The title above heads an enlightening article written in the New York Times by a Jesuit priest from New York, James Martin. The article was not enlightening because of its sound theology. That is not to be expected from a Jesuit. Rather, the article was enlightening because of its candid expression of unbelief in the sovereignty of God over evil and the evident consequences of that unbelief in the fear and despair in the face of the pandemic of COVID-19.

The world has been shaken with the coronavirus and the disease known as COVID-19. The disease has effectively shut down the world economy, brought normal human life to a virtual standstill, and caused massive disruptions at all levels of human life. Included in this are the orders from state and local governments preventing large gatherings of people, which in fact prohibit the gathering of churches of Jesus Christ for public worship. 

In large measure the reaction to the disease is driven by the fact that the specific form of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is scientifically unknown. This ignorance contributes to the fear. Man all his life long through fear of death is subject to bondage. Fear belongs to the bondage of unbelief and sin. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ delivers from all fear with its glorious exhortation to the believer, “Fear not!” In the world there is only fear. Fear of what might happen with this virus has led to a willing dismantling of normal life.

James Martin describes the reaction that he has encountered in the ungodly environs of the city of New York, a city particularly hard hit by the virus:

In just the past few weeks, millions have started to fear that they are moving to their appointment [with death] with terrifying speed, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. The sheer horror of this fast-moving infection is coupled with the almost physical shock from its sudden onset. As a priest, I’ve heard an avalanche of feelings in the last month: panic, fear, anger, sadness, confusion and despair.¹ 

He writes in vivid terms of the images in “the minds of millions of believers, who quail at steadily rising death tolls, struggle with stories of physicians forced to triage patients and recoil at photos of rows of coffins.” With minds full of fear, “even the most religious people ask me: Why is this happening? And: Where is God in all of this?”

Martin’s “honest answer” to the fearful question about where God is in all this is: “We don’t know.” To the question of why this is happening, he replies, “The most honest answer to the question of why the Covid-19 virus is killing thousands of people, why infectious diseases ravage humanity and why there is suffering at all is: We don’t know.”

Banishing God from the universe, it is no wonder the people he talks to are full of fear. The idol of James Martin reminds me of the idol Baal whom Elijah mocked, saying, “Maybe he is on a hunting trip, or talking, or on a journey, or maybe he is sleeping and needs to be awakened!” The Roman Catholic James Martin does not know where God is and what he is doing when suffering comes on the world, when there is calamity, and when men die from calamities. Further, he does not know why there is suffering in the world at all! His Roman Catholic forebears were not so bold.

The Reformed faith teaches that God does not disappear in a calamity, but he sits enthroned in the heavens as the absolutely sovereign God of heaven and earth. It teaches that absolutely nothing comes to pass in the universe apart from his will and work. Shall there be evil in the city and the Lord has not done it?

Why is there suffering? The suffering of human beings in the world is not mystifying to one who believes the Reformed faith. God made man perfect and upright, as his friend in the garden and king of creation. Adam, by the instigation of the devil and by his own willful disobedience, departed from God, who was his life, and brought upon himself and all his posterity death. Death in all its forms—physical death, spiritual death in man’s total depravity, and liability to eternal death in hell—is the just punishment of a holy God for the rebellion of Adam. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Adam was the federal head of the human race, and all human beings are judged guilty of Adam’s sin, and thus all are liable to suffer death as the punishment of that sin. That God is God and that sin is an offense against his most high majesty explain the terrible suffering and calamity that come on the wicked and rebellious world.

Martin suggests that to bring up God’s punishment of sin as an explanation of suffering in the world makes God out to be “a monster.” Outside of faith in Christ, however, all that man can expect in the world is suffering of every kind, because sin is terrible and God is just and he will not suffer such disobedience and rebellion to go unpunished.

Not minimizing man’s guilt in his sin, the Reformed faith also teaches a more profound answer to the question of sin and suffering. God decreed in his counsel sin, evil, suffering, and calamity. He decreed them as that for which he has a good purpose. From the fall of Adam into sin and death and the curse that followed from it, to the evil of wicked men at the cross, to all the suffering in the world, to the persecution of his people—God decreed it all and carries it out as that for which he has a good purpose. That purpose is the revelation of himself as the righteous, holy, and gracious God and the perfection of his covenant and kingdom in a new heaven and earth in Jesus Christ. This world in its present form is not the goal, just as Eden the first was not the goal. God will make all things heavenly by a wonder of grace.

Having denied God, James Martin has the temerity to suggest that while we do not know where God is or why there is suffering in the world, nevertheless, we can turn to Jesus: “in these frightening times, Christians may find comfort in knowing that when they pray to Jesus, they are praying to someone who understands them not only because he is divine and knows all things, but because he is human and experienced all things.”

For Martin, if you are not a Christian, you can still turn to Jesus “as a model for care of the sick.”

I do not think that James Martin is out of the mainstream in nominally religious America; he was published in the New York Times. To make God an unknowable and absent deity from the world and to divorce the knowledge of Jesus from the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the reason for suffering in the world is unbelief not only in God but also in Jesus. Such unbelief can only have the judgment of the kind of despair, fear, and anxiety about which Martin writes.

Jesus Christ is the revelation of God. His whole purpose in coming into this world was the revelation of God and to accomplish God’s purpose in the world and with the world. In a world that lies in sin and death and under the curse, Jesus Christ is the gospel of God concerning his wonderful purpose and grace to redeem the world that lies under the curse and to lift it to the heights of heaven, to make this earth one with the heaven and re-
create it by the wonder of grace as the everlasting dwelling place of Christ and his elect people—the perfection of his covenant.

