Open Church and James Coates

Welcome to Theology Throwdown!

We, the Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

This is a ministry called Striving for Eternity. All right, welcome to another

Theology Throwdown. This is where the Christian podcast community podcasters get together and we discuss a topic.

Tonight's topic is going to be on Should Churches Open? And we're also going to focus a little bit, for those who are familiar with Pastor James Coates, who has been arrested up in Edmonton, Canada.

So, we'll start off with introducing the different podcasters and their podcast.

So, I'll start with Eve, you were the first one in, and Eve is the only one who has never missed an episode of this.

So, I can't even make that claim because I've skipped. Way to go,

Eve! That's only because I do a monthly podcast instead of a daily or weekly one, so I have time to spare.

So, I'm Eve Franklin and I'm co -host of the podcast Are You Just Watching?

And where my co -host and I discuss movies from a Christian worldview.

And you have a workbook out that's the same as your show.

Are You Just Watching? Do you want to describe that for folks? Yeah, it's very little reading, so the whole point of it is to kind of get you in the mindset to watch movies critically.

And there's lots of guided workbook pages in there to help you watch critically and then to kind of discern what you watched and describe what you've watched.

Kind of set you up to do the kind of reviews we do in our podcast. See, when you said little reading,

I thought it was like a picture book. I got all excited. No, it's a lot more workbook than text to read.

So, if you don't like to read a lot, that's the perfect book for you. I like to read a lot though.

Aaron, you're next when you introduce yourself and you have two podcasts. I do, yeah.

So, the first podcast is coming up on its fifth year, I believe. And we have over 400 episodes.

It's called Truth, Love, Parent. And as you couldn't tell, it's really about parenting.

We do talk a lot about marriage on there as well. And one of the resources that I created for the parents is called

The Celebration of God, which is a discipleship program specifically designed, obviously, for parents and their children.

However, I realized the application was far broader than just families. And I went ahead and started a podcast this past year called

The Celebration of God, where we look at how we can worship God, not just in the high days, coming into Easter, but also in those low moments, in those mundane, ordinary moments, but also walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

How do we worship God every moment of every day? So, those are the two podcasts that I'm doing.

And I'm just really thankful that the Lord has allowed me to start that second one. I actually made time for it, kind of.

I probably just threw something else out, actually. I'm not doing what I should be doing in another area, but it's doing pretty well.

Well, the other area that you could drop some of your martial arts, I mean, you have enough black belts in different styles.

So, you don't have to do all of them. No, no. Actually, I have to get three more. That's my plan.

Well, jiu -jitsu is a little bit longer to get a black belt. So, if you go for that one, it'll take a little bit longer.

Yeah, but you listen to podcast times three. I train martial arts times five. There you go.

Nathaniel, you're next. Yeah, I'm Nathaniel Jolly of the

Truth Be Known podcast. We are kind of an apologetic for charismatic doctrinal issues.

And lately, we've been picking up other theological issues that are pertinent to the church today. And you recently did one on the topic we'll talk about tonight with James Coates.

We did, yep. And your co -host is also here. I'm going to let you say your last names for folks so I don't mess it up, but Eki.

So, my name is Eki Tepsepornchai. I recently just joined Nathaniel. I was brought on as a guest, like,

I think, three or four times. And then Nathaniel just kind of threw the idea out there for me to join him.

And we have a great rapport. So, I ended up joining him anyway. So, I actually haven't been on any podcast that was specifically the apologetic for Pentecostal or charismatic.

But we've been discussing a lot of modern relevant issues such as the James Coates situation we'll talk about tonight.

And Ken, you're next. All right. Yeah. Ken, I'm part of the

Do Theology podcast where we keep doctrine in its place. We talk about different theological things.

If you ever struggle with how to discern which doctrines we need to have absolute unity over, which doctrines we can have grace over, and how to wrestle through various conscience matters.

We talk about all those things in our podcast. And we also do interviews with some different Christian leaders that have been very helpful.

We've had Ray Comfort and Elisa Childers on so far this year. We also have

Carl Truman and Bob Kauflin coming up. So, yeah, those are going to be some really good interviews.

Looking forward to releasing those. Good. And my name is Andrew Epworth. I'm the host of Andrew Epworth's Wrap Report.

I host Apologetics Live, which is a live show Thursday nights. If you guys ever want to come in and ask any apologetic question,

I can answer any question you have about God and the Bible. Because I think I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

So with that, why don't we get into the topic tonight? Hold on one second.

Can I throw out a huge shout out to Eki and to Nathaniel? If you guys happen to still be on Twitter, follow those guys.

I do. And I tell you what, it is so awesome. So Nathaniel, Eki, thank you so much for what you guys are putting out there.

But I'm just saying you guys should totally do that. Well, why don't you give out your Twitter handles? I'm off Twitter.

I'm on Parler and Gab. Oh, Parler and Gab. Okay, fine. Whatever. Well, mine is just E -K -K -I -E -T.

So that's a pretty simple handle. Yeah, mine's just my name, Nathaniel Jolly.

I'm on Gab too, also as Nathaniel Jolly. And I'm on Gab just as Eki.

So Eki on Gab, EkiT on Twitter. But thank you for the shout out. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, brother. I'm Andrew Rapport on both

Parler and Gab. I got off of Twitter because some years ago,

I saw that Planned Parenthood, they were wishing mothers a happy Mother's Day.

And I posted and I said, I tagged Planned Parenthood. I said, Planned Parenthood wishing mothers happy Mother's Day is like Adolf Hitler wishing

Jewish people a good Yom Kippur. Twitter removed it. And so I retyped it and took a photo of it, put it back up again, and they removed it again.

And then I put the picture up and said the tweet that Twitter keeps removing. I had hundreds of people that had sent this to at Jack.

And at that time, I had no idea who at Jack was. So there were hundreds of people that were sharing it to him.

And ever since then, I've kind of been, you know, nothing I do on Twitter matters. So just coming in now is

Daniel Minnick. So I'll let him come in and introduce himself and his podcast. As soon as I see him unmute himself, that is.

Or put his camera on. I could probably let folks know he's with True Espresso Podcasts.

I wonder if I actually have his introduction here. We could probably find him introducing his own show.

If I could play it real quick. I got to find it.

Unless he comes in here again. Here, I'll introduce his show for you. Hello, everyone.

Daniel Minnick here. I host a podcast called Truth Espresso, and I am inviting you to join in.

So what can you expect at Truth Espresso? Well, at Truth Espresso, we wake up our minds every

Monday with a robust shot of truth. Let's dig deep in the word of God as we get to know our

God better together. Let's challenge our view of the world as we take apart conventional politics with a fine -toothed comb.

See all that Truth Espresso has to offer by going to www .TruthEspresso .com.

And by the way, Truth Espresso is now a member podcast of the growing family of the

Christian podcast community. Check out other faith -building shows at www .ChristianPodcastCommunity

.com, hosted by Striving for Eternity Ministries. All right, so we'll see if Daniel can come in.

Daniel's having some sound issues. So with that, let's get to the topic. First, I want to have us address the topic of church's opening.

This has been really a year. We have another podcaster just popped in,

Phil Sessa. Phil, you want to introduce yourself and your podcast, and we'll get started. Sure.

