The COVID-19 pandemic is a global catastrophe but hidden within that great darkness are the sparks of the final redemption. This is clearly evidenced by the manner in which the Ten Plagues of Egypt that preceded the Exodus are reappearing in a unique and prophetic manner that is entirely influenced by the pandemic.

PLAGUES PRECEDE FINAL REDEMPTION

Jewish sources predict that all of the plagues will reappear in the final Redemption but in even more powerful forms. This reload of the Egyptian plagues was prophesied by Micah.

I will show him wondrous deeds As in the days when You sallied forth from the land of Egypt. Micah 7:15

It is also written in Midrash Tanchuma, homiletic teachings collected around the fifth century, that “just as God struck the Egyptians with 10 plagues, so too He will strike the enemies of the Jewish people at the time of the Redemption.”

This concept was explained by Rabbi Bahya ben Asher, a 13th-century Spanish commentator, who wrote, “In Egypt, God used only part of His strength. When the final redemption comes, God will show much, much more of His power.”

INSECTS

For if you do not let My people go, I will let loose swarms of insects against you and your courtiers and your people and your houses; the houses of the Egyptians, and the very ground they stand on, shall be filled with swarms of insects. Exodus 8:17

Insects bear many threats to humans, but usually, they are guided by evil intent that is as minuscule as their minds. But now, human intervention threatens to increase that evil intent and the ability of insects to harm.

The U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced its Insect Allies program in 2016. The project was touted as being beneficial to mankind by delivering protective genes to plants via insects, which are responsible for the transmission of most plant viruses. Scientists believe that implanting viruses in the bugs would offer plants protective benefits that could ensure food security in the event of a major threat.

But some scientists were wary of a hidden agenda. In an editorial published in the journal Science, a group of researchers led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, claim DARPA is potentially developing insects as a means of delivering a “new class of biological weapon.” They noted that just as the genes implanted in the insects could help the plants, by the same measure genes could be implanted that would entirely wipe out crops. 

This certainly leads to conjecture about what other foul purposes tiny bugs could be used for through the wonders of modern technology. The final Gog and Magog War will undoubtedly be fought with modern weapons with some prophecies describing an unnaturally short war hinting at a nuclear engagement. So too, the coronavirus graphically illustrates the potential for genetic science to unleash horrors that shadow the plagues of Egypt.

But some have suggested that the animals are coming to check in on the strangely absent humans. that area.

HAIL

The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Exodus 9:24

Hail is a not-uncommon naturally occurring weather condition but not so in its Biblical incarnation which brought together the unnatural mixture of fire and ice. It was not so long ago that many believed 2020 would be remembered for the horrifying wildfires that burned an estimated 46 million acres of land, destroyed over 5,900 buildings including approximately 2,683 homes, and killed at least 30 people. An estimated one billion animals were also killed and some endangered species may be driven to extinction. 

The fires began as the vast wilderness region of Australia was hard-pressed by a drought. Aid came in an extreme form as the appropriately named Cyclone Esther lingered for the two weeks leading up the holiday of Purim, raising reservoir levels by a full meter, bringing the most rain some areas had experienced in ten years. 

In late January, while the fires continued to burn in the southeast, the capital city Canberra, Melbourne, and other areas were hit by hailstorms raining down golf-ball-sized chunks of ice.

As if one plague of extremes was not enough, a 186-mile wide cloud of red dust was carried by wind gusts up to 66 miles per hour plunged whole swathes of the countryside into darkness. 

LOCUSTS

“Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again.” Exodus 10:14

No mental gymnastics or imagination stretching are required to place this plague firmly in 2020. A wave of locusts swept through East Africa last year but the wave currently feasting on its leftovers is estimated to be 20 times larger and is described as the worst in 70 years. This wave very much resembles the Biblical plague in this respect, coming as part of a wave of catastrophes that left the land of Egypt bereft of any food.

Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again. They covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt. Exodus 10:14-15 

Many farmers are prevented by pandemic lockdowns from going out to their fields to battle the swarms. In addition, the pandemic has slowed the delivery of vital pesticides and equipment form other countries. Many field officers have been prevented from tracking and reporting on the infestation due to restrictions.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called the locust outbreak, caused in part by climate change, “an unprecedented threat” to food security and livelihoods.

DARKNESS

Moshe held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. Exodus 10:22

In this list of 2020 coronavirus plagues reloaded, a shocking connection between the pandemic and darkness is revealed in an oblique modern-day ‘prophecy.’ In 1981, Dean Koontz wrote a suspense novel in which a character named Dombey narrates a story about a Chinese scientist who brought a biological weapon to the U.S. Shockingly, the virus was named Wuhan-400 for the microbiology laboratory that does indeed exist in the city of Wuhan. 

Claims that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan lab where it was being developed as a biological weapon were initially labeled as conspiracy theories and heavily censored by Facebook, recent revelations indicate that the scenario described by Koontz might be closer to fact than fiction.

The name of Koontz’s book: The Eyes of Darkness.

So, in a rather oblique manner, the plague of The Eyes of Darkness has arrived.

KILLING OF THE FIRSTBORN

“And every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle.” Exodus 11:5 

This is perhaps the plague that is most closely connected to the coronavirus. Passover night is the time of the seder ritual which brings together friends and family. Since the Exodus from Egypt, this night has always been a festive time to be surrounded by the ones you love.

Until this year.

The Israeli government ordered a strict lockdown. Most families had a somber holiday rather than a festive one, with empty seats where the elders, the most vulnerable to the disease, normally sat. 

This year, the seder more closely resembled the one-time-only seder that was performed in Egypt the night before the Israelites left Egypt and never repeated again. In Egypt, after keeping a lamb in their homes for two weeks, the Jews slaughtered the lamb, painted their doorposts with the blood, roasted it, and ate it. The angel of death was roaming the streets of Egypt, killing all the firstborn, and the blood on the doorposts was a sign that kept death at bay. 

Like that somber Egyptian seder, Jews performed the seder ritual in tightly shut homes while the angel of death loomed outside.

 Shmuel Treister, who has translated several mystic works from Hebrew to English and is a scholar of Jewish literature, noted some startling aspects of the coronavirus that connect it to the plague in Egypt.

“China instituted a cruel ‘one-child policy’ from 1980 until 2015,” Treister told Breaking Israel News.  To enforce birth limits, provincial governments could, and did, require the use of contraception, sterilizations, and abortions to ensure compliance, and imposed enormous fines for violations. According to China’s government, 400 million births were prevented. 

“This horrific policy was similar to what Pharoah imposed on the Jews in Egypt by throwing the male babies into the Nile,” Treister said. “It was, essentially, a spiritual as well as a physical attack. Pharoah was trying to prevent the Jews from performing the first commandment given to Adam in Eden of being fruitful and multiplying.

“This evil deed by Pharoah was repaid measure-for-measure in the final plague that killed the first-born Egyptians.a human imposed plague of the first-born. In China today, anyone over the age of five was born during the one-child policy. They are, by necessity, the first, and only, born.”

During their research, scientists used microscopes to photograph the virus and the name comes from its shape, which resembles a crown when imaged using an electron microscope. Corona is Latin for ‘Crown’. 

And China most certainly has a grim role to play in the end-of-days, as noted by the Prophet Ezekiel.

I will pour out my anger upon Sin, the stronghold of Egypt, and I will destroy the wealth of No. I will set fire to Egypt; Sin shall writhe in anguish and No shall be torn apart; and Noph [shall face] adversaries in broad daylight Ezekiel 30:15-16

In modern Hebrew, ‘Sin’ (סין) is the name for China.