What the Coronavirus Has Exposed about Our Worldview

What the coronavirus has exposed about our worldview. Soren Kern joins us today here on the Christian Real View Radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, welcome to the program for this week as we discuss what the coronavirus, COVID-19, also known as, has exposed about our worldview. Now, this coronavirus continues to dominate not just the headlines but literally the way of life all over the world. Countries like Spain are not allowing citizens to leave their homes. Here in America, states have ordered closures of business along with almost unprecedented restrictions on other aspects of life like schools and businesses and elsewhere. Now, as of yesterday, May 20th, and it's risen from then, there were over 15,000 cases of coronavirus in America and about 250 deaths so far, according to the CDC.

Now, these numbers may not seem proportionate with the strong government actions being taken, but many health professionals are predicting case numbers and deaths will rise in the coming weeks and months if people aren't kept apart from each other. So, this weekend on the Christian Real View, Soren Kern, who's a geopolitical analyst with the Gatestone Institute, he joins us today all the way over from Spain live to discuss the cracks that this coronavirus has exposed worldwide, everything from how ill-prepared we are for any disruption to our way of life to how much we expect government to alleviate our problems. But there is some good news as well that we can all be thankful for, and let's bring Soren on and Soren, welcome to the Christian Real View all the way across the ocean in Spain. Thank you for having me. It's good to be with you.

Well, we're thankful to have you on the program today. Tell us first off, Soren, what is life like right now in Europe, in Spain, and in Spain there's been over a thousand deaths only behind Italy, China, and Iran. It's definitely afflicted that country a lot. Yeah, we've been on lockdown here in Spain for seven days now.

This is the seventh day. It's very shocking to see how life just comes to a standstill. No one is allowed to leave their homes except for emergency cases, to go to the supermarket, to go to a doctor.

People have pets to walk their dogs. The lockdown here is being enforced very heavily. There's a very, very large police presence and military presence, and people who are outside, who do not have a justification for being outside, are being issued citations.

There have been some cases where people have resisted arrest, and the sanctions for something like that, it's up to 12 years in prison. So the government here is taking the matters very seriously. Wow. Again, Soren Kern with us today in the Christian Real View coming to us from Spain. He writes for the Gatestone Institute. Their website is gatestoneinstitute.org. Just search for his name there.

You can get his weekly or his regular column. How has it gotten so bad in Italy? They've had over 4,000 deaths, the most of any country, Soren. Yeah, the situation here in Europe is essentially out of control.

The Italians were very late, as were the rest of the European countries in getting a hold of this. I fear that even with these lockdowns, Italy has been in lockdown for 12 days now, and the number of deaths are exponentially increasing. We had over 600 deaths in Italy just yesterday, the largest single daily death toll. And so the numbers also of infected people in Italy is increasing at a very large rate, over 45,000 people there, not 47,000, I think, today. And the numbers here in Spain are also very alarming.

After a week in lockdown, the numbers have jumped by almost 3,000 new cases. The similar situation is playing itself out in Germany. Germany has had a high number of cases, but a low number of deaths. They've only had about 67 deaths as of the last reporting that I saw.

How is that the case, that they've had high cases but low deaths? Well, the number of infected people jumped today by almost 4,000, and the number of deaths is rising as well. So I think that in the case of Germany, it's very strange, but the demographic of people who are being infected is very young. Most of the people who have been infected in Germany are under the age of 60. That is not the case in Italy, where most of the people are elderly people and more vulnerable to this virus.

But I think we're going to be seeing in the next week or so, I think that Germany and Spain are just sort of behind by a few days, maybe a week or so, of what's going on in Italy, and we're going to see that playing itself out in all of the countries in Europe here within, you know, within the next 10 or 15 days. Soren Kern with us today on the Christian Real View Radio program. He's a geopolitical analyst and writer for the Gatestone Institute. Soren, how did this virus arise? Did it come from a market in China? That's the common thinking of humans eating some sort of animal, like a bat or something. Or there have been reports, and we don't know how true they are, that this was actually created in a virus lab in China. Or that it potentially even could be a biological weapon.

I know this is getting into the conspiracy side of things, but what are you hearing as to how this virus arose? Well, for now, it's very hard to tell. You know that China is a closed society. They've been expelling Western journalists.