Can you hear me? Yes, you just sound like you're in a can. Oh, sorry. Hey guys,

Phil Sessa here. Stop and think about a podcast. We were normally going out on Monday nights to evangelize, but we switched that to Saturdays, and that's why

I wasn't able to be on the podcast Theology Throwdown, usually.

So I just finished catechism with my kids, and so here we are, ready to dive in.

All right. There is a humming noise or something. You may want to try to look at that and figure that out.

I know that you have your co -host usually fix all your technology for you, and he's not here to fix everything.

We're now about the anniversary of one year. It wasn't plugged in. Yeah, get it plugged in.

It usually helps. We're on almost a one -year anniversary from when we were told to have a, and if you think about this, that was the 14 or 15 day slow the spread.

Do we remember that? It wasn't supposed to be this lockdown. It was to slow the spread so we don't overload the hospitals.

A year later, there's still some churches that haven't opened.

The first question, I'm just going to throw it out to each of us, is what's your positions?

Should churches open? When should churches have opened? If you're saying they should still stay closed, why?

If you think that they should have opened already, when do you think they should have? What was it for you that triggered when they should open?

Who wants to go first? I heard a really great conference from Scott Brown called

Jurisdictions. If you didn't hear that conference, it was fantastic. Really, when you think about it, the government does not have jurisdiction over the church.

They can't tell us when we can open our doors, when we can close our doors, when we can sing, when we can't sing.

They don't have jurisdiction over the church. Even the whole separation of church and state thing is so greatly misunderstood.

It's actually believed in reverse, whereas it was supposed to be that the state wasn't going to have jurisdiction over the church.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the letter saying that the state would not interfere with the church, not that the church can't speak in the state.

I believe that churches have all jurisdiction to open up and to carry on as they please.

They can use any kind of safety precautions that they deem necessary. If they want to have a non -wearing mask side and a mask side or whatever they want to do to deal with the weaker brother, if that is even an issue here, which it might be, then they should operate in that respect.

We rent from a church, so they're mandating that we wear masks.

Except if we're preaching or giving announcements, we wear them. Then we go outside and take them off. I don't think the state has jurisdiction over us.

I feel like a lot of churches, in my opinion, have kind of kowtowed in thinking that the state does have jurisdiction over the church.

Aaron, what do you think? I need to clarify something real quick. It's very possible that there are churches that have closed their doors who are not having

Zoom or other online stuff. Are you referring to those where they're not doing anything, or are you also including the ones whose doors are closed but are still regularly doing

Zoom? Whichever. Are you asking me? I was asking Andrew. Whichever you prefer.

I want to start off with the broad, and then we'll Zoom in.

Okay, we'll Zoom in. Saw what you did right there,

Andrew. My opinion on this is very precise.

I think that the churches, A, should not be closing, and B, I think that Zooming is not doing church.

I probably will talk more about this later, but I guess that's my short opinion on the topic. Ken, how about you?

Yeah, so just a couple of weeks ago, for our church, I was teaching through our core values, and one of those values is

Christian fellowship, and we worked through Hebrews chapter 10. And it's pretty hard to get through that passage and conclude that, you know what, it's okay if we're not gathering together.

Really, really difficult. And so by conviction, yeah, I do believe that the church should continue to be gathering together in person.

In that sermon that I taught, I did say that there is no such thing as attending church online.

We can listen to sermons online. We can, you know, have worship in our hearts online, but the church is more than just listening to a sermon and singing some songs.

There's more to it than that. And it just cannot happen over the internet as the

Lord intended it to. So, yeah, that's my position. That's my conviction. And yeah, like I said, it's hard to work through Hebrews chapter 10 and conclude that we can persist in an extended period of time without gathering.

Nathaniel, how about you? Yeah, I'm in the same place. I mean, I was going to bring up Hebrews 10 .25

as well. It talks about not abandoning the meeting together. Yeah, look, I think there was grace in the beginning when we didn't know what was going on.

As soon as we realized that all these other different areas of society could be open.

I mean, look, as soon as we realized that strip clubs were open, that marijuana dispensaries were open, that abortion clinics were, quote unquote, safe, which is ironic.

At that stage, every church should have been looking for a plan to open as soon as possible.

So, just like I said in our recent podcast, if your church is still closed down, find a new one.

Eki, how about you? Yeah, I agree. I mean, our church, we were closed down. And when

I say closed down, meaning we were doing the internet thing for the first couple of months. And we know the same thing.

And we're in the state of California. California has been like the most locked down state in the entire nation. And once they started to come up with plans, and this was back in May, they were coming up with plans to reopen.

And we were looking at their stages. They had this four -stage plan where churches were in the final stage.

Even shopping malls were opening before churches. But stores and shops were starting to open, restaurants were starting to open.

And I think at that point, similar to what Nathaniel just said, look, if any businesses are opening, then this really should be our cue to open anyway.

And in the first place, it was never, as mentioned before, it was never government's position to tell us when to shut down.

But one of the primary arguments I bring up is just the word for church. In the Greek, it's ekklesia.

And what does that mean? That means congregation, literally congregation or gathering. And so when Jesus first used that word in Matthew 16, when he said, on this rock,

I will build my church, the idea was that his disciples would gather together. And that's always been the pattern for God's people from the

Old Testament all the way through the New Testament. Synagogue comes from the Greek word sun, which means together, and ago, which means to go or to come.

So literally, it's to come together. So there's always been this implication that God's people would gather together to worship

God together. It doesn't even need to, even if you didn't have Hebrews, you wouldn't even need Hebrews. It's already implied just by the word of God that God's people come together.

There's no concept of a person of God who stands off on his own or ignores the rest of the body.

We come together and we worship together. Eve, how about you? I guess

I'm not a pastor, so I've always kind of left that decision to the pastors in my church.

But our church started back in June, and we only went back to virtual for a couple

Sundays in December. And that was a choice made both by surveying the body and the pastors making the decision as to what they felt was safe.

And in Kentucky, which is where I go to church, our governor tried to shut churches down and was actually sued.

And so that lawsuit did not go in the governor's favor. And so the churches were able to reopen, even though they weren't supposed to reopen until later in his stages of reopening.

And a lot of churches never stopped meeting, which was up to there. I think personally, the churches should be open, but there should be accommodations made for those who do not feel like they can come in.

And it's kind of like what you would do for shut -ins, the people who can't normally make it to church anyway, not able to travel or for whatever reason.

And I think that the amount of shut -ins increased with the pandemic. And so that puts a little more onus on the church to be able to provide for the spiritual needs of the people who can't make it into church for whatever that reason is.

Daniel, how about you? I think I have a lot of agreement with the fellowship here that I am strongly against the idea that the government has jurisdiction to shut down the churches, even from the beginning, you know, with the whole 15 days.

I mean, at the time, I'm just thinking, okay, I could do that, even though I don't agree that the government should be able to say you must stay in your homes.

But my church actually was renting from a school.

And so that had some problems then since the school had no choice but to shut down.

And so we had to do the video thing for a few months while the pastor searched for another church that would rent to us.

And so in May, we found a church. We did a few months there and then we couldn't do that one.

So we found another church, did a few weeks there. We're able to go back to the school for a few weeks and then no longer.

And then God blessed in that there is a family in a church that had a business that was able to rent, able actually to allow us to meet rent free.

So that was a blessing there. And so we've been meeting, you know, ever since, even if having to hop around.

But yeah, I do not agree that the government has jurisdiction to tell us when we can worship, how we can worship.

