The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc) is seriously concerned—and with cause. In January, for the first time in history, the organization started warning doctors not to prescribe two common antiviral drugs (rimantadine and amantadine) to treat h3n2, the most dominant form of flu virus, because they simply will not work. Just two years ago, fewer than 2 percent of samples were resistant to these drugs; today, 91 percent of samples are resistant to these frontline medications (cdc Health Alert, January 14). The speed of the mutation is cause for alarm.
Could a simple household flu become an epidemic? Every year, about 36,000 people die from the flu; 200,000 are hospitalized in the United States alone.
Other medications are still widely available this year that the flu has not yet overcome. But the ability of viruses to rapidly adapt and change to overcome medications is clearly growing. Tamiflu will defeat the flu this year; what about next year? What about 10 years from now?
Still more foreboding, tuberculosis and hiv have also gained resistance to frontline medications recently. Is bird flu next? A simple mutation is all that is needed to turn bird flu warnings from merely ominous headlines into the worst pandemic in modern times.
Despite the billions of dollars world governments are spending to prevent a pandemic, the leader of the World Health Organization says it is only a matter of time before an avian-flu virus acquires the ability to jump from human to human, sparking the outbreak of human pandemic influenza. The last such pandemic—the Spanish Flu in 1918—killed 40 million people.
A confluence of negative conditions has set the stage for disease epidemics of biblical proportions—which is exactly what we will see. Scripture says there will be diseases and pestilences as the pale horse of the apocalypse rides across the land.
As curses for disobedience to God, Deuteronomy 28 warns about consumption (chronic, degenerative diseases such as aids), inflammation (malaria or communicative diseases such as influenzas), emerods (tumors, cancers, etc.) and other diseases “whereof thou canst not be healed” (verse 27). In other words, diseases become more than resistant to drugs—they are incurable!
While the antiviral drugs, vaccines, and other advances of modern medicine that people look to as saviors will prove to be of little help, there is a sure Savior you can call upon for protection from the coming pandemics. Request a free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s booklet The Plain Truth About Healing for an in-depth biblical study of this subject.