Mega Edition: SBC Cancelled, Russel Moore's NYT Article, Cary Gordon on Rom 13

Welcome to another mega exciting edition of the Quarantine Coronavirus Conversations of Matter.

How's that for alliteration? I did learn something in seminary. How are you doing, guys? How are you doing out there?

Guys and gals, leave me a comment. Let me know, did you lose your job? Are you having a hard time? Did you find some work?

I know a company near me was hiring two days ago because frankly, there are some things right now that are in demand.

Look for those opportunities if you don't have a job right now. Be productive, redeem the time because the days are certainly evil.

You know, we're bombarded and it seems like every day feels like a year because so much information comes into our minds.

We can't possibly remember it and this podcast is probably not an exception. But one thing I've tried to do is when it's information you already have,

I want to give you paradigms for interpreting it and help you walk through it. And I'm not perfect, I don't have all the answers, but for those who do watch,

I know you enjoy my opinion and hopefully I can help you think about the things that you're hearing. The other thing

I often do is I give you niche information that you won't hear. And I'll probably give you a little bit of that today, especially regarding social justice and evangelical church stuff.

So we're gonna talk about a lot of things. We're gonna talk about the SBC. We're gonna talk about woke evangelicals and how they're reacting to this.

We're gonna talk about just the general situation and the loss of civil liberties and the virus itself a little bit.

But the main part of this, the main thrust is going to be towards the end.

And this is why this is a mega edition, it's gonna be long. I'm going to be interviewing

Pastor Kerry Gordon out in Sioux City, Iowa for almost an hour actually. He actually is meeting despite the order from the governor in Iowa.

And he's been on several syndicated national shows. He's actually been given a great opportunity to witness.

He's got some professional documentary guys coming who are making a documentary about this issue this weekend.

And they're not Christians, but he's gonna be on that platform sharing the gospel.

And so he's actually gaining a platform for sharing good, positive things, which is great.

But I want you to hear his perspective because it's not really being heard out there a lot. And he's got a different way of looking at Romans 13 than the typical way you hear people looking at it today.

And I'm hearing it everywhere applied that churches just need to shut down because the government, whatever the government says, we need to do as long as the government doesn't ask us to sin.

That's kind of the logic. And that wasn't the logic of our founding fathers or the Black Robe Regiment.

If you've done any study on the Revolutionary War, that's not how they thought about Romans 13 at all. And Kerry's kind of in that mold.

And so I want you to hear what Pastor Kerry Gordon has to say about that. And as well, I should say this now, at the end,

I'm gonna play a few short videos from pastors and an evangelist out in California who are just giving short answers to common questions on this issue.

What does the ministry look like? How do I comfort people? What do I meet for church?

What about Romans 13, et cetera, et cetera. Online church, what is that?

How do I do it? So I'm just gonna put that at the end, but you can find those videos at The Church and COVID -19 on Facebook and The Church and COVID -19 on YouTube.

I'm gonna put those two links in the info section. You're gonna wanna go check those out. I'm thinking there's gonna be more videos added as time goes on.

And it's from across the evangelical spectrum. But some helpful articulations,

I do believe. So let's start with first things first. We're gonna do some Southern Baptist stuff. I got a large Southern Baptist audience.

And if you're not, don't worry, I'm not gonna stay here forever. But the SBC is canceled this year. No Southern Baptist convention.

Al Mohler announced it. And of course, the reason being used is coronavirus. Now, number one, does it not strike you as unusual that it's in June and they're already canceling?

I mean, I'm speaking at a conference in California of all places in June, and we're still waiting to see what happens because we don't know.

But even if you had to cancel, why not just postpone it? Why not have it later in the year, defer it? They didn't wanna do that either.

So J .D. Greer, who's kind of leading the whole Southern Baptist convention into an iceberg, is going to be the president for another year.

Russell Moore, Ed Stetzer, they're all gonna be in the same positions, doing the same thing they've been doing. And you don't have a say in it, frankly.

They could have done online voting, right? Couldn't they have, I mean, the problem with that, for the woke people at least, would be that the entities in large churches, they can afford, in some cases, they actually pay for their messengers to go and influence this convention.

Well, small churches, medium -sized churches, they don't have the resources to send someone to the convention. And so those who would most likely vote against the woke social justice stuff, they're not at the conventions.

But if you did it online, they would have a say. Now, I thought participatory democracy was a good thing.

But maybe not in this case. Maybe not if it's gonna hurt the elites. I'm just saying, that was an idea that I heard more than one person bring up and say, well, why don't we do it this way?

Not even mentioned in this video by Al Mohler, not even addressed. And of course, the woke crowd, here's one example, they're happy about this because, look, we can't debate things like Resolution 9.

And he's talking about, basically, women preachers and the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference, which was a mess, the pastor who was speaking there.

He's saying, this is great. This is actually God who spared the SBC in America of this pending atrocity.

The pending atrocity is conservatives trying to influence the convention. That's the pending atrocity.

So, you can see kind of where this is heading. And of course, there's justifications out there. This was an interesting thread by Peter Lumpkins.

It didn't get a lot of attention, but he's talking about a podcast in which they were saying, hey, you know, this happened before 1945,

World War II, Southern Baptist Convention canceled. And Peter Lumpkins points out, no, actually, there was no provision that allowed them to cancel in 1945.

They actually spoke of the SBC as deferred. They actually looked to have it, if possible, the amended constitution in 1946 to accommodate canceling annual meetings, apparently, in response to wartime dilemma.

And then he talks about how the president remained the president in 1945, but there existed no officer term limits in 1945.

That didn't come until 1952. Now we have term limits. So, he's saying that this argument doesn't, that dog don't hunt, is what he's saying.

And I, frankly, intend to agree with him. This is just, it's weird to me.

Like, there's other ways. I mean, if we're doing church online, if that's such the big push, and SBC pastors are all about it, why can't you do the convention online?

Why is that such a problem? But it is to them, and I think it probably has to do with, you guessed it, power.

If you have another idea for why this might be the case, then you tell me. But at the very least, couldn't you have a vote for the next president or for some resolutions?