The Wall Street Journal did an investigation into this a week ago, and now the Chinese government has ordered these journalists to be expelled from the country. So I think it's going to take some time to find out the true origin of this. It would not surprise me if it were a biological weapon that escaped from a lab and made itself into, you know, infected people in the city of Wuhan.

And then through air travel, modern transportation, it was just a matter of time until it came to the rest of Europe. So right now, the theory seems to be that a transmission from an animal to a biological weapon is a threat to a human in a market in China. But I think there's also a very probable possibility that it's a biological weapon that sort of escaped from the lab. Do you think it's possible, though, that a biological weapon would be much more deadly than this, though? In other words, this isn't killing everyone. Wouldn't they create a biological weapon that would be much more fatal?

Sure. I mean, I'm just speculating here. But what I think is that they were experimenting with some kind of viruses, and the virus escaped from the lab. That's just a suspicion. It might not be the most dangerous possible weapon, obviously, that they could come up with. But I think there was just experiments going on in a lab that could very well have gotten out of control. But that's just in the realm of theory right now, speculation.

And at some point in the future, these things will come to light. I think the focus right now in Europe and in the United States is prevention and suppressing this thing. How long are you hearing — let's move over to America now, since you are an American — how long are you hearing this will last in America, where society has basically come to pretty much a standstill here as well?

Yeah, I think you can, Americans can sort of look to Europe to sort of see what's going to be coming there. The initial lockdown here was for two weeks, but the government already extended it for a month. And it's very clear that this thing is continuing to grow, and that will be under lockdown for, I'm sure, well over a month. The real problem is that if you end the lockdown, and then everybody goes back to normal life, that there will be a second, even more deadly wave of infection. So really, until there's a vaccine or some kind of a medical solution to this, Americans and Europeans, I say Westerners, are really going to have to be prepared for a dramatic change in our lifestyles and in our personal freedoms. Soren Kern with us today on the Christian Real View, a geopolitical analyst for the Gatestone Institute, coming to us live from Spain.

You may remember Soren as one of our past conference speakers for the Christian Real View. Soren, what is this going to do to the world, and let's say specifically America economically? In other words, is the fix to this, the shutdown of society, worse than the actual flu?

Or the ramifications worse than the sickness? Yeah, well, that's essentially the decision that political leaders are making. What is more important, human life or the economic repercussions of this? Now, the UK, the leadership there decided that it was better to let the estimates say 200,000 people die in the UK and not shut down the entire economy.

Now, that came under a huge amount of criticism. In recent days, the British government has changed their talk as well, and they're looking at much more rigorous efforts to separate populations, separate people from, so that this thing cannot continue to spread. So I think that the economic repercussions of this thing are human life, human life, human life, human life, and the economy are huge in Calcutta at this point. It's very clear that a country like Italy is going to suffer to the point where it might be leaving the Euro currency.

We've talked about this before, that Italy, in the 2008 financial crisis, there was a lot of talk about Italy and some of these other economically weaker countries leaving the single currency, and that puts the whole single currency, the Euro, at risk. So we're really talking about scenarios that we really don't know yet or how this is going to play out. It really depends, I think, a great deal on how fast the vaccine can be developed for this thing and how fast this can be halted. But if this really continues for a year or 18 months where some scenarios in the British government say that it could be affecting the British population for 18 months, we're really talking about massive, massive upheaval in life and economics. I'm going to play a soundbite, Soren, from Victor Davis Hanson, another geopolitical analyst, appears often on Fox News, talking about how this, how this is, this virus is impacting Russia and China and Iran.

Here's Victor Davis Hanson. Well, you got to remember that before this started, they were losing, if we can use that term, Martha, Russia was suffering terribly from collapsing oil prices, which they blamed on US fracking. And China was looking at a recalibration of the trade agreements with the Trump administration, and they were terrified of it.

No need to mention Iran. They were under tough sanctions and they were all in not a very good position. And when this started, they saw an opportunity and they look at it very differently than we do. We've lost today, Martha, about 250 Americans tragically out of 20,000 cases. We think that's a humanitarian disaster.

They look at it in a very different way. They look at the GDP that's been lost, the liquidity that's been wiped out, the stocks, and they come up with a figure around 10 trillion. And they say, you know what, those crazy Americans, $40 billion a person they've wiped out in their economy, and this is great. And so what we need to do is tell the world that they're even more culpable, they're more incompetent, and make them double down and do this and wreck that economy and get this pressure off us. We have to take a little break and say, you know what, we're ruining a very sophisticated economy that has not only health issues as your prior guests so cogently argued, but it has geostrategic implications. That's life and death as well.

