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Dangerous Trend: Media Blaming Evangelicals for Spreading COVID-19
Researched by Pastor Gary Boyd
Conclusion by Pastor Boyd

This is not the first time something like this has happened. A national tragedy occurs, and Christians get scapegoated.

The ancient pagans of Rome, as their society fell apart, blamed Christians. Remember Nero blaming the Christians for the burning of Rome?

Several media organizations are now focusing on how several large megachurches around the country continue to meet, especially in New Orleans where the virus is now considered a "hot spot."

With President Donald Trump announcing on Sunday that his administration was extending the social distancing guidelines for the entire month of April watch for the focus on churches to continue to get increased scrutiny in the press.

New York City (another hot spot) Mayor Bill de Blasio has already warned pastors to shut down their houses of worship - or else. The mayor said the police department, fire department and building inspectors "will force” congregations to disperse if they are found holding worship services this week.

Any congregation that refuses to comply with the mayor's order could face fines or have their buildings permanently closed.

Such orders are reinforcing the public consciousness that Christians are in part to blame for the rapid spread by refusing to stop meeting at church.

The death toll is expected to continue to rise greatly this week in New York, New Orleans and other major metro areas (with the peak death toll still not expected to take place for another two weeks).

As emotions begin to run high, don't be surprised if other localities begin to issue such orders as NY has done in regards to church closures, which in turn will spread the mindset that if you need someone to blame other than the politicians, those Bible believing Christians are next in line.

The media has often associated Evangelicals with support for Trump and now some are taking direct fire at that association in spreading the blame.

The New York Times ran a disturbing piece last week with the title:

'The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals'

Subtitled, “Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies."

According to Katherine Stewart, the author of the article, "Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown."

Other articles in the media have already sowed the seeds of such divisiveness when the White House previously released a picture of the vice president praying with the coronavirus task force in his West Wing office.

After the taskforce prayer photo began circulating on social media, it didn't take long for some on the political left to mock the prayer or take offense to it.


Hemant Mehta, who writes for Patheos.com's "Friendly Atheist" blog, wrote that "it's not a joke when people say these Republicans are trying to stop a virus with prayer."

"What else did anyone expect?" Mehta asked. "Science? Reason? Something sensible? Of course not. If this virus truly becomes a pandemic, we're at the mercy of people delusional enough to think their pleas to God will fix the problem. The same God who presumably created the virus, at least in their minds, will somehow make sure it hurts only a handful of Americans ... and a ton of Chinese people."

Dr. Angela Rassmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, also criticized the prayer.

"I have yet to attend a scientific meeting that begins in prayer," she wrote.

Thomas Chatterton Williams, a writer with the New York Times Magazine, shared the photo on Twitter and commented that "we are so screwed."

Conclusion by Pastor Boyd

Of course none of this finger pointing is helpful, honestly it is hateful and a plant in people’s minds by the devil. Instead of blaming the virus they blame the innocent, just like the Jews were blamed in world War 2; in other words there is no logical sense to any of it. We should at this point in history know who the author of chaos, confusion, and disorder is don’t we?

As Satan and his minions grow in strength and power so do believers in Christ grow in power and strength.

The great move of God known as the Welsh revival that touched Wales soon after the turn of the 20th century portends the "lightning" of yet another awakening, according to Wallace Henley.

God is up to something huge, he says in his new book, “Call Down Lightning: What the Welsh Revival Reveals About the End Times.” And it's that particular revival and historical cycle that reveals the world is about to see a fresh outpouring of the Spirit.

The Welsh revival, Henley says, "is prototypical of what Jesus predicts for the end of the age. That is, it's a sample on a small scale of the great global revival that He predicts in Matthew 24 and Matthew 13 when there will be mass harvests of people coming into the Kingdom."

The coming revival will be very sudden, just like the Welsh revival was, and will encompass every social group in the culture, he said.

"It will be the promise of God made manifest in the redemption of whole societies," he said.

Christians need not fear the end times, he went on to say. Indeed, Jude refers to this time as the "blessed hope." But many Christians tend to view them as a period of awful dread, he said.

"Yes, there will be suffering. Jesus said there will be many tribulations," he stressed, "but He said this is the beginning of birth pangs the beginning of many sorrows. He didn't say that was the summation of the end."

The end times began with the ministry, atonement, and the ascension of Jesus Christ, he emphasized.

"We've been living in the end times for two millennia and as the end times approach we not only will see the tensions and stresses that we're experiencing but we've got to look beyond that and see the tremendous fruit," Henley elaborated.

"So I say to every church: Get ready for the harvest. Do all possible to be ready for the harvest."

The metaphor of lightning Henley uses, both in the title and throughout the book, is that the charge is first built up in the ground and then the ground literally draws the lighting. And so it is spiritually, Henley said.

"God wants to come. The lightning is in the cloud. He wants to send revival. But He moves on us through crisis, through hardship, through dark times. He moves on us to begin to pray for that, to release that. He limits Himself at the point of our freedom. And He sovereignly moves and brings about those conditions that will cause us to move, to cry out to it," Henley said.

When Henley was a congressional aide, it occurred to him on one particular day as he watched members of the House of Representatives vote that they were elected by the people they represent to voice the desire of the people they represent.

"What a picture of intercession," he thought to himself that day.

Anytime a piece of legislation is presented in Congress it's because of a need that arises in a congressional district served by the congressman, and that person is voting on behalf of all those people.

The Church of Jesus Christ, then, is God's House of Representatives. The remnant of people on the Earth who have the authority on the Earth to cast the proverbial ballot through their prayers, he elaborated.

Henley writes extensively about Evan Roberts, a Methodist minister at the forefront of the Welsh revival in 1904–1905, who led meetings at which hundreds upon hundreds of people repented and professed faith in Jesus Christ.

Roberts was known to tarry for hours in prayer with the Lord in solitude and had visions of God doing miraculous things. Though he was a devout Christian and spent his childhood memorizing Scripture and studying the Bible, he had no formal education or theological training. Yet God used him mightily.

"God chooses the lowly things, the things the world counts as foolish, the things that are not in the sense of the world's reputation," Henley says of how God worked through Roberts, referencing 1 Corinthians 1:27–28.

And it's His heart to use people today whom the world regards as unimportant, he stressed.

"You are mighty in the Kingdom when you call down lighting, when you call out to God for revival," he says to readers who have long prayed for God to move again.

"The deeper the darkness the brighter the light. So I anticipate that with the profound darkness of our times, that when revival comes it's going to come in a very explosive, dynamic form," Henley said, when asked about the state of the United States.

More than anything he hopes “Call Down Lighting” will be used as a catalyst for revival in congregations all over the world.

"Revival is not going to come through the Republican Party or the Democrat Party, or to America, or anywhere if it doesn't come to the Church. The Church is the key. And I hope church leaders will catch a new vision for the critical nature of the Church and its role in God's great cosmic plan."

Yes this new revival is coming and it is up to you the believer to pray it down.