And the food supply is being devastated by the ever-increasing population.

In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”  Three days without food will often turn friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor, and in some cases, relative against relative. It will also turn decent people into criminals and, in some cases, turn well-bred people into cannibals.

No stable person will go berserk after not eating for three days, but when the fear of starvation is added, panic will soon follow.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote that the population expands in times of plenty until there is not enough food (and other resources) to feed the people. A relentless struggle for food causes tremendous pressure and distress in a region. Even in difficult times, the drive for “a virtuous attachment” (marriage) is so strong that the problem will worsen with additional children making any permanent improvement of the poor impossible. His basic premise was when times are good, the population increases, and the increase tends to consume resources, making it difficult for the less fortunate.

Malthusianism is in our world today, often with missionary zeal, to cut the population by prohibiting marriage, limiting family size, and even using the radical schemes of forced abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Even aborting handicapped babies after their birth and killing off those born without the possibility of a “quality life.”

Malthus posited that since population growth will always outrun the food supply, any improvement of humankind is impossible unless harsh limits on reproduction are imposed. He suggested late marriages and “moral restraint” (abstinence), wars, and disease would help keep a balance between the population and the food supply. Others added birth control; however, Malthus was an English preacher and did not recommend birth control.

When favorable weather produces abundant crops, the population is generally healthy and happy. They tend to keep having children in abundance. We are told the tendency toward marriage is a constant struggle and hinders any improvement in the condition of the poor. Therefore, the population increases, causing distress and pressure for additional food and other resources. Malthus considered society doomed to famine, disease, poverty, misery, and death; however, later marriages, sexual abstinence, and celibacy would help mitigate the suffering of the poor.

He lived in the mid-1700s and did not see the Industrial Revolution galloping his way from 1760 to about 1840. He did not anticipate machines run by steam, water, air, or electricity doing the work of scores of men. He also failed to see the rise of contraceptives that permitted families to have two or three children instead of five or six—or more.

Hunger, disease, and war decrease the population requiring less food; and birth control, postponement of marriage, and celibacy further help to keep the world in balance.

He thought natural causes such as accidents, old age, famine, and “vice,” including infanticide, murder, contraception, and homosexuality, could stop excessive population growth. But he didn’t have any hope of escaping massive famine.

When good times continue and the population increases, it threatens everyone; consequently, since more people live longer, the elderly, handicapped, and unproductive are “useless eaters.”

The famines in India (which happened about every ten years for decades) were necessary to keep the “excess” population in check. Officials even prohibited private charities from taking food into famine-stricken areas! The Malthusian theory also “influenced British policies in Ireland during the 1840s, in which relief measures during the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) were neglected, and mass starvation was seen as a natural and inevitable consequence of the island’s supposed over-population.”

Enter the Germans. In 1920, a world-shaking book was published by Germans Karl Binding and Dr. Alfred Hoche with the English title, Permission to Destroy Life Devoid of Value or Permitting the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life. It addressed the legal relationship between suicide and euthanasia and then extended it to killing the mentally ill. The book suggested that killing a patient was justifiable when it led to other lives being saved, mainly when the patient in question was of no value to themselves or society. The book advocates killing the mentally ill or the intellectually dead, especially since such people were a drain on society.

The expression “life unworthy of life,” which appeared first in this book, was essential to Nazi ideology. The two authors, a lawyer, and a physician, were not political and were not National Socialists. They were academics dealing with a very delicate subject. Does the state have the right to kill some people for the good of many? Does the state have a right to decide when a life is not productive?

That question has not been answered, in my opinion.

Food or the lack of it is a significant issue in our time because if not enough food is available, then everything comes down. I have never seen such an emphasis on food and its potential unavailability. It is no longer only an issue for the preppies, but for everyone since everyone eats.

People are becoming more aware of their total dependence on others for that which is indispensable—food. Past generations would have been horrified of such reliance.

With the absence of food, anarchy prevails, followed by famine. Shortage of food is one thing, but the lack of food is a disaster. Paul Lee Tan gave a peasant’s description of the Russian Famine from 1932 to 1933. “We’ve eaten everything we could lay our hands on—cats, dogs, field-mice, birds. When it’s light tomorrow you will see the trees stripped of bark…And the horse manure has been eaten. Sometimes there are whole grains in it.”

