The modern case of COVID-19 has raised questions concerning the ability of the governing authorities to mandate universal vaccines, to refuse any exemptions, including religious, and to punish those who refuse. This has relevance to future things and the possibility of pestilences, Matthew 24:7, or rumors of pestilences being part of the experience of those living under the governing authorities prior to the coming of the Lord. So that's kind of the background of the question. So here's the question.
Does submitting to every ordinance include what happens to one's own body forced injections in this case, from their perspective, from a compulsory medical situation that violates one's own conscience based on all available evidence. So early Christians obviously had to deal with forceful governments and forceful situations. Is there any relevant teachings that you can think of that would give us direction on something like this for a person?
Yeah, well, the two New Testament principles are to obey Caesar and submit to every ordinance. And then the other one is we must obey God as ruler rather than men. So if Caesar commands us to do something that contradicts the teachings of Jesus, we have to choose between loyalty to one or the other, then we always have to choose to obey Jesus or his father rather than men. On vaccines? Wow, yeah, then you're getting into a very gray area.
One Christian might feel that the way vaccines are produced, that there is a scriptural principle being violated, and that a Christian should not get vaccines for that reason. It's probably not my personal view. I haven't spent very much time trying to investigate that question. I have read a little bit on it. But yeah, if that was someone's Christian conscience that there is something unscriptural about it.
Now, if it's just that you don't like from a medical standpoint to get a vaccine, personally, I would probably say we should obey Caesar if it's just a personal preference. Obviously, Caesar would not be doing this to be out of a sense of wanting to persecute people. Governments are concerned about the health of their citizens. And there have been things like smallpox and that that have been almost totally eradicated. Smallpox had been eradicated, I think, for a while because of vaccines.
Polio, I remember what it was like when I was a child, and now it's extremely rare, again, because of vaccines. So they have been effective. I can see why the government would mandate that. But yeah, if you feel there's a scriptural principle being violated, then you should be true to your conscience. But as has always been the case, you can also expect to pay a price too. I mean, the early Christians knew that if they violated Caesar's law in order to obey Christ, that they would likely be punished by Caesar.
So I mean, yeah, we do have to be ready to go to jail or whatever if we violate Caesar's laws. I mean, hopefully I'm not aware I stay out of the political realm. So I wasn't aware of any talk here in the United States, any serious talk about mandating that for everybody. But maybe if you're on political blogs and things like that, yeah, there might be stuff I'm not aware of. I have to be the last person to consult on current political issues.
Yeah, I think you touched on a point there right at the end as far as political blogs. I think in the information age, all of this talk of eschatology gets accelerated down individual tunnels. And so we all have to be careful with where we're actually receiving information from. But I appreciate just calling us back to scripture. Is it violating the commands of Christ or not? And then working it out from there and making the decision based on that rather than personal preference.
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