Why can't you do that online? All right. Most of you know, because you're watching, civil liberties are under attack in different places, and I have a number of examples here, and this is just a drop in the bucket, but certain counties are authorizing the county to commandeer private property.

You have the Department of Justice wanting to be able to have emergency powers to detain without court proceedings.

You have the social media crackdown going on right now. I'm the victim of that. Two videos ago, the one I put out about the media narrative against Trump, the social justice narrative, calling it the

China virus. Yep, Facebook didn't want me sharing that. You have mobile phone industry looking at the possibility of tracking people for future similar disasters.

There's just, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. I'm not gonna cover all of this. California's probably the worst example.

I'm glad I don't, it's a war zone. I'm glad I don't live out there. You have criminals being let out of jail, the gun stores being shut down, businesses who stay open, their sewer, their water's cut off, and then you have drones,

Chinese -made drones, patrolling with night vision to make sure curfews are kept. Aye yai yai, that is

California, though. So, of course, the effect on small businesses is one of the worst things about this whole thing.

You have the small business industry just being wiped out, while Walmart, Amazon, they're essential, so they're hiring people, they're making record profits, and small businesses can't compete.

And then you have some of the crazy left people wanting to do things like abolish the family at Open Democracy, and the argument here is families perpetuate abuse, now people have to spend more time in those environments, not everyone has a family, it's unfair, et cetera, et cetera.

So, and I pointed this out like three videos ago when I was pointing to some articles at the World Economic Forum.

Every utopian, globalist, pipe dreamer, and even those who aren't pipe dreamers who can actually do some scary things, they're all salivating right now.

Every single leftist dream is in the process of trying to be implemented somehow, whether it's education, or whether it's global warming stuff or whether it's even illegal migration, and amnesty, and everything.

It's like, if it's even not a related problem, the solution is this leftist thing over here.

And so, that shouldn't come as a shock to us, but we need to be aware, we need to be vigilant against it, obviously.

Of course, social justice rhetoric's still around, African American Policy Forum, without any evidence yet, they're saying resources aren't being distributed properly.

And it's like, what is this, a week in? Two weeks in? You know this?

This is, it's just because we live in America. It's critical race theory. We live in America, and by definition, it's not fair.

Coronavirus will change the world permanently. This was an interesting article put out by the Politico. 34 big thinkers and their predictions.

And it doesn't mean they're all right, but this was an interesting one, especially. Her name is

Amy Sullivan, Director of Strategy for Vote for the Common Good. And she basically predicts an ecumenical movement, not just Catholics, and Protestants, and Jewish people, and Muslims coming together.

But also, I'm gonna quote it. She says, the culture war that has branded those who preach about the common good and the epithet, with the epithet social justice warriors, may ease amid the very present reminder of our interconnected humanity.

And I was thinking, you know, number one, that's 180 degrees off, because the social justice warriors are the ones that are saying these victim groups, their perspectives must be elevated and trump everything that the non -victim groups think.

And they're basically more, they're more worthy. We should give our resources to them.

We should listen to them. They should run the show. And so they're forming their known new hierarchy.

That is not our common humanity. Our common humanity is what the other side is saying, what my side is saying, that we all are made in the image of God.

And we all have sin, equally. We all are equally in need of a savior. And we should be treated equally.

And of course, we're talking about being equally in the non -egalitarian sense.

They're talking about equity in the egalitarian sense, which means basically playing God. And so they're trying to dream about what the world may look like.

This is a good thing, in Amy Sullivan's mind. And it was interesting, this is kind of related. I saw Stephen Ecker, a church history professor at Southeastern, where I went.

He talks about the situation right now in the Roman Catholic Church, where they're saying, you know, if you can't go to confession, you know, just confess to God.

And the Protestants are like, yeah, yeah, we've been saying that for 500 years. And Stephen Ecker, you know, who's teaching

Reformation at Southeastern, he says, you know, I appreciate the Protestant Reformation as much or more than most people. And yes, the

Pope made an accommodation to the confessional that vindicates Luther and other reformers on this. But now, this is the key part, now isn't the time to pile on the

Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps it's never the time, consider grace. Well, if Martin Luther considered grace in Stephen Ecker's definition, and John Calvin considered grace, we would not have the

Protestant Church. And we wouldn't have Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where Stephen Ecker teaches. He would not have the job he has.

And he would not be studying the history that he's studying and teaching that history because they would have just gone along to get along and they wouldn't have wanted to cause an offense.

And so we wouldn't have had a Reformation. This is kind of the danger in my mind of what

Amy Sullivan's talking about because she's probably onto something. She's probably right in some ways that there is a movement already in this direction.

And the coronavirus thing, I think, is just an opportunity to, you know, put a shot of adrenaline in that movement.

And it simply is this, let's all come together. Let's not offend one another. Let's be, let's talk about the things we have in common, so to speak, and not the things that divide us.

And it's not right to go after other religions. You know what, now is the time. There's an opportunity right now, in a loving way, of course, but to say, you know what,

Roman Catholics, if you've really been doing it wrong for, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe consider what the

Bible has to say about confessing your sins, and the priesthood of all believers, and maybe you're not in the right church.

And, you know, and maybe the doctrine of that church is a damning doctrine, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, and it is bringing you to hell and not heaven, and we want you to repent of your sins, turn to Jesus, and trust in him alone, not your works or anything else, and, you know, imputed righteousness, not infused righteousness, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, this is the time to get that message out there. It's an opportunity, but we're missing it, some of us, because of people under the same kind of thinking

Stephen Ecker's under. I think churches are missing it, many churches, in more than one way, but that's just one example for you.

Should churches meet? A anchor at MSNBC, O'Donnell, predicts millions will die if churches packed on Easter.

So this is, I'm gonna just talk kind of personally for a minute. My most popular video that I put out in the last like two months, probably more than that, was yesterday.

