On February 27, 2020, Israel’s MIGAL Galilee Research Institute issued this press release:
After 4 years of research funded by Israel’s Ministry of Science & Technology, MIGAL’s researchers have developed an effective vaccine against avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), to be adapted soon and create a human vaccine against COVID-19[.]1
At the time, CEO David Zigdon was hopeful that MIGAL could “produce the vaccine during the next 8–10 weeks” and “achieve safety approval in 90 days.”
MIGAL was hardly alone in this pursuit: “U.S.-based Gilead Sciences, for example, announced this week that it is launching two Phase III clinical trials for a drug to treat covid-19, as this particular strain of the coronavirus is known.”2
Yet “many experts suggest[ed] we are still a ways off from having a coronavirus vaccine that’s as readily available as one for the flu.”3
Ironically, it was Israel that produced the cure for a different kind of “pandemic” that infected humanity a long time ago. This pandemic is a spiritual one: we are infected with sin — a fallen nature prone to rebellion against our Creator.
God made people good, but they have found many ways to be bad. [Ecclesiastes 7:29; see also Genesis 1:26–27 and Romans 1:18–25]
To borrow a tagline from TV’s The Walking Dead: “We are all infected” — which parallels the way the Bible talks about sin: “everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:234) “Only God is truly good.” (Mark 10:18) “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6)
And this isn’t just “something the Bible claims”; just “a religious notion.” We may lie to ourselves about it — but inwardly we all know it’s true. Every single one of us has a built-in moral compass, no matter how faulty — or rusty — it may be. Even the atheist Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, acknowledges “that humans have an awareness of morality — a sense of right and wrong and a feeling of obligation to be thus governed[.]”5
As Ruse’s choice of the word “humans” implies, this moral intuition is universal, crossing cultural lines and spanning human history. Despite the fact that different cultures (and different individuals) clash over specific issues, broadly speaking there are some fundamental values and principles that are genuinely universal. C. S. Lewis demonstrated this in his remarkable survey “Illustrations of the Tao,”6 listing various laws and ethical principles shared by multiple cultures down through history.
On the other hand, people who seem to lack a conscience are sociopaths — a few of them brutal dictators. For example, Adolf Hitler — one of history’s most infamous villains — reportedly
saw evolutionary ethics as the will of God. . . . He stated that in order for one organism to live, another must die. . . . There is no better principle imaginable, he argued, than “the principle of the eternal selection of the better over the weaker.” Indeed, he explicitly called this principle the “will of Providence.”7
“It followed for him that might was right, that his own violent methods were therefore absolutely in keeping with the laws of nature.”8
Note carefully: “Evolutionary ethics drove [Hitler] to engage in behavior that the rest of us consider abominable.”9 While Hitler apparently subscribed to some notion of a Creator, he thought of that Being pretty much as winding up the cosmos and letting it go. Hitler rejected the idea — promoted by Christianity — that a proper, informed, maturing ethic requires a relationship with the Creator; that living life as it was intended requires His input from outside of nature.
Those who reject a relationship with God also, quite naturally, reject His input into their lives. This leaves us to fall back on whatever our feelings and imagination tell us the rules should be.
It’s like some of those TV cooking or baking contests (my wife loves the Kids Baking Championship), when the host provides contestants with various ingredients and challenges their creativity. Best recipe wins. In the “kitchen” of morality, whether you’re an atheist or, like Hitler, a deist — either way, if you believe you’ve been given a mélange of life-ingredients to do with as you please, you’ll be a relativistic “baker,” concocting whatever moral recipe happens to suit your spiritual palate.
It should be obvious why such an approach to ethics (especially for society as a whole) just isn’t reliable over the long haul.
We need — and were designed for — a relationship with God.
And that’s where the “Israeli vaccine” comes in: not for COVID-19, but for sin.
How did Israel managed to “cure” the sin disease? Well, in one sense . . . they did precisely nothing. That is: human ingenuity and effort didn’t produce the cure. It was entirely due to God’s planning and power. Yet Israel was, unconsciously, God’s agent. About 4,000 years ago He promised to Abraham, the first Jew: “All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3) And so unfolds—
the family history of Jesus the Messiah. He came from the family of [King] David, who was from the family of Abraham. [Matthew 1:1]
. . . [F]rom [Israel], by human descent, came the Christ, who is God over all [Romans 9:5].
This one very special Jew . . . is God’s cure for the global sin-virus. The Bible tells us that—
the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 6:23]
. . . God was in Christ, making peace between the world and himself. In Christ, God did not hold people guilty for their sins. . . . Christ had no sin, but God made him become sin [on our behalf] so that in Christ we could be right with God. [2 Corinthians 5:19, 21]
[Jesus] personally carried our sins in his body on the cross[—he allowed himself to be crucified by the Romans—]so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. [1 Peter 2:24]
If, that is, you place your trust in him: “everyone who believes in him [will] not be lost [to sin and its consequences] but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Then we gain the status of being “in Christ” — having Jesus Christ as our representative before God the Father. In that way we conduct a relationship with God.
