Tag: Ccovid19

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We Fell So Easily

Why the Church closures are are bigger deal than we want to admit.

Canadians who pay attention are noticing that there is a war against churches that stay open in spite of government mandates. This isn’t going to split the church in Canada, it already has. Many wonder why, when there are no Covid deaths traceable to worship, and maybe less that five Covid cases in all of Canada connected to worship, that the fines number in the millions and pastors are jailed.
I believe the behaviour of the civil government in this pandemic is designed to weaken Bible-believing churches and to pre-emptively rob them of their message.
Civil leaders are throttling up their push toward social change, and Bible-believing churches are a direct threat to that change.
Every major political leader affirms that “hate has no place in Canada.” They are pretty coy about defining hate, but it isn’t hard to parse:
1. If you are anti-abortion, you are sexist.
2. If you are anti sex-selective abortion, you are a racist.
3. If you reject Critical Race Theory, you are a racist.
4. If you doubt the rule of the state over all, you are a rebel.
5. If you are anti same-sex marriage, you are a homophobe.
6. If you are against women pastors, you are a misogynist.
7. If you are against the non-scientific notion that sex can be changed, transphobic.
8. If you teach against teachings of Islam, you are an Islamophobe.
(I used the negatives, “anti” and “against” to trigger all the right people. I hope that isn’t you. If this kind of writing bothers you, you are part of the problem.)
The above describes every church that takes the Bible seriously. If your church, your pastor, is faithful to Scripture, the labels sexist, racist, rebel, homophobe, transphobe, misogynist, and Islamophobe will all be applied.
This is why the government of Ontario and the government of Canada have attacked churches so viciously. Although they have the power to attack churches directly on each of the eight points above, they are far too cowardly to do so. They can speak of “hate” in general terms, but they are very reluctant to attach these monikers to actual churches and pastors. They will attempt, for instance, to try to make it illegal to criticize Islam, but it is far easier to just keep the church shut.
So instead, the churches are attacked over health. Who could argue with that? Well, Bible-believing churches and pastors certainly have disputed the value of lockdowns and closures, and continue to do so. The same Biblical commitment they have doctrinally and morally is demonstrated in the very plain fact that the state is not Lord over the church. We believe that and act upon it.
Churches that have Biblical stances on these points are the ones fighting the fines and imprisonments. I know of no church, pastored by a woman, who is remaining open. I know of no United Church of Canada, or Convention Baptist of Ontario and Quebec that remains open. There may be churches associate with the Gospel Coalition that are open, but the leadership is in full submission to the state.
Churches that question Biblical authority are the most likely ones to remain closed.
When pastors faithfully preach the whole counsel of God, they will preach that the Gospel transforms, converts, and will undermine the state-religion of humanism. They will teach that homosexuals can be converted. They will teach that same-sex marriage is a lie. They will preach that abortion is murder. They will teach that Islam is a false-religion.
But is this not hate, according to our Prime Minister?
None of this will be acceptable in the new Canada, a nation that is being constructed by humans with no reference to the God that created them.
The institutional church in Canada has received a mortal blow. It is soon to be illegal to try to convert a homosexual away from that sin. Then, to name any behaviour as sinful. Today, Christian business people must participate in same-sex marriage. Our taxes pay for abortions, our schools are indoctrination centres for Critical Race Theory and the sexual revolution. We complied when it was demanded that our worship cease. Now do we think we’ll stand when we are told we must not preach a message contrary to that of the State?
We fell so easily.
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Did You Fall Off Your Chair Yet?

Today (Tuesday) is the day that we were supposed to “fall off our chair” when we heard the new Covid-19 modeling. I think Mr. Ford may fall off his chair as he overreaches the limits of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We are now being warned, threatened really, with a collapsing health care system as it will be overloaded by Covid cases. But the public must never allow this smokescreen to be deployed—the health system in Ontario has had shortages, rationing, delays, and hallway medicine for nearly 20 years. People have died because of the failure of politicians and administrators to reign in costs, hire and pay staff, and control the burgeoning hospital bureaucracies.
Recently, the CEO of our local St. Joseph’s Healthcare system was dismissed because it was learned that he traveled in December to a warmer climate. He was fired for the travel, but it ought to have been only for the hypocrisy of being on the lockdown team and thinking that the rules did not apply to him. Anyone ought to be able to travel, but the hypocrisy spoils the public trust at a time we can ill afford.
To make his dismissal easier for him, he was awarded a contract buyout of $1 million dollars to be paid out over the next two years. I have no idea how many hospital beds that could buy (and we are not short of literal beds, or spaces, but the staff to care for those in the beds). Again, note the disconnect between those with golden parachutes on the public dime and those whose businesses and lives have been destroyed. Taxpayers pay for the hospital CEO’’s salary and buyout, and there is nothing for those who truly suffer. It is time to look at those who write the contracts.
We have seen years of waste, scandal, graft, and cronyism in all Ontario government departments for years now. Covid is an excuse to cover incompetence, and the public is blamed for failure to comply, although compliance is very high.
Warnings are being issued that care will be rationed, and some patients may need to be euthanized to best utilize resources. Truth is, all healthcare is rationed at some point, and in a public-only system such as in Canada, the reality of rationing arrives much earlier than where a private system is allowed. Issuing threats like this is an act of desperation—it makes hostages of us all.
A representative system of government such as ours can only work when those elected are held accountable, and at this time many of our leaders are depending upon our being distracted enough that we don’t. In the future, our leaders must never be allowed to get out of a press conference or town-hall meeting without these points being raised. Then they will have cause to “fall off their chair.”
Hang on to your seats! The article is here.
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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year. Just a few random ramblings for the year to get us started. Thanks for your patience, or, if you are not patient, feel free to move right along.
 