It's probably got like 10 ,000 views now, and it's just like five minutes of me walking around Liberty University saying social distancing is happening, there's signs everywhere,

Purell stations, guards, they're doing it right, it's a ghost town anyway, but the students who are here are international, or they probably have no place to go, that is their home, and the alternative for some of these students is, if they do have a home, it's either go home from spring break to mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, or come to a school where most of the children, the children,

I'm getting old, most of the students are young and healthy, which is better, and so I just say that there's no alternatives to the situation

Liberty University is in, no better alternatives, and people are going nuts on me, and some of the comments really show an anti -Christian bigotry, anti -evangelical bigotry, anti, in this case, anti -Liberty, and then of course my video had nothing to do with Falwell, but they're trying to bring

Falwell into it, and he's just being stupid, he's just like Trump, and there's this fear that these conservatives and these

Christians especially, they're just gonna ruin everything, they're gonna kill everyone because they're gonna meet up for church, they're not gonna shut down their campuses, they're gonna just spread the disease, and I do fear this kind of, not in a cosmic way,

I'm not like shaking my boots, but I do see this, and I do realize that this could be a problem moving forward if Christians are blamed for this kind of thing, for meeting up for church, for not practicing social distancing.

I mean, look, I went to Walmart the other day, and most of you have probably done that, and I probably picked up more germs,

I'm picking up more germs now at Walmart than I probably ever have. It's crowded, there's spills in the aisles because people are just going crazy, everyone's high -strung, you can't keep up with all the cleaning, it's so dirty, and it's not

Walmart's fault, it's just that's the situation everywhere, and it's like, and they're getting down on Liberty University and churches because they're gonna be irresponsible.

There's just this assumption that Christians are dumb, we don't care about our own apparently, we're just willing to kill all our old people, and that's frankly, that's anti -Christian bigotry,

I'll call it what it is. Now, what are some of the bigwigs in Christianity saying? Well, here's what they're saying, and I didn't do a deep dive,

I got three opinions here that all are pretty much the same. Mark Devers says, you know, I'm looking forward to the first Sunday the government allows us to gather again.

Yeah, of course, a lot of references to Romans 13, and kind of telling churches that it's their duty to come to church, they have to come to church, sorry, the opposite, not go to church, they have to not go to church, do the online thing or whatever your church has planned, and that's just part of our obedience to the civil authorities as commanded.

And we're gonna get into this later with Kerry Gordon, but this narrative is hardly even being challenged right now, and Kerry Gordon's one of these guys that he just thinks more like the founding generation thought about it, and it's gonna be interesting,

I think, for you to hear his perspective, and I happen to be kind of more along the same line as Kerry on that, to be quite frank with you.

I think Romans 13 is, and I'm gonna share more later, but I think it's fundamentally being misunderstood and misapplied in many of these situations.

So we're gonna get to that, but let's keep going on this, because we gotta talk about Russell Moore, we really gotta talk about Russell Moore.

So this article came out this morning in the New York Times, number one, why is it that every time a liberal in evangelicalism, or someone who's not a liberal, but they have this one liberal niche perspective, they get carried in the

Washington Post, or the New York Times, or some other liberal rag, and they just, they love it.

It's like, you know, if I had the opportunity to write for the, like Tim Keller's another guy that does this, if I had the opportunity, would

I take it? I mean, I guess, but a lot of times they use it as a way to kind of bash their own people, and sort of virtue signal, and teach their people.

Instead of using it as a platform to tell the world the good news, and talk to the world about what they're doing wrong, that would be prophetic, like real prophetic.

They use it as an opportunity to tell the church what they want the church to do. And I'm going to show you an example of this, this is kind of pretty classic.

This is what Russell Moore did today. And by the way, Al Mohler said something very similar to what I'm about to read to you, but it was such a word salad, it was from his briefing yesterday,

I didn't even bother to analyze it, it would take too long. Russell Moore said basically the same thing, in ironically a more straightforward way.

Here's what he said. I hope the lessons we take from our country's experience with COVID -19 aren't about food, or avoiding the spread of germs.

Okay. But about how we treat the most vulnerable among us. A pandemic is no time to turn our eyes away from the sanctity of human life.

Now look, wait for it. This language, sanctity of human life, this pro -life language he's using here. And Russell Moore, Danny Akin, I mean the list just goes on and on and on.

I mean, most of the big wig evangelicals right now are moving towards this holistic view, this pro -life view.

Now this is the same exact view that Ron Sider and Jim Wallace and other evangelical leftists from the 1970s have been pushing since that time.

And so what Russell Moore's gonna do is he's gonna turn this coronavirus issue into a pro -life issue.

And there's a key difference between the two. I'm gonna point that out. And it is very sneaky. And I don't mind saying this is actually evil thinking.

We already are hearing talk about weighing the value of human life against the health of the nation's economy and the strength of the stock market.

Okay, that's a straw man. That's a straw man right there. He's talking about things that like, there was

I think the deputy governor in Texas said and others who have said, you know, I'm older.

I'm willing to take calculated risk. I'm willing to go to work so that we have a country left because they're looking at all these changes that are being made to our country, not just economically, but economics is part of it.

And they're saying, where's the country gonna be for my kids and grandkids? And for those who haven't lived that long, for those who aren't students of history, you're not gonna understand this, but I need to explain it to you.

A country's economy is probably the main part, one of the major parts.

Their spiritual condition is bigger in my opinion, but their country's economy is a significant factor in a country's national security.

I need to say that again. A country's economy is a significant factor in a country's national security. A country, your economy will help you have the tax base to be able to fight something like a

COVID -19. But not just that, there's actually bad guys out there and China's one of them.

And they don't want to do nice things to us. And we need to be able to support a military financially so that we can protect ourselves.

And not only that, not just enemies foreign, but enemies domestic. The economy is important.

And not only that, private property is a principle that you find throughout God's word that is protected as it is a fundamental right given to us by God.

And so to violate that for the sake of the common good is actually evil. Acts is the place that most evangelicals like to go who are on the progressive side and say, we should just be like the church of Acts, share everything in common.

Well, if you read Acts, Ananias and Sapphira, when they sold their property, they were told by Peter, was it not yours when you had it?

Was it not yours and did not belong to you? Private property was still protected at that point.

It's a sacred thing. And you don't violate private property for the sake of the common good.

That's actually immoral. And God doesn't do things that way. Just read the Torah, read the law and look at all the laws about property.

