Sickness, Pestilence, and Plague

Jeff Pollard

Sickness, pestilence, plague—the inhabitants of this world, ancient or modern, have all experienced the weakening or deadly power represented by those words. Throughout the Holy Scriptures, Almighty God used sickness to judge pagan nations and to chasten His own people. The Lord God of the Hebrews declared to Pharaoh by the mouth of Moses, “I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth”(Exo 9:14). And God told His own people that if they were unfaithful to His covenant, “The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land (Deu 28:21). Even Christ declared that in these last days, “There shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places (Mat 24:7). And so it has been down through the ages. In his day, Puritan Thomas Adams described this: “We cannot forget our clear deliverance from that late woeful judgment of the pestilence. How sorrowful were those times, when every month swept away thousands from among us! When a man could not set forth his foot but into the jaws of death! When piles of carcasses were carried to their pits as dung to the fields! When it was cruelty in the sick to admit visitation, and love was little better than murderous! The more sad and horrible the face of those times looked, so much greater cause have we to proclaim the mercy of God in our present freedom. All the land was afraid of this city; now this city is clearer than many places of the land. We may now throng together into God’s house without fear and breathe in one another’s face without danger. How gracious was this deliverance! Yea, how speedy! To abate so fast, as in three months to decrease from a thousand a week to ten, yea, to none; certainly it was little less than miraculous! When we consider this, O heavenly Father, who can accuse thee of slackness?” In Adam’s experience, God brought a quick end to the plague, and God’s people joyfully met together again to worship. Some of this sounds familiar, does it not?

In our day, our whole world is sick—literally! And many of God’s people cannot meet for worship. People around the globe are suffering physically and economically by a quick-spreading coronavirus that gives us COVID-19. Some contract a light case of it, some have a rough time with it, some die from it—falling out of time into eternity with or without Christ. A worldwide pandemic is a new experience for our globe! But whether it be COVID-19, a common cold, the flu, or any other disease, all plagues on earth exist because of Adam’s sin: it spread the holocaust of sickness to the human race, and our Lord regularly uses tha unseen power to judge or destroy nations and to chasten His people. Now let us answer the following question: Do we as Christians have a biblical view of sickness, or is it something that simply slows us down for a while, giving us a good opportunity to gripe against God’s all-wise providence? We might put it another way: Do you waste your sickness with a sinful attitude or does sickness draw you closer to Christ, stirring you to self-examination, repentance, and even sweet communion with Him?

With those questions in mind, we offer you the latest edition of the Free Grace Broadcasters: Sickness. J.C. Ryle introduces this important subject by declaring that sickness is universal, and he explains why that is so. Arthur W. Pink then describes the gift of health as priceless. Philip B. Power tells us how to apply God’s wonderful comforts in Christ to our sickbed. Do you use your time wisely while you are sick? Thomas Boston gives biblical reasons for how and why you should. A living author, Christopher Bogosh, has written an excellent book—Compassionate Jesus—calling Christians to rethink our approach to modern medicine. He tells us how to use God’s medicine—prayer. In a truly provocative article, John D. Wells reveals why the sickbed is not favorable for finding eternal life. Following that, Puritan George Swinnocl reminds us of our biblical duty to visit and minister to the sick: it is not merely a pastoral work but an act that Christ will mention in the Day of Judgment! In a second article, Ryle asks hard questions and presses our consciences with biblical duties to help us prepare ourselves to honor Christ, examine ourselves before Christ, and commune with Christ in our times of sickness! Lastly, in my opinion, no uninspired writer brings the sweetness of Christ to the subject of sickness as beautifully as Charles Spurgeon. And he exhorts us, “If Jesus loves you, and you are sick, let all the world see how you glorify God in your sickness. Let friends and nurses see how the beloved of the Lord are cheered and comforted by Him.” Do we believe that? God does use sickness for the good of the lost and His people for His glory.

Christ loves His people, especially in their times of sickness. We pray that during this extraordinary time of sickness in our world, that you will find this FGB a safe, biblical guide to repentance and for honoring Christ in our seasons of sickness. O may your sickbed be a holy place of communion with Jesus Christ the Great Physician. He heal from sin-sickness too.