Are you feeling a little nervous now that Ebola is here in the United States?

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and virtually all the other experts assure us we do not need to worry.  But maybe we should.  At least a little.

On September 20 a man named Thomas Eric Duncan flew into the United States from West Africa via Brusssels.  He had evaded the screening in Liberia that would have caught his exposure to an Ebola victim five days earlier.  Although he was showing no symptoms, clearly he wanted to get to this country and did not care if he exposed others.  In Dallas, when he began feeling ill, he went to a hospital only to be sent home with antibiotics.  Two days later he returned in an ambulance.  Now he is fighting for his life.

His family has been quarantined and fifty people are being monitored as health officials wait to see if any of them develop symptoms.  Across the country worried patients have been admitted to various hospitals to be checked for the disease.  So far, all have tested negative.  That’s good.

But we’re uneasy.  Don’t fear, the officials tell us.  We are screening people.  And here in the United States, we have such good health care that most patients will not die.  Even if the experimental drugs are in miniscule supply or just not available.  It’s a matter of proper care and keeping a patient’s fluid levels up.  And taking the proper public health steps.  We can handle it if it comes.  They tell us.

Maybe we can.  I hope so.  In Africa 3400 people have died out of about 7800 people who have contracted Ebola.  That’s about a 45 percent fatality rate.  But medical care there is way below our standards here.  No question about that.

But there is a condition here that may make us more vulnerable than we think.  And there is also an antidote but most people will think it rather silly.

I Chronicles 21 contains the story of how King David sinned against God by numbering the people.   His census was apparently a show of confidence in his own military might rather than trusting God for protection.  As a consequence, God sent a plague against the nation and 70,000 people died in three days.  When David had thoroughly repented before God, the Almighty stayed his hand.  David purchased a stone threshing floor on Mount Zion and offered a sacrifice of worship there.  That site became the location of the temple and the center of the worship of God in Israel.

The point here is that according to the Bible, there are times when God has sent or allowed plagues to come upon the earth as acts of judgment designed to bring men to repentance.  The fourth horseman in the book of Revelation that is loosed upon the earth is pestilence and death. (Revelation 6:8)  I am not saying that Ebola is such a judgment of God.  Not all illness is God’s judgment.  But if it were, all of our vaunted medical efforts would prove powerless against it.

The thing that we must take into account is the sin that pervades our nation and marks our own personal lives.  To put it bluntly: Sin makes us vulnerable to God’s wrath.  When we sin we forfeit God’s protection.  Yes, there will be those who laugh in derision at such nonsense as I am suggesting.  In reply I would say, “Don’t think you can mess with God and get away with it.”  As Jesus used to say, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

But if our sins expose us to danger, there is also an antidote.  David expresses it in Psalm 39.  David cries out to God, “And now, Lord, for what do I wait?  My hope is in You.  Deliver me from my transgressions…Remove your plague from me; Because of the opposition of your hand I am perishing.” (v 7, 8, 10)  And God had mercy.

I do not expect to see wholesale repentance by our nation any time soon.  But as individuals we can repent and seek God’s mercy.  Perhaps we each should pray that God will not visit us or our nation with the scourge of Ebola.  And perhaps he will spare us.

Dr. Rick Perrin is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship..  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..