Americans have little experience with food shortage on a national scale and no examples of massive starvation in our country.

No longer is a food shortage, food interruption, and food unavailability discussed only by the fringe groups, but highly placed officials and politicians are concerned. President Biden said of the food shortage, “Yes, it’s gonna be real.” Food prices are at their highest since records began 60 years ago.

That’s one time Biden got it right.

The concern is already here, and it will worsen as grocery stores run out of major items early in the day, then they will no longer have those items at all. Then, many people will go from anxious to apprehension to anarchy—the nine meals have been missed. It is one thing to be fearful of food shortages but another to have a fear of starvation, then the fact starvation.

It will get super serious as some borderline people become irresponsible. Some parents will take what they want to feed their children. The cities would become unlivable as food riots occur as otherwise decent people use force to take what they feel they need—if not deserve. Understand this is not speculation. It has always happened in all societies. As seen before, truckers would refuse to enter the rioting cities, further exacerbating the problem.

Henry Kissinger declared in The Final Days, “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”  In a 1974 National Security Memo, he also declared, “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”

If you don’t think many public officials will promote plans to diminish, deplete, and destroy elements of a population to keep order (and their jobs), you live in an alternate universe. And you don’t know history.

Our Great Food Disaster has already started.

 The Great Famine was one of the great disasters of human history. The world-class disaster started when a physical chill settled on Europeans of the 14th century. The Baltic Sea froze twice, followed by unseasonably cold years of gradually shorter growing seasons that meant disaster. Rain started in 1315 and continued for 7 years, especially in the summers. Crop failures lasted through 1316 until the summer harvest in 1317.

In 1315, it rained so much, people talked of Noah’s flood. Crops failed, and people all over Europe died of starvation. People began to harvest wild edible roots, grasses, nuts, and bark in the forests. They ate their own children, and people in Poland took down hanged men from the scaffold and ate them. Food scarcity prompted prison inmates to kill new inmates and “devoured them half alive.” The time was conspicuous for severe crime levels, rampage, disease, mass death, cannibalism , and infanticide.

Almost everyone was hungry since 95% of the population consisted of peasants who had no reserve food supplies and no money to purchase if any were available for sale. During this time, people did not think or act rationally. They butchered their draft animals and ate their seed grain, guaranteeing continued famine. Many abandoned their children, yet some elderly people chose not to eat to ensure food for the young.

During this period, life expectancy was shockingly low. During the Great Famine and the Plague, it was a little under 30 years, and between 1348 and 1375, life expectancy was only 17 years! Lack of food and a deadly plague will do that to a population.

All that was area-wide, including a few nations; however, some experts tell us we are facing a world famine, first in Africa, Bangladesh, South American nations, Middle East nations, and China, then Europe and the United States.

And those populations are all headed in your direction!

Governments and do-good organizations will do something even if it is wrong. The World Economic Forum (WEF) just finished its annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, expressing concern about the world’s future because of the reliance on meat in our diets. They recommend everyone swear an oath to veganism and eat seaweed, algae, cacti, and avocado seeds. Gamblers can safely bet the farm that the billionaires in Davos did not eat algae.

God warns us in I Timothy 4:3 in the last days men would forbid the eating of meat and abstaining from marriage!

Suppose you’re stranded on a leaking lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with 5 other people. The problem is the boat will only hold 4, so two passengers must jump overboard or be thrown overboard.  One passenger is CEO of a major corporation; another is a surgeon skilled in saving helpless children; another is Stacey Abrams, pretender to the Georgia Governor’s office; another is a glib college student, and an unemployed person recently fired and now waiting for the results of a recent job application.  The boat is leaking badly. Two of you have to go. Whom do you throw overboard? I don’t think the unemployed man has to worry about his job application, nor will the college student have to worry about his student loans. Both are expendable.

The obvious point is people have different values in today’s world, but no person or board or any political entity has the authority to decide on a person’s worth.

But then, if Stacey would choose to do the manly thing and jump overboard, that would solve the theoretical problem. However, the food problem is not theoretical. And Stacey’s decision, like all her decisions, is totally irrelevant.

Today, leaders who allegedly are levelheaded, honest, informed, and concerned say starvation is ahead, first in third world nations then here.

Have you planted your garden yet?

