The Covid Prophecies: A Healing Message for Troubled Times

By A LeRoy

A Healing Message for Troubled Times
When Covid first showed up in 2020, it presented us with a choice: to respond with fear, or to respond with love. This book is an appeal to love, seeing in the virus a social reformer, setting us free from structures of exploitation and enslavement.
And there is no better author to deliver this message than Abdiel LeRoy, a former Reuters journalist and Bible scholar, a storyteller and poet, who has discerned and set out for us Covid's prophetic mission, likening it to the role of plague when wielded by Moses to abolish slavery in ancient Egypt.
Weaving between entertaining stories, prophetic analysis, and searing poetry, LeRoy hails the transformational power of this virus while denouncing the mindless response of world leaders who have no better answer than to enrich pharmaceutical companies. You will find here no flag-waving for party or candidate but recognition that the political system, with its imperial structures, is starting to break apart, that it must break apart for the good of planet, peoples, and species.
Whether you are a seeker of Bible prophecy, a climate activist, or simply love great storytelling in poetry and prose, this message of awakened hope will call to your heart.
"A brave new presence in the politics of the globe."
San Francisco Review of Books
“Abdiel LeRoy’s poetry and prose offer intellectual nourishment for critical thinkers and seekers of truth."
Annemarie M. Osborne

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unparagoned
• Release date: Sep 23, 2021

Book preview

The Covid Prophecies

The Covid Prophecies

A Healing Message for Troubled Times

A. Le Roy

Unparagoned

Copyright 2020-2021  A. LeRoy

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License Notes

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Copyright protection is vital to a healthy society and to its seekers of truth. Stealing the creation of another is blasphemy to Art and punished, as Dante points out, in the Seventh Circle of Hell. There, flakes of flame fall like snow onto the naked bodies of the condemned. If others would enjoy this book, have them buy an authorized copy for themselves. Also be sure to attribute quotations to the author.

Contents

The Verses Versus Empire Series

Introduction

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2020

The Awakening

Covidious

Covidious—II

Peaceful Reflections on a Pandemic

Peaceful Reflections on a Pandemic—II

A Virus Speaks

A Virus Speaks—II

Preoccupation

Pandemedia

Viperus

Pandemonic

FOiled

Bigle's Lament

Memorial Murder

Herald

On Awakening Empathy

Poetry. Prophecy. Protest. Prose.

Our Champion Pathogen

Karma-la

DNC… PDQ… AOC

Jacob’s Ladder

L-ish

On Virulent Government

Livid

Notoriety

Unquenchable

The End-Times Election

Dead Man Walking

The Blesscurse

Postcard to the Future

Overkill

Unbidden

The Princess President

An Intercessory Intervention

Vial

Audit

2021

A Vacuous Vaccine

Cockup

2 Little 2 Late

ROut!

Biddable

Π in the Sky

A British Police Officer Reflects on His Day

Transmagination

The Citizenship Candidate

The Oh-My-God Scariant

The Parable of the Frogs

Conclusion?

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The Verses Versus Empire Collection

From the Author

Afterword

Obama's Dream (Sample)

Wings of Desire

Books by A. LeRoy

Epic Poetry

Fiction

Poetry Collections

Non-Fiction

Notes

The Verses Versus Empire Series

Verses Versus Empire: I—The Bush Era

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Verses Versus Empire: II—The Obama Era

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Verses Versus Empire: III—The Trump Era

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The Verses Versus Empire Collection: Volumes I, II, and III (2001-2021)

Introduction

When I began writing political poetry in 2001, enraged at the U.S. Supreme Court's fraudulent installation of George W. Bush in the White House, I had no idea I would keep it going for 20 years and through three imperial presidencies. But here we are, several hundred poems later—along with occasional prose pieces and short stories—all gathered into The Verses Versus Empire Collection.

Nor did I foresee the turn my writing would take in 2020 with the arrival of a transformative virus that suddenly challenged the existing order so lamented in my verses up 'til then. Nor could I have imagined the power of this virus to effect rapid change in ways that petitions and protests could only dream of, much less that I would come to embrace it as 'Our Champion Pathogen'.

Covid also demanded I use prose to a far greater extent, especially as I approached publications to offer the Good News of Covid—news that they would prove so unwilling to hear. So I decided to excerpt all the Verses Versus Empire pieces written since Covid's arrival, and combine them with one or two earlier pieces, to form The Covid Prophecies.

Though prose, rather than poetry, makes up the majority of this distillation, its themes are anything but prosaic. For I see in Covid the arrival of a prophetic revolutionary, an activist for abolition, setting us free from the structures of exploitation that have enslaved humanity for millennia. And that prophetic mission, akin to Moses' use of plague against Pharaoh to free an enslaved people, is profoundly poetic, shaping human thought and destiny, allied even with the creative force that declared, Let there be light.

As I said, our gatekeepers of punditry have proven unequal to the task of discerning Covid's message. So be it. By the grace of modern technology, I don't need their sanction. Christ came to overthrow the existing order, he chose things deemed foolish by the world to shame the things deemed wise, and he called on me as a man of letters for this age. If my activity be from him, no word of it shall fail but yield its timely harvest. Nor shall any—man or monster, dragon or devil, institution or imperial beast, nor anything else in all creation—prevail against it.

Naysayers will arise of course. I will not debate them. Why waste words on those who have already made up their minds and who use the testimony of prophets merely as fodder for mockery? Let them. Their end shall be what their deeds deserve. I say what needs to be said and am heard by those with ears to hear, and no purported leader, no protection of office, no altar or high place, secular or sacred, is beyond my reach.

Others, meanwhile, may listen with a more open mind, may even wholeheartedly embrace the principles here espoused, but balk at their enactment, arguing that Covid's vision is too revolutionary or too sudden, too impractical or Utopian, that the world is simply not ready for it. To them I would say that Covid is a phenomenal accelerator, and I would quote the visionary words of Rutger Bregman in his work of enlightenment, Utopia for Realists:

The end of slavery, the emancipation of women, the rise of the welfare state—all were progressive ideas that started out as crazy and irrational but were ultimately accepted as basic common sense… If we want to change the world, we need to be unrealistic, unreasonable, and impossible.

Nor are my words in service of one political party or another. Like most who read this book, I am appalled at those poor players who strut their sordid hour upon the stage in mock combat with eachother. Clack, clack, clack go their swords. Clang, clang, clang go their cymbals. To quote Martin Luther in 1531, These foxes are tied together by the tails, even though their heads look in opposite directions. While they outwardly profess to be great enemies, inwardly they think, teach, and defend one and the same thing. ¹ Yes, like the papists and anabaptists Luther describes in his age, our pharisee Republicans and sadducee Democrats, ² sycophantic Tories and servile Labourites, are allied in destructive impulse inflicted on the very electorates they have wooed and deceived.

But now, watch these governments and power structures crumble. Built on corrupt foundations, their thrones have already started to tilt. They lean to compensate, desperate to appear upright—nothing to see here—but the ground still shifts beneath them. The subsidence continues, while with white-knuckled desperation they cling ever tighter to the corruption that installed them. Finally, they are spilled out of their high places to find out what democracy really looks like!

There will be much spectacle to enjoy as all this unfolds, much laughter to be had, though that's not to say it will be painless for the rest of us. This analysis of Covid rests solidly on the precedents of Moses and Elijah described in the Old Testament. Both wielded natural phenomena—plague in the case of Moses, drought in the case of Elijah—to coerce hard-hearted leaders, and both had to see their kin endure some of the same conditions.

But abolition was achieved in the end, the Israelites left Egypt laden with treasure, and Pharaoh, the patriarchal figurehead, embodiment of empire, would die in the Red Sea, drowned by his own hubris.

Nor would Covid prolong the suffering either; it will persist only as long as the leaders and power structures attempt to hold out against its abolitionist agenda. For example, have all the homeless people in the land been housed? Have all the nuclear weapons been dismantled? And are all the weapons manufacturers out of business? Has the Green New Deal been implemented, or fracking ceased? Have fossil-fuel subsidies and bank loans been entirely diverted to wind and solar energy? Has Julian Assange been set free? Or Reality Winner? Or Mumia Abu