Churches closed, pastors arrested

power1 said:

I suppose one could play on the freeway and say if there was anything not good about that, God could change it! However, I would certainly not blame people if they decided to get up off that high speed freeway, and have a nice stroll on the beach or forest. It is common knowledge that getting run over by a big truck has ill effects!

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But this isn't game where people are playing anything. Gut wrenching issues are effecting people with all this. Forgive me but you're making it seem like people are making such decisions lightly as in doing something unwise like playing on a busy road. If you're wanting to embrace a way of thinking that something will have ill effects and it's common as you say to believe so then like you've said...according to one's faith so be it done unto you.

Nope I'm not seeking to sound arrogant and self boasting that I'm believing stronger than you. I'd be a fool to do that as such would be pride. I will say one thing though when it come to me ....I'm not going to allow Satan to put up this block where I don't have free course of action as in visiting a loved in the hospital. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Where mercy needs to go forth I"m going to allow it to go forth. I will not let Satan stand in the way and believing the best of you I'll trust you wouldn't want to allow that either.

Well, some may chose an experimental intrusion into their body, and some may choose to try and avoid that if possible.

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And I'm sure you would agree it's a lot more easier for some people to avoid it as compared to others. Not everybody is in the same boat. There's different type of boats.

In either case, if their usual place of worship and fellowship and meeting was under police barricade, and their pastor arrested, perhaps some might want to obey God anyhow rather than fear man, and meet. (vaxxed or not)

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And I'd be the first to agree with you friend that the Lord might commend their sincerity in how they think they're always making a stand. He might say to them later though that you might have brought some things upon yourself that maybe didn't really have to happen. Could he actually say to some you really here and there should have yielded to your magistrates. Zeal doesn't ALWAYS mean someone is right. Know when it's time to make stands and when it isn't. And I think there's a thousand and one ways to preach the gospel and feed the flock and it doesn't ALWAYS have to be in a church building. Maybe food for thought.

power1 said:

So when they came for others that was OK, long as you were safe and they did not come for you. OK. Rather than be angry and distrustful of a system that fined and jailed and closed churches and etc etc, you feel you were fine, thank you very much. You also seem to extend this warm trust in the system to believe that things in the future will be wonderful again. OK.

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Wrong. I mentioned what we did in relation to your comment below. Rather than meet in some secret location, we held services online.

power1 said:

Right. I was just thinking it would be harder to bust folks meeting in secret than it would be to catch folks break and entering a crime scene with police tape, and then sitting there for an hour to be certain they get caught.

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power1 said:

Well, not everyone. Ever shopped at Cosco? The parking lot can have hundreds of cars. How about abortion clinics? Were they all closed? Schools? Airports? Liquor stores? Malls?
Go online? Some people may not have more faith in that than in video games or facebook. It does seem possible to 'remain open' for many churches though. For other people, they might prefer (have faith) to meet in other ways than the way they used to. Maybe some feel that the restrictions are growing and biased and probably are not only permanent but may increase. The agenda in schools and governments is overtly Satanic these day in many ways. Some churches (one would hope) may choose to not ignore this any longer but deal with it with actions. Some not feel it is business as usual.

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Where I live they didn't close down stores were people buy food and other essentials. But they did close down restaurants, libraries, theaters, arenas etc.

power1 said:

Well, not everyone. Ever shopped at Cosco? The parking lot can have hundreds of cars. How about abortion clinics? Were they all closed? Schools? Airports? Liquor stores? Malls?.....

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It is not just about the number of people, it is about social distancing and wearing masks and the nature of your interaction.

At Cosco, are you frequently encourage to hold the hand of a stranger? Are you frequently within a confined space with 5 to 8 people within a 6 foot radius of you? At Cosco or the Mall do they let you in without a mask?

The closest analogy to Church would be schools. But even at schools they require masks and mandate social distancing.

Please don't be disingenuous when arguing. If your argument is true and strong then it should be able to survive the truth. And the truth is, the situation at a church is different than at Cosco. If Cosco didn't have the space to enable social distancing and didn't enforce mask mandates then Cosco would be shut down just as any other business would be shut down.

This shutdown has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with following the current law.