So geostrategic implications between the conflict between America as a superpower, and other more bad acting states like China, Iran, and Russia. We're going to take our first break of the day, Soren. But I want you to think about this question I'm going to ask you after the break. How is this virus going to reorder geopolitical power in the world? Let's take our first break of the day here on the Christian Review, coming back and talking more about the coronavirus with our guest today, Soren Kern from the Gatestone Institute. More coming up.

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We have a whole updated store. We'd love to have you consider supporting the Christian World View with a donation or monthly partnership. You can find out all about that at thechristianworldview.org. Our guest today in the program is Soren Kern. He's a geopolitical analyst for the Gatestone Institute. The website is gatestoneinstitute.org.

Search for his name, Kern, K-E-R-N, and you can get his regular column that he writes for them. We're talking about the coronavirus today and Soren is coming to us live from Spain. Soren, you heard before the break there that soundbite from Victor Davis Hanson talking about how Russia, Iran, and China are rubbing their hands over this, seeing the economic downturn of America and what this might do to geopolitical power in the world. Do you see this coronavirus as being a means of reordering geopolitical power in the world?

Sure. It really depends a lot on how fast the United States can recover from this, but if this is a prolonged crisis that really puts tremendous strain on the economy, actors, global actors who don't share our values are going to take advantage of this. Now, in the case of China, we've seen that they are beginning to achieve the United States of being the originator of this virus. What we see here in Europe is the Chinese government sending plane loads of medical equipment to European countries.

Several plane loads had arrived in Spain, in Slovenia, in Belgium, in France, in Italy, essentially because the European Union, other European countries have not been as helpful, showing as much solidarity as they probably should. The Chinese have really been taking advantage of this. What I think they're trying to do is just rewrite history to the point where people will somehow, when this is all over, praise China for its actions instead of blaming China for being the originator of this. I think also the other key issue with Iran is that it continues to work on its nuclear program and its building of centrifuges to enrich more uranium. Despite the large number of deaths in Iran because of this virus, the government is continuing with its nuclear program. So the real problem is that as President Trump in the United States is distracted from all these other international problems, that these countries are going to take advantage of this virus. And they already are and they will. So it's really imperative to my mind that the United States can get back up and running as quickly as possible.

And of course, that all depends on a vaccine. I was thinking about Iran, that they want to get a nuclear bomb because they would be in the same class as North Korea then and they have much greater negotiating leverage when it comes to nuclear weapons. So we'll keep our eyes on that. There have been in China, as you just mentioned, that they're trying to propagandize the world and blame America for this, even the US military for this virus. There have been disappearances over there of doctors who reported this early. They delayed in reporting it to the world. That really caused a terrible downstream attack. They delayed in reporting it to the world.

That really caused a terrible downstream effect worldwide if they had jumped on this right away. People are disappearing. A prominent critic of Xi Jinping, the president of China, has disappeared. He was a very successful real estate mogul over there.

He's gone. The level of thuggery by the Chinese communists. Why should America and how can we extract ourself from that relationship? We're so tied into them for cheap labor, producing our goods so we can get cheap goods over here. But at what cost is this Soren taking place that we're involved with China? Sure, I think that this crisis really does show the limits of globalization.

You see that the knee-jerk reaction of all the European states in the European Union is nationalism, is taking care of their people first. I think that for decades, three, four decades, the United States has really moved much of its manufacturing capacity to China. I hope President Trump has intimated that this is going to really be a change turning point in American industrial relations, bringing some of these companies back and being less reliant on China. I think also one thing to point out is that the Chinese government, I think, is very afraid of its own people. It's taking these draconian measures in recent weeks to silence its people, to silence any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and its handling of this thing because they're definitely afraid of a rebellion. It's really early to see how this plays itself out, but it could be that this also plants the seeds for some fundamental political change in China. In any case, when President Trump was asked in a press conference earlier this week what actions he would take about China, he said he didn't want to address that. But I imagine that they must be thinking that there has to be some accountability on the part of the Chinese government for what it's done.