And the law actually has a lot to say about what to do in a quarantine situation.

They had lepers. They had quarantine. They had quarantine for just about everything, for religious quarantine situations, but they respected private property.

Russell Moore has been after this forever. And before him, Ron Sider and Jim Wallace, they've been after trying to get you to value the common good over individual rights and that have been given by God.

That's what they've been trying to do. And honestly, here's the secret really. Now it's a secret it seems.

Everyone used to know this, but protecting individual liberties and securing those actually does more for the common good than anything else.

But you hear the big wig evangelicals, they throw around words like human flourishing and they assume that humans can't flourish in a free market system, in a system when individual liberties are secured.

We must violate those in order to help the common good. I'm gonna keep reading for you and I'm gonna explain how

Russell Moore implements this. He said, it's true that a depression would cause untold suffering for people around the world, hitting the poor the hardest.

Still, each human life is more significant than a trillion dollar gross national product. Stocks and bonds are important, yes, but human beings are created in the image of God.

Now there's half -truths here, guys. Be careful. Humans are created in the image of God. What does that mean?

That means God gives them certain rights. Private property is one of them. Anyway, we must also reject suggestions that it makes sense to prioritize the care of those who are young and healthy over those who are elderly or have disabilities.

That's another straw man. That's another straw man. People aren't saying that they should be prioritized more from a governmental standpoint.

What people are saying is that there's actually a cost -benefit risk that everyone takes and it's inescapable and it's for the flu, it's for other diseases, it's for just getting in your car and driving.

I mean, we take risks all day, every day and some things are more dangerous for older people. As you get older, your reflexes aren't as good, all right?

So you can't even... That's why eventually driver's licenses are taken away from you but your ability to fight any disease is diminished and so do you just not, you stop living?

No, no. So older people are saying, no, I'm gonna keep living and Russell Moore right here is trying to say that no, no,

I'm gonna get you to try to create a false dichotomy in your mind. It's either young folks or old folks, you choose.

It doesn't work that way. Such considerations, he says, turn human lives into check marks on a page rather than the sacred mystery they are.

He's getting more new agey in the way he talks. When we entertain these ideas, something of our very humanity is lost.

And actually here's the title, God Doesn't Want Us to Sacrifice the Old. No, Russell Moore, you're the one that is causing us to lose our humanity.

It's the kind of thinking that you are advocating because you want to look at everything collectively and you want to violate the rights that God has given us that are tethered to responsibilities

God's given us. And by the logic, and you can test this by taking it to the extreme, by the logic

Russell Moore is giving you, this would mean that what's to prohibit us from locking down all roads, never travel again, or the government should space out roads and only allow a certain amount of people on the road, or I don't know,

I mean, pick any issue you want where even one life, because we just heard a trillion dollars versus one life and one life wins.

Even one life could be saved. Well, we need to come to the aid of that one life and we need to bend every force.

So we prioritize physical safety in this life over keeping the commands of God.

That's where this logic brings you, keeping the commands of God. And the commands of God are for me to look out for myself, to be responsible for my family, as I pointed out in the last video

I made, and to provide for them. I'm not, that doesn't belong to the government. The government is for protecting us against evildoers.

And I'm gonna talk to Kerry about this a little more, but what Russell Moore is giving you right now is more of a materialist mindset.

This is not a spiritual mindset that views life as continuing on after the physical existence has passed.

And not that things in this world don't matter, they do. Physical things do matter. But there's hierarchies and there's rights and there's responsibilities

God has given to us in the here and now, and those must be protected. Otherwise, we set ourselves up for tyranny.

Anyone who comes in and wants to essentially violate our rights for the sake of the common good or a perceived argument for the common good will get platformed by these guys.

Now here's what's going on. A lot of discussion about this today. I'm not gonna go into great detail.

I've been reading a lot about this virus. And it's interesting, I had one of my friends who reads Italian to verify this for me.

But apparently in Italy, it was one of their National Institute of Health, so I guess it was a spokesperson for them.

They were saying that only 12 % of the COVID -19 deaths list COVID -19 as cause.

And so this means that 88 % of Italy's alleged COVID -19 deaths could be misdiagnosed. And misattributed, meaning someone could have

COVID -19 and because they had it and they died, it's attributed to that, but actually it was something else that killed them.

So think about it this way. This is the problem. And a bunch of us have been saying this for a while. Because our information is limited to lag measures, and it's only those who are, at least initially, those who are really sick, who are coming, who are, you know, they're approaching death's door and they're the ones that are getting tested, it's gonna create numbers that look terrible.

But the possibility is that more people have it. Here's one story says that coronavirus, this is in England, coronavirus may have already infected half of UK population.

It's possible that a lot of people have it and they're not exhibiting the symptoms. And, or it's a cold, it's something not as bad, and it's not killing them.

And so if that's the case, and you're only measuring the people who are on death's door and it's going to greatly exaggerate the numbers.

And now we're finding out that England is not taking it as seriously. It's still serious, by the way, it is serious.

I'm not saying it's not, but England is just what they're saying. They're saying that, I'm gonna try to read some of this for you here.

The Four Nations Public Health Group made an interim recommendation in January. They take you through the history.

Then they say that they're reviewing the most up -to -date information. And they have determined that several features we have now changed.

In particular, more information is available about the mortality rate, low overall. And there is now greater clinical awareness of the specific and sensitive laboratory tests.

So they're downgrading it in Great Britain. And this Imperial College scientist who predicted the 500 ,000 coronavirus deaths, again, this is from the

Washington Examiner, in the UK, revises to 20 ,000. And so now after everyone freaked out, we're starting to find out that, yeah, it's a bad virus, but it's not

Armageddon. It's not the Black Plague. It's not what we thought initially that it was. And so I'm thinking about all those

Twitter discussions that I got into with people who were just saying, well, just trust the experts.

Look at their measurements, look at their data. And I'm like, their data's incomplete. And now we're finding out, yes, the data was incomplete.

And so I'm not telling you, you should still wash your hands. I'm not telling you that there aren't risks. And that you shouldn't be staying home in quarantine.

