Most people are uninterested in what priests from mainline denominations have to say. I can hardly blame them since so much of it is utter nonsense. We still have a priestly caste that has authority, though: doctors, scientists, experts in general and politicians, although the lustre of the latter has become tarnished of late. The reason for this is that we like to be told what to do: freedom, as Dostoyevsky noted, is a burden which we are only too eager to give away to whoever offers to relieve us of it.
As a result, we sheep listen keenly for our shepherd’s call and follow him where he leads.
Jeremiah encountered false prophets who insisted that everything would turn out fine:
Jeremiah 23:16ff
[16] A Message from GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies: “Don’t listen to the sermons of the prophets. It’s all hot air. Lies, lies, and more lies. They make it all up. Not a word they speak comes from me.
[17] They preach their ‘Everything Will Turn Out Fine’ sermon to congregations with no taste for God, Their ‘Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen to You’ sermon to people who are set in their own ways.
[18] “Have any of these prophets bothered to meet with me ,the true GOD? bothered to take in what I have to say? listened to and then lived out my Word?
[19] Look out! GOD’s hurricane will be let loose— my hurricane blast, Spinning the heads of the wicked like tops!
[20] God’s raging anger won’t let up Until I’ve made a clean sweep, completing the job I began. When the job’s done, you’ll see that it’s been well done.
We have been assured by our medical experts that taking one or a combination of the readily available COVID-19 vaccines will save us. Such is the fervour of these priestly panjandrums and their devotees that the vaccination ritual has taken on a eucharistic aura. Selfies of the first dose rite are posted on Facebook, garnering enthusiastic approval and congratulations; new converts feverishly – literally in some cases – proselytize their friends to partake of the Dose; scorn is heaped on the reluctant.
What lies underneath all this? Does it have a spiritual aspect?
It now seems plausible that the COVID-19 virus was man-made in the Chinese Wuhan laboratory as part of their gain of function research – a process partially funded by the US National Institutes of Health. Which goes to show that the existence of a conspiracy theory is not evidence of the absence of a conspiracy. So, the havoc that has been visited on mankind was, in all likelihood, self-inflicted.
Our efforts to extricate ourselves are mainly focussed on vaccines, all of which (in North America, at least) have been produced or tested using a kidney dissected from a baby girl aborted in 1972 (the HEK-293 cell line) or the iris of another baby aborted in 1985 (the PER.C6 cell line). This may or may not fill you with unease; in my case, it does.
The Catholic church is one of the few denominations that have made a statement on the morality of taking a vaccine whose development relied on an aborted baby (the Anglican Church – even ACNA- has yet to make an even flabby pronouncement on it). To summarise the Catholic position: it is morally acceptable to take such a vaccine if no alternative is available because the abortion was not performed for the express purpose of harvesting the baby’s organs for sale to a laboratory; that was incidental to the abortion and the use of the vaccine is not encouraging further abortions. There is no material cooperation with the evil act of abortion. In my view, the argument is flawed for a couple of reasons. Here is one: it has recently come to light that the university of Pittsburgh has been aborting babies by induction so that they remain intact, a requirement for optimal organ harvesting. The babies may still be alive when they are induced; indeed, they may still be alive when they are dissected. The organs, once removed, are sold to laboratories for medical experiments, just as the kidney and iris were to develop our COVID-19 vaccines. To consume the vaccine is to grant tacit assent to a demonic abomination, an abomination which would have no reason to continue if all refused to inject the fruit of its macabre experiments.
One of the enduring conceits of mankind has been that we are in command of our own destiny. “The vaccine will give us our freedom back”, we are told. “It will ‘flatten the curve’” – remember that? “You will be able to travel, take off your mask, eat in restaurants, hug your grandchildren, go to baseball games” and so forth. I vaccinate, therefore I can ….. hug, dine out, travel – insert your choice distraction.
But what if God is in control, not us? What if this is His judgement on an evil generation? What if He is waiting for us to repent?
Countries that have instigated draconian lockdowns and mask mandates have not done significantly better than Sweden that didn’t.
Israel was the first country to start vaccinating people. The majority of the population has received two Pfizer injections. Yet this was the headline in yesterday’s Times of Israel:
Health officials predict thousands of seriously ill COVID patients within month
It goes on to say:
Israeli hospitals have to prepare for an influx of nearly 5,000 coronavirus patients within weeks, half of whom will need acute care to deal with severe bouts of COVID-19, health officials have warned Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, according to reports Wednesday.
An old friend of mine used to like telling me: “If you sup with the Devil make sure you use a long spoon”.
I’ll leave you with some questions: are we in control of this pandemic or is God? Is our priestly caste spouting piffle when they assure us that everything will be fine if we just do as they say or are we at a Jeremiah moment? If you take the vaccine, is your spoon long enough?
Well said and posted David, I think the most important questions remain (as above), “What if,….?
We have been living with a diet of daily COVID-19 news around the world for more than 17 months. Doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers continue to work hard to fight this deadly virus. There is no end in sight. No wonder, some people no longer believe that God is in control of the world. But, if God is not in control of the world, then who is? Do we really know the Christian God who created the entire universe long ago? Do we really know the Christian God who sent Jesus to save us long ago? Do we really know the Christian God who will transform the world into a new heaven and a new earth?
