In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
— Matthew 2:18 (KJV)
I weep. Before I write one line of doctrine, before I open one scroll of the ancient tongues, I weep as Rachel wept in Ramah, and I refuse to be comforted; for I have looked upon the plight of humanity, and behold, the reaper resteth not. In this present hour, while thou readest this page, death gathereth his harvest across the whole earth. The most careful counters of the nations — the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the great registries of the Global Burden of Disease — testify with one voice that between sixty and sixty-three million souls depart this life every single year. Hear it, O reader, and let thine heart be broken as mine is broken.
Sixty million in a year. That is about one hundred sixty-five thousand every day; about six thousand eight hundred and fifty every hour; about one hundred and fourteen every minute; verily, nearly two souls every second. Whilst thou didst read this one paragraph, more than a hundred persons crossed over from time into eternity — some ready, and lo, many not ready. My tears fall upon this manuscript as Jeremiah’s tears fell upon his scroll: Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (Jeremiah 9:1).
And whom doth the enemy take? The physicians of the nations have numbered his weapons. Ischaemic disease of the heart slew above nine million in a single year; the stroke, near seven million; the pestilence called COVID-19, in the year of its rage, near nine million by the official count, and by the truer measure of excess mortality, near fifteen million in two years — erasing a decade of human progress in the twinkling of an eye, and casting the life-expectancy of the whole world backward from about seventy-three years to seventy-one. The cancers devour their millions; the lungs fail; the sugar in the blood turneth traitor; the kidneys bow; the ancient scourge of tuberculosis yet walketh. Three of every four deaths come by the slow chronic diseases; heart disease and cancer together take almost every second grave upon the earth.
Yea, and the little ones — hear this and weep with me — near five million children died before their fifth birthdayin a single recent year. Blessed be God, that number was thirteen millions a generation ago; mercy hath moved, medicine hath laboured, and the fall is great. Yet five million lambs is five million lambs, and Rachel weepeth still.
The demographers reckon that of the hundred and nine to one hundred and seventeen billion human beings ever born since the beginning, above one hundred billion have already died. The dead outnumber the living more than thirteen to one. The earth thou walkest upon is one vast Machpelah, one purchased burying-field, one potter’s field bought with the price of blood. Every civilization that ever raised a tower hath also digged a grave. Every crown hath rolled at last into the dust. Every hand that ever wrote I shall livewas folded at last upon a silent breast.
Wherefore do I write this book? Because my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6); because therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge (Isaiah 5:13); because through knowledge shall the just be delivered (Proverbs 11:9). The nations have counted the dead, but they have not comprehended death. Their statistics confirm his reach; only the Scripture unveileth his face, his throne, his treasury, his sting, and — glory to God — his appointed execution. For it is written, and this is the trumpet-text of the whole volume: The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26).