You did not hear that from me. I'm not giving you any advice on medical. In fact, if I were to, I would say that you should probably be very careful right now.

But I'm just saying, this is hope. This is hope. It isn't the doom and gloom that we thought it was.

And I'm hoping that'll take the wind out of some of these utopianists, utopian people. I don't know what to call them, globalists,

I guess. Their sales. So yeah, that's what's going on.

I want to now switch gears. We're gonna be talking to Kerry Gordon. Kerry has, like I said, been on many e -media interviews talking about why his church is still meeting,

Romans 13, how he deals with that. I want you to hear from him. I think he's got a valuable perspective.

And then I'm gonna play for you some clips from other pastors and evangelists on how they're dealing with this. And again, you can go to the

Facebook group, The Church and COVID -19, or the YouTube group, The Church and COVID -19.

YouTube channel, Facebook page. So I hope this was helpful for you.

God bless. Until next time. Pastor Kerry Gordon, thank you so much for joining me for this discussion.

I know a lot of churches have been canceling, doing online church. And you've made some waves.

You've actually been in the news for continuing to meet and for, in some ways, speaking out against what the governor there in Iowa is doing.

I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. I'm sure you have a lot of other interviews. I'm honored to be here.

I appreciate you asking me to come. Yeah, my pleasure. I wanted to ask you real quick, what does ministry look like for you right now?

I know a lot of pastors are seeing different things, depending on where they are. But in this quarantine environment, what does it look like to be a pastor?

Well, there's a lot of confusion. We've never walked this way before. Never seen anything like this in our lifetimes.

And if you haven't carefully studied and spent time with the Constitution and the

Bill of Rights and understanding the founding principles of the country, and a lot of ministers don't do that because they're busy.

And the doctrine of pietism sort of relegates that to being inferior and unimportant. And so there's not a lot of knowledge about the

Constitution. The fact is, if it weren't for the Constitution, we wouldn't have any churches right now in this country, most likely.

We wouldn't have the Bill of Rights. We wouldn't have the Declaration of Independence. We wouldn't have been founded with 13 colonies that originally became the first 13 states and codified the 10 commandments and the state law.

So we wouldn't be a Christian civilization. There wouldn't be Western civilization. So ironically, men who did think a lot about the proper interpretation and application of Romans 13th chapter, which deals with the purpose of government as God sees it, to reward good and punish evil, strictly tethering them to biblical definitions of good and evil, of course.

There would be no, if there hadn't been men that understood these principles about private property, freedom of speech, et cetera, et cetera, we wouldn't have churches.

Ironically, here we are 2020, and no one really understands our legal roots on the basis of freedom, it seems.

If you look at the internet, look at what common ministers are doing and what they're saying, there's a complete separation of understanding.

So what ministry looks like is, my best way to say it is, we're probably ripe for a third great awakening.

The whole world is afraid. People are looking for answers and they're scared, but the churches are closed.

So largely, your average unsaved person down the street here from me, they know where the churches are physically.

They don't know how to necessarily look for church service at a certain time, live streaming on a Sunday morning.

So people are only doing kind of sort of church. And I say that because if you look at James, there's many things that the church is commanded to do when we come together physically for worship.

We're supposed to have communion. How do you have communion through a video screen? You're supposed to lay hands on the sick when they call for the elders.

We're in a pandemic, people need to call for the elders of the church to pray for them, lay hands on the sick, anoint them with oil, do what the scripture says.

Well, you can't do that through a video screen. You can't bury the dead through a video screen.

People die during a pandemic. I heard reports of Mennonites trying to have a funeral in the state of New York, and they were interrupted by the state police.

Think of the horrors of that. I mean, honestly, the Mennonites stated themselves already so much that probably the state police brought the germs with them.

So there's a lot of problems with the idea that real religion, biblical church, the way the scriptures command church be conducted, it simply cannot be done biblically, fully and completely through this kind of a means where we're talking screen to screen.

Now, you can supplement your ministry, you can do a lot of great things. You can expand your reach with the gospel, you can reach people perhaps through the internet, but that's still not doing church.

So we're really not doing church if we're only streaming. And I think that's theologically sound to say, you can't really fulfill your obligations as a minister sitting at home in your pajamas on Sunday, looking into a little tiny camera and talking to people.

Yeah, I totally agree. You can't do communion, administer the ordinances, the full spectrum of the gifts aren't on display online.

I understand. There's no way to baptize anyone through a screen either. I forgot that. That's right, that's right.

And of course, I mean, this reminds me, I saw, I think it was last year, there was some online pastor who was digitally baptizing people.

What? Yeah, I don't know, I'll have to send it to you. I'm gonna lead them through the baptism and then

Lisa is actually gonna be the one that's physically gonna lower Alyssa into the bathtub. Hopefully that's not going mainstream.

But what is it right now is the cancellation of church services. And here's, I wanted to get into this a little more detailed with you, because I think there's a part of us that we all understand in emergencies, there might be exceptions to having church.

Like if a hurricane comes through and you're in Florida, maybe that's the Sunday you don't wanna meet. And I think that's what a lot of people just trying to use their common sense are thinking right now.

Could you just address what is the difference between what's going on now and like a hurricane coming through?

Well, that's a very good point. And yes, we live in the great white North and we have blizzards.

We can have 40 below zero temperatures where we have church.

And our church is at the highest elevation within our entire city limits. So our church is very high.

We almost have our own private weather system up there. The winds are so bad. You can reach straight line winds of 70 miles an hour, which is hurricane force.

But now think of it in snow. It's literally deadly to try to go anywhere in a blizzard like that.

It's very, very dangerous. So there are times when we have to cancel services because that's a legitimate issue.

It's just not practical. The oldest member of my church, I think is 97 and she's just turned 98.

So I don't think that I want her getting out of her little car and trying to drive to church in a blizzard. So we do have to make good decisions.

The scripture still says, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. So we have responsibility personally, but this is different.

And it's different because the decisions that are being made are quite subjective.

You hear the term flatten the curve. Where did the curve start? No one really knows.

How do you flatten a curve if you're gonna look at a graph and you don't know where the beginning of it is or where the ending of it is.

