I wonder how familiar we are with David and the census and the plague? You can read about it in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. For whatever reason....pride probably....David wanted a census to be taken....'pride'....because it would show how strong Israel was. His commander Joab questioned him about it but David gave the order anyway for the census to be taken.
The results of the census are given in 1 Samuel as Israel having 800,000 men able to use a sword....and Judah 500,000.....but Chronicles lists Israel as 1.1 million men.....and Judah with 470,000. It appears that Chronicles listed more than just men trained for battle. Whatever the explanation David knew right away that he had 'greatly sinned' by conducting the census.
God gave him three options on the judgment to be handed down to him....and David took the third option.....pestilence. You need to read both accounts with a little bit of help from a study bible because this isn't something that God offered every day....and there is more than one area here that we need help on. 70,000 people died of the plague the first day....and God stopped it....even before the plague reached all areas of the nation.
We have over ten times the number of deaths in America in this pandemic....but probably a hundred times the population of Israel and Judah at the time. God's methods in this may have been unusual....but bringing a plague as judgment was not.
Now the world certainly doesn't see this pandemic as judgment from God....but I don't know if the church even considers it as judgment....and if it does....the judgment is probably on the unbelieving world and the evil Democrat Party and not us.
From day one of our part in this pandemic....that which was most on our mind was the 2020 election. Had our pulpits spoken up it might have been different....but they did not. Add to this the roar of the lion....where Donald Trump was a no-show in the pandemic at first....then reluctantly agreed to some of the restrictions he was advised to give....and then got tired of that and began to harp on Fauci and others....then came the unsuccessful election....and all hell broke loose....and I'm not just being figurative in that assessment.
Today....not only do we not even come close to thinking about God's judgment....we ridicule the entire matter. Good men and women.....dedicated men and women in the field of science....have had their reputations destroyed. I am 71 years old.....and have followed politics for over a half century....and have been a flag waving radical conservative evangelical for decades.....but this before me every day in the form of talk radio and Fox and MAGA and January 6 and purging and destroying is no more what we were at one time than how the Democrat Party today is nothing even similar to what it had once been!
The pandemic was not the first of judgments on us....and it won't be the last....but you see....evangelicalism today wants to make America great again....it doesn't want to hear anything about Jesus coming back in judgment....for we have plans....and there is no place in those plans for any tribulation or Antichrist or Jesus returning.
