“And authority was given them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with a long sword and with food shortage and with deadly plague and by the wild beasts of the earth.” (Revelation 6:8b)

28. (a) How has there been a fulfillment of prophecy concerning “deadly plague”? (b) How have Jehovah’s people been protected from many diseases today?

²⁸ Of current importance here is “deadly plague.” Following in the wake of the ravages of World War I, the Spanish flu reaped over 20 million human lives in just a few months of 1918-19. The only territory on earth to escape this scourge was the small island of St. Helena. In places where the population was decimated, funeral pyres were lit to burn the piles of bodies. And today there is the frightful incidence of heart disease and cancer, much of which is caused by tobacco pollution. In what was described as “the ugly decade” of the 1980’s, a way of life that is lawless by Bible standards added the scourge of AIDS to the “deadly plague.” In the year 2000, the U.S. surgeon general was reported as calling AIDS “probably the worst health epidemic the world has ever known.” He said that 52 million people around the world had contracted HIV/​AIDS, and of them 20 million had died. How thankful Jehovah’s people are that the wise counsel of his Word keeps them away from fornication and misuse of blood, through which so many diseases are transmitted today!​—Acts 15:28, 29; compare 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.