no calamity will befall you, and not even a plague will draw near to your tent.”​—Ps. 91:9, 10.

But those making the one living and true God, Jehovah, their life’s refuge, “no calamity will befall you.” That is to say, none of the calamities described in the preceding verses of Psalm 91. Of course, they may share with the general public in large-scale natural calamities such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, epidemics, food shortages, the ravages of international and intertribal wars and political revolutions, but these do not destroy their spirituality or weaken their faith and trust in Almighty God. And they can recover materially and physically from those earthly calamities.

 6. Why is spiritual calamity more serious, and who are those who suffer therefrom?

⁶ Spiritual calamity, however, is different. From it there is no recovery, as in the case of religious Christendom and Jewry. These religious groups are, just like pagandom, not spiritually prosperous. They continue in their sick, diseased religious state, with destructive calamity ahead of them in the coming “great tribulation.” (Matt. 24:21, 22; Rev. 7:14) Calamity is ahead for all not taking refuge in Jehovah and dwelling in him.

 7. (a) What are the figurative “plagues” that infect the citylike world? (b) In what course does safety lie for us who are like tenting alien residents?

⁷ Those trustfully dwelling in the Most High God are pictured as alien residents, dwelling in tents in this present system of things, outside city limits. (1 Pet. 2:11; Heb. 11:8-10) To these as a class the divine promise is: “And not even a plague will draw near to your tent.” (Ps. 91:10) Among the spiritually harmful “plagues” that now infest the citylike world are such contagious things as nationalism, fanatical patriotism, the teaching of evolution as a fact, selfish materialism, drug abuse, the blood transfusion craze, spiritistic practices, the modern “new sexual morality,” the love of pleasures rather than love of God, religious sectarianism, “Higher Criticism” of the Bible, worship of the “sacred cow” of science, also the worship of the political “wild beast” and worship of its postwar “image,” the United Nations, successor to the League of Nations. (Rev. 9:20, 21; 13:1-18) Only as those making Jehovah their refuge keep their “tent” pitched far away from the “city” of this world will they keep free from the contagion of its many “plagues.”