This, in a sense, “inoculates” us against the sin-virus:
If we live in the light, . . . the blood sacrifice of Jesus, God’s Son, washes away every sin and makes us clean. . . . [I]f we confess our sins, God will forgive us. . . . He will make us clean from all the wrong things we have done. [1 John 1:7, 9]
In the world of physical diseases and medicine, there are those who will try to scam you:
The World Health Organization (WHO), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Better Business Bureau have all issued warnings in recent weeks about the uptick in criminal scams tied to the coronavirus.
Even some foreign governments are suspected of being involved.
As the virus continues to spread globally and throughout the U.S., the instances of these scams will increase. And the average person will become more susceptible to the fear-mongering and manipulation tactics used by these criminals.10
Among the coronavirus scams floating around out there:
Fake government and healthcare sources
Seller/buyer scams
Social media scams, like fake fundraising
Various types of misinformation about the virus or propaganda surrounding the alleged efficacy of the vaccines
The same thing happens when it comes to spiritual things: the Bible teaches that there is a real Devil, named Satan, who “has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They cannot see the light of the Good News — the message about the divine greatness of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:4; see also 1 John 5:19) The Devil “trick[s] the people of the earth” (Revelation 20:3).
And just as someone could fool you (or even themselves!) into thinking they’re an expert on COVID-19, when it comes to spiritual expertise, “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)
He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them. [2 Thessalonians 2:10]
“Every kind of evil deception” includes:
False religion and false prophets/teachers
False reports of miracles
Real miracles—but performed by Satan rather than God
Things of this world—money, pleasure, power—that may not be evil in and of themselves, but which can easily distract us from Ultimate Truth
False science —promoted by scientists who are highly intelligent but have allowed an anti-God bias to control their research; they try to convince people that God doesn’t exist or that the Bible can’t be trusted as God’s word
Personal bias of our own that motivates us to try to evade God and His invitation to salvation—as well as His warnings of judgment
Finally, when it comes to serious illness or other health problems, it’s common for people to simply ignore the warnings or symptoms, and pretend that everything’s okay. Again using the coronavirus as an example, we should note the words of WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.”11
But the inaction of human beings toward their spiritual state — and the doom hanging over them — is far more alarming.
So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it. . . . [W]hat makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation . . . ? [Hebrews 2:1, 3]
Be careful and don’t refuse to listen when God speaks. [Past generations] refused to listen to him when he warned them on earth. And they did not escape. Now God is speaking from heaven. So now it will be worse for those who refuse to listen to him. [Hebrews 12:25]
. . . God’s grace has come. That grace can save everyone. [Titus 2:11]
Many, especially governments and the mainstream media, have ignored science-based findings on various treatments for Covid that have had resounding success around the world, such as Ivermectin and Regeneron. When it comes to the sin-virus — you already have it. But you still have opportunity to evade eternal consequences.
I tell you that the “right time” is now. The “day of salvation” is now. [2 Corinthians 6:2]
“Breakthrough From Israel’s MIGAL Research Institute in Development of Corona virus (COVID-19) Vaccine,” MIGAL Galilee Research Institute LTD. (27 Feb. 2020), http://www.migal.org.il/Migal.covid (accessed 11 Mar. 2020; italics mine).
Benyamin Cohen, “Israeli scientists: We have developed a coronavirus vaccine,” From the Grapevine (27 Feb. 2020), https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/health/coronavirus-vaccine-israel-migal-research-institute-david-zigdon (accessed 12 Mar. 2020).
Ibid.
Italics mine.
Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 261.
The appendix to Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Orig. Oxford University Press, 1943); viewable online at https://archive.org/stream/TheAbolitionOfMan_229/C.s.Lewis-TheAbolitionOfMan#page/n33/mode/2up (accessed 17 Mar. 2020).
Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 40 (emph. mine).
Hitter’s press secretary Otto Dietrich, quoted in Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 41 (emph. mine).
Weikart, 2.
Jason Glassberg, “Coronavirus: 6 scams to watch out for,” Yahoo Finance (8 Mar. 2020), https://ca.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-scams-to-watch-out-for-182236936.html (accessed 26 Mar. 2020).
“It’s official: ‘Deeply concerned’ WHO declares the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic,” Reuters / The Canadian Press (National Post, 11 Mar. 2020), https://nationalpost.com/news/world/its-official-the-covid-19-outbreak-is-a-global-pandemic (accessed 11 Mar. 2020).