The gospel proclaims that in order that his people escape the punishment of sin God sent Jesus Christ into the world to suffer for them and in their place on the cross and to earn and merit their complete righteousness and salvation. God did that according to his sovereign counsel of election and reprobation. It is the suffering of Jesus Christ that provides the most astounding example of God’s sovereignty over suffering and evil. According to the scripture, all the wickedness of men at the cross was included in the counsel of God: “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:27–28).

God decreed that, carried that out, and used that to accomplish salvation for his people whom he loved. The amazing truth of the cross is that God bruised Jesus Christ and put him to grief in order that God in Christ might reconcile his elect people unto himself. Involved in that—decreed and controlled and carried out by God—was the most monstrous wickedness of men that can ever be contemplated. At the cross there was the demonstration of the wickedness of man, because of which the world lies under the curse of sin and death and suffers the judgments of God.

The cross of Christ, and the Christ of the cross, is also the secret to understand suffering in the world. Apart from him and faith in him there is only—and justly—suffering to men because of their sin. In him—only in him by faith—all the suffering in this world is turned to the advantage and salvation of God’s people. He works by it their eternal profit.

COVID-19 and the Running of the Pale Horse

There is more that can and must be said about epidemics like COVID-19. The world is a world of sin, spiritual darkness, and enmity against God. That world develops in its sin. The development of Adam’s original sin will culminate in the worldwide kingdom of antichrist, to whom the great red dragon will give his seat, power, and authority. The coming of this kingdom, too, is under the sovereign control of God as he reveals the wickedness of man’s sin and ripens the world for final judgment.

The coronavirus is the hand of God, and the fears that accompany it and multiply its effect are the Lord’s sword against the ungodly world for the purpose of bringing his kingdom. That must be the Reformed believer’s response regarding the coming of the pandemic to the world. The pandemic belongs to the phenomenon of the precursory signs that are created by the promised coming of Christ our savior. Jesus Christ foretold that such things would come on the world as part of his coming. He revealed to the apostle John in Revelation 6:1–8 that such events would happen throughout world history in the running of the four horsemen. All of these proceed from the sealed book in the hand of Jesus Christ, which represents the counsel of God for the perfection of God’s kingdom. The pandemic is not only God’s work, but also Christ comes in fulfillment of God’s promise.

Specifically, the coming of coronavirus is the running of the pale horse of Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

The pale horse is green like the grass. Grass is the scriptural symbol of man’s fleeting life. Psalm 90 says that man flourishes like the grass for a time and then he quickly fades away. Isaiah 40 says that all flesh is as grass; the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever! God’s word over man is, “Return to dust, ye sons of men.”

The pale horse’s rider is Death and his attendant is Hell, or more properly the Grave, which is ready to receive the victims of this dreadful horse and its rider. His weapon is death by many means. His mandate from God is to kill one quarter of the earth’s population. As he rides throughout history, he cuts down the inhabitants of the earth like grass by death in all its ugly forms. The monstrous rider stalks about and slays by war, violence, murder, suicide, and drug overdose. He kills by death in old age, in tender age, in middle age, by heart attack and stroke, by accidents at work, on the road, at home, on vacation, and by storm and flood, wind and fire, and pestilence. He gallops by plagues and mows down millions by famines and disasters. He kills by beasts—big beasts and little beasts. How he kills by little beasts! He terrifies man by little, unseen beasts that stalk the creation and travel the globe. With a stroke he mows down millions by AIDS, flu, malaria, Ebola, SARS, COVID-19, and a hundred other diseases old and new.

The one who directs everything is Christ, according to God’s decree. Christ is the one who opens the seals. He holds the reins of history and controls all the events of history. He sends forth the white horse of his kingdom conquering and to conquer. He unleashes the red and the black and green horses. He controls the rise and fall of nations, the price of bread and the wages to buy it. He maintains the contrast between rich and poor. He sends death in all its forms on the earth to kill.

What Christ is directing is a warfare in which his kingdom is victorious. As the consummate general he wages his war perfectly, directing every event and all creatures as so many soldiers in his army. Christ controls the gospel, whether it saves or hardens. He controls the markets, economies, beasts great and small, little viruses, great pandemics, pestilence, famine, war and rumor of war. The life and death of billions of men are in his hand. In all, his kingdom comes.

When we see these things, we ought to believe, repent, and worship this grand and lordly Christ. We ought to refresh ourselves with the thought, “Ah, Christ is waging war. He is active in history for the coming of his kingdom.” History is not about the victorious progress of democracy, capitalism, socialism, or any other force or movement in history. All history is about the victorious progress of the kingdom of God. Why is all this necessary? Why the running of the white horse in the preaching of the gospel? Why all the strife, warfare, and murder in the world? Why the tremendous contrast between riches and poverty? Why does the terrible last horse mow down millions? The answer is that the kingdom of God must come in this way, according to God’s sovereign and determinate counsel, for the judgment of the reprobate ungodly and the salvation of God’s elect, to the glory of God.

The elect suffer these things as well. These things cause them to hold fast what they have, to look and pray for the coming of Jesus Christ, and to lift up their heads in hope that their redemption is near. These things serve to harden the reprobate, to ripen the world for judgment, and to hasten the coming of the antichrist, whom Christ will consume with the spirit of his mouth and will destroy with the brightness of his coming.

When the church sees warfare, pestilence, and famine in the world, she ought not be surprised or fearful. All things—war, famine, pestilence, nakedness, riches, and poverty—work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.

So I will wash my hands and watch out for the health of myself and my neighbor, but not fear or be perplexed. Indeed, I will come and see, as I was instructed to do. Come and see by faith the mighty hand of God and the execution of his perfect counsel. Come and see the coming of Jesus Christ.

And pray. Pray still more fervently, “Come, Lord Jesus, come in every event and calamity of history, come quickly!”