If you are a liberal, the following is probably the most reactionary thing you will have recently read, so read it and bleat all you like. I dont regard your whining as a reason to withhold truth.
A few days ago I wrote an article here entitled “How to end this epidemic, fast!” on this site.
In it, I spoke of the responsibility individuals have, especially believing individuals, to practice introspection and mortification of the flesh, namely fasting (in which I include the practice of staying a season in isolation at home, as a kind of fasting, which may or may not be accompanied by dietary or clothing restrictions) and pointed out how quarantine is a Bible idea (indeed the 40 days which quarantine literally means, despite the words itself being coined in 13th Century Venice, are reflected in the Bible). In his excellent book “Fasting” Franklin Jentezen points out how the longest fasting period is 40 days coinciding with the longest life cycle of the disease-causing flies that upset the human condition.
I am not one to go seeking a lot of numerology in Scripture, although more powerful intellects than mine have tried to do that, including Isaac Newton. Had anything much been obtained by doing so, I get the feeling Newton would have got to it before most of us.
Nevertheless, the number 40 is mentioned in the Bible no less than 159 times in Scripture, and often in contexts of trying, testing and judgement. Fasting for 40 days and – note this well, in seclusion – was practised by Moses and Elijah and Jesus Christ himself, and there are also the cases of the 40 days and nights of rain in the Flood, the 40 days of mockery by Goliath, the largest number of lashes that could be administered was forty (Deuteronomy 25:3), the Israelites were under the Philistines 40 years and in the Book of Jonah 40 days was the deadline given to Nineveh to repent.
This is why we ought to observe a strict fast and seclusion throughout April and most of May. The time between Easter Sunday (the close of Lent, another 40 day fast most have failed to observe, include those who claim to believe in it) and the end of Ramadan this year is about 40 days. May 23rd is the last day of Ramadan this year when a third of the world will be fasting, and so Easter Monday morning would be the beginning of 40 days ending on that night.
My belief is, that if all believing people observe at this time the fast of seclusion, in keeping apart for forty days, with dietary restrictions (exact details on these may vary), that it would be a certain way to stem the flood of this virus, or at least would put believing people out of the frame for it. Unbelieving people have been sharing memes showing Christian, Muslim and Jewish acts of worship with a view to blaming religion and the practice of faith in God for this epidemic.
Now I am not a big ecumenist. I have plenty of theological differences even with other Protestants, let alone non-Protestant Christians and I will be honest and say that Islam for me is not valid as a way to please God because Jesus in Islam is just a good man and a prophet, while we know that He is very God who entered His own Creation as part of it, so that in that way, the way of suffering on our behalf, he could bring us out into a perfect fellowship with Him and the Father, and the only way to do this is by repentance and faith in his death on the cross and resurrection.
That having been said, I believe God has been merciful to many Muslims, partly because they have been more concerned about maintaining righteousness in civil life than we have. They have not killed millions of their sons with abortions and thus God has ordained in His justice that in spite of their rejection of Jesus they still could come into previously Christian lands and their children would fill the vacuum created by the murdered children of those who think falsely that they are Christian. So in countries which have had 7 million abortions in the last forty years, you have 7 million Islamic immigrants, in countries where you had 5 million abortions you have five million Muslims coming in, and in places like Poland which have had very few abortions, they had very few Muslim immigrants because there is no vacuum for the sons of the desert to fill.
This ought to be told very clearly by Poland, Hungary, etc to the High Court judges of the EU who ruled that, despite the current coronavirus crisis and the fact that in Greece they have become a vector of this and other infections, and have breached the borders of that country by violence, we should be accepting quotas. In doing so they risk a Visegrad Four rebellion, with Poland, Hungary and probably the Czech s and Slovaks if not other nations from the Eastern side simply deciding to make their own Brexit Referendum with the other choice on the ballot sheet being a union along less dictatorial lines with each other and the UK and any others (most likely Italy which has already begun the process of taking down EU flags from public places) who care to join.
As it is the EU have not shown any solidarity or leadership during this crisis at all. All they have managed to do is to faff and do a newly-clothed Emperor dance in front of its remaining citizens, telling them what to do but offering no help. Showing that they have learned nothing at all from Brexit.
Back to that line of thought in a minute, first I would like to conclude the thought about the value of a Christian-Muslim joint fast. We do not get saved by observing fasts. But fasting is a display of sorrow and contrition which adds power to our lives and to our prayers. I would suggest that if Christians are willing to repeat a Lenten style fast after Easter [after all, Jesus said Himself to the disciples of John the Baptist that His disciples would fast after the Bridegroom was gone and not before (Matthew 9:15), so it is hard to understand why the Lenten tradition precedes Easter] including staying secluded as part of this 40 day fast and Muslims are willing to start Ramadan early this year and also give themselves the additional burden of not visiting outside their nuclear household for iftars (in exchange for this consideration they should possibly relax some other stringency, for example drinking water during the day), then I am telling you that I understand from the Spirit of God that this plague will be stayed regardless of what the ungodly do. This is not one of the seven plagues of Revelation 15 and 16. We are apparently not in that period yet, although it may be in our lifetime. Probably this episode will move those events one step closer, or more than one. But that is a separate matter.
I hope that imams and Christian leaders and Rabbis will support a common imploring of God in fasting and seclusion for forty days between Easter and the end of Ramadan. I am putting this out in the hope that it will be heard, and will be the basis of much prayer to God and attention to the discipline of our flesh and carnality, and of repentance, repentance leading to faith and the obtaining of God’s forgiveness in Jesus.
A second, more prosaic call is to the EU leaders generally.
The best think that you can do in the area of public policy, having done really next to nothing so far for all your people, is to declare that this academic year will simply not exist, it will be repeated next year. Whether we are talking about Kindergarten or people in the final year of their post doctorate diplomas. All the way through. They should be told that the EU will pick up the tab for their tuition fees and maintenance and everyone in schools at this time will be given that year again.
The absence of school leavers and university graduates in 2020 will rapidly serve to soak up the mass unemployment currently taking place and avoid its aggravation in the Summer.
Henceforth, children would enter each phase of education one year later and go through their O level or GCSE level equivalent a year later and do their university stage a year later. This would enable these younger people to get much more out of their education, especially those years of education after the point at which they have expressed a preference for one or other course of studies or “pillar”. It would enable ore maturity of those entering tertiary education, thus greatly increasing return on investment in the sector. It would make the preparatory phase of life maintain its proper proportions to the working life and retirement phase, both of which are strained by the prospect of increased longevity. This would be the way to get a positive lasting legacy from the Coronavirus outbreak and turn a tragedy into an heroic and epic achievement of civilisation.
Have we got the courage to do this? Either of the things I am suggesting in this post?
Please share with as many people as you can. Maybe someone will listen, maybe someone will see the truth in what I have put forward today.
PS: one possible light in the tunnel for some places may be if people have had their BCGs
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-vaccine-bcg-immune-boost-coronavirus.html
More analyses are appearing to see if there is a statistically significant link, in the meantime, I urge any readers of mine who have not had thie BCGs to get them if they can.
Ensuring good levels of sleep and Vitamins C and D together with Magnesium and Zinc and drinking lots of water are also sound advice, but these you can read in a lot of places, and people come to Huliganov.TV for original thoughts. Which is why there are so few of you here.