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 20 books, the most recent, Reflections of a Lifetime Fundamentalist: No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets! The eBook is available at Amazon.com for $4.99. Other titles at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles and click here to support  his work with a donation.)

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” – John Bunyan

The Black Death (bubonic plague) is not simply a fearful fact in history but is still with us today. The CDC reported that in recent decades there are about seven cases annually in the western U.S. Colorado reported 22 cases of the bubonic plague between 2005 to 2020, and the Daily Mail reported a ten-year-old girl died in early July 2021of the plague. In 2015, four people died of the plague nationwide.

Bubonic plague is called Black Death because body parts such as fingers and toes turn black with gangrene. Death occurs within 2 to 7 days, often sooner. Its deadlier form, known as pneumonic plague, can prove deadly within 24 hours of onset and can be transmitted through the air.

CCN reported on July 6, 2020, “The infamous Bubonic Plague, also known as the ‘Black Death,’ has claimed two lives in Western Mongolia and infected a few in the Chinese region of inner Mongolia….China has become a Petri dish of deadly diseases lately….Judging by the craziness 2020 has brought us so far, one might think nothing could surprise us anymore. Well, think again. Bubonic plague, the one that killed half of Europe back in the 13th century, has just made a comeback in China and Mongolia.” One hundred and forty-six people were put in quarantine.

On February 20, 2021, The Independent reported bubonic plague  killed at least 31 people and sickened over 500 in the Biringi area of Ituri Province in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo between November 15 and December 13 of 2020. The health minister said, ‘We have more than 520 cases … of which more than 31 have been fatal.’”

New evidence supports the contention that bubonic plague started much earlier in China than thought. According to dental samples, the October 22, 2015, issue of Cell published a study revealing that Black Death was present in China almost 3,300 years ago. “They found the DNA of Yersinia pestis bacteria in seven individuals, the oldest of which walked the earth around 2794 B.C.”

What was thought to be the first recorded case of the bubonic plague was in China in 224 B.C., and it struck again in the first worldwide bubonic plague in A.D. 540 at Pelusium, Egypt. This was during the reign of Emperor Justinian, known as “the emperor that never sleeps.” The plague spread to all parts of the known world in sixty years. The dead lay unburied in the streets, and “at length, ten thousand persons died each day at Constantinople.” The people of Constantinople became desperate with all the bodies, so they placed them anywhere they could. It got worse as the black horse of famine galloped through the city streets because mills, where corn was ground, stopped operating.

Historian William Rosen wrote in his book Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe, the plague “would mark the end of one world and the beginning of another. Along the way, it would consume at least 25 million human lives.” Some say half of Europe’s people (100 million) were killed before the plague left in the 700s.

The contemporary historian John of Ephesus described the scene of destruction at Constantinople in the following words — “noble and chaste women, dignified with honour, who sat in bed chambers, now with their mouths swollen, wide open and gaping, who were piled up in horrible heaps, all ages lying prostrate, all staturers bowed down and overthrown, all ranks pressed on upon another, in a single wine-press of God’s wrath, like beasts, not like human beings.”

Bubonic plague even attacked Emperor Justinian, but he survived; however, his Empire did not. The invisible bug brought an end to the Byzantine Empire and began the Middle Ages. The question is: how will bubonic plague and other deadly pestilences impact America?

The plague returned in 1339 and became known as the Black Death, Great Mortality, and Great Pestilence, killing millions. Others died during a seven-year famine called “the famine before the plague.” In August of 1347, the plague haughtily marched into England, killing millions more. One Italian wrote, “Its victims ate lunch with their friends and [ate] dinner with their ancestors in paradise.”  This epidemic claimed an astonishing 20 million lives in just four years.

The bubonic plague cut its way through the Far East to Italy and then to Europe. It is thought that Genoa merchants transported plague in their cargoes of spices, nutmeg, jewels, and silks. In Siena, Italy, 75% of the people were cut down like grain before the scythe. As described in the Cronica Senese by Agnolo di Tura in 1348, “The victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath the armpits and in the groin and fall over while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight. And so they died. None could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship.”

Pestilences have a horrific record in mankind’s history and have produced massive problems of civil disorder, disruption of labor, economic disaster, rebellion, and the demise of whole populations. Government officials, bishops, and the Roman Emperor accused Jews, lepers, beggars, and gypsies of spreading the plague by poisoning water wells resulting in the massacre of entire communities of men, women, and children for those alleged crimes.

In Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, Jews were massacred as the cause of the plague since rumors were rife that they had poisoned city water systems. In Strasbourg, 2,000 Jews were burned alive, and 3,000 Jews were slaughtered in Mainz. Rulers in Poland and Lithuania offered a haven to Jews starting a mass Jewish migration to those nations.

The King of Sweden believed fasting on a Friday and not wearing shoes on Sunday would appease God and stop the plague. However, lice on rats were the cause, not God, and the plague continued killing two of the king’s brothers and moved capriciously to Russia and Greenland.

The deadly plague lashed the face of Russia in 1351, and in 1353. It retreated but never disappeared, coming back sporadically but not killing millions again until another outbreak in the 1600s that also greatly reduced the population of Europe.

The face of London was smashed by the plague in 1348 and about every ten years thereafter until the plague of 1665. In 300 years, the city experienced 40 epidemics. During those times, about 20 percent of the living in London died of plague.

The Great Plague of 1665 was one of the worst of the numerous outbreaks, killing 100,000 Londoners in just seven months.

The most significant change that came with the pandemic was the end of serfdom in Western Europe as the lord of the manor no longer had a stranglehold on his serfs. The serfs were in great demand, so they could not be forced to stay with their lifetime lord. Homes were empty, businesses closed, and the land lay idle. A laborer became worth far more since workers were few. The survivors had better opportunities for work and increased wages.

The fifteenth century brought prosperity since numerous houses were empty after infected people fled their farms and businesses for hopeless healing and protection elsewhere. Moreover, the plague broke down the common divisions between the upper and lower classes, which led to the rise of a new middle class.

The Black Death outbreaks in the sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries claimed the lives of up to 200 million people, about 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population! And all eruptions started in China!

Bubonic Plague lashed the face of Europe in the Middle Ages, killing half the population in some cities, more in others. The presence of plague, unknown to most people, is still with us today, even in America.

Now the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that bubonic plague is spreading in parts of Madagascar (island nation just east of southern Africa), and a “weak health care system means it may spread farther.” The WHO reported that as of August 1, 2017, Madagascar was experiencing “a large outbreak of plague.” These cases were “unusually severe.” After November 2017, a total of 2119 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of plague, including 187 deaths, were reported by the Ministry of Health of Madagascar to WHO.

Today, most plague deaths are in Africa, particularly the Congo. Other areas with regular outbreaks are Tanzania, Madagascar, Vietnam, Peru, China, Mongolia, and, occasionally, the U.S.

What does that portend for America?

It seems many people think (and knowledgeable Christians know) that earthquakes, famines, wars, and rumors of wars are an indication of the end of the world as we know it. No, I’m not a pessimist; that teaching comes from the Bible—and an old Time magazine cover screamed, “The End of the World.” Yes, we have seen disasters before but not with such frequency and intensity. Nations could be destroyed as they have in the past.

Muslim religious scholars taught that the plague was a “martyrdom and mercy” from God, assuring the believer’s place in paradise. For non-believers, it was a punishment from Allah. Some Muslim doctors cautioned against preventing or curing a disease sent by Allah.

Pope Francis even promised forgiveness of sins to all Chinese coronavirus victims and their caregivers. Francis is a usurper of authority spewing false hope to superstitious, susceptible, and suffering people.

Historically, the Black Death visited many major cities, but necessary border controls at some city gates, harbors, and mountain passes kept the disease at bay and some cities did not have many deaths. However, when the plague arrived in an area, it often killed 70% of the population!

National Geographic revealed the bacterium has even been researched as a biological weapon by some countries! Known nations experimenting with biological weapons are Iraq, Iran, Libya, China, Russia, and North Korea.

It is not demagoguery to suggest that the world could become a massive graveyard since the Black Death is still very much with us, as is the Chinese coronavirus.

I will sleep well tonight because I trust the sovereign God who is in control; however, while mankind cannot thwart the future, he can make preparation for the knowns and try to mitigate the unknowns.

I hope you also sleep well tonight, pilgrim.  

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 20 books, the most recent, Reflections of a Lifetime Fundamentalist: No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets! The eBook is available at Amazon.com for $4.99. Other titles at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D., and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles and click here to support  his work with a donation.)

