Posted on 08/22/2023 5:22:00 AM PDT by lightman
As an Evangelical Christian I think I agree with this. The church, including the one I attend absolutely failed. They capitulated and bowed the knee to the atheistic governors and County Executives who spit upon the Constitutions they swore allegiance to.
Many in my church have lost respect for the church leadership.
If there was a better one in my community. we’d be there, but sadly, they all failed equally.
2020 taught me firsthand the unfortunate lesson that very few people in this world have the courage to truly stand up to fascism. I understand now how it is that so many awful atrocities take place throughout history.
An excerpt from Bill Wylie-Kellermanns classic Seasons of Faith and Conscience (1991).
The sealing of the tomb is, I believe, notoriously misunderstood. I grew up with a Sunday School notion that to seal the tomb was a matter of hefting the big stone and cementing it tight. The seal, in my minds eye, was something like first-century caulkingputtying up the cracks to keep the stink in. Not so. This is a legal seal. Cords would be strung across the rock and anchored at each end with clay. To move the stone would break the seal and indicate tampering.
The event conspicuously echoes the story of Daniel sealed in the den of lions. And a stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel (Daniel 6:18). As there, this is a legal lock on the tomb doornot air tight, but politically tight. To move the stone and break the seal is a civil crime. The resurrection is against the law.
The seal is also a recurring theme in the book of Revelation. Remember the scroll of history sealed with seven seals? Only One is worthy to break them and look upon or unveil the truth: that One is the Lamb who was slain. The seal is a claim of ownership and authority. Its meaning in Revelation is at least that God in Christ reigns sovereign over all history and in all events.
Caesar, in Pilate, on the other hand, violently disputes the claim. He has set his seal of approval on Jesus death, and now he guarantees it with troops. Secured by security forces. When the seal is broken in the resurrection, it stands among the signs that the power of the powers (death in all its forms) has been broken. The dominion of political authorityespecially inflated, aggressiveand imperial authority has been cut to the heart.
My church Legacy in Albuquerque fought the state of New Mexico and its fascist Governor every step of the way!
All religious gatherings were shut down but the queer hook-up apps stayed open for business. Guess they were “essential.”
Same in Pennsylvania...the Governor’s orders explicitly exempted places of worship but the Hierarchs (probably pressured by their liability insurance underwriters) chose fear over faith.
The last three years have shown that this claim might be completely inverted. It is faith that allows people clarity to see through government propaganda and inspire people with moral conviction to do what is right regardless of what a totalitarian government happens to be preaching at any one time.
AMEN!
Me ;-)
I was representing students making claims to their schools for their religious exemptions from the Covid vaccine.
Pure Pontius Pilate move.
The parish allowed parishioners to come in the back entrance where the media was not on the lookout, and they kept the lights in the building very low so as not to attract government officials.
America is pagan Rome now - with a side order of soviet law.
Goodonya !
Very parallel to what the St. Mary's Catholic Church of Lancaster, Pennsylvania did during the 1918 Spanish Influenza.
But that closure of churches lasted for only three weeks.
Which goes to show how badly we were being played over a disease so mild that you had to "get tested" to know whether or not you had it.
I believe that we’re to be respectful toward government when they appear to have good intentions. So, the 14 days to flatten the curve, given an entirely unknown disease, was not an outrageous thing to ask. However, when it became evident that this would be extended and used for power, control, and to discriminate against churches, our obligation then was to “obey God rather than man.”
Our pastor was called by the county health department and threatened with state troopers if we had our 2020 Easter Service. We were allegedly having services in defiance of the governors orders and theirs, which we were not. We followed CDC guidelines and did facebook and parking lot services, but we had 10 people in the church doing various jobs. Playing piano, leading music, facebook, sound room etc... doing the social distancing idiocy and that wasn’t good enough. Your cars will be 6 ft apart in the parking lot the health department shrew demanded and the pastor asked why this wasn’t the rule for Walmart and Krogers? No reply. He finally said you are violating our Constitutional Rights, we are having services and you send your troopers, they obviously need to hear the Word as do you.
We held our Easter service and filed complaints with the state Attorney General Daniel Cameron and they investigated and put a stop to the local health department thug(BTW her husband is allegedly a minister, interesting his wife’s master works in Frankfort). No troopers showed up and the congregation is still furious at the local health department gestapo’s tactics.
Come May the pastor and deacons decided we are done with the parking lot services and we are having them in person and did the distancing thing and placed masks and hand sanitizer about the church. Our first day back was the Mothers Day service which we were going to do regardless of the health department thugs. The night before the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled churches could meet, the governor was in violation of the law.
Since that Mothers Day service we have closed once for a Wednesday and Sunday services because the pastor, assistant pastor and deacons had minor cases of covid at the same time. Because we refused to close we were attacked by other churches in the community. We were called “bad neighbors”, “uncaring for our fellowmen”, even said we were “a bunch of fanatical snake handler types!” At one point we were the only Baptist church in our county having Sunday and Wednesday evening services.
Attendance stayed strong, when we went back to in church services we had about five or ten members either stay in their cars or watch facebook and after a few months all those returned but five or six and they stopped attending and fell away. The tithes and contributions remained strong and actually increased in 2020, 2021, 2022 and this year as well.
The pastor and deacons all say we didn’t do anything God’s hand was in this beginning to now, he gets all the glory!!!
Having just gone through a 35 part study of ACTS, I am struck by how totalitarian the antichrist Jews were in their scheming and, oddly, how judicially fair the Roman government constrained itself to be in spite of them (albeit with mixed motives thrown in). There was something TO being a Roman citizen and Paul pointedly appealed to his citizenship several times and prevailed over his kinsman foes.
...got a bit of scorn their way even from fellow churchgoers.
likewise
I get sick FROM flu shots, so I wasn’t about to take the COVID one.
Wifey did - booster, too.
Yup - she got sick!
yeah!
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