1. First off, don’t place too much hope in the flip of a calendar page. Man makes calendars, but God made time. He is not following our calendar.
 
2. If you are behind in your 2020 Bible reading, just stay with the plan you’re on and continue. Otherwise, at the end of your time on earth, you may have read Genesis 60 times but never make it through the Prophets. Maybe your 2020 New Year’s resolution to read the Bible through will actually be an 18- or 24-month plan. So what? The goal is the reading—just do that.
 
3. Let’s agree to stop saying that a current event may “usher in the antichrist.” This is often said with great seriousness, emphasizing that we are now in the last days.
But . . .
Remember the millennium meltdown of 2000? I do. Books, sermon series, and videos were all produced with great certainty that the turning of the calendar meant the antichrist would arrive and bring in the seven-year tribulation. Depending upon your eschatology, the rapture would occur sometime before, middle of, or after the Great Tribulation.
 
I don’t need to remind anyone that none of that happened as predicted. In fact, the change to 2000 did not usher in anything other than a change of calendars which required some computer coding. The reality is that Jesus was likely born between 6-4 BC (our calendars are 4-6 years off), the actual millennium began sometime in 1994-96! We were late to that party.
 
God does not live by our time.
 
The antichrist has always been with us. All the passages referring to the antichrist occur in John’s letters (not the Revelation): 1 John 2:18; 1 John 2:22; 1 John 4:3; 2 John 7. The idea of antichrist is that it is the spirit that will replace and be against Christ. This has been the struggle between God’s people and Satan’s forces since the beginning. It has been present against Christians since the beginning.
 
Let’s learn from this: God’s acts are not determined by our news-feed.
 
4. Consider the world in which we live. Chaos seems to reign, and the entire world is focused on the US election—indeed elections in many countries are viewed by many as the salvation or damnation of a nation.
 
Elections are serious matters, but not ultimate ones. It is true they change the course of history, but God determines history in the first place. An election may be used of God for national salvation or national judgement. I’m inclined that in recent times it is for the latter. We are not witnessing the end of the world, but the end of Western civilization, and that does not mean the end of the church or the end of Christ’s rule on earth. No nation that destroys its young, disabled, frail and elders can hope to avoid judgement. This statement should be entirely unremarkable. We should expect national judgement as much as we expect the sun to rise in the morning. It is the most predictable event we have. Christians should read up on this–it’s in the Bible.
 
Will Communism prevail? Will climate change fanatics win? Possibly, but untrue systems cannot go on if they are false to reality as established in Creation, by a Creator, who has told us other things that cancel the mischief planned by the planners. God laughs at them, actually (Psalm 2).
 
Any man or woman, or collection of them (a nation, society, or culture) that chooses to abandon what God has decreed will fail, and that failing is brutal to watch (Job 21:5).
 
So it follows that the outcome of elections, run as they are by unregenerate people, will have unregenerate results:
 
“We are not seeing terrible things in our culture because we vote the wrong way. We are seeing terrible things in our culture because men love darkness rather than light.” –Voddie Baucham.
 
We are a confused people, and that itself is a sign of God’s judgement. See Romans 1:18-32, Genesis 11:1-9; Exodus 14:24; Leviticus 26:16; Isaiah 22:5, etc. 1 Corinthians 14:33 tells us that “God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.” We need to come to grips with the fact that all the contradictions of policy, laws and solutions are the signs of a confused people. Our rulers and governors are demonstrating, before God and His church, that they do not know what they are doing, and Christians need to pray 1) for repentance in the hearts of those who rule and 2) that their plans for evil will be completely frustrated and defeated.
 
5. In light of the above, Christians must stop being surprised when unredeemed people act like unredeemed people who insist we follow the fruits of un-redemption, all the while openly displaying total confusion.
 
6. As our society thrashes and rages like a wounded animal caught in a trap, we should, short of a real interruption brought on by repentance or God’s judgement, expect violence. Repentance will quell the violence. Judgement will too.
 
7. On a final note, Christians must reject and abandoned the pietism that has so damaged the church’s witness for nearly 200 years. This is the notion that faith is entirely private and does not enter the world outside the church or family. This is the opinion that the faith has little or nothing to do with the world between Sundays, and to insist on cultural change is somehow to only “rearrange deck-chairs on the Titanic.”
 
God is the Creator, Christ is the King, and we are His subjects. We cannot abandon the world to Satan.
 
It is a new year on my calendar. There is, in Christ, much to celebrated daily.
 
Happy New Year! Just remember, God created time–He is not bound to it.