There are lots of medical experts that are saying that we're grossly overreacting. The Queen's finest in the

United Kingdom, the greatest experts that England could muster in medical and in science fields, studied the coronavirus and said, banning mass gatherings of worshipers on Sundays or Saturdays would do virtually nothing to stop the spread of the disease.

Why isn't America listening to the experts that are dealing with it overseas concerning mass gatherings?

There's just not enough data to show that it justifies what is happening within our 50 states at various levels.

Here's the problem. The Bill of Rights, or you could say a

Bill of Limits exists and the first one deals with our right to assemble, to worship and express religious liberty that does not come from the state, but comes from God.

And the state therefore is charged with protecting a right that comes from God and they're explicitly forbidden from interfering with the assembling of ourselves together for religious purposes under constitutional law.

So there's terrible ramifications if we set a precedent where we allow in the name of an emergency, governors, mayors, police chiefs, or even the president of the

United States to say, oh no, I'm nervous, I'm afraid. This is a dangerous place, people can die.

So we're just gonna ignore the constitution for a couple of weeks. You're not allowed to do that under the rule of law.

And I would make this argument that it's when we're in an emergency and when we're afraid, there is a tendency in human nature to overreact or do things that we're not thinking through clearly enough.

This is when you most need the safety provided by the principle that we get from the word of God and having the rule of law keep us in line.

So right now is not when we cast aside the law as presidents, mayors, and governors. Right now is when we should be strictly adhering to constitutional law.

Does that help? It does, yeah. You know, I think in my mind, the short answer is usually in a hurricane or a national emergency, because I grew up in the

North as well where we would have blizzards like you're describing. I don't remember the government canceling church.

I mean, I remember advisories. I remember, I mean, I've been in cases, it's been situations in New York where I was where the president had to declare a state of emergency, the governor did, and then the president sent in aid and so forth.

And I just don't remember this ever happening where the government imposed itself and said you can't meet. I remember us exercising discretion and saying, you know what, let's cancel this

Sunday. But it wasn't because our county executive or the governor of the state said that you have to cancel.

But it sounds like you're saying it's an issue of self -government. I totally agree. Yeah, yeah. Well, it seems like it's a difference in culture.

Like I understand a church who wants to cancel for a Sunday or two, because they're just not prepared to deal with this.

And, you know, they don't know what's going on. They're trusting their authorities to tell them the truth about this. And it looks bad in their mind.

But when it goes on for weeks and for potentially months, and you can't exercise, you can't obey the commands

God has given you, at what point do you say, okay, well, now we need to stop what we're doing and we need to go back to church, because church is more necessary than grocery markets.

I mean, unless you're a materialist, you have to believe that church prayer works, that we need to come to God in a time of crisis.

Right, it's self -government. Local authorities, when we speak of ecclesiastical power, local churches, sorry, my camera's sliding around.

Oh, that's fine. Local authorities are better at understanding their situation than someone 2 ,000 miles away.

Right, right. And so what ought to be happening right now all across the United States is everyone should be acting within the constraints of the law, within the constraints of the

Constitution, not acting rashly or trampling on other people's rights, because there are collateral consequences that are the result, there are unintended consequences when you step outside of rational thinking that is really explained in our law and expressed by our existing higher law of the

Constitution. So for example, if the government today can violate the

First Amendment, there's just something to think about and say, you must close your doors, which is what they've done in our state, which

I've defied. I've said, no, you're not gonna do that. That's unlawful. Then that means they could turn around two years from now, following the kind of thinking we've already seen legislated in California.

And they could say, you're not allowed to close your doors during a serious plague where the elders of the church may feel that if you have any contact with this, everyone will die.

There's no cure, there's no treatment. And the pastor says, close the doors. We've got to protect our sheep.

And the government says, no, you can't close your doors because that's discrimination against the sick.

So now what are you gonna do? So we've got wonderful godly people that are saying we should just obey.

Well, think about what you're doing though, because if you just obey authority without questioning it, there's consequences coming, especially if you're at the same time that you're attempting to display an obedience to authority if by doing that, not realizing it, you're actually encouraging the men with guns and badges to violate the laws while you're talking about obeying the laws.

We all have to obey, not just the little people and the sheep. The guys with the guns and badges have to obey too.

And let me give you an example of this kind of perverted thinking. You know how intersectionality works. Well, in California, as I understand it, they've changed legislation there.

It used to be criminal for a homosexual man to have intercourse with another person if he had

HIV. He had to declare it upfront. Otherwise it could be a death sentence on the person that he's coming into contact with.

Well, they've removed that law now. So you're no longer considered homicidal or it's not an act of willful manslaughter.

You can have HIV, which is a death sentence, in some cases, and willingly, knowingly infect another person.

And because it's a right to privacy, you don't have to tell people that you have a deadly disease before you engage in sexual contact.

So that kind of thinking, you realize it's going to find its way slithering through our legal system until the government, that we allow to violate the

First Amendment today, a year from now, they'll violate it again, and this time until you can't close your doors.

The purpose is the principle of subsidiary. I am better equipped to protect my flock and to take care of my dominion, my sovereign authority as the head of our church.

I do a better job of governing my church than the state does of governing its jurisdiction.

And that's just a fact. Our state government doesn't do a very good job doing what they're supposed to do.

The last thing I want is to have them interfere with what I do much better than what they do already and start telling me how to dictate things in my church.

They're violating biblical law. They're causing me to have to choose between obeying biblical law or them.

They're putting me in the place of righteous civil disobedience. And I want to get into those two issues because you've mentioned constitutional law.

I know in the state of Iowa, you have pretty much the same kind of Bill of Rights language that's in the

United States Constitution. In the state constitution, most states have that. So there's state law.

And then you have, of course, Romans 13 and biblical law. And I want to talk about all of that.

But you bring up a great point about just the proportionality of this. And I think it's really helpful for people to think of the extreme case in order to see if the principle holds up.

So what if the church canceled every flu season or the government canceled church every flu season for our safety?

Would that be a Romans 13 submit to government? Because let's face it, people meeting together could get sick and someone could die.

