The Day a Plague Died

On May 8, 1980, delegates at the Thirty-Third World Health Assembly in Geneva rose to affirm what had never before been true in human history: a disease that had killed an estimated 300 million people in the twentieth century alone was gone. Smallpox — the scourge that had blinded, scarred, and buried human beings for over three thousand years — was officially eradicated. Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who had led the WHO's intensified eradication campaign since 1967, later described the moment with quiet awe. The last known natural case had occurred in October 1977, when a hospital cook named Ali Maow Maalin contracted the virus in Merca, Somalia. He survived. And after him, no one on earth would suffer from smallpox again.

Think about that: a disease that once seemed as permanent as death itself was wiped from the face of the earth through the persistence of thousands of health workers going village to village, arm to arm, across every continent.

Yet even as we celebrate, we know the tears have not all been dried. Other plagues still rage. Other suffering still waits. Smallpox is gone, but death is not — not yet. That is why Revelation 21:4 stirs something so deep within us: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain." What humanity accomplished with smallpox was extraordinary. But God promises something greater still — not the eradication of one disease, but the abolition of suffering itself. And that day, too, is coming.