Again, everything really depends on how fast the United States can get back to normalcy. The thing here in Europe is that the governments are very weak. They're very dependent on China. They're very afraid to confront China. And I think President Trump has really shown some great leadership in that respect. Yeah, I really believe, I know there'd be a big economic, things would get more expensive over here, but I don't believe we should be doing business with a communist dictatorship like that and to be at their mercy, even for medical supplies and so forth, the medications which are produced in China. We have so much being produced in China now with such a, with such a wicked government over there.

Not a good partnership to have. Soren Kern with us today here on the Christian worldview, talking about the coronavirus and its effects worldwide. He's a geopolitical analyst for the Gatestone Institute, gatestoneinstitute.org. Now, according to the CDC, again, the Centers for Disease Control, I went to their website and I looked up just the regular flu in this flu season. What have been the statistics and data with the regular flu, not the coronavirus, the regular flu. The CDC, I'm quoting here, the CDC estimates that so far this flu season, now this isn't even for a whole year, this is just the flu season.

I'm assuming it starts, I didn't look what it started, but I think it starts in October or something like that. There have been at least 38 million, this is in America, 38 million flu illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations, and 23,000 deaths from the flu. Now compare that to what has taken place so far with the coronavirus. I think we've had what, you know, 250 deaths versus 23,000 deaths from the regular flu, just this flu season. The question, Soren, is, is there something nefarious going on about this very strong government response to the coronavirus? As serious as it is, you've described how serious it is, yes, we get that.

Something to do with, you know, testing control of government, the ability to control people, a push towards socialism. In other words, I mean, compared to the regular flu, the data, the statistics are just far lower for the coronavirus. So is there something nefarious going on by governments?

Well, I don't think so. I think that this is a very serious problem, and it's more serious than the flu. I think that the full force of this virus has not yet impacted Europe or the United States. It will in the next month or two, and we'll see very, very high levels of death. I just was calculating the death rate as of today in Italy up to 8%. That's a shockingly high number. And so I think that looking at this, like in terms of Bible prophecy or from like a longer term view, I think that bad actors like China or Russia or Iran can observe from what's happening how easy it is to shut down Western economies.

It's shocking how the whole country of Spain, 40 million people, 46 million people, has just shut down within the course of like 48 hours. And I think that anybody who wants to develop a pathogen in the future just has to look from this example. So we're looking really at a situation where bad actors are learning from this. I think another aspect of this is that populations, that peoples, publics, are becoming accustomed, let's say, not accustomed, but they're seeing like what life is like, um, blocked inside. And so it seems like it's some kind of a, could be like some kind of a preparation of a mentality of, the mentality of, you know, of what happens in a case like this. You know, I'm just thinking in terms of like Bible prophecy, when we look at the tribulation and all of these measures that the Bible describes that will take place in the end time, you can really see how this sort of, to my mind, is laying the frame with the groundwork for that. Okay. Well, I'm going to ask you that question next after this next break about whether you see prophetic end times, biblical prophecy, end times, significance to all this, but just hang on a second.

Let us get past this next break. I just have a few more questions for you after that. Our guest today is Soren Kern. He's a geopolitical analyst with the Gatestone Institute. The website is gatestoneinstitute.org.

Highly recommended that you get his regular column. Just go to gatestoneinstitute.org, search for Soren Kern. It's spelled K-E-R-N. We're talking today about what the coronavirus has exposed about our worldview. We're going to get into that as well, not only government responses we've talked about so far, but how are individuals responding to this? What has the response shown and what is that exposing about the worldview of our culture? And we'll also talk about God's purposes in this, any good news that may result from this worldwide pandemic. This is David Wiet and you're listening to the Christian worldview.

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That's 1-888-646-2233 or myboyben.com. Back on the Christian Reel of You radio program. I'm David Wheaton, the host. Just encourage you to go to our website, thechristianreelofyou.org.

There's a lot to do there. You can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print newsletter. Just put your email address in there. You get those every week.