There's always that risk. Or getting in your car and going to church is a risk. So there's lots of risks. I think you can make the medical argument,

John, that every single public gathering, you're taking some reasonable risk that some communicable disease will come into the auditorium and someone will die.

I mean, that's a possibility within reason that could happen in any church service anywhere in the world, anytime.

Right. So shall we just close church and build a bunker? I mean, at some point, men have to be self -governed and they have to do it within the constraints of the

Constitution. Biblical law, yeah, Romans 13, there's a lot of misunderstandings about it. Yeah, let's talk about that.

Let's talk about Romans 13 right now. There's a lot of, I actually was on Twitter just looking up, what are people saying about Romans 13?

And I was like, holy cow, everyone's talking about Romans 13 as the reason. It's kind of like the hammer to come down on any church that would stay open to say you need to submit to authority right now.

So I'm gonna play devil's advocate a little bit. Why not? Why not Romans 13? It says that we're supposed to submit to authority.

So why aren't you submitting, Harry Gordon? First of all, we need to back away from Romans 13 and let's just begin here.

The man who wrote Romans 13th chapter refused to obey an unrighteous civil authority and had his head cut off, history tells us.

So obviously, when he wrote Romans 13th chapter, it wasn't do as I say, not as I do.

The Apostle Paul, who was writing to the Romans, obviously understood that there are times when we cannot obey an unrighteous civil authority.

And next, when you go to Romans 13th chapter, Romans says that government, which is authorized by God, is explicitly authorized by God to reward good and to punish evil.

That means government that is authorized by God must accept

God's biblical legal definitions of the words good and evil. And so when you're given the warning, for example, in Romans 13, that you should be afraid because they bear the sword not in vain, it's within the context and framework of governments that are doing their proper duty before God who have a proper definition of good and evil.

You should be afraid if you're doing evil. So everything's got to be tethered to the rhetorical question, who has the right to define good and evil?

There's only one and it's God. How do we know the definitions in the scriptures? So the scriptures teach us from the beginning to the end that we are never to submit to an unlawful authority that pits itself against God's definitions of good and evil.

So you can't take Romans 13 then, ignore the fact that the author practiced righteous civil disobedience,

Jesus practiced righteous civil disobedience, Peter did, the apostles did, the entire scriptures counsel.

Romans 13 is to harmonize with all the scripture, not to suddenly erupt in the midst of the New Testament and counterdict and countermand everything

God has told us for the previous several thousand years about the righteous role of a lesser magistrate in the midst of a situation where someone with greater authority and power is commanding people do something or creating legislation that violates principles that we know are right before God.

So in this situation, I would say there's a couple of different reasons why I'm not just yielding to the government.

Yeah, I wanna get into this a little more because I know there's a lot of questions that are popping up in people's minds right now about, because they've always been told

Romans 13 is in sort of, unless the government specifically tells you to sin, you must obey.

And well, it's not specifically a sin not to meet for one or two Sundays or three or four,

I don't know where that line is, but they'll say, that's not a sin, so we must obey what the government says.

I just wanted to read this, I'll get your reaction, but most people also don't know, and so I'm just gonna say this for everyone, that the chapter delineations in your

Bible, they weren't there originally. So if you go to Romans 12 and you read the

Romans 12 one, and this kind of sets the context, we're supposed to be living sacrifices to God, holy and acceptable, it's our spiritual service of worship, not to be conformed to the world.

So this is about not being the way that, or practicing evil the way that the

Gentiles do and engaging in their kind of behavior, we're different, right, we're a church. So the end of Romans 12, right before we get to Romans 13, it's talking about respect what is right in the sight of all men, verse 17, be at peace with all men, don't take vengeance, that's to the

Lord, and then verse 21, the last verse, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, which really,

I mean, you could have started the chapter 13 with that verse, really, and then you get to, well, what does that look like?

Well, it means you're gonna not be overcome by evil, it means every person, so we're talking about individuals here, people in the church, need to be subject, and I'm gonna read it here, be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.

Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed all will receive condemnation upon themselves.

For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority?

Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same, for it is a minister of God, so we're deacons to you for good, but if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing, for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath, and the one who practices evil, and then it's necessary to be in subjection, and it goes on, so the only reason

I read that is for people who haven't read Romans 13 in a while, here's a refresher, but it seems to me, and I wanna get your reaction to this, it's a command to individual

Christians to not behave in an evil way, and it's saying there's consequences if you're evil, so submit to the governing authorities in their capacity to implement just rule, and so am

I on track there, you think? You're exactly right, you're exactly right, and one of the arguments is, just to summarize what

I've been seeing a lot of ministers say, look, just do what the government says, and love your neighbor, this is a great opportunity to show that we love our neighbor as ourselves, we care about them not getting sick, so we're just going to obey,

I think Romans 13 is actually a very good place to discuss how do we love our neighbor, and I think if you are enabling governing authorities with the sword, with the power of the sword, with the power of force, if you are maybe not knowledgeably doing this, but if you are by your actions of submitting to tyranny, when they are abusing the law that we've all agreed to live under in the

United States, you are not really loving your neighbor, because you are enabling, or in some sense rewarding, an abuse of authority from a tyrant, or a would -be tyrant, that will end up harming your neighbor too at some point, so I mean there's a virus that could kill a few people, and there's also a government that has guns and could kill a few people too, so I think we need to realize that if we love our neighbor, the question we've got to be asking as pastors, this is what

I ask myself, can I honorably defend the Constitution of the United States of America, the

Bill of Rights, and hold my governess accountable for stepping outside of constitutional boundaries, and fully protect my congregation from the coronavirus at the same time?

And the answer is yes, and we've been able to do that. I have not bowed to her illegal activity,

I've kindly pointed it out, I've reached out directly to her, I've gone through media,

I've raised a ruckus publicly, I'm holding our police department accountable, I've reached out to the chief of police and said, now you've taken an oath to the

Constitution, and you've just received unconstitutional orders that are sinful and wrong from the governess, she's stepping outside of her jurisdiction, and you could misunderstand that, and then use your guns, and your authority to arrest people, and actually end up gunning for Christians trying to go worship

God, because God has commanded that we're to come together on the first day of the week to worship, so we should obey

God rather than men, so I'm trying to hold them all accountable, meanwhile, our people are staying in their cars where they're never gonna get the disease, and I'm standing out in freezing cold in the snow preaching at my church on our property in a safe way, broadcasting through my microphone to the

FM radios of their cars, so I've been able to do both at the same time, and I think we're actually harming

America, if we don't understand the full scope of this issue, does that make sense?