And like, you know, as Christians, God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and a love and a sound mind.

So we shouldn't fear the virus and we shouldn't fear the government. And, you know,

I don't know if Romans 13 will come up in this discussion, but I have views about Romans 13 that are, you know, less, you know, are more anti -state than a lot of other people might hold to.

In my situation, we, you know, kind of like Phil and Daniel, we didn't have to hop around like Daniel, but we rent a facility.

We rent a senior center. And so when this came out there, you know, the county dictates that.

And so they shut down. So we were, we kind of had no choice. We could only meet when they were able to open up again.

Initially, I treated this kind of like I would, you know, if we have, you know, when you're up here in the

Northeast, you get weather, you get snow. Sometimes when you get a huge storm, just for safety, we would close.

We never, we didn't used to do Zoom. So that was new. But for the first, you know, for two weeks, it's like, okay, we could do that.

And then the two weeks extended to, you know, and it kept going.

I guess for me, I agree, you know, as was already said by Phil, Daniel, others, you know,

I think that we as Christians don't take into account this idea that the culture tries to put of a separation of church and state.

As Phil said, that originally it was that the state would stay out of church business. And people need to be reminded of that.

But I like to use the separation of church and state against them. You know, whenever the issue of same -sex marriage comes up here in New Jersey, when they had the, you know, they were going to vote on that.

I got up and I asked the congressmen and women and since they had it open,

I said, do you believe in a separation of church and state? Everyone's nodding their head. I said, well, then that makes your decision easy.

You should vote no on same -sex marriage since that's a church issue, not a state issue.

It's not your domain to define what marriage is. Of course, they ignored that and just, you know, but that's really where I think this comes down to.

This is for us, this is the state defining a church issue. And I don't think they have the right or the realm to be able to do that, especially since they say that they believe in this separation.

A great sermon on that would be James Coates' sermon before he got arrested from Grace Life in Edmonton, Canada.

It's pretty much been everywhere. So if you need to hear it, I think Justin Peters on his

Didache podcast is like playing it with every show. If you listen to Didache, he plays this at the end of each episode, it seems, because he's played it on two of them so far.

But it's a great it's a great sermon on Romans 13 and this issue. Now, for me, where I said the gig is up,

I showed caution. We didn't know, you know, we don't know things.

OK, we could show a little caution. But once the Black Lives Matter protest started. Thank you.

I mean, because then they were you saw all these people. There were no masks. There was no social distancing.

They were gathering in the hundreds and thousands everywhere. And the articles started coming out that this will this was good.

This is going to bring herd immunity. This is going to bring healing. But going to church is going to kill everyone.

Right. So that's when that's when it was really clear that this was a political issue and no longer a health issue, that this is being used for political purposes.

So for me, that's when it was, OK, churches everywhere, just open, just there's there's now no reason to be closed.

Well, Andrew, I couldn't I couldn't agree more with you on that point, because it was said that they that that the

BLM group had such an important message that they could defy the social distancing and everything like that.

So what they've essentially said was that the message that we've been preaching since Christ for two thousand years, that message that save sinners from hell, that says to obey government, that message is not as important as the message over here to disobey, to disobey government.

I mean, it's it's I mean, it's just it's so contradictory, but it is so biased because how this new message, which isn't new, it's started in the garden.

That God really say they were just echoing the God really say message from the garden.

And we're at our message is the gospel of salvation.

And so they've essentially said your message needs to go and their message is hip and relevant and their message needs to stay.

Absolutely ridiculous. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to trigger Phil guys. So just be careful. But the message of BLM is is insurrection and the message of the church is good news.

Is that just just trying to check. You're going to say resurrection, insurrection, resurrection.

That's what I thought. I was waiting for it. I'm actually good. I'm actually

I'm actually opening this new book I just got from Scott Brown. When to disobey by it's translated and edited by Scott Brown case studies in tyranny, insurrection and obedience to God.

I never I had never heard of Pierre Veret. I think he's a Swiss reformer. Has anybody heard him before.

Maybe not. And I think I was just thinking about some of the examples we had on the east coast where certain pastors kept their churches shut down but they were actually encouraging their congregants to take to participate in these

Black Lives Matter rallies. And then not only that, then we had some people that had the nerve to say that when you go to these

Black Lives Matter rallies don't share the gospel because it's not about the gospel.

It's about supporting your fellow brethren. And that was another clear sign that, okay, we've got some church leaders who shouldn't be church leaders who have their priorities all mixed up and are following the culture rather than following what the

Bible says. No, I will admit that I'm not against all the churches, you know, opening.

I mean, I'm happy that Joel Stein. Shut the doors.

Well, I don't know if you if you if you guys saw John MacArthur came out with an article on Daily Wire today.

I think today, but the end of frivolous religion. If you haven't gotten a chance to read this, it is good.

There's one part of it that is just great because he talks about the fact that when you look at, you know, all the nonsense we've gotten in church recently, the church growth movement and all that others, where it's all about getting numbers of people in your pews.

This kind of like they don't have the purpose now, like they don't have a message to preach other than, you know, getting people in pews.

And it really was, you know, it's a great article because it does point out that these people who haven't been preaching the gospel.

Don't have anything else to preach right now. There's nothing that's going to get people that are afraid of a virus into the pew.

But the gospel message and expositional preaching that will. I think there are there are four big questions that come up as I'm interacting with people on this particular topic.

And we've hit on two of them. And one kind of tangentially we've kind of hit on.

The first question is, is it okay to be afraid of the virus? And I think that's that's where a lot of people are, you know, they're sitting back and they're saying, you know, this is a legitimate thing that we need to stay away from.

You know, this is we don't don't mess with it. The second question is, then people have to ask, well, what is the truth about the virus?

And I think this is really, really important. I've heard a lot of pastors saying, hey, listen, we want to love our communities.

We want to love our people. And this this this ends up the love flag ends up kind of getting me realizing, okay,

I don't know that this is going to go in a good direction. Because it sounds great. You know, we need to love people.

And so therefore, we're going to wear the mask and we're going to shut the doors and so on and so forth. One of the questions that I had to ask in regard to that particular statement is, you know, well, are we loving the people who shouldn't be medically wearing the mask?

How can we say that we're loving everyone if we're only loving a subsection? That's not I don't know that that's really Christ honoring love.

So we need it. But this is the thing that we need to talk about. What is the truth about the virus? Are we and I'm not coming to be a doctor and I don't think this is the direction of the podcast, but we need to be really wise about this.

Because like Andrew, you said, as soon as the quote unquote professionals were saying that, oh, the protests and the riots.

That's okay. They prove themselves to be unscientific. They prove themselves that they weren't using real logic, real numbers, real, real science.

So I think, you know, it's not just about speaking in love. We're supposed to speak the truth in love.

And if the truth is we don't need to be afraid of the virus. Or only a certain group needs to be afraid of the virus, then we need to speak that truth.

The third question came up earlier. How does God want us to obey the government? I think that's a really important one that needs to be grappled with.

But then the fourth question is, what does it really mean? You know, if we say, you know, well, no, we need to we need to continue assembling.

We're not going to listen to the government. The question has to be, well, what does it actually mean to assemble? And I was talking to someone recently who, you know, speaking of Hebrews 10, 25, they said, well, we are assembling.

You know, we're totally assembling. Like right now, the eight of us are assembling here on Zoom. Right? We've assembled.