You'll get the short takes, the highlights of the program every week by doing that, and audio of past programs, other resources, and you can find out how you can support the ministry of the Christian Reel of You radio program. Soren Kern is our guest today on the program. He's coming to us from Spain. He's a geopolitical analyst with the Gatestone Institute. We're talking about the coronavirus, and before the break, Soren, I asked you about the prophetic end times significance to all of this. I know it's impossible to look in the future and know God's purposes and plans. We just can't know that, but is there anything that stands out about the virus or response to it that you think has some end time significance? Well, I think, as I said on the other side of the break, that I think that this crisis is really conditioning people to live under an authoritarian system. A country like Spain is essentially turned into a police state within a very short period of time, and so I think that, you know, the Bible talks about the complete and total control that the Antichrist will have on the world population during the end times, and we really see that the technology is already in place, and this really is an unprecedented emergency, I mean, in our generation, and so I think long term also, you know, if there is a currency collapse, if the United States is in this for a long, long time, we'll really see a geopolitical reordering of the world in which the United States is no longer the superpower, because the American ability to project its military influence across the world is really based on its economic strength. If that economic strength is gone, there's just no money to, you know, to continue with this military presence globally, and other actors like China, as we talked about, even Iran, you know, Iran wants to be the hegemon in the Middle East, and they will take advantage of this, so I think we can also see, you know, how fragile our life, our societies really are.

This whole thing really can come collapsing in a very, very short period of time. Any thoughts on God's purposes in all of this? Any good news that you think can result, let's say, in America from going through this particular pandemic crisis? Yeah, well I think that the Lord is using this to get our attention. The Lord is sovereign over everything, and He could very easily make this go away if He decided not to, and so I think really this is an opportunity to get back to the basics. It's an opportunity for Christians to examine their, you know, their spiritual life, their relationship with the Lord. I think it's an opportunity to move away from, you know, from the materialism that is so rampant in Western society, to look more towards the end goal, which is to be with the Lord. So I think there are a lot of opportunities here for believers to share their faith as this thing hits Western Europe and the United States. People who do not know the Lord are going to be desperate. They're going to be desperately looking for answers. We already see that here in Spain with unbelieving friends calling us and sending us very urgent texts with questions, and people are looking for answers, and so this is an opportunity, I think, for the church to proclaim the gospel to an unbelieving world.

Yeah, well unfortunately, it's all of our human nature to not seek God when things are going well and predictable, when things are not going well and there's crisis, all of a sudden we realize how weak we are. So thank you for concluding with that encouragement, Soren. We appreciate your perspective today and coming to us all the way live from Spain, and we just wish all of God's best and health to you and your family and keep up the great work you are doing. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Soren.

Soren Kern, everyone. Again, website is gatestoneinstitute.org. Search for his name and you'll be able to read his regular columns about the geopolitical situations going on in the world. I'd like to open up the phone lines today to get some listener perspective to anything that Soren had to talk about with regard to this virus.

We talked about a lot of different things. Is the reaction, the lockdowns, is it going to be worse than the actual sickness toll from this? In other words, is the downturn economically going to reorder the geopolitical alignment in the world? Is it going to hurt America so much? Basically, if America goes down, the whole world is reordered in a very, very bad way. We are the last thing, our economic power and our military power is the last thing standing between, as he mentioned, bad actors of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other places around the world. So that's one question we can discuss.

Anything else that you wanted to take away from any of the discussion today? Our studio number is 1-877-655-6755. If you're not a call type person, you can always email us. Our studio number email address is feedback at thechristianworldview.org. We do read all of those.

Sometimes we don't get to answer all of them, but we do read them all. Feedback at thechristianworldview.org. In the meantime, as Bobby may be getting some of your calls up on the call screening board, what has the coronavirus exposed about the world view of our culture of individuals? We talked about governments and things like that and the crackdowns, but what about people's response to this? I think there are several things that I've just been watching in the news and you read online and people's reactions to this whole thing, and I think it's really exposed certain flaws in our world view. The first one is how unprepared people are for any disruption of their life.

In other words, we have this idea, this world view that things are always going to continue as they always have been. It's easy to fall into that, but these things happen. They may not have happened in our lifetime. This is unprecedented for my lifetime.

I'm 50 years old. Maybe for the older generation, you remember World War II, the Holocaust or something like that when things were drastically reordered, but I don't remember a time in my life where basically most of the world, at least significant first world countries, are on lockdown and business has stopped and we're just sitting around waiting for the next dictate from government at this point. So how unprepared we are for disruption beyond just basic food and supplies, and we don't have any kind of backup in case the grocery store down the street runs out of stocks on their shelves, but that people and businesses have very little saved for emergency. You see reports on television and so forth that people are saying their business is going to go bankrupt in a week or two and or individuals say they can't make payments on things and this is only after a week or two of shutdowns. I mean that is just way too highly leveraged and presumptuous upon the future to be running on that little margin in case there's any disruption. No business, no person should go bankrupt after two weeks of disruption.

