John Piper’s View that Coronavirus was Sent by God Contradicted that of Joseph Prince – By Rev George Ong (Dated 4 Feb 2022)
(This article was also sent to Rev Dr Ngoei Foong Nghian, General Secretary, NCCS office, and for the attention of the Executive Committee Members.)
Joseph Prince has been championing the view that coronavirus was sent by Satan but John Piper categorically stated in his eBook, ‘Coronavirus and Christ’ that coronavirus was sent by God (see below for excerpts in John Piper’s eBook).
When coronavirus started to unleash in the first few months of 2020, though I had not read John Piper’s book, I had already formed the view that God was the one who sent it.
Only recently (about 2 weeks ago), through a friend, did I know that John Piper had written a book on the coronavirus; and I bought and read it.
I have also written 3 main articles that can be found on my website. If you have missed reading what I have written on the subject, please view the following articles:
Joseph Prince’s Teaching that Natural Disasters such as COVID-19 are only Caused by Satan & not God is a Lie (Subtitle: Is COVID-19 Caused by God or Satan?): Part 1 of 3 Parts – By Rev George Ong (Dated 27 Dec 2021)
Joseph Prince’s Teaching that Natural Disasters such as COVID-19 are only Caused by Satan & not God is a Lie (Subtitle: Is COVID-19 Caused by God or Satan?): Part 2 of 3 Parts – By Rev George Ong (Dated 30 Dec 2021)
Joseph Prince’s Teaching that Natural Disasters such as COVID-19 are only Caused by Satan & not God is a Lie (Subtitle: Is COVID-19 Caused by God or Satan?): Part 3 of 3 Parts – By Rev George Ong (Dated 3 Jan 2022)
As for John Piper’s view which is reflected in his eBook: ‘Coronavirus and Christ,’ please read the following excerpts:
“The coronavirus was sent, therefore, by God. This is not a season for sentimental views of God. It is a bitter season. And God ordained it. God governs it. He will end it. No part of it is outside his sway. Life and death are in his hand.
Job did not sin with his lips (Job 1:22) when he said:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21)
The Lord gave. And the Lord took. The Lord took Job’s ten children. In the presence of God, no one has a right to life. Every breath we take is a gift of grace. Every heartbeat, undeserved. Life and death are finally in the hands of God:
See now that I, even I, am he,
and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. (Deut. 32:39)”
“The very sovereignty that rules in sickness is the sovereignty that sustains in loss. The very sovereignty that takes life is the sovereignty that conquered death and brings believers home to heaven and Christ. It is not sweet to think that Satan, sickness, sabotage, fate, or chance has the last say in my life. That is not good news. That God reigns is good news.”
“But Satan is on a leash. The leash is in God’s hands. He does not act without God’s leave. He acts only with permission and limitation (Job 1:12; 2:6; Luke 22:31; 2 Cor. 12:7). God decides finally the extent of Satan’s damage. He is not separate from God’s judgment. He serves it – unwittingly.”
“Here’s my suggestion: God put the physical world under a curse so that the physical horrors we see around us in diseases and calamities would become a vivid picture of how horrible sin is. In other words, physical evil is a parable, a drama, a signpost pointing to the moral outrage of rebellion against God.
Why might that be fitting? Because in our present condition, after the fall, blinded by sin, we cannot see or feel how repugnant sin against God is. Hardly anyone in the world feels the horror of preferring other things over God. Who loses any sleep over our daily belittling of God by neglect and defiance?
But, oh, how we feel our physical pain! How indignant we can become if God touches our bodies! We may not grieve over the way we demean God every day in our hearts. But let the coronavirus come and threaten our bodies, and he has our attention. Or does he? Physical pain is God’s trumpet blast to tell us that something is dreadfully wrong in the world. Disease and deformity are God’s pictures in the physical realm of what sin is like in the spiritual realm.
And that is true, even though some of the most godly people in the world bear those diseases and deformities. Calamities are God’s previews of what sin deserves and will one day receive in judgment a thousand times worse. They are warnings. They are wake-up calls to see the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of sin against God… Therefore, God is mercifully shouting to us in these days: Wake up! Sin against God is like this! It is horrible and ugly. And far more dangerous than the coronavirus.”
“What God is doing in the coronavirus is showing us – graphically, painfully – that nothing in this world gives the security and satisfaction that we find in the infinite greatness and worth of Jesus. This global pandemic takes away our freedom of movement, our business activity, and our face-to-face relations. It takes away our security and our comfort. And, in the end, it may take away our lives. The reason God exposes us to such losses is to rouse us to rely on Christ.”