We can see each other. We could talk to each other. Right? So therefore we're assembling. And those seem to me to be the four big questions that when somebody is able to answer those questions, do

I need to be afraid of the virus? And that leads me to think, you know, what is the truth about the virus?

Okay. So once we have that, now we go, okay, well, how does God want me to respond to the government, regardless of what they think about the virus?

And therefore, leads to number four, what does it mean to assemble? I think when we've gotten those questions, then the answer, you know, those are the people who are making the choices that they're making based off of how they've answered those questions.

Yeah, I think you're right. And some of the problem that we have with your very first question is once there's no time that we've seen in history when the government starts using science, that we continue with science, it becomes political.

And you see this time and time again, where you have science, they use it, and then they start making it political. And that's really the thing that you have here now.

So, should we be afraid of the virus? There are going to be people that are afraid. I mean, there's people that were afraid of the flu.

But when we start looking at the actual numbers, I don't think that the, you know, the fear of the virus is justified when we look at the actual science behind it, realizing the actual cases, things like this.

But then there's a flip side to that last question, or your first question, I should say.

And that is, do we fear the virus? But what's the other side? So, staying at home, being afraid of the virus and not leaving your home, what damage does that do?

There's another fear there. And I think this is where the churches should open.

Because one of the things I think, you know, we're saying, you know, Aaron, you were saying, well, we can we can meet here on zoom.

Here's one of the things on zoom. If we were all at dinner, all eight of us, we go to dinner, we would not have what we have right now.

One person talking and everyone else just sitting and listening. Right?

I mean, this is what changes when you're at church, you do zoom online, and you have the whole church and everyone's listening to one person.

So what does that end up doing? That takes the person who's most talkative, and they dominate and people who are less talkative, just no one hears from them.

If we're sitting around a table at a restaurant, you'd have two or three of us talking and two or three of us talking and you know, there will be two or three different conversations going.

And there's less talkative people would have attention. And so what we're actually doing is a disservice to certain people, based on their personalities, when we try to say we're going to do church online, because they're not getting the fellowship, because the people that are more talkative are.

So it's a little bit of a different spin from from what you said. But that would be my. So if you're doing zoom, you're committing personality injustice.

I like that. Sounds like a new t shirt. You're pressing the less talkative, like, like Franklin.

And then don't you think it allows you didn't even have anything to say to that. Yeah. Daniel's got that cool podcast voice, man.

Tell you, I wish my face looked enough like a podcaster.

So don't you think that I mean, it seems like there are a lot of Christians who are, you know, like, you know,

I guess Pew Warmer types who might actually like the whole zoom church thing.

It's kind of like seeker sensitive type thing. Oh, feel comfortable. I don't have to get my family go to church.

I just in my pajamas and watch a video. I don't even feel like I'm in church. Hey, this is great.

I don't feel the conviction. If, say, the pastor says something, you know, convicting

I can just pause the video or something. No, I think that's a legitimate concern.

And it's one of the things that in my church, the elders we discussed of once we could open.

We said, okay, we were doing a mixed thing. We opened and then we said we'd do zoom.

I think we just said we're doing it for like four weeks. But the reason we didn't we didn't want people to get used to just sitting at home and watching.

But I think I forget who mentioned it, but we do. We could kind of look at this.

There are some people that are there like shut ins. You know, if you have someone who's a shut in, they can't get out.

So I do think it's a little different there. But there's a lot of churches that do live streams.

And make that available so that their shut ins can watch. So what do you guys think with this argument that people say, well, you do the live stream anyway, what's the problem with if you want to open find you open, but there's people who don't want to go to church.

Is that a problem if they just watch a live stream? Yeah, I was actually gonna say something about that very thing where we have a lot of churches and a lot of pastors that have been, you know, pretty vocal about the importance of meeting together in person and things like that, while at the same time, our churches are offering a live stream of the live service to in its public to whoever wants to view it and you know there's different arguments that can be made for and against that.

I know for us, we actually we were meeting in person, but we were also offering the live stream onto Facebook, and we had to make a decision that, you know, we're sending two messages here.

We're sending one message that it's important that we gather in person, and, and that's important, but then we're live streaming seemingly possibly communicating that yeah you know but it's okay if you stay home.

And we want to give grace especially you know, you've mentioned about the, you know, shut ins and things of that nature and we want to be give grace to that and make accommodations for that and so we've done we've made a private zoom link available for our shut ins.

But we do not have a public live stream, any longer. And that was it that was something that we transitioned to a little bit ago.

But one thing that we need to think through as well is, you know, okay we're offering a private zoom link for our shut but there are many individuals who might desire that link when they're not actually shut ins right there, they're shopping in person, they're attending

Super Bowl parties in person, you know they're attending other social functions in person, but on Sunday they want to stay home.

Yeah, and we need to lovingly and graciously challenge these individuals say hey you know if this is what you're doing.

You need to consider that this is that this is inconsistent, and you may have some repenting to do.

That's a great. Can I add on top of that just, I've worked in corporate America for 25 years, and in corporate

America I've seen the use of conference calls and video conferencing and all that.

And even in corporate America, the folks understand that you do not accomplish as much as you do over a video conference, compared to actually being face to face with a person, or you talk to any kind of salesperson if they want to close a major deal you don't you get there in person.

And so there is an experience of being together with fellow believers in person at the church that cannot be replicated over the internet, and I'm not a mystic but I have no problem saying that the

Holy Spirit works in wondrous ways when the people are singing together they're praying together.

They are worshiping together they're hearing the Word of God proclaim together their fellowshipping and all those things that you just can't replicate in a out of body kind of zoom type of experience.

Now to your point we do have a lot of shut ins we've got a lot of elderly folks who are at greater risk with the coven kind of danger.

And so we do make it available to them but it has also served as an outreach opportunity we

I just found out this past week someone who is a Mormon has been watching our live stream. And she recently told a friend who was part of our church said that she's come to the conviction that Mormonism is a cult and she wants to get baptized at our church, and I hadn't even preached anything on Mormonism but there there are some pros and cons to weigh in that but I agree with you we need to really emphasize the importance of coming together as a physical church for those who are available and, and able to do so.

And also kind of in line with that. The church comes together and gathers, and then goes out and scatters.

So how do you do, how do you ultimately do outreach is, you know,

I met a guy he told me at a supermarket. I had a t shirt I had a sweatshirt on that said

Christ life matters. And he liked it and I gave him a gospel track and he said you know

I'm a Facebook evangelist, and I said I've never heard it on this wise. And, I mean, he just, he told me he was ordained,

I said what you do to be ordained and he said, I took new new and Old Testament survey, I said just take her minutes, and he said what's that.

So, it was something but I mean really how do you, how do you go out with with your church to reach lost people.

I mean, you know through zoom, you know, I just,

I don't see how that can happen and when we look at x to 42. There were 3000 infants that were born into the kingdom, and they sat at the disciples feet and they were they were live there they were in person.

Of course they didn't have the technology we have. But what's interesting is, with all the technology we have, they seem to be more effective with Tele person that we have with all our technology.

Yeah, well let me let me shift gears a bit and and talk about what's going on up in Canada.

We've seen really I guess we should we could start in Los Angeles, we saw what was going on with Grace Community Church, where Dr.

John MacArthur is the pastor. The city was, they were trying everything they could to fit within the guidelines.