In A.D. 250, the Roman Empire was in turbulence. The Goths had just won a major victory and the barbarians were at the gates of Rome. Barbarians originally meant any non-Greek people but eventually came to mean “a brutal, cruel, warlike people.” Then the plague of Saint Cyprian lashed the empire for fifteen years with wave after wave smashing the same areas. Its spread was facilitated by numerous military activities that were going on throughout the provinces. It was a time of terrible tragedy that pushed people to the brink of despair.

An indication of the conditions prevalent at the time can be seen in the statement of Heinrich Häser, a German medical author: “Men crowded into the large cities; only the nearest fields were cultivated; the more distant ones became overgrown, and were used as hunting preserves; farm land had no value, because the population had so diminished that enough grain to feed them could be grown on the limited cultivated areas. Hieronymus wrote that the human race had been all but destroyed.”

Much of the face of Italy was changed because of this epidemic. Large parts of the land were depopulated and left vacant. Swamps appeared and the earth was returning to a state of desert and forests. Disease was changing the face of the earth in every way. There were problems in the palace and bickering on the battlefields. The soldiers were often unpaid because the pestilence sapped the wealth and the cash flow slowed. Rebellious soldiers broke rank and fled into the forests, and took what they wanted from those trying to eke out an existence from the land. Military insurrections, civil disorders, and civil wars became common while the Roman Empire continued to crack along its foundations.

An indication of the extent of national trouble during times of disease, destruction, and death can be seen in desperate laws passed during Diocletian‘s reign (ruled 285-305). Farmers were forbidden to leave the farms to take up other jobs and some occupations were made hereditary. That simply meant that a son had to follow his father’s trade or profession. Yes, it was tyrannical but when you are poor without much of a future, the chain doesn’t seem too heavy! Just one more burden to bear.

Caesar had trouble “keeping them down on the farms” once they had been to the city. Moreover, after mutinous soldiers had robbed the country people and tax collectors had confiscated their money and crops (calling it–like today–taxes), the country people looked for other means to make a living. Those laws, forcing people to work at certain occupations, were passed because famine and epidemic had killed so many of the workers leaving critical jobs vacant.

The marching armies, fleeing populations, and famine all contributed to conditions that were inviting pestilence. The empire was crumbling and dying by the fifth-century with the Vandals, Goths, and other barbarians still beating on the gates of Rome. (Many were already in the Empire having crossed the Pyrenees into Spain.) The first of the barbarians to sack Rome were the Visigoths, led by Alaric in 410. Alaric‘s hopes of glory faded when he developed symptoms of malaria and soon died. His successful storming of the city signaled the final decline of the Roman Empire in the West, but it had been crumbling for many years from various internal problems. The mighty Alaric fell because of a mosquito bite!

In 455, the Vandals appeared at the gates of Rome, entered for a few weeks, and then left the city for Carthage! Angelo Celli suggested they were driven out by malaria. Thousands of infected people threw themselves into the Tiber River to hasten death and escape lingering pain. It was a time of famine, fear, and fighting–and pestilence. At this time, as if Rome were not having enough trouble, faraway Britain experienced a relentless epidemic.

The barbarians had been moving in human waves from east to west during the troubled early fifth century and were now settled along the Danube–in Roman territory. They had already knocked down the gates of Rome and had settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. Now they were interested in Britain. Vortigern, Britain‘s leader, had his back to the wall as he faced other barbarians from the north (the Picts and Scots), and the Venerable Bede reported that Vortigern called upon the Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, for help. Desperate leaders thought it wise to settle barbarians within their empire to furnish troops to aid in the defense of the empire. It worked–for a while.

Bede wrote: “…a severe plague fell upon that corrupt generation [Britain], which soon destroyed such numbers of them, that the living were scarcely sufficient to bury the dead….They consulted what was to be done, and where they should seek assistance to prevent or repel the cruel and frequent incursions of the northern nations; and they all agreed with their King Vortigern to call over to their aid, from the parts beyond the sea, the Saxon nation; which, as the event still more evidently showed, appears to have been done by the appointment of our Lord Himself, that evil might fall upon them for their wicked deeds.”

