Is COVID-19 David Wilkerson’s Plague?
David Wilkerson was one of the most fearless evangelists in American history — and for those of us Christians who actually read our Bibles, it’s easy to see why. Baptism of the Holy Spirit can do some pretty amazing things and give us pretty amazing gifts — like the ability to miraculously heal, or, in Wilkerson’s case, the ability to prophesy. The latter is one that I too have had hints of in the past — often times dreams I had during my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, for example, ended up being visions of actual personal life events years down the road, as I explain further in Fairytale?: Why Christianity Isn’t One, and that includes a dream in 2009 — during the height of H1N1 — about a far worse future pandemic that, in hindsight, I actually now know to be COVID-19 — often times when I have a vision like this I wake up and forget half the details, but ever since being reminded of it by the event actually happening I actually can remember the exact name of this current outbreak appearing in that dream. So I can definitely relate to Wilkerson in this regard.
It’s against this backdrop that it makes sense why he would choose the most Godless of places to build a church: Times Square in New York City. Every New Year’s Eve, that place becomes packed with millions of people, who go on to watch the most morally degenerate of performers twerk on stage while singing. It’s known all throughout the year for all kinds of vices: from materialism to sexual sin and everything else in between. So Wilkerson used these prophecies mainly to warn people of coming calamities — up to and including 9/11. That said, of all of Wilkerson’s prophecies in his many books starting with The Vision, one of them clearly stands out:
I see a plague coming on the world, and the bars, churches, and government will shut down. The plague will hit New York City and shake it like it has never been shaken. The plague is going to force prayerless believers into radical prayer and into their Bibles, and repentance will be the cry from the man of God in the pulpit. And out of it will come a third Great Awakening that will sweep America and the world.
These are Wilkerson’s words during a sermon way back in 1986, but they read an awful lot like he’s talking about 2020. A lot of bars and restaurants have certainly been shuttered as a result of the SARS-2/COVID-19 pandemic, for starters. Churches — including my own — have switched to being online-only, mainly because worship in large groups makes it incredibly easy to spread a deadly pneumonia-like respiratory disease around. Finally, the virus is spreading among police officers and through prisons like very few diseases have ever done, which is compelling state governments to release prisoners, and local governments have shut down entirely.
As if that’s not enough, NYC appears to be Ground Zero for this whole thing, with more than half of the 200K+ confirmed American cases of the disease in New York alone and New Jersey being the number 2 most infected state. Yes, it is a worldwide pandemic at this point and everyone should be taking precautions no matter where they are, but that it’s seeming to hit NYC especially hard appears to be no accident, especially given that just last year Governor Cuomo signed into law an abomination of an abortion bill that not only legalized murder-in-utero for the entire 9 months on a statewide basis but also attempted to delegitimize abortion survivors on top of that. That said, all human life is indeed precious, and COVID-19 victims are no exception to this rule either.
We’re already starting to see Christians including myself begin diving deeper and deeper into the Word as well — starting of course with Christian doctors and nurses praying from rooftops en masse at hospitals all across the country. Then there’s the fact that with more time on our hands, those of us who were all caught up in our busy lives now have more time to open our Bibles and study. This extra spare time translates to extra prayer time, and it’s having an impact on the faith of millions, including myself and also including my own pastors and fellow young adults who initially were just as uncertain about this whole thing as I was.
As a Christian, one can only keep this up, because revival is the inevitable outcome if enough of us become energized. We’ve got three parts of this prophecy fulfilled already, so keep praying for the fourth and keep encouraging each other. If COVID-19 is indeed what Wilkerson was talking about here and if Wilkerson said that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, then there most likely is, because it means that this is no accident, but that it was the plan of He who lives in us for revival all along.