The, they were, they were following the guidelines for for protests, where you could be outside and you didn't have to social distance if you're outside so they set up if anyone hasn't ever been to shepherds conference when they have shepherds conference they have a very very large tent that covers their, their parking lot almost the entire parking lot.

And that's where they put books and people can eat in there. Well, they, they set that up so that they can have church outside in the tent.

And that was, it literally was a thing where if you're watching it. Or if you knew what was going on every

Monday, the church would send out a thing saying okay we're going to do this on Sunday so we can all meet. And then on Thursday or Friday this the state or city would basically squash it.

And it was just week after week after week and they started to realize this is they're targeting the church they have rules different for the church than for everyone else.

And that's when, you know, john McArthur just said enough we're opening. And, you know, they know that granted, they have an advantage that some of our other churches don't have that I think they have, they have at least two judges as elders and I think two lawyers.

So, they have a legal staff within the eldership, and then they have deacons and members that are also in the legal community so they actually have a staff but you know, one of one of those judges is associated with my church workplace advanced church so he's, he's kind of on loan for for advisement to us so we've gotten some, some cool feedback through that but you know they basically have their own legal team.

To figure out how to do it and they approached it different than other churches did it they approached on a

First Amendment issue. Best line I heard was john McArthur being interviewed in an interviewer.

What gives you the right, what do you think it is that gives you the right to open your church up.

And he turned the same First Amendment that gives you the freedom of press. It was a great line.

But I think that really emboldened people. I know that john ended up having different meetings we were on a zoom call with him.

Maybe 200 of us that were he basically was encouraging us to open up and to, to how to deal with it legally and that emboldened people.

And I think then you end up seeing what went on with Pastor Coates up in Edmonton, Canada, and what you ended up having here for folks who don't know, they were open.

They felt as was, as we've discussed with Romans 13 that the state doesn't have the right to do to restrict the worship or to, to define how churches can worship.

And for that reason, they opened. And they started getting a lot of people

I don't know about the rest of you guys I know when we opened up there were a lot of churches that weren't open we were seeing a whole lot of new visitors.

Grace Community Church I was told just this week. There's probably, they're full.

They're, they're, they're completely full and overflow. And they probably have a couple thousand people members who still haven't come back yet.

So, they're gonna have to probably go to three services. You know, but James Coates was basically told he would be arrested.

If he continued to preach. Some of you didn't see what we did on Apologetics Live we, the guys from Matter of Theology and I did a special episode, dealing with Pastor Coates.

And, you know, basically what his wife had informed us, or, you know, the legal team had informed us is that they basically did a secret trial for him they've, they've treated he's in a maximum security prison, where he's only allowed out one hour a day to wash himself and get to get exercise.

He was put in there with with ankle cuffs. So, he's being treated, you know,

I mean, like, like a mass murderer. And meanwhile, there are murderers from this prison that were released due to COVID.

So, you know, you have someone who's being treated, he is such a threat to society that they have to treat him this way.

And they told him that he could, he could, he had a court date. They would release him if he promised not to preach.

He had to stop preaching. And he prayed in the

Bible. Yeah. You know, and this is, this is, it's, it's, you had this with Peter, right?

You had it with John Bunyan, if you want to go to, you know, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, same, same exact thing.

Just stop preaching, we'll let you go. So, this is the, this is the scenario, just bring people up to speed with who

James Coates is and what was happening. So, the question I have for you guys, what is your position?

It's, I'll just give mine, I guess, out of the, out of the gate. I'm really bothered by the many people that I've seen online that are criticizing him and saying, just follow the law.

Just, you know, it's not a big deal. Just keep to the 10 or 15%.

I think that if you keep to 10 or 15 % of your congregation that can meet, you're, you're showing a disservice to the 85%.

And you're not caring for them. And a pastor's job is to shepherd and he cannot do that to only 15 % of the flock.

Because the others will, will end up suffering. So, that's my position. But what do you guys think with what's going on?

Andrew, I was, so I was thinking about both this and what happened to MacArthur, I believe there were groups like nine marks that actually came out against MacArthur.

And so there seems to be this infighting that's happening where you have well known preachers that and ministries that are, that are really fighting against the gospel, going forth, and the gospel being preached to the congregations.

How could you shepherd the flock among you if they're not among you. So, um,

I mean I applaud what he's doing. And I think he's, you know, if you will.

I don't know if I would say setting precedent because this is this was happening all through the book of Acts, continuing precedent maybe of what was happening, and I think it's good that that all this is taking place.

Even though, you know, he's the guy that's experiencing it. I think it's knocking on our door. Yeah, I think.

I think there's there's obviously a lot to this, this bigger thing but the one question that comes up in my mind is as I have a friend who will go unnamed, who is serving in a mission field that I can't expose.

It's a Muslim run country. If he and his people are caught they'll be imprisoned in the worst possible way worse than Coates is.

And that's a that's like a best case scenario. And a worst case scenario is that they'll be killed.

So, should we say to them, well, you know, don't meet. Obviously the law, you know says this.

You should stop meeting. It's for the sake of your lives, don't meet. And if anyone would say to that person.

Oh yeah, don't meet, you know that person that they, they need to get a white t shirt and a black magic marker and they need to write

I don't read my Bible, you know, on the t shirt right you know we are blessed when we are persecuted.

But, and yet, in this particular scenario, they say well we need to obey the government in this in this area don't preach.

It's okay. And I think that's just as ridiculous as saying to the guy over the Middle East will stop preaching because the government says don't.

But, and here's my second opinion on this. I'm sorry it's telling me my connections a little unstable so I'm sorry if I'm digitally stuttering here.

Oh perfect good. Here's my second thought and this is unique I think to America, is that a lot of people don't realize this okay.

You know we think about hierarchy we think about authority. And when I tell my children to do something. They don't have any right whatsoever to tell me no, unless of course you know

I'm telling them to sin, then by all means I would expect you know anyone's kids to say no I can't do that mom dad that's a sin against God.

But here's the great thing about the American government. It was created in such a way that we have avenues, whereby we hold the government accountable, where we are able to say to them, hey, you're not allowed to tell me not to do that.

And that's a very interesting structure that people don't think about when they think about authority and we need to obey our authority. Well, our authority has given us the power to say to them.

No, because you're not allowed to do that. And that's a, again, maybe it's a unique thing to America and other countries who potentially, and really there aren't any other countries that have a government system the way we do.

So maybe it's unique to us but I think that's a very important thing for us to remember here in America, that to obey the government is actually to defy the government at certain times because the government has told us that we're allowed to defy them when they're doing things they're not supposed to be doing.

Yeah, that's a really good point because it's actually in our constitution that we can assemble for peaceful protesting.

Yes. So, you know, it's interesting because I remember meeting a guy who he would smuggle

Bibles into China. And the one thing he wouldn't do is lie about it.

He had a conviction, he's not going to lie. And he's been, when I met him years ago, he had been in and out of China 22 times,

I think he told me. And I was like, have you ever been caught? He says, oh yeah, plenty of times. He literally was, they asked him, what are you doing?

You know, what do you have in your bags? And he said, Bibles and gospel tracts. And they're like, yeah, okay, move along.

He opened it, they opened his suitcases and it's like, you know, a little bit of clothes and then all

Bibles and gospel tracts. And they opened it, they looked at it, they asked what it is. He said,

Bibles and gospel tracts. And they said, what are you going to do with it? Give it out to people. And they just closed the suitcase, zipped it up.

