Question:
Good day to you Pastor Andrew Phiri.
It is our hearts desire to listen to what the word of God told us and always be watchful. We are blessed by your ministry in so many ways and we believed God is working in you. My family together with our brothers and sisters here in our local church would be so glad and thankful if you can share your views in the light of the Word of God on the pandemic and vaccinations happening in the world today. We are sorry if we added burden to your work. May the Lord God grant the desires of our hearts. Shalom
Reply
Shalom dear brother,
Greetings to you and your family in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Whenever something of a wider or global impact happens anxiety takes a hold of people in different ways. Among believers the anxiety may take the form of trying to relate the events with prophecy. This is not unique to believers in this Endtime. Back in the years of the early church when Christians experienced fierce persecution during times of the Roman empire everything seemed to have spelled out the fulfilment of the Great Tribulation as foretold by the Lord in Matthew 24.
At Thessalonica in Greece, in the first century, some believers lived in fear supposing that the Lord’s coming was imminent. “Now we beseech you, brethren” Apostle Paul wrote to them, “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand” (2 The.2:1-3). Paul went further to explain to the believers the specific signs that would happen to indicate the fulfilment of the prophecy of the coming of the Lord. Dear brother, over the years, various events, troubles, and calamities have happened that seemed to herald the Lord’s coming; such events were in every way like a nimbus cloud but which failed to produce rain. Time and again believers have played with arithmetic to predict events of the apocalypse and others would couple their analyses with dreams but it’s been to no avail.
Am I suggesting that current happenings do not point to prophetic fulfilments? No, but I want us to be aware that the current fanaticism about COVID-19 and its vaccines being the fulfilment of 666, is not a new happening. There was the Black Death pandemic in the 14th century, it was the worst in history; it claimed between 75 and 200 million lives. Then there was the 1918 Pandemic (Spanish Flu) which claimed between 25 and 50 million people. The current Covid 19 pandemic has so far claimed only 4.7 million lives. In all the instances of these pandemics there was a belief that they heralded the end of the world. What is more, whenever interventions of vaccines were provided there has always been an element of people supposing that it was the Mark of the Beast (666).
Here is what I have to say, no matter how interesting some theories may seem, of trying to generate the number “666” out of the name “COVID-19” and such similar interpretations, the Mark of the Beast has nothing to do with it! Did you know that some Catholics computed 666 out of the name “Ellen G White” (as a counter-response to her writings which outlined how the Catholic System is an antichrist system)? Well, so many things spell 666 but there are particular ones which consistently manifest prophecy in NAME and in DEED!
The pandemics may fall within the broad prophecy of “pestilences” in Matthew 24 but they are never in themselves the mark of the Beast. It is important to know that when the time is here for us to soon see the Lord, or when something of major prophetic significance is about to happen, and if we truly walk closely with the Lord the way Enoch, Abraham, or Elijah did, God won’t leave us to speculate with our calculators and theories. When it was time for Enoch to go he received a definite sign by which he even named his son Methuselah – “His death shall bring”. Methuselah became a timepiece in that generation. When he grew old and Noah knew that the old man would die any time, and when God began to show him dreams and visions of the end of the world, Noah had enough witness to know that time would no longer tarry. When the time came for Lot to leave Sodom, he saw the two peculiar men and recognised them. He bowed down because they were familiar in his spiritual experiences and so when they told him to leave Sodom, he did not hesitate. And in our time, when the Seals were about to be revealed, different people began to have experiences about it. Brother Branham narrates these in Is this the Sign of the End, Sir? Dearly beloved, when the time arrives for God’s final instructions to be given to the Bride, they won’t be given to us on a white or blackboard in form of a hard-to-solve arithmetic problem; it will be a simple truth but which will penetrate deep to the hearts of all who have ears to hear what the Spirit shall speak. Your spirit will bear witness that the time is up.
In conclusion, regarding this question of the pandemic and prophecy, no one has said it better than Pastor Billy Joseph Ogundipe of Nigeria:
“COVID 19 IS NOT THE MARK OF THE BEAST. You have to put it under Mathew 24:7 if you are not carnal. The vaccine is not a sin, it does not affect your Eternal life. Nothing put on your external body affects your spiritual Soul. To make it amount to 666 is nothing but 100% carnality. That is ‘strange fire’ on the Altar, be careful. Every modern day device and hi-tech of every sort, modern day smart phones with all their functions with fastest means of communications ever devised, monetary, systems, BVN, NIM, and others are the ‘John the Baptist’ for the Antichrist but they are not the Mark of the Beast. All those are 2 Thes.2:7 – ‘the mystery of iniquity that already at work’ but not the very mark. They may have evil device behind the vaccine as people were saying about HIV in those days, I don’t doubt nor believe that but don’t tell me it is the mark of the Beast. If the vaccine is the mark then mouth cover and washing of hands which they force more than the vaccine upon people should also be the mark of the Beast. People always love to carnally help God to fulfil His word. We know where the mark will come from and when it will come. I will not be here then, somebody might! Strange fire on the Altar”
I hope this answers your question.