It does, yeah, and there's so many questions I'm sure people are having right now, I wanna just go through a few of them, common objections here on the

Romans 13 issue, and then we'll get to the constitutional issue, I know they're related, but I've heard this many times,

Nero was the emperor of Rome, and I don't think Nero's persecution had actually started by that point, but that's usually the implication, is hey,

Nero is a bad dude, and when Paul wrote that to the Romans, he's talking about Nero, he's saying

Nero is the one that they should submit to, does that do anything for you?

I mean, I don't think that changes it, because it's about personal behavior in my mind, but. It really reinforces my point accidentally, actually.

Nero began as a senator in a republic, just like ours, and he asked for emergency powers, and they gave it to him, and then he never let go of it, and turned it into a tyranny, and I would say, if I was in that moment, and I saw

Nero pushing and promoting a Republican style government, by the way, patterned after the style of Moses, if you study history, they looked directly to the

Old Testament, our Old Testament, and patterned it after the teachings of Moses, who the

Romans said was the greatest lawgiver in history, and they tried to learn from the

Jews and how to make a good republic, from Exodus 18, 21 principles, and if I had lived then,

I hope I would be consistent, and I would say to Nero the same thing I'm saying to the governor in Iowa, you can't step outside the law, you've pledged an oath to obey this law, you're breaking it, and I argue, men with authority, men with guns or swords, if we're back at the times of Nero, when they break the law, it's arguably more serious and a greater sin than when some local thug tries to rob a gas station, one local thug just harms a couple of people at the gas station, a tyrant over top of an entire nation can harm untold thousands of people, so I would say

Nero is a great argument for my position, someone should have said Nero, you're violating your oath and you're sinning before God, you're stepping outside of the reins of this republic, stop right now, so that we could prevent

Nero from becoming the monster that he became, and I think that when we think or assume that we don't share the same potential future as Rome once did, we're kidding ourselves and we're not learning from history.

Yeah, that's a good point, maybe there were some folks in Rome who did do that, I don't know, but I think that the point comes back down to, in the context of Romans 13, this is about individual behavior and submitting to just laws,

I can't see it any other way when I read it, and I know the founding fathers, they were very aware of Romans 13 during the

American Revolution, and to them actually, they applied it to King George and said you're abdicating your responsibility, you're not behaving as a minister of God, you're violating our local authorities, we need to submit to our local authorities who are resisting this, and so.

They said specifically he was unfit to be the ruler of a free people, and they made that determination by looking at the scriptures and that he was stepping outside of his biblical role and becoming a monster of Satan.

Right, right, yeah, so I think for those who are listening who are still trying to make sense of all this, I would, to put it in an analogy here,

I would look at it like if your pastor came over to your house, like Carrie, you would never do this,

I know, but if you went to one of your, the house of one of the members of your church and you just started spanking their kids, you know, it's like they did something wrong, and they may have, it's possible.

I've had enough of my own kids. Yeah, that's right, right? I don't know, I shouldn't have used the example, but we're talking, so I did, but that would be wrong, you would never do that because you would be like that's not my role,

I'm a pastor, I instruct the fathers to do that, or the mothers to do that. A violation of jurisdiction. It's a jurisdiction issue, that's right, and so anyway,

I think that's pretty good, we haven't, go ahead. I'm keenly familiar with this because I fought for the

First Amendment before in my life. That's right, yeah, why don't we talk about that real quick? Tell us about that. Well, we had a time before Obergefell in the

Supreme Court when the state court, they unanimously just decided one day out of the thin air, we were gonna have gay marriage, and the legislature had just passed a law that marriage would only be between one man and one woman, period, final end of discussion, signed by the governor.

So we had a duly passed law that reinforced the reality biologically, religiously, historically, and otherwise.

Marriages only between one man, one woman, stop the nonsense. Well, the state

Supreme Court decided out of the thin air to unanimously create gay marriage, and courts don't have the jurisdiction, you see, to make law.

That's not why courts exist. The legislators make law. The governor is the executive.

They enforce the law the legislature makes. The court system, the judicial branch, is only there to interpret the law and render opinions.

So this is a jurisdiction issue. Well, our courts were overstepping their bounds exactly the same as right now in Iowa.

The governor, the executive branch, is now overstepping its bounds. I fought this war against the courts 10 years ago, and now

I'm fighting against the governor. Now, I won the war, but it hurt. I had to go through a lot. We had garbage dumped in our driveway to the church one

Sunday morning. We couldn't get into the church. Rocks through the windows. I had open public death threats against me, my wife, my children.

It was really a harrowing experience. We almost lost our entire ministry. I almost went bankrupt.

We didn't, but I almost went bankrupt as a ministry. Wow. And this was all to say, hey, the state is interfering in the church's business.

Holy matrimony is the jurisdiction of Almighty God according to the scriptures. I will not allow the state of Iowa to poke its nose inside the doors of my church and tell us we will marry gay people.

We will participate in things that God's law says is an abomination. So you can see where this was going.

I could see it. The state, the liberals and the left, and the Republicans these days, they say there's a separation of church and state, but I've noticed they only want me to stay out of the state.

They don't mind the state getting right in the middle of my sanctuary and telling me what I can and can't do.

So I fought this war before against the judges, and I won. Three state Supreme Court justices, including the chief justice, were fired in the same day during a retention vote, and I largely led the charge for that across the state.

In the process, they told me I was not allowed to talk about political things because there's a separation of church and state.

So you see, it's always one way with them. They can interfere with us, but I can't say anything to them.

That's exactly what they're doing now. The governor is overstepping her powers and commanding me to close my church, and I'm being threatened that if I choose not to incite my

God -granