Are Bed Bugs A Wake Up Call For A Nation Spiritually Asleep?

Every one of us needs to sort out how we believe God is involved in the world today. Many may not admit they are Deists: they believe in God, but they are unwilling to give him credit or blame for any direct involvement in the world today. This is a theology of a God who had hands-on connections back in the beginning, or in Bible days, but today is pretty silent, leaving us to ourselves.

What the Bible actually says is that all things are sustained by him (Colossians 1:17), at all times. Were God to lift his hand for a mere nanosecond, even molecules at the atomic level would instantly unravel.

God is not silent today; he is always communicating, always speaking, guiding, confirming, correcting and warning. The problem is many are not familiar with the sound of his voice and few are fluent in God’s language of choice: symbolism.

Symbolism is the language throughout the Bible: significant numbers, colors, creatures and circumstances. God has even used everyday things like coats or clay pots to communicate a message. Jesus taught his disciples to see the spiritual, symbolic meaning behind everyday events.

A number of years ago, I read Murray Dueck’s fascinating book called, “If It Were A Dream, What Would It Mean? Discovering the Spiritual Meaning Behind Everyday Events.” To be clear, greater meaning and significance is not to be milked out of every little news item. However, those with prophetic sense note that there are spiritual signs of something more in transpiring events. Those with eyes to see the signs and discern deeper spiritual significance are never able to prove it is indeed God speaking; they just have a sense to guide their prayers.

Because of Dueck’s book and his fascinating examples of God speaking to the world today, you can understand how my interest was piqued last fall with this headline: “Plague of Bed Bugs Found in Empire State Building.” The word “plague” triggered prophetic listening in me. Biblically, God has sent judgment and correction by way of pestilence, and promises to continue to do so.

Exodus 9:15 says, “For now I had put forth my hand, and smitten thee and thy people with pestilence.” The Pale Horse of the Apocalypse in Revelation 6:8 is evidence that pestilence remains in God’s bag of tricks to provoke people to return to Him.

My prophetic interest increased as I continued to read the August 22, 2010 article on the plague of bed bugs at the Empire State Building:

First they crawled into trendy New York clothing stores like Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch. Then they turned their attention to the Time Warner headquarters. Now an infestation of bed bugs has been found at one of New York City’s best-known landmarks, the Empire State Building.

Apparently, Time Warner spent a half a million dollars to eradicate the bed bugs. Subsequent articles said the bed bugs were spreading via trucks. A headline a couple weeks later read, “Bedbugs close down the Nike Store in NYC.” An article a month later said the problem then spread to London. Today, you can find news articles that say, “All fifty states reporting outbreaks of the blood sucking nocturnal creatures.” Or, “Resilient strains of superbugs are infesting mattresses at an alarming rate.” It’s now the “Biggest Mystery in Entomology.”

Interestingly enough, a few bed bugs can create a colony of thousands within just a couple weeks. All that is fascinating, but with my spiritual eyes I am looking even deeper and asking, “What do bugs mean?” It is curious to me that bed bugs are nocturnal and drink blood. What does the Empire State Building represent? Interestingly enough, it was intentionally built during the Great Depression as a public symbol of hope.

Or what do Nike, or Time Warner and the fashion district of New York City represent, if anything? What does a bed symbolize? Bugs — or anything for that matter — coming after us in bed is off the charts in personal terms of a violation. Verses come to mind like Psalm 4:8, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

There is even speculation that the tarping of the West Wing of the White House late last fall was due to fumigation efforts in dealing with bed bug infestations in Washington DC at that time. Apple now has a bed bug outbreak app called Bed Bug Alert so users can see locations where bedbugs have been reported. This 2011 Google Bed Bug Registry Database Infestation Map shows how America is now a nation in the peak of a full-blown plague of bed bugs.

Public Health biologist Laura Krueger of the California Department of Health explains this from a natural perspective,

We don’t use as harsh a chemical as we used to; we don’t spray mattresses with insecticide before selling them anymore and the bugs are getting increasingly resistant to the few chemicals we have left.

As I prayerfully meditate on all this, my question is what does it all mean spiritually?  Perhaps nothing. If you have bed bugs in your home, then I am not saying God gave them to you because you have done something to displease him. What I do have suspicion of is that this national bed bug outbreak, unusually no longer confined to the slums and poor communities, is a symbol and something that should at least cause us pause.

Students of Bible prophecy know that plagues, pestilences and diseases are things the Bible tells us to watch for.  Jesus said, “Watch and pray” (Mark 13:33). On September 4, 2010 a minister named Doug Addison posted the following on a website I frequent on occasion:

Another prophetic message through the media is the return of bed bugs. This is a prophetic forewarning about an attack coming against our intimacy with God. In dreams, beds represent our intimacy with God. Bed bugs drink human blood (life blood) slowly and often go undetected until it is too late.

When I shared an earlier draft of this article with a friend who I consider an intercessor for America, she felt this blight did relate to a lack of intimacy with God but more specifically to defilements in the “bedroom.” The Bible says, “Keep the marriage bed pure” (Hebrews 13:4). Yet, nationally we have epidemic infidelity and immorality of all flavors, pornography and perversions. Her question back to me was, “Is all this stuff going on in our BEDS BUGGING God?”

There is a sobering section in Amos 4:6-12 where God spoke to a defiant nation though things other than words:

“I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord. “I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another… yet you have not returned to me.” Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew… I sent plagues among you as I did to Egypt… yet you have not returned to me…”

A passage like that gives me pause to pray about this outbreak and plague of bed bugs in America. If what I have put forth here in this article results in more people spiritually tuning in more carefully to God’s voice and language of choice, and looking more intently at his involvement in the world today, then I have succeeded. Even more though my hope is you will join me and many others and praying for and through these types of devastations that seem to be increasingly coming on our nation and the nations of the world.

We need to prayerfully consider things like plagues and pestilences as God has spoken through them in the past and promises to in the future. Watch and pray.