What does the Bible say about pandemic diseases/sicknesses?

None of us knows why God has allowed COVID-19 to spread so rapidly or permitted government responses to go as far as they have in restricting Christian meetings. Hopefully, at the very least, those of us living in Western countries are led to thank Him for His grace in having preserved us from so many of the natural hardships which much of the world’s population, and countless Christians, have suffered. In addition, we may do well to consider whether the Lord is testing the faith of His people, as He did with Abraham in Genesis 22 (to take but one example).

Hence we read of “the beginning of sorrows,” presaged, as they shall be, by nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, with attendant famines, pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places; and, although these are not peculiar to that special moment, yet they are precursory to it, and are, so far, a distinct premonition of worse to follow.

We are in a world where certain laws as the result of the entrance of sin operate as part of God’s government, and these laws know no distinction between saint and sinner. There is no respect of persons. Saint and sinner are visited with strict impartiality. An epidemic rages. Christian and unbeliever alike fall victims. The use or abuse we make of our bodies help to make us immune from disease, or render us easy victims, and this is true of either saint or sinner.

The Lord Himself has told us that sword, famine, and pestilence are but the beginning of the sorrows called down by the wickedness of mankind. He knows, however, how to humble and try and bless His own people by their means, as He surely has done and does.

This is often mentioned along with the sword and the famine as punishment from God upon His rebellious people. It is represented as being sent directly by God Himself. When David had numbered the people, the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there died 70,000 men. 2 Sam. 24:15-16.

If the reader will turn to Ex. 30:11 to 16, he will find that when Israel was numbered it was necessary to furnish a ransom for their souls, failing which plague would break out upon them. King David once numbered the people, but there is no mention of their giving a ransom. The record is, "The Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men" (2 Sam. 24:15). God cannot take account of sinful men in the flesh save in judgment. If man is to be in favor before God it must be through an accepted ransom.

God's righteousness in visiting on men their sins Israel were about again to prove. God's mercies and His pardoning grace they were also afresh to know. "The Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, from the morning even to the time appointed; and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men." A solemn time it must have been. Pestilence was walking in darkness, and destruction was wasting at noonday. The destroying angel was actively at work, and no man was able to withstand him. Throughout the length and breadth of the land death was claiming its victims. Who would next be struck no one could tell. No remedy availed to cure the sick. No intercession, however urgent, succeeded in preserving the life of a beloved one. All joy must have fled; all energy for ordinary pursuits must have been paralyzed. God was working, and in power. Of old he had laid bare His arm, and worked in power on behalf of Israel; now His hand was outstretched, but in this deadly way against them. Could any charge Him with injustice? No. They deserved the chastisement, though David's act in numbering them was the proximate cause for this visitation. Helpless, how helpless were they all. Their only hope was in the mercy of God. He was their only refuge. "His mercies are great," said David. Now he was to prove that, though as yet he knew not how. The way of judgment had been declared; the way in which grace should be manifested was as yet a secret in the bosom of the Almighty.

Certainly God hears his prayer, but there must be some governmental results from the wrong-doing of man of authority. God therefore sends the prophet Gad to David to ask him to choose one of three alternatives, either seven years of famine in the land, or three months of Israel's retreating before their enemies, or three days of a deadly plague in the land.

It may be asserted that the disease of this man's body was an infliction upon him in consequence of some particular sins of which he had been guilty. God sent such temporal judgments in His government of the people of Israel, as the scripture testifies in many parts. For instance, at the repeated murmuring of the nation in the wilderness Jehovah smote them with a plague (Num. 11:32-33; Ps. 78:31). In New Testament times it was so also in the assembly at Corinth, where many were in sickness and some even slept, because of their transgression (1 Cor. 11:30; see also James 5:14-16). The Lord recognised afflictions of this judicial character in the case of the impotent man of Bethesda, to whom He said after His cure, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" (John 5:14).

Nor does the Lord, to Whom all belongs below as on high, need the apology of man to justify His permission, any more than for the sickness and death, the plague and the famine, the tempest and the earthquake, which He employs providentially in this fallen world. To what purposes of grace does He not turn every one of these inflictions for such as hear His word. So doubtless it was then whether Jews or Gentiles owned the swine.