“Then it came to pass a pestilence fell on the city…in that delightful Land which is washed by the Delaware waters guarding its sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle stands on its banks…the City he founded…”
Canto V, ‘Evangeline’, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1847.
The Jeremiah-moment for every time for both Time and Eternity turns upon The Ultimate Question posed by our Sole Great Physician of spirit, soul and body:
“What think ye of Christ, whose son is He?” + Matthew 22:42.
Is He the son of Baal-again, Buddha, Mohammed, Darwin, Freud, or most latterly, Marx?
‘Evangeline’ had answered life’s + Crucial Question many years before the Pestilence came; thus, “on a Sabbath morn…she entered the door of the almshouse…the chambers of sickness…to follow meekly, with reverent steps, The Sacred Feet of her Saviour”.
I’m horrified by the abortion connection and made up my mind early on to have nothing to do with any vaccine so morally tainted. To accept it would be tantamount to accepting an organ transplant knowing that the organ had been forcibly harvested from a political prisoner like they do in China. God is in charge of my health in any case, so I’ll keep a clear conscience before Him and take my chances with any pathogen that comes along.
COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon. It is hard for me to understand why some countries have more active cases as of yesterday, e.g., 1999.6 cases/100,000 people in the U.S., 1925.5 in the U.K., 551.5 in Israel, in comparison to 42.5 in Canada, 2.45 in Taiwan, 0.91 in New Zealand, etc. Regardless, COVID-19 does teach us at least on thing: to change our focus away from this temporary world to our eternal home (Colossians 3:1-2; Hebrews 12:1-2). We can continue to trust God, knowing that our times are in His hands (Psalm 31:15).
An excellent post that demonstrates a keen moral clarity, which is sorely lacking in both church and state. This was an edifying read. Thank you.
I am reminded of the old joke about the man waiting on his roof during a flood for God to rescue him, and he rejects two boats and a helicopter as they come by. Having perished, he asks Peter at the gate “why didn’t you rescue me?” and Peter replies – we sent two boats and a helicopter!
And you do know, David, don’t you – that most doctors call miscarriages “abortions”?
I disagree with your first point, that the vaccine is God’s gift to man. Of course, I could be wrong; if I am, God should fire his current propaganda team and hire a new one.
Your second point:
makes no sense. A miscarriage is an accident, a doctor induced abortion is deliberate. If you really want to pursue that weird line of reasoning, murdering a person becomes equivalent to dying of natural causes because doctors call both “death”.
And you are certain that foetal tissue is always from a ‘doctor induced abortion’? I don’t think so! And i don’t appreciate you calling my line of reasoning ‘weird’! Just because i don’t agree with you doesn’t mean my reasoning is weird. That’s quite a slap in the face!
If your point is that the kidney dissected from the baby girl in 1972 that was sold to a lab to produce the HEK-293 cell line could have been from a miscarriage rather than an elective abortion, I refer you to research carried out by Dr. Alvin Wong on the ethics of the HEK293 cell line. His is the most comprehensive research on this that I am aware of. You can find it here. Here is an extract:
That and the fact that labs like to obtain “fresh” specimens seems to be sufficiently conclusive.
I confess, I interpreted your comment to be an attempt to imply an equivalence between a miscarriage and an abortion, my apologies if I had that wrong.
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Bothers me a lot too. Does anybody know if the HEK line can continue indefinitely? I read a bit about the limitations on divisions, many cell lines go cancerous after a period of time. But HEK may be ‘immortal’ in that sense.
It matters – if HEK can continue then no further abortions need to happen for vaccine development, theoretically. If not, then vaccines will require a new victim in due course.
Do not do evil for good to result. Indeed. But if the evil has already been done and no further evil is required, and something that may be good is now possible, should we reject it because of the original taint? Not a theoretical question, rather one I’m wresting with.
The challenge of living in a fallen world….
My understanding is that the HEK-293 cell line can be regenerated indefinitely, but I don’t know for sure.
On your non-theoretical question: yes, it’s tricky. For my part, I’ve reached the decision that it’s not ethically legitimate to take the vaccine, largely for the reasons I’ve described in the article. I can understand why others might reach a different conclusion, though.
Attempting to compel others to do as you have done (or as the zeitgeist is dictating) is the position for which I have no sympathy.
Yes I agree, compelling others to follow the zeitgeist is as inevitable as it is wrong. It can change so easily – last years conspiracy theory about covid origins is this years acceptable theory. You’ve got to be willing to have your own backbone on this.
I reluctantly took the AZ based on my understanding that HEK is immortal. I’m less than comfortable with it still though. But I also bear in mind that so much of what we live on in society is built on sinful foundations. It’s like the tares and wheat – hard to divide until the final day.
It’s like being down to eating bug infested hard tack on a ship when all other food had run out. It seems you are forced to choose between the least of two weevils. ;P
There may be many medications and products either developed or tested using fetal cell lines..See 1 Corinthians 10: 24
Remember the Nuremberg Code, back when the Western World had some ethics and morals? No experimental medical interventions without informed consent.
I have had a horror of this vaccine since it was first proposed, and the more I find out about it, the more horror I have.