How Lies Helped Spread the Coronavirus
With each passing day, we seem to know less and less about what is actually going on with the Coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese hot zone. China’s ruling Communist Party is facing public anger and recrimination over how it has handled the crisis. Each day the Chinese government puts out numbers that don’t seem to match observation from people on the ground.
One of the first persons to recognize the Coronavirus was Dr. Li Wenliang. In December, Li was treating a cluster of patients suffering from a virus apparently picked up at a meat and poultry market in Wuhan, a city in central China with a population greater than metropolitan Chicago. Li sent messages to a chat group of medical school alumni wondering if SARS—the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that killed nearly 800 people worldwide in 2002 and 2003—had returned.
Li, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist, contracted the virus while treating patients, and his death was confirmed Feb 7th. Li, one of eight medical professionals in Wuhan who tried to warn colleagues and others when the government did not, had said that police forced him to sign a statement admitting he spread falsehoods.
Even the staunchly pro-government Global Times newspaper said the whistleblowers’ treatment was “evidence of local authorities’ incompetence to tackle a contagious and deadly virus.”
When Dr. Li became a fatality, there were only 450 reported deaths. The current death rate of 2 percent would make it very unlikely that a healthy 34-year-old man would die from the virus.
Every few days, a city would report numbers that were greater than the global total, and then they would be quickly changed to match an official data. Even in some official numbers, the death rate is greater than 4 percent.
The rapid construction of two massive hospitals that can bed 10,000 patients had the global news media expressing confidence that China had things under control. I see a couple red flags. First, that is a lot of money being spent for a virus that is reported to only have the same spread factor as the common flu. Secondly, these so-called hospitals are just giant buildings with rows of beds.
The massive increase in beds has not made it any easier to check a loved one into a real hospital. Chen Jiaxin, 22, said by telephone from Wuhan that his father fell ill, but had to return home because no hospital would accept him. When he called for an ambulance after his father’s fever spiked, Chen said, he was told 400 people were ahead of him and “we were just told to wait and wait.”
Mother-of-two Rong Qin, 32, said that her 67-year-old father is feeling sick and is awaiting test results, but that she was told by local officials that even those with a positive diagnosis have to wait for a bed. “What I am hoping now is to put my father in a public quarantine facility so that he doesn’t pass the infection on to other family members,” she said.
The official quarantine zone is of some 50 million residents, but the actual number on lockdown may be vastly larger. One estimate has the number around 400 million. If true, it would show the government is in full-scale panic over a virus that is extremely easy to pass from person to person.
It was reported by the NY Times that in one city, authorities were going house to house to find sick people. Anyone sent to a quarantine center with a lack of proper medical equipment will be a death sentence for many patients. People with pneumonia would die unless they were put on oxygen or a respirator.
I still maintain that the virus will level out at some point and spare the western world from a tide of death that we haven’t seen in 75 years. Terry and I were talking the other day, and we both wondered if current events were part of a final push for the rapture. We will just have to watch.
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18).
— Todd
History’s Most Viewed Event
Of all my cogitating on Bible prophecy, the thought just never struck.
I’m partner with Todd Strandberg in raptureready.com. I’ve written hundreds of articles on the subject. I’ve authored entire books devoted just to the topic. Yet I’ve never even thought, much less written about, one particular aspect of the matter. Some might correct me on that, but that is my memory—or failure thereof—on this thing specifically involved.
The topic, the subject, is the Rapture—that stupendous instant when Jesus Christ steps out on the clouds of glory and shouts with the last trump and the voice of an archangel, “Come up here!”
We believe that it will happen in an atomos of time—quicker than it takes for light traveling at 186,000 miles per second to enter the eye and strike the retina. That’s much faster than the eye can blink, I’m told.
Again, we believe that millions of all born-again believers who are alive will vanish in that instant. It will happen all over the world, but perhaps in no place on earth will the great event be witnessed by more people than in America. And, I’m not meaning that this is because there are more Christians—true believers—in the United States than in any other place on the planet. That might be the case, but that isn’t why I state it.
The thought, as I said above, had not crossed my mind until an epiphany came in the form of an email by a Christian sister, whom I presume is a long-time family member of our Rapture Ready website.
Although I won’t mention her name, I will relate a part of her email that struck deeply into my prophecy-watcher alert center:
Terry: Concerning the Rapture discussion about whether or not people will see us leaving when we are caught up. They will certainly see SOMETHING, because there are cameras everywhere constantly filming everybody.
So, if I’m out in the middle of the street talking to one of my neighbors when Jesus suddenly calls me up into the clouds, at least three of my neighbors’ security cameras are going to record my disappearance. (Where did she go? She was standing right there talking to Dave and then she just disappeared!”).
Whether we just disappear or can be seen rising up after we are transformed, the cameras at the grocery store, the bank, the jam-cam on I-10, the neighbor’s security camera or doorbell ring camera, all those cameras recording everybody everywhere all over the world are going to capture it all.
Again, this is just an idea that never struck me. But it will surely happen just as she describes, barring an unforeseen EMP attack or other phenomenon that shuts down all cameras in the nation.
Anyone who has watched forensic shows that record crimes in every possible location knows that we’re under constant surveillance. There is no way we can escape the cameras looking down on us from telephone poles, building roofs, or wherever.
Even drones now circle overhead and record every movement we make, both for law enforcement and commercial purposes. Private drones now keep track of us just for amusement and entertainment.
But it’s the cellphone and other devices held by individuals in every town in the country that make the emailer’s observation of special, prophetic significance.
People are literally filming on their phones every moment of every day and night, especially in America, where so many people have smart devices. There is no doubt that the disappearance of people around towns all over America will be captured in that staggering instant.
The news-gathering entities around the US will be soliciting every video they can find. Social media venues will go crazy with quantities of footage that will likely almost melt down many websites. It will be the most filmed event in history!
Many of those video recorders will still be going when they hit the ground, having been dropped by Christians doing the filming. These, too, will give credence to the message of those of us who have been teaching the truth of the pre-Trib Rapture.
Perhaps it is the many such videos that will convince a great number of people who have heard our message. The message? That Jesus has called believers to Himself. Those who see and are thus convinced might then seek earnestly all information left behind that forewarns of what they have just witnessed.
My thanks to my emailer friend who stimulated the thought about history’s most viewed event!
—Terry