So John Piper’s view that
“The coronavirus was sent, therefore, by God,”
contradicted Joseph Prince’s view that it was Satan who caused it.
John Piper states that God sent the coronavirus to remind us how awful and prevalent human sin is and warn us of the dreadful consequences. On the other hand, Joseph Prince absolves sin from the coronavirus and states that sin has already been dealt with at the cross of Christ. And for believers to ask God for the forgiveness of sins when all their past, present and future sins have been forgiven at the cross, or even to talk about sin, is to insult God.
In a weekly Sunday sermon aired on YouTube, Joseph Prince said the following; please click here to view excerpts in the one-minute video,
“I think the COVID-19, one thing good that has come out of it. I know there’s a lot of bad in it. And it’s not from God, it’s from the devil.”
“We are right now seeing those signs coming to pass. Never before in modern times, the time of this day that we live in where we have the advent of computers and all that, have there been such a global pandemic of such magnitude as the one we are living in. For sure, this is definitely one of the pestilences that Jesus talked about. Jesus mentioned about pestilence coming before He comes again. Now some people quote, if that’s happening that means the Lord is sending all these things to usher in the coming of Jesus. No, no, no, no. He’s telling us that these are the signs. He didn’t say that He send them. These are the signs, when all these things happen, it’s only the beginning, which means the devil knows his time is short. And that’s mentioned in the Book of Revelation (Rev 12:12b).
The devil knows his time is short. And he’s angry. He knows Jesus is coming back. And he’s causing all these wars and rumours of wars and pestilences and plagues and earthquakes and diverse earthquakes. This is not the work of God. It’s the work of the devil.”
What Joseph Prince said in the video not only contradicted John Piper, but is also a blatant lie against the Holy Scriptures. This is because in both the Old and New Testament scriptures, every pestilence, plague, earthquake and famine are sent by God, most directly and some indirectly. They either came directly from the hand of God or they were indirectly caused or allowed by Him.
Not one verse, and I say again, not one verse that I know in the entire scriptures about pestilences, plagues, earthquakes or famines is ascribed directly to Satan. Not one!
Yet, Joseph Prince has the recklessness to declare to the world that Satan is the one who causes all the earthquakes and pestilences, such as coronavirus that is afflicting the world today.
Joseph Prince teaches that it is Satan who is solely responsible but John Piper and most importantly, the scripture teaches that God is the cause of them, either directly or indirectly.
Coronavirus has indeed exposed the bankruptcy of Joseph Prince’s Health & Wealth Doctrine. Nothing tells the stark truth against Joseph Prince’s doctrine better than the following figures do. To date, more than 380,000,000 were infected with coronavirus and over 5,690,000 had died from the disease.
Assuming just one percent of these are Christians (which is a very conservative estimate), this means at least 3.8 million believers were afflicted with coronavirus and more than 56,000 had died from it.
(And does Joseph Prince dare say that none of his 34,000 congregants has contracted the same disease? Even if any of them do, Prince will ensure that this remains a tightly-guarded ‘top-secret’ and he will do all he can to make sure this doesn’t leak out to the public. And at the same time, Prince will spare no effort to get the so-called positive testimonies to be featured at his Sunday worship services. These testimonies will always end up with statements such as this, “I was healed or experienced a breakthrough because of Joseph Prince’s teaching or what he said in a sermon, giving the impression that God can only heal believers or give them the breakthrough because of Joseph Prince.)
This categorically proves that Joseph Prince’s Health & Wealth Gospel and especially, his oft-quoted and famous statement that “No virus can come near you” is a blatant lie and a scam.
The fact that there are at least 3.8 million believers who were afflicted with coronavirus (conservative estimate) and another 56,000 who were killed by it (conservative estimate), proves that there are about 4 million contradictions to Joseph Prince’s doctrine – that “No virus can come near you”.
I’ve hardly heard Prince say this same statement for quite a while in his weekly Sunday sermons, as he is probably too embarrassed to state it again.
Yes, God can heal the most sinful and undeserved person from the most deadly and incurable disease as He is the all-powerful-God. But at the same time, because He is also the Sovereign God, He decides when to heal and who to heal. God, not Satan, decides when to send the coronavirus and when to end it.
Joseph Prince, by stubbornly insisting that God must protect every believer from every disease because “No virus can come near you” is undermining the very sovereignty of God. One, such as Joseph Prince, who consistently undermines the sovereignty of God is preaching a different God of the Bible.
Rev George Ong