQ banner and demand that their personal choices regarding sexuality be accepted and even celebrated. Whether they openly speak it, or simply demonstrate it by their actions, they are a generation that openly curses God and works to destroy anything Christian, anything that speaks of godliness. They are mostly college educated and seem to believe in the exalted wisdom they have received through their years of ‘educational indoctrination’. In a sense, they have denied the very existence of God and as a result, they refuse to see and acknowledge their own foolishness.
The human spirit is so closely made in God’s own image that, secretly, it longs for something real and solid, something truthful to latch onto and believe. In the quest for that something, if an evil ‘spirit of deception’ offers something counterfeit (that’s all Satan has) which sounds good to the flesh, a person will often latch onto that and allow it to control his beliefs and actions, in other words, he has become deceived. The longer a person remains deceived, the easier it is for delusion to follow.
Please consider the dictionary definitions of deception and delusion:
Deception:
a) the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid, that which is false or invalid: the act of deceiving
b) (b) an instance of actions and/or schemes fabricated to mislead and or delude someone into errantly believing a lie or inaccuracy
Delusion:
a) An idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder – Oxford Living Dictionary
b) A false personal belief that is not subject to reason or contradictory evidence and is not explained by a person’s usual cultural and religious concepts (so that, for example, it is not an article of faith). A delusion may be firmly maintained in the face of incontrovertible evidence that it is false. Delusions are a frequent feature of schizophrenia. – MedicineNet.com
As Paul said in the first chapter of Romans, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 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 Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 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; 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 1:18-32 KJV).
That evil spirit of deception has established a stronghold over much of the population of the United States and we are, I believe, at or near the point in time that Paul mentions in 2 Thessalonians 2, where he said, “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2: 11-12 KJV).
The introduction of the dreaded coronavirus/COVID-19 that causes people to comply with unlawful commands that do not stop the spread of the virus, and in some cases actually make it worse, is an instance of people “believing a lie”. The internet has ample sites where much of the ballyhooed effects of the COVID-19 have been contradicted by people with sound arguments against believing and complying with all that we have been told by the WHO, the CDC and ‘so-called doctors’ like Anthony Fauci, et al. I do not believe that accepting the lie(s) about the virus will bring damnation to the soul, but I do believe that the world population has now been led to a place where the BIG lie concerning the Antichrist, will be much easier for many millions of people to accept, and THAT will bring damnation.
Even though I don’t believe that the COVID-19 virus is THE strong delusion that brings damnation as spoken of by Paul, it is certainly a tool that Satan has used to deceive people and lead them into a state of powerful deception, possibly proceeding into serious delusion, causing them to live in constant fear, thereby causing them to make very unwise decisions. Even though it may not be the delusion Paul speaks of, there are nonetheless many who have entered into that dangerous state based on the dictionary definition of delusion (above).
Conclusion
It is imperative that all Christians live with a keen awareness that the destroyer is even now hard at work, as described by the Apostle Peter, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” (I Peter 5:8 KJV)
Please understand that, just because he ‘walks about as a roaring lion’, he is NOT a roaring lion who can just sneak up on you and have you for lunch. No, he is limited by all TRUE godliness and all persons who live godly should not let a spirit of fear cause them to actually fear. Remember, fear has torment and torment is not of God. Yes, Satan will work to bring persecution your way through the kind of people mentioned above, and this should not come as a shocking revelation.
Paul wrote to Timothy, saying, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2 Timothy 3:12 KJV). If you are being persecuted, rejoice! That persecution is a sure sign of your godly living! Also remember the words of Jesus who said, “In the world, you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33 KJV). If Jesus overcame the world, He expects us to do the same.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus!
Blessings!