He had been in and out time and time again. And, you know, so all the people that say, oh, you gotta, you gotta lie about it.

You gotta, you know, he never did. And he would go in and out multiple times.

But he had a trust in that God, if God wanted him doing it, God will keep him doing it. If God wanted him to do prison ministry, that's what he'll do.

And I think that that's an attitude that not enough American Christians that want a comfortable Christianity want to think about.

I mean, I think that, you know, there's persecutions coming. And I think what we see with Pastor Coates is just the beginning.

There's there was a attempt to try in Canada. The health official there tried to pass a law that would allow the health officials to arrest anybody that not only goes to church, but anyone they think may go to church.

Now, fortunately, a judge threw that out, which is good. But I think that's where we're headed.

So anyone else have to want to weigh in on this? Well, just the fact that things like that are happening goes to show that it's a mistake to think that our government officials are looking out for the best interests of the church.

You know, so when people say obey the government, they're thinking about the government officials and these government laws. And they act like the government officials are actually interested in what is best for the church when they're not.

At the end of the day, we're grown. We're all adults. We can make decisions based upon what we see. And when

I look at the James Coates situation, I mean, you know, Canada now has the benefit of the doubt of having seen

COVID in action for over a year. So when we shut down early on almost a year ago, we actually didn't know a whole lot about COVID and how it would affect us and the percentages and all that.

We actually know that now. And so the folks in Canada, I think, you know, shame on them for making such harsh decisions.

And so with this church, and I understand that they had been meeting for, I think I read somewhere, they'd been meeting for 26 straight weeks and they had zero

COVID cases within the church. And so that too goes to show that, look, this is not a super spreader event.

And when you talk about the Black Lives Matter rallies earlier, you know, that goes to show and Black Lives Matter rally, that's just another religious event.

It's just being called something else, right? So when we see the government treating these other events the way that they do, it's very clear that they really don't care about the church.

They don't want the church to meet. Gavin Newsom of California doesn't even follow his own mandates, right? And we've seen that with other politicians.

So the COVID is clearly a political issue. As you mentioned, the church has the full authority to decide when to meet.

And when you talk about countries such as like China, why don't you tell China, oh yeah, just obey the government.

Well, if they obey the government, they got to go to straight run churches where the highest authority is not God, but the Chinese Communist Party.

No, they don't do that. They meet underground. They continue to meet. And so we have to be able to continue to meet.

And fortunately for us, we're in a country like America where there is at least in our constitution that right for us to do that.

And we should continue to fight for that until they take it away and we're forced underground. Yeah, no, that's good.

Because when you think about, you know, what makes something essential, who makes the decision on what's essential, what's not essential.

So the marijuana dispensary, essential, the liquor stores are essential, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is not.

But BLM, their message, which actually opposes the gospel of Christ. And I agree wholeheartedly.

Very great insight. They're just another religion. They absolutely are another religion.

So that religion's okay. But this religion of 2000 years of Christianity, that's not okay.

And isn't this exposing a weakness in our ecclesiology? We look at Christian churches all over America and how they're just allowing the government to downgrade their services to be like a shopping mall store.

And what kind of message is this sending to our children and to the younger generations that, oh, yeah, church is really not all that important.

It's no more important than, say, going to the shopping mall and going shopping at your favorite stores there.

No, for the Christian, church is absolutely essential. I mean, we come together for that spiritual encouragement, for that spiritual feeding.

I mean, I think of Ephesians chapter 4, 11 through 13, when it says Christ gave to the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers in order to build up the saints, in order to edify, equip the saints to the building up of the body of Christ.

So it is absolutely essential for that purpose. But we can't expect the secular world to understand just how essential that is to the person who is truly in the household of God.

And what BLM was willing to go out and do and be emboldened out there, it seems that they stepped up in pride with the wrong message.

And it seemed like many in the church stepped back in fear. And we have the right message.

So wires got crossed somewhere there. And I agree there is a problem in our ecclesiology. So we're back to insurrection or resurrection.

So I got it that does any does anyone remember back when the riots started in the articles would propose that the riots were like the the

BLM riots were kind of a health, like, like it was like a, you know, this is healthcare in a way

I've heard immunity. No, no, not that but that their message, what what they're trying to promote was a matter of public health, that's what it was.

So that was the excuse for why we could allow it because okay, you know, having to shelter in place because of COVID is a matter of public health but the message that they were promoting as a matter of public health so that's why it's allowed and, you know, like okay violence and rioting and burning things down is, is, is a matter of promoting public health but then, you know, okay well why isn't the church which heals the soul, some people even go to go to a church because they're, you know,

I mean we've recently at our church encountered like someone visited, because they were struggling with suicidal issues that this one person you know came to our visit our church actually flew down, then went to our church to get help for that like, so that's, you know, the, the, the congregational church is not a matter of, you know, public health but burning things and looting and violence is promoting the public health.

One of the things I found early on, and we're off topic of pastor coats we'll get back to that but you know

I, I noticed that by me when I was living in New Jersey. None of the mosques that I drove by on Fridays were closed.

In fact, in one town where there was a pastor the pastor was inside the church building.

And he was preaching through a short wave like am FM type frequency to people that were in their cars windows up the cars were not were even staggered.

So even the cars were separated, but people were in their cars. And every single car got a few was $1 ,000 or $1 ,500 fine, and the pastor was arrested in the same town where there was a mosque that had been opened on that Friday before that parking lot was full.

So, so you can't say that this isn't being targeted. This is clearly being in New York City, where you couldn't go to synagogue they were shutting down the synagogues they were shutting down.

If you guys remember during Resurrection Sunday they were making a big deal, couldn't go to church. But when

Ramadan came around, the mayor of New York City was clear. Hey, we have 75 places that you can get hello food.

You know what they could do you know what they can normally do to get hello food they cook it. I mean, the state didn't mean remember this is the state doing this, this is the city, city funds, paying to have food for them.

And what really blew me away is they shut down Resurrection Sunday, but yet they were in the mosques taping out city workers taping out where people could be to pray during Ramadan.

So the same city officials that are being told they have to arrest people that are going to synagogue or church for Passover Resurrection Sunday are making allowances for Ramadan.

It shows you that this really didn't have to do with a religious issue.

This ties in perfectly to the Coates incident. And because it's what you're exactly saying right there because right now

I think the church is split. There are people who are saying we are being persecuted. And then you have a group of people who are saying, guys, this isn't persecution.

Come on. Who was who was hung? Who was burned at the stake? This isn't persecution. And I think that is the key thing that we need to focus in on because people who recognize that they are being persecuted.

People like Pastor Coates are saying, I need to respond the way the Bible says we are to respond to persecution.

The people who are saying it's not persecution are just saying, well, you know, we might not like it. It's uncomfortable.

So we can just go along with it. Earlier, Daniel mentioned 2 Timothy 1, 7, and it says, you know,

God has not given us a spirit of timidity. Now that that word translated timidity in the new American standard is a hapax legomena.

Right. So it only shows up one time in the scripture, but it has the idea of cowardice. And I think that's part of the issue of what we're dealing with here is that we have a bunch of pastors who are cowards who don't want to stand up against the persecution, which is kind of scary because how would they respond if they actually were being killed, if they were being tortured?

There's no way those guys would be out in the front line in the face of, quote unquote, real persecution because they can't show up for this persecution.