That's just poor planning. I mean maybe there's some extreme cases, but all of us should be working toward in our finances, whatever they may be, that we have three to six months of reserve in case something unexpected happens. We lose our job, there's a death, there's a sickness, whatever. We should be working toward that instead of presuming that you know I got this income coming in I can count on it next week and the next week and the next week.

We can't. That's what this virus has taught me at least is that how we need to be prepared, not hoarding, not live in a bunker for six years, it's not going to work by the way if everything goes south in the world, but you know having some reserve and some preparation so that a disruption like this, however long it may last, we can hold out and be fairly stable and move on with our lives and be able to take care of our families for at least three months, six months, and maybe more. Number two thing that I think this has exposed about our worldview of our society is that how people expect and look to government to save them. You know there's a reason that God designed the family to be the primary umbrella of protection for people and not the government. So as the nuclear family, as dad and mom raising children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, as that is being pushed to the side, it's disappearing, becoming less common, being redesigned to different kinds of quote family arrangements, the safety net is no longer dad and mom, you know, income coming in and taking care of the kids, the safety net is government.

That's who people look to. And then people think King Trump should just wave a wand and make this go away. Or that government should have, you know, a million ventilators in storage somewhere behind the White House. You know, what is the government going to do for me? Or what is my business going to do to me now that I have to work at home? What am I going to do with my kids?

What are you, the business, going to do with my kids who are now home that I can't send to daycare or school? There's this immediate change in people's perspective that takes place that when things are disrupted, there's not enough apparently of a family intact unit in umbrella of protection there that they're immediately going outside and saying, what is government and what is my corporate job going to be able to do for me? Now, in line here going on is the government apparently is now going to issue a one trillion, no wonder people look to government, they're going to be doing a one trillion dollar stimulus package. I mean, where are we getting that money?

Are we printing it? What does that do to inflation? What does that do to our economy? We're already 24 trillion dollars in debt. They're going to be issuing, the government's going to be issuing twelve hundred dollar checks to every person in the country.

I don't know if everyone gets one, but I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but they're going to be writing checks to people. And that's where our mentality has gone today. People expect and look to the government to save them, but what is the impact of that?

What is the effect of that? I think that's a sad reality that has come from this particular situation with the coronavirus. There are more, there are many more things I think this has exposed. I have about five or six more that we'll get to after this final break of the day here on the Christian worldview.

We're talking about the coronavirus, what it's exposed about our worldview. Soren Kern has been our guest earlier in the program. If you missed that interview, I highly encourage you to go back and hear it. You can get it at our website later today. The program's usually posted at thechristianworldview.org.

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I'm David Wheaton. Our website is thechristianworldview.org, and we're talking about what the coronavirus has exposed about our worldview. We got to the first two things before the break, how people are unprepared for any kind of disruption. You know, a week off the job or a two-week off the job, and they're already claiming that there's going to be bankruptcy.

That may be the case, but if we get past this, try to have it so it's not that way. Prepare for disruption. Prepare to have some reserve for three to six months for your family in case something happens like this. Again, another thing exposed, people expect and look to government to save them.

We talked about that. The third thing is you see reports on the news, and people kind of joke and wink about it, but it seems to me there's truth to it that how Americans don't know how to stay home and be with family anymore. I mean, you hear the news reports and, well, what are we going to do with our kids? And, you know, our kids are home, they're not in school, they're not in daycare, their sports activities are taken home. What are we going to do?

We're going crazy. And really, I mean, these are your kids after all. You're a family after all. I mean, there's lots of things you can do at home right now. We should be actually very thankful this is not much worse. There's not real food shortages yet. We still have communication. We have internet. We don't have looting.

There hasn't been a huge drop in public safety so far. I mean, we can go outside. So how about just reading the Bible with your family once or twice a day? Do you have a Bible study with your family? How about going for a walk? How about watching something redemptive on television? Not Netflix movies all day, but we have all kinds of resources with the Christian worldview like Theo, that 15-episode series for kids. It's excellent.

We've been watching the Torchlighter series on biographies of great Christians like John Bunyan and Martin Luther and others. These are really good things to be able to do that sometimes we don't get the chance to do when life is running along at 100 miles an hour. Do school at home. A lot of schools are now offering optional e-learning or homeschooling resources and so forth.