1. You go to your church gathering in defiance of a government order.
2. You sit unmasked next to a person who has COVID and doesn't know it yet.
3. You are exposed to the virus in church. You don't know it yet, and go to work where you expose a co-worker.
4. Your co-worker goes home and exposes his young adult daughter who who works in a nursing home.
5. The young adult daughter feels okay and goes to work at her nursing home where she exposes an infirm 85-year-old woman.
6. You recover from COVID. You think it really wasn't all that bad and the prohibition against your church gathering is bunk.
7. The old woman dies.
8. You never know a woman died, and continue on in life satisfied with the knowledge that you exercised your rights and stood up to an oppressive government.

Love thy neighbor.

power1 said:

It is not a game to inject unknown experimental substances into young children or our own bodies.

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And I'm sure a great number here as I've seen them do could argue with you that the vaccines are not of an unknown experimental substance at this stage of the process. I would like to mention this that as far as Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said as of the other day that he was not going to mandate the taking a vaccines for children but let the parents decide. My point.....can't you and some others stand by the government and say a word of praise about anything they do in trying to be reasonable?

It has been tradition for missionaries to get vaccines as needed in order to preach the gospel. So when someone has a reason that is in love for getting a vaccine who are we to throw stones?

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That's correct. But some NO many are and in my books they need to repent. They have a position that God told them not to take a vaccine refusing to accept God might have told others something different.

That does not mean I agree with old folks homes holding people hostage....

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Nursing homes are holding them hostage? That right there seems like unnecessary hyperbole. If I'm not mistaken if a family wants to pull a family member out of a home they can.

In Ireland which is one of the most vaccinated countries, the majority of sick are the vaccinated for example!

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And hospital after hospital after hospital are saying the majority of the most seriously sick in their places are the unvaccinated. And when I talk to nurses mostly on line, NOT MEDIA GROUPS, who tell me that's basically true. Perhaps that needs to be considered? Or are we just going to assert all these dear people are just liars? As a Christian I think we need to have second thoughts about doing that. I'd hope you'd share that opinion.

Even if it ever got to the point where the vax was known to kill millions, and stop reproduction, and cause all sorts of hellish complications, why would I cast stones on people who were duped into getting it?

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And is it possible some are being duped into NOT taking it? One of my daughters was opposed to the vaccines not at this time for she's vaccinated. But she was following on FB quite often one who was into this strong social activism standing against the vaccines. This individual caught covid and died. Before she did she recanted and felt remorse for speaking against them pleaded for people to get vaccinated.

If a church went underground, that was not to condemn people sick from a vaccine, or who ended up getting it. The people would be meeting secretly to rob the government the power to stop them obeying God according to their faith and the bible.

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And I'm thinking the Lord would have us weigh what TRULY is a productive action to take as compared to one which is counter productive in advancing the Kingdom. You can fight, fight, fight, fight for what one feels is their Constitutional right of living in a country but if doing so causes your influence in the culture to be totally decimated than what have you gained? Consider Jesus didn't ALWAYS consider it necessary to offend the culture in fact at one place he stood against the idea of doing so. Matt 17:24

Calgary Street Church pastor Artur Pawlowski has been charged, yet again, by police for providing food to the homeless.

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But is this a constant thing where he's always being charged for providing food or are you talking about one city not maybe showing the best of wisdom at one time? You should appreciate every city, town and region in Canada handle things differently. What concerns me is you see an instance like Pawlowski and a narrative is spun that in Canada well there you go...we have a totalitarian society. I happened to work in soup kitchen in one town in Ontario.

The government of our municipality has been good even donated funds to renovate some kitchens. Point. They want to homeless to receive food. Also the health board paid us a couple of visits and they've done everything to be helpful wanting us to continue but with some reasonable stipulations. All I'm saying is I don't favor a mental state being created that all the country is dark and there aren't a great many in government not trying to be helpful. I believe and know there is.

Is it good, in the midst of a pandemic, to social distance, wear masks, yada yada yada. Yes. We should do such things for our fellow man.

Should the government order religious institutions to close? No...that is overreach
Should the church listen when the government orders them to close? No. The government has no authority over the church whatsoever.

power1 said:

And believers have been gracious to the mass baby killing wicked governments and their lying and heavy handed tyranny, and hypocrisy.

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Yes we should be loving, kind and gracious to everyone. And I'd ask you what is your solution to this. I'd tell you mine. I'd contend we ARE NOT called to seek to create a morality revolution in people or culture. We are called rather to seek to be born a spiritual transformation within the hearts of men which changes them or makes them a new creation. 2 Cor 5:17 One can't overcome the works of the flesh by fleshly means to persuade you overcome the flesh by the Spirit or in other words....You get people born again Jn 3:3 and those morality things you're concerned about WILL CHANGE. But you come at it through the Spirit and not the flesh. If people rise up just naturally speaking and cause revolts that speaks more in line with being a zealot. Zealots meant well and were sincere but they knew not what spirit they were from.

No one needs to ask Caesar if they can meet. He can like it or lump it.

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I'd suggest you might be getting too caught up with what you consider to be your Constitutional rights of an earthly country and maybe not considering what actions might genuinely might advance the Kingdom and what actually might even hinder it. I think it's a misnomer to say it's just one Caesar asking you to modify how you do servicers for a period of time. It's arguably speaking 80% of the culture....the culture you're wanting have influence with, the culture you're trying to win that if they feel you have acted irresponsibly then what positive thing has been gained? Now they might not listen to a word you say about anything! There is a place where it's NOT showing cowardice to say like Paul and Timothy once did, "To the Jews I became a Jew that I might win the Jews. 1 Cor 9:20

spiritfilledjm said:

Is it good, in the midst of a pandemic, to social distance, wear masks, yada yada yada. Yes. We should do such things for our fellow man.

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All right then. But are all members of every church doing this? Are it's leaders encouraging these protocols to be carried out? I'm sure the majority are. But what about the 5% or let's even say 1% that don't? Are you saying no words of censor shouldn't ever be spoken to them to do a reasonable thing when the greater culture insists upon it?

Should the government order religious institutions to close? No...that is overreach
Should the church listen when the government orders them to close? No. The government has no authority over the church whatsoever.

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I hear what you're saying but have you really thought through on this? What if a bylaw came forth about asbestoses in walls and action needed to be taken? What if they discovered there's a danger to people because of a structural problem? What if they don't have proper smoke alarms which are mandated to be set up a certain way? Those are safety issues you say? But isn't that how covid is being thought of from their standpoint? Why shouldn't we be fair and at least TRY to understand what they're saying?

The main difference between what is happenning now and the persecution of churches back then is that NOBODY IS SAYING YOU CANT WORSHIP OR BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT.

Now they are just saying you can't worship in that space.

power1 said:

I guess back when masks were NOT recommended wearing them was not for fellow man? Ha. Basically, the message seems to be trust the medical heads, despite advice not to do so from tens of thousands of other medical professionals. Even when they change the advice 180 degrees twice a week if they feel like it.

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Can you provide evidence of tens of thousands of medical professionals saying something different? The overwhelming medical consensus has simply followed the data. Unsurprisingly, the guidance has changed when the facts have changed.

power1 said:

Canadian pastor arrested issues dire warning, ordered to parrot COVID experts

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He was arrested for breaking the covid related temporary 'no gathering' law...

power1 said:

That's nice. Apparently they actually cannot gather anywhere though, or even feed the hungry as a group or etc etc etc. By the way if 'that space' is now useless what would you propose?

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Our church has done online. It's been hard but it gets done.
It's a temporary situation.

power1 said:

Considering the treatment of some church leaders, the question arises, should churches all go underground now?

Canadian pastor arrested issues dire warning, ordered to parrot COVID experts

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/aylmer-church-defies-province-sunday-service-1.6001630

A meeting in the open is basically a sitting duck for the system to shut it down, arrest people or etc. The growing heavy fines could result is church assets being affected. It seems to me that meeting in secret is more like going on the attack, rather than being attacked. (spiritually). The bible says the gates of hell will not be able to withstand the church. Not visa verso. Is there any reason all churches should not sell whatever they can and go underground?

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Actually Matthew 16:18 says

“I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭16:18‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

Some versions you the word “prevail against it”.

I think the idea is that evil will not conquer the church, not that the church will conquer evil because the scriptures also say that evil will still be around until judgement day.

power1 said:

Is there any reason all churches should not sell whatever they can and go underground?

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“you wouldn’t put a lamp under a basket”.

we’re supposed to be a light to those in darkness.