Apparently Britain‘s fighting forces were greatly depleted by the plague. The Saxons arrived in 449 and acted as mercenary guards for the Britons. The Brits discovered that their “help” was to be another “plague” upon their island. Everything would be different because of the Saxons, who came to help but ended up being a plague. Bede recognized that the pugnacious Saxons were a curse from God because of Britain’s wickedness.

Hans Zinsser, physician and author concludes: “It requires little exercise of the imagination, therefore, to conclude that the history of the British Isles in all its subsequent developments of race, customs, architecture, and so forth, was in large part determined by an epidemic disease.” Britain would never be the same because of an invisible bug!

And neither will we!

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY  Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

More people died as a result of the Spanish flu than died in World War I–on both sides! During the Crimean War (1854-56), ten times more British soldiers died of dysentery than from all the Russian weapons combined! Moreover, 50 years later, during the Boer War, there were five times more deaths from disease than from enemy fire.

From the dawn of history, mankind has experienced times of sickness, sorrow, and suffering. Often, times of pestilence were mysterious, sudden, and without remedy. Lack of knowledge, superstition, and poor sanitary conditions often contributed to the progress of the pestilence. Men often felt that God was visiting them with plague to punish their evil deeds. The disease was usually dreadful, devastating, and deadly and often left as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared. Now, we face another deadly possibility: the Ebola virus (EVD). Plus, there are Islamic terrorists with the ability, equipment, funds, and commitment to wreak destruction, disease, and death on a massive scale.

Throughout history, people often reacted out of fear and ignorance, and that only compounded the problem, extending the pestilence. They ran from the towns, but found that when they arrived in a “safe haven” they were met by the same pestilence! Of course, the pestilence had been a traveling companion. Hopefully, the mistakes make in the past will not be repeated in the future. Our present threat could come from Ebola, a nuclear blast, poisoned water or food supply, or biological agents sprayed over a metropolitan area. It might simply be numerous suicide attacks in scattered malls and churches.

The further one goes back into history, the less reliable are the numbers of dead, and the less assurance we have of the pestilence that took them; however, it is a fact that mankind has suffered far more from bugs than from battles.

My use the word plague is a general term for any deadly epidemic disease since even the experts can‘t identify some of the major plagues of the past.

We know that malaria hit Italy in the first-century B.C., and that the dead were in all the houses, and the streets were crowded with funeral processions. Many who had mourned a stricken relative died themselves with such rapidity that they were burned on the same pyre as those they had mourned.

An epidemic that lashed the whole world started in Verus’ Roman army while his troops were fighting in the East in A.D. 165. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, the original infection came from a chest in a temple which Roman soldiers had looted. God warned about those who are greedy for gain in Proverbs 1:19, reminding us that it would cost the lives of the greedy souls. The results of this thievery cost the lives of millions of innocent souls. Verus’ army carried the disease homeward, scattering it everywhere, and by the time they reached Rome, the disease had spread from Persia to the shores of the Rhine, a world plague. Hans Zinsser, American physician, bacteriologist, and prolific author, quoted Orosius’ report that deaths were so many that some cities in Italy were abandoned and fell into decay.

There was so much terror of the disease that no one dared nurse the sick and dying. It even killed Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, who was among the 2,000 per day that died in that city.

In the epidemic of Cyprian about A.D. 251, the plague skulked through Egypt, leaving the dead and dying, and then boldly attacked Rome and Greece where the daily dead rose to 5,000! It spread over the entire world, from Egypt to Scotland. It was during this plague that the custom of wearing black as an indication of mourning became common, according to Roman Catholic historian Baronius (1538-1607).

The pestilence of A.D. 302, had a companion—famine. The people resorted to eating grass, and the deaths from famine almost matched those dying from disease. Hungry dogs fought over the bodies of the human dead. Hieronymus tells us that the human race had been “all but destroyed,” and that the earth was returning to a state of desert and forests.

Headlines last week reported: “UN predicts global famine” if Ebola continues to explode. Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response revealed that “Ebola got a head start on us.” He also said, “It [Ebola] is far ahead of us, it is running faster than us, and it is winning the race,” adding “We either stop Ebola now or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan.” Note, “We do not have a plan.”

So, maybe Ebola [EVD] or terrorism will do to us what Hieronymus reported about the human race in 302 A.D.–it had been “all but destroyed,” and the earth was returning to a state of desert and forests.

God help us! World health officials have not been very helpful!

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”