COVID-Related Starvation

In many nations around the globe, COVID-19 restrictions are crippling economies and forcing many into joblessness. In the Philippines, the rates of hunger are unprecedented, and food charities are struggling to keep up (AFP, December 9, 2020). A director of one food charity observed, “If you go out there everybody will tell you that they’re more afraid of dying from hunger than dying from COVID. They don’t care about COVID anymore.”

According to one source, nearly a third of Philippine families ran short on food in the past three months, and 2.2 million families are currently experiencing “severe hunger.” Dreams of moving out of poverty have been shattered, and some compare the current state of existence to “living like pigs.”

The current extreme hunger in the Philippines is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what the future holds for mankind. The Bible warns of a future time of global hunger when billions of people will be affected by Revelation’s “black horse” of famine (Revelation 6:5–6). This coming time of extreme scarcity will be unprecedented in human history, one of many dramatic events that will come on a world that has turned away from God—just before the return of Jesus Christ. To learn more about these earthshaking events, read or listen to our informative booklet Armageddon and Beyond!