What Can the COVID-19 Generation Learn from the Great Plague Generation?

In 1527, Martin Luther ministered during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Germany. 

In 1665, Puritan preachers ministered during the Great Plague of London.  

In 1854, Charles Spurgeon ministered during a cholera outbreak in London. 

In 1918, American pastors ministered during the Spanish Flu epidemic. 

And in 2020, the global church faces the Coronavirus pandemic. 

 What Should We Pray?

As we walk through these uncertain times, we do so prayerfully. And what should we be praying for right now? Perhaps one of the Puritan preachers of the 17th century might lend us some insight for our prayers. 

Many Puritan preachers ministered in London to churches, cities, and families during the Great Plague of 1665. Richard Baxter was one of the great Puritan preachers of this generation.

Baxter (1615-1691) was thin, lean, and physically weak, enduring debility of the nerves throughout his life.[1] His continued sickness and lifelong weaknesses left him with a continual expectation of death. This proved to be a blessing, however, as it stirred him to preach “as a dying man to dying men.”[2]

The Great Plague of 1665 broke out just a few years after Baxter completed his pastoral ministry in Kidderminster, England. Many reports claim that more than 60,000 died as a result of this Great Plague, which claimed the lives of 15% of the London population.

Baxter reflected years later on the impact the Great Plague had on families.

His reflection carries both encouraging and discouraging observations. Baxter wrote:

“I have reason to hope that the Great Plague in London was a help to the conversion of many hundred souls; not only as it called men to review their lives, and think of their state; but as it made them far more impartial hearers of public preaching and private counsel. There was then in London no scorning at holy seriousness and diligence for salvation, in comparison of what it is now. 

The houses that now roar out drunken songs and scorns at godliness, and revile, threaten and curse the religious sort, had other language then, when ‘Lord have mercy on us’ was written on the doors. 

The sense of approaching death so awakened both preachers and hearers, that multitudes of young men and others were converted to true repentance.”[3]  

Baxter noticed that during the plague, families were hoping in the Lord. They were open to the Gospel; open to the Word of God. People were saved as they turned from their sins and gave their lives to Christ. They were writing, “Lord have mercy on us,” on their doors. There was a revival.

This is what Baxter saw in 1665, and yet, Baxter also saw families who hardened their hearts once the plague ended. 

Will this be us? Will we hope in the Lord during the virus and then go back to trusting in ourselves and selfishly living for ourselves once the virus is over?  

I believe if Baxter could speak to the 2020 church, he would plead with us to spend the days of this pandemic with an openness to the Gospel, a renewed zeal for the things of God, a prayerful cry for mercy and grace, and a revived heart. And then I believe he would plead with us to not lose sight of this reformation once the pandemic has passed. 

Jonathan Williams, Ph.D. (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the founder of Gospel Family Ministries, the author of Gospel Family: Cultivating Family Discipleship, Family Worship, and Family Missions, and the senior pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, TX. He lives in Houston with his wife and three children.

[1] Richard Baxter, The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. INC, 1931), 11. J.I. Packer offered further detail regarding Baxter’s physical ailments, which included “a tubercular cough; frequent nosebleeds and bleeding from his finger-ends; migraine headaches; inflamed eyes; all kinds of digestive disorders; kidney stones and gallstones.” J.I. Packer, Evangelical Influences: Profiles of Figures and Movements Rooted in the Reformation (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, 1999), 30.      

[2] Ibid., 26.     

[3] William Orme, The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter: With a Life of the Author and A Critical Examination of his Writings, Volume XI (London: James Duncan), 505.