My title here might make one ask: “What do you mean, ‘sudden emergence?’” By this question—to carry the supposition further—the questioner might follow up with: “The Chinese have been front and center and a growing item in the news for decades.”

China has indeed been moving from its Far East shadows behind that long wall that can be seen from satellites in space. Their emergence continues on an hour-by-hour basis. All we have to do is to listen to any news report at the moment these days. China is at the center of controversy in the matter of the COVID-19 crisis.

Top administration officials who are charged with national security are looking with accusatory thoughts toward the communist government of China. Almost certainly, many are saying, China is guilty of releasing the virus once it escaped from one of their laboratories somewhere near Wuhan.

The city—larger in population than New York City—was shut down for some time right at the beginning of the virus’ release, experts are saying. Somehow, I can’t remember exactly how, according to the report, the intelligence from the area showed that many roads for heavy traffic were completely closed for more than a week at one point. It was something that had never been done. There was no explanation for the shutdown, the report I heard said.

The inference the experts in national security made, according to the news report I heard, was that the streets and roads were completely shut down, disallowing the city’s millions of people to traverse them. This means, they believe, that something of a highly dangerous nature caused the dictator, Xii Ping, to disrupt life totally in the area.

Shortly after the shutdown, U S intelligence agencies reported, according to what I heard that Chinese military removed hundreds, if not thousands, from their apartments. These same people haven’t been heard from since. The thinking, among the people who gather intelligence, is that these were taken and killed in some manner, and attempts were made to erase that they ever existed.

Why? Apparently those removed were sick with the virus. They were removed, the thinking goes, so that the Chinese government could hide that the virus broke out in Wuhan and vicinity.

This “theory” is based in fact, in that US intelligence authorities have made no effort to discount this report. Apparently, electronic devices that monitor the area of Wuhan and the military weapons laboratory picked up on all these doings in and around the area.

The reports discount the “theory” that the virus spread from the so called wet markets of the area. These are the places where meats are bought by grocery shoppers. They apparently choose live animals—and exotic animals, at that, in some cases. Bats were thought to be the “meat” from which the virus came in this regard.

Now the question is whether the virus escaped the labs accidentally or was deliberately released. The former thinking seems to be what most of the intelligence people I’ve heard talk about the matters involved have concluded.

Now the accusations are that Xii Ping and his cadre of underlings decided that the accidental release was not going to bring only China’s economic circumstance to a standstill. They wanted and continue to want all economies to suffer so China can maintain its relatively close number-one economic position as it comes out of the crisis. The virus, the thinking goes, was put on planes by the Chinese government, with people carrying it to major cities around the world.

This certainly seems to be the plausible explanation for what has happened.

It is much more than just doubtful that this could have been contrived totally as part of a plan to do the damage it has done. The Chinese have simply—and maybe not so simply—taken advantage of the virus’ accidental release. Their strategy, if so, is brilliantly evil.

As stated in previous commentaries, I believe it was planned by the greatest schemer there is—Lucifer, the fallen one. He, I conjecture, started it from the beginning and continues to carry out the devilish plan.

So the American administration is casting a suspicious glare at the Chinese communist regime and pointing an accusatory finger, based on electronic and on-the-ground intelligence.

What does this all mean, prophetically speaking? My own thought is that while Satan has planned it all from its inception, it is, of course, under the complete control of God, whose omniscience nothing and no one escapes. I believe it is yet another signal of stage-setting for the Tribulation era and the ultimate return of His Son, the Lord Jesus, to clean up the planet of all sin and rebellion.

It is almost a certainty that China will be a primary player in the Tribulation era. The virus and China’s part in the release of its deadly and destructive effects could well be the Lord grabbing the old Chinese dragon by its neck and pulling it to the surface of earth’s bubbling cauldron of rebellion against God to make known its evil intentions.

China, as we’ve looked at many times, is showing itself to be the hegemonic force that consistently proves it wants to dominate not only the South China Sea and its sphere of influence, but wants to become the world’s number-one economic and military superpower.

The coronavirus might be a pandemic—a much-overblown one in terms of its potential deadly effects, in my estimation. It is likely Satan, however, who has brought it about to the degree that it has inflicted its havoc upon the world. But the God of Heaven controls it, like He controls everything in the ultimate sense.

Could China now have been “outed” in alerting all observers to its genocidal evil? Could the Lord be seeing to it that the Chinese dragon is shown to be in cahoots with the old red dragon, Satan so that there can be no excuse that the world hasn’t been warned?

That Chinese dragon will be the king of the kings of the east, I really have little doubt. They and their Near-East and Far-East Asian cohorts will be responsible for killing fully one-third of earth’s inhabitants at the later stages of the movement of nations toward the killing fields of Armageddon.

And the sixth angel poured out his bowl upon the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings from the east. (Revelation 16:12)