And I wrote an article a long time ago and I reformatted it, put it back out in the blog recently. It's called. And by the way, for some reason,

I don't know, it wouldn't circulate around Facebook. I'm not sure why I thought it'd be a huge hit because it's called how to kill a

Christian in three easy steps. And the whole idea was simply that I had three propositional statements that if these three statements would be true, then here in America, it would be completely appropriate to kill a

Christian. And so the one that's most close to the issue is this, a government that takes the life of a

Christian solely for being a Christian must first make Christianity illegal.

And I think we agree with that, you know, and we plenty of governments out there have done that exact same thing. But how do we get to there?

That's where the second statement comes in. A government that makes Christianity illegal must first convince the culture that Christianity is harmful.

Well, OK, well, how do we get to there? And that takes us to this. A government that demonizes

Christianity must first persuade the nation that Christianity is divergent.

If we just take those three, right, we can see that here in America, we are we are way past the number one.

They're convincing people that Christianity is weird. It's strange. It's divergent. It's awkward. Right.

But we are now solidly into the Christianity is harmful.

And when you look at that within the context of the broader picture, there is only one step left because whatever is harmful and they've shown us that with the virus, the virus is harmful.

Therefore, we need to cut it off. We have vaccines and we have masks and we're ready to tank our economy and do all of these crazy things because of this harmful thing.

Right. Well, the moment that Christianity is harmful, we can attack it the exact same way that we attacked the virus.

So, Andrew, yes, this has everything to do with Coates, because Coates said that, you know,

I must stand for Christ. I cannot disobey God. I need to do what I need to do.

He wasn't a coward. He functioned in that spirit of power and of love and a sound mind.

And he did what he was supposed to do. And I believe I don't be too harsh, but I believe that the vast majority of individuals who are doing the opposite.

It's it's a huge it's a huge problem with timidity. It's a huge problem with making excuses that we're not really being persecuted.

Well, I saw. I'm going to say that I think

James Coates is the Richard Warmbrandt of our generation. And for folks who know who

Richard Warmbrandt is, go check him out. But he's he's basically became the voice of the martyrs ministry.

But that's who I think he is. He's he's our our Richard Warmbrandt. So and there's a there's a free book,

Tortured for Christ, about his life. Really amazing. But I saw this article about the the woman who played on the

Mandalorian. And so she said Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers, but by their neighbors, even by children.

The post, which originally elsewhere read because history is edited. Most people today don't realize that that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews.

The government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being

Jews. And so she was kicked off the show and what have you. But I think in that same sentiment,

I don't know. Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, OK.

I think what Aaron is saying is is really written in a concise way in this art, in the same fashion that the government must look to make

Christianity legal and then get the culture to to have that same thinking.

We're against progress. We're against love and all these. And what's interesting is every indictment they have against the church is actually a twisting of the gospel.

I mean, just think they took George Floyd and they made him their messiah. Right. They made the one who died and then they did everything supposedly for him.

And we have a risen messiah and we live our lives for his glory and we spread his message and we do everything for him.

And so everything they're seeking really is found in Christ in the gospel and they're seeking it through a false gospel.

And getting back to James Coates, he's doing that's simply that same thing.

Christ went to the cross for him and he's willing to do whatever needs to be for the sake of the gospel, even by going to jail, knowing that God will still take care of of the sheep under his care.

Yeah, that's a good point. Eve, we haven't heard a lot from you. You have anything you want to weigh in on?

I was just going to let the pastors talk. The sole female here who's not in church leadership per se, but.

Well, it doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. She's got a she's got a cool voice, too, though. I would have the perspective of, you know, the average church body that, you know, the person who is the pew warmer or the person who is not wanting to come to Sunday school because we're in a closed room with a lot of masks, mask wearing and what have you.

And I think that the points you've made are really good ones for the church body to hear, because the the discussion

I hear going on among members is I don't want to wear masks. I'm not going to go if I'm required to or I don't want to go because nobody's there.

They're not enforcing masks enough and I'm scared or we're going to be in a in a small room and I don't think the masks are enough to protect me.

Or it's all me, me, me, me, me. That's all I'm hearing from everybody. I'm scared.

It's, I don't want to wear masks. I don't want to sacrifice for the rest of people of the people in the church or on both sides and I really feel for the pastors because they're the ones that are threading the needle between, you know, the anti maskers and the people who are scared and the people who are not scared and I've seen that kind of going on in my own church where, you know, they send out the, they send out surveys to see what people are thinking about the various steps that we did and reopening and, and even to this day even since our church has been open since June and we started doing

Sunday school again in the fall. We still have half our congregation that is not coming. And it's, to me,

I think that what all of you have been discussing, especially with the example of Pastor Coates is we need to quit.

Quit thinking so much about ourselves and being so selfish because it's not, it's not about me.

It's about Christ. And if I, if we really do firmly believe that God is going to protect us and that we are immortal until the day

God calls us home and whether that is through a virus or through getting hit by a truck or through a natural death in our bed when we've reached old age, it doesn't matter.

We, we live our lives for Christ and, and we don't put ourselves first.

And I think that that is the, the best example I can take from the discussion that you gentlemen have been having while I've been listening.

Amen. Yeah, good word. Ken, you've been kind of quiet as well.

Anything you want to weigh in on that? No, I mean, I think, I think what

Eve just said is really hits the nail on the head as far as, you know, taking our eyes off of ourselves.

You know, the whole passage of Hebrews chapter 10, the focus is on... You're muted.

Ken, you muted yourself. Sorry. I was just saying that I think

Eve hit the nail on the head where, you know, that passage from Hebrews chapter 10 is not me focused, right?

It's, it's about, you know, let us consider how we can stir one another up to love and good deeds.

And, and so if we maintain that other's focus, that's, that's going to change a lot of how we interact with all of the details about masks, no masks, social distancing, all of that stuff.

It just, that changes the whole conversation when I'm not focused about me, I'm focused on other people.

Nathaniel, you have anything else you want to weigh in on before we start wrapping up? Yeah, I mean,

I agree with a lot of the stuff that's been said already. You know, how many times do we say things like, you know, as the pulpit goes, so goes the church.

And then, you know, I hear Eve talk and talk about all the confusion that really pastors have created for themselves with poor ecclesiology, with poor understanding of Romans, with the poor understanding of what we do and don't have authority to do in the church.

You know, just thinking about like the mask issue. The reality is, as a pastor, you do not have the spiritual authority to make your congregants wear a mask.

You just can't make that call. You know, within the church, that's got to be, you know, a conscious issue.

If people want to wear a mask, fine. If they don't, fine. But I can't make people wear or not wear a mask.

God hasn't given me that. That's not a spiritual authority that we have. That would eliminate a lot of issues.

I think about the Romans issue, we didn't really talk about that, but James Coates, great sermon.

You know, as you've said, if people haven't heard that, go listen to it. John MacArthur also has put out some really good stuff.

And I'm sure a lot of you guys have probably preached on it as well, how we respond to government. But, you know,

I find it ironic that the people who appeal to Paul most for obeying the government have failed to remember that when

Paul was writing to Timothy, just the irony in this,

Paul's writing to Timothy while he's in the Mamertine prison. Second Timothy, he's getting ready to be executed.

And in the same book that he says, you know, he talks about praying for the government. In that same book,

Paul is actually about to lose his life for disobeying the government. Right?

So if you want to appeal to Paul, take a few biblical church history lessons, because he died for disobeying the government in the same book that he tells you to pray and appeals to obeying the government.

And the reason is because they overstep their God -given boundaries. And so James Coates, you know, absolutely in the right.

And, you know, it has really disgusted me to see, you know, fellow pastors who have disparaged him, who,

I mean, who have put him down in one way or another, who have basically said, well, he got what he had coming.

What a terrible thing. And I look at that and I think of a real life situation that I had when

I was in the military when I was going through training. And I'll never forget this. I mean, occasionally I go to sleep at night and I remember this incident.

We were doing grenade training in the combat training section and I was standing next to a guy.

He was a great guy. He was a nice guy. Nothing wrong with him. Absolute coward.

We were preparing to get sent to Iraq. The guy pulls out the pin of a grenade and he drops it at my foot.

You know, you're talking about having a fight or flight moment, right?

So he pulls the pin out of the grenade. He drops the grenade because he's scared. He's shaking. He's a coward.

And, you know, so we get that taken care of. But in James Coates, I look around the scene and I just think, man, there are,

I would never want to be in a foxhole with that guy. There are a lot of Christians that I hope I don't ever end in a foxhole with.

Right? They'll be the guys that walk away from the faith because they were never of the faith or, you know, hey, calling the 1 -800 number, turning my church in because their church is closed.

Let's not be those guys. And I think, but this is a good opportunity.

We talked a lot about the negative stuff. I see a lot of good purifying that God is doing in the

American church, in the Western church. Right? Because we're seeing pastors and churches and believers who say, you know what, my obedience to Christ is far more important than my comfort.

And as time goes on, man, that line is getting just clearer and clearer. Persecution, look, persecution is not narrowly defined in Scripture by the extremes.

Torture, beheading, you know, just being ostracized in a community is a form of persecution.

Right? Being looked down upon, being shunned, being told that you're not.

But our government telling the world that the church is not loving, right, is a form of persecution.

So we need to understand those things. And Canada is right next door. So we shouldn't think that that level of persecution isn't coming to us.

I think what we need to do is prepare ourselves and the folks in our church to stand faithful to Christ.

And like Paul, Paul didn't whine when he was in the prison getting ready to be executed.

He wrote a letter to Timothy, and it was focused on being faithful to Christ, on preaching the gospel.

In fact, the focus of that letter was on keeping sound doctrine. And that was the

Apostle Paul's, you know, sort of last will and testament. And so, yeah, I just think we recognize these things.

We need to encourage our brothers and sisters who seem to be wavering. I think sadly we'll discover that many aren't our brothers and sisters.

Praise God for the churches that stay closed, because it probably means they should be closed.

And that sounds harsh. But I'd rather have one God -fearing

Bible teaching church in a community than 50 who love the world over Christ.

So I think we'll see a lot of good things coming out of this. And, you know, and that's what

I think with that article that I mentioned earlier from John MacArthur. I mean, that did.

There's going to be, this is a pruning. Okay. This is a pruning that we see going on.

And we're going to see who are the, who is the real church. Because the

Joelstein attenders are not going to be showing up when the church, when the government says, go to church and we arrest you.

They're done. You know, so we're going to, you know, but this, I actually say that this is, this is the best time to be alive as a

Christian. We have the greatest opportunity to share the gospel right now because we're, we're now in a world that is fearful.

They're scared of the, of something they can't see. They are worried about everything under the sun.

You have, you even have the conservatives who are worried America is going socialist. And so they're, everybody there's, they are fearful everywhere.

And we alone have the message to set them free. We alone, but the message we've had has been so muddied over the years with the prosperity gospel and the church growth movement and all this other nonsense.

But when all that's cleared away and all that noise is silenced, we're going to hear the gospel going forth, but only if Christians step up now and do so.

And this is an opportunity for us. This is the time. Do not fear. Yes, there is going to be persecution.

Yes, they're going to come out against us. Yes, they're going to be saying that we shouldn't be doing, sharing the gospel with people.

But now's the time for us to do it because I have news for us. We were thrown in jail.

It's too late to share the gospel with them. And you can still share it with the jailers, you know, with your prison guards. But the reality is now is an opportunity.

Instead of worrying about what the government may do to you, here's a simple reality.

Speak the truth in love. And I guess parent, just throw that in there for Aaron, right?

But speak the truth in love to your neighbor, to your co -worker, to your family.

Give them the gospel. And you know what's going to happen if people start getting saved, if we see a revival?

The politicians will pretend to be Christian. You want evidence? Look at like every president of the

United States. They all pretend. Okay, so the reality is they will follow.

But we're not, we have to lead. Christians, we need to lead. So I think there's a lot of good that's coming out of it.

And I think that we're seeing stronger churches. We're seeing all of the churches that won't open. And they're staying closed.

And you're seeing the solid believers from all those churches that are finding good churches to be at.

Talking to a pastor in California. And he said that because there's a liberal church in the area, and there's people who they do, they meet on Zoom.

And it's a liberal church, but they get paid to teach Sunday school. So they said to this pastor, we have to leave at quarter to 12, so we can get home to teach because we get paid to teach

Sunday school at this liberal church. But we feel that we should be in church and gathering.

So they're coming to a solid church. And he's like, you know what? While they're here, they're getting the truth. And they may come out of the liberal church, right?

This is the thing that we're seeing all over the place. People are gathering in the churches that will gather, and they're hearing good biblical sermons.

And the churches that don't want to gather, they're just, they're withering on the vine. I think that Christianity could come out stronger out of this.

But what's it going to take? It's going to take Christians seizing this great opportunity that we have, not shying away, not being fearful, but standing up like James Coates.

James Coates' church had more people the week he was arrested in attendance than they ever had before.

That tells you something. I already mentioned that Grace Community Church of John MacArthur has more people in attendance with thousands of people that are members that aren't showing up.

Why? Because solid believers want to see people that stand up and take

Christ serious. And that's the opportunity I think we have. That's the opportunity

I think that we have by opening our churches. I'll end with this.

Aaron Coates, Pastor Coates' wife, was asked this question. How can we support you?

How can we support James Coates? And she had a very simple message. Open your church.

If we all open our churches, guess what happens? James Coates doesn't go to jail. I mean, he gets, you know, his case,

I mean, it becomes nothing because everyone else is open. Do you know why Black Lives Matter was allowed to get away with marching on the streets the way they were, night after night, burning cities?

Because they did it. Because there were too many. They had too many people. And the politicians didn't want to interfere.

They didn't want to take the political, they saw the numbers. Okay? Folks, go to church.

Open your church. And the politicians will get the message. Yes, Lord.

Amen. Yeah. Amen. I mean, if people are going, if people are going to shut their churches for a pandemic or would -be pandemic and be fearful of this, what happens when they say, listen, you just can't meet.

We haven't given you a reason. We just don't want you to meet. I mean, if we'll shut for this, much smaller thing than when they put the clamp on, you know, they've already gotten many to cower at this level when they turn up the heat.

But I love what Andrew said, like, let's just meet. Let's meet. Let's open the churches. There's tons of numbers.

Open and preach. And with that, we'll close out with a promo for the

Christian Podcast Community. Evangelism, apologetics, parenting, homeschooling, sermons, and much, much more.

So check us out at christianpodcastcommunity .org.

One stop for all your favorite Christian podcasts. God bless.