There's lots of things you can do at home. We should not be responding like, oh, what are we going to do with our kids? We have to stop this. The fourth thing that we've seen with this exposing about our worldview is how short our supply chain is. All the abundance we see around us in America is really kind of a mirage. The cascading effect of increased demand. All of a sudden there's this huge demand for toilet paper.

Well, first of all, it's a luxury. I'm not sure there's such a huge demand for that over food and water or medicines, but still it shows you when there's an increased demand, not people can't get it. So this great abundance we think we have if demand goes up all of a sudden, all of a sudden we see that, you know, it's not there.

So don't consider the abundance we have as something permanent. The one, two, three, four, fifth thing that I think this is exposed about our worldview is how interconnected our world is and how dependent on China we are. We talked about this with Soren and if America goes down financially through this, we can thank our past leaders who got us so, and corporate people as well, who got us so integrated with China and the demand for lower and lower prices here. You know, I always think it's kind of odd, kind of ironic that all the woke evangelicals who hate Donald Trump and who are so for social justice and everything have no problem with the social injustices taking place in China and our integration with them and their repression of people over in China as they produce our products for cheap. I don't hear them saying anything about that.

I think that's very ironic. The silence is deafening in that particular thing. We need to get out of China if at all possible. Number six thing that this is exposed about our worldview is how tenuous life is. This should be abundantly apparent to anyone right now how tenuous our life is, how delicate it is, how much it can change.

I mean Soren's been talking about that. Their whole country is basically in lockdown and went from a regular bustling economy. You know that our stock market has lost the entire amount of value since President Trump took office. He took office, I think it was around 19,000 or 20,000. It had been up to 30,000 within about a month or so here. It's now down back below what it was when he took office.

That's a third of the value of the stock market has dropped as a result of this coronavirus. Think our situation is tenuous? We are not in control. Despite how prepared we think we are, even if we prep and do all these things, we're still not in control. God moves his finger and we are shaken.

We're basically sitting around now waiting for a small group of political leaders to tell us what we can do and what we can't do. This should make anyone who isn't in a right relationship with God through his Son run to him and say, You are in control. I'm not. What do I have to do to be right with you? You don't have to do anything.

You need to receive something. You need to repent of your sin and receive by faith the message of the Gospel, which is that Christ came and paid the penalty for your sin on the cross so that you put your faith in his work and not your own. God promises to forgive your sin, to make you right with him and give you eternal life in heaven. That's what this tenuous situation should be driving you to if you do not know the Lord in a saving way. The last thing I'll say is how much we do have to be thankful for in the midst of all this. Like I said, life could be much worse. This situation, people are getting sick and people are dying, yes, and that's terrible. It's a terrible tragedy, and we should be praying for those people and trying to help people where we can, of course, doing whatever we can to stop the human suffering here. But relatively speaking, very few people have died in this country compared to our overall population.

Something like 250 right now compared to 327 million people. I mean, I have to believe that all this separation is actually going to help not have this virus spread even more, even though it obviously is very difficult economically in many other ways. And the last thing we can be thankful for is how patient God is with us. Like I said, he moves his finger and we are shaken.

If he moves his finger a little more, we are shaken even more. God is patient, as in the days of Noah. He saw the great wickedness on the earth, and he said, I am not going to strive with man forever. I'm going to blot them out from the face of the earth. I'm going to destroy all mankind.

But you know what? He waited 120 years to do it, because he was giving people more time to repent. He was going to make an ark, or he used to have Noah make an ark, and on that ark there was going to be one door to be able to get into the ark and be safe from the coming judgment, the coming flood judgment. And he was offering all those through Noah, a preacher of righteousness, he was preaching to these people saying, a flood is coming, judgment is coming. You can enter through this one door of the ark. Jesus is that one door. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He is the one door to eternal life. God is being patient with us despite this pandemic that's taking place. God has patience, and he's saying, come through the door of my son. Repent and believe in him as your Savior and Lord. I hope you will do that today if you have never done that in your life, because then there's a road of sanctification and eventually glorification in the end time. You can trust God in the myths of this, that he has perfectly things right in control according to his time.

Trust him, not anything of your own human reasoning. We do live in a changing and challenging world, never more true than it is right now, but there is something that's never more true than right now as well too. Jesus Christ ends his word.

They are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Until next weekend, think biblically, live accordingly, and pray. The Christian Worldview is a weekly one-hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call us toll-free at 1-888-646-2233 or write to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.