A Command is Still A Command

No photo description available.

It has been argued that the command to gather for worship in Hebrews 10:25 is not really a command at all, but something of a suggestion that can be set aside for something more important, say, the civil authority’s desire to end in-person worship. So to proclaim as the Apostles, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) is not really appropriate since God does not here, nor anywhere else, actually command assembled worship.

Or so goes the argument.

But in Hebrews there is a verb form called hortatory subjunctive, a participle of means. It is used repeatedly as a command, often in a form that reads, “let us . . .” These statements are not options, but actual commands. See 4:1; 4:11; 4:14, 4:16; 6:1; 10:22; 10:23; 12:1; 12:28; 13:15; and 13:15. These are clearly commands, carrying the same weight as imperatives.

Therefore, the command to meet together is contained here:

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24–25, ESV)

If meeting together is not a command, then neither is the first part of the sentence, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” God in Hebrews is commanding the stirring up of love and good works, which includes gathering together. It is unimaginable that this can be seen as anything but an actual command.

Some members of the wider Evangelical church in Canada argued that the civil government has authority over the church in the matter of gathering together. This was widely disseminated through the Gospel Coalition Canada, but other churches, denominations, and fellowships had their own version. Placing an impossible interpretation of Romans 13 ahead of God’s command to assemble, they surrendered to the state in this matter.

Jesus said, “the gates of Hell will not prevail” against His church (Matthew 16:18). But it seems the gates of Hell are doing just fine. lately. Perhaps it is because the church is not pressing the attack!

It would be far simpler for the Canadian church to simply confess the sin of disbanding than to go through the mental gymnastics necessary to make the commands of God into suggestions. We are facing this again soon—this time let’s get it right.

16 June, 202116 June, 2021

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.

25 November, 2015

"But Church is Boring!"

Religious Boredom

A. W. Tozer

THAT THERE IS SOMETHING gravely wrong with evangelical Christianity today is not likely to be denied by any serious minded person acquainted with the facts. Just what is wrong is not so easy to determine.

In examining the situation myself I find nature and reason in conflict within me, for I tend by temperament to want to settle everything with a sweep of the pen. But reason advises caution; nothing is that simple, and we must be careful to distinguish cause from effect. As every doctor knows there is a wide difference between the disease and the symptoms; and every Christian knows that there is a big difference between cause and effect in the sphere of religion.

At the root of our spiritual trouble lie a number of causes and these causes have effects, but which is cause and which effect is not always known. I suspect that many things currently under attack by our evangelists and pastors (and editors, for that matter) are not the causes of our troubles but the effects of causes that lie deeper. We treat the symptoms and wonder why the patient does not get well. Or, to change the figure, we lay down a heavy fire against nothing more substantial than the cloud of dust raised by marching enemy troops long gone by.

One mark of the low state of affairs among us is religious boredom. Whether this is a thing in itself or merely a symptom of the thing, I do not know for sure, though I suspect that it is the latter. And that it is found to some degree almost everywhere among Christians is too evident to be denied.

Boredom is, of course, a state of mind resulting from trying to maintain an interest in something that holds no trace of interest for us (the boss’s jokes, say, or that lecture on the care and nurture of dahlias to which we went because we could not resist the enthusiastic urging of a friend). No one is bored by what he can in good conscience walk away from. Boredom comes when a man must try to hear with relish what for want of relish he hardly hears at all.

By this definition there is certainly much boredom in religion these days. The businessman on a Sunday morning whose mind is on golf can scarcely disguise his lack of interest in the sermon he is compelled to hear. The housewife who is unacquainted with the learned theological or philosophical jargon of the speaker; the young couple who feel a tingle of love for each other but who neither love nor know the One about whom the choir is singing-these cannot escape the low-grade mental pain we call boredom while they struggle to keep their attention focused upon the service. All these are too courteous to admit to others that they are bored and possibly too timid to admit it even to themselves, but I believe that a bit of candid confession would do us all good.

When Moses tarried in the mount, Israel became bored with the faith that sees the invisible and clamored for a god they could see and touch. And they displayed a great deal more enthusiasm for the golden calf than they did over the Lord God of Abraham. Later they tired of manna and complained against the monotony of their diet. On their petulant insistence they finally got flesh to eat, and that to their own undoing.

Those Christians who belong to the evangelical wing of the church (which I firmly believe is the only one that even approximates New Testament Christianity) have over the last half-century shown an increasing impatience with things invisible and eternal and have demanded and got a host of things visible and temporal to satisfy their fleshly appetites. Without Biblical authority, or any other right under the sun, carnal religious leaders have introduced a host of attractions that serve no purpose except to provide entertainment for the retarded saints.

It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.

This has influenced the whole pattern of church life, and even brought into being a new type of church architecture, designed to house the golden calf.

So we have the strange anomaly of orthodoxy in creed and heterodoxy in practice. The striped-candy technique has been so fully integrated into our present religious thinking that it is simply taken for granted. Its victims never dream that it is not a part of the teachings of Christ and His apostles.

Any objection to the carryings on of our present golden-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, “But we are winning them!” And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world’s treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is no.

We are paying a frightful price for our religious boredom. And that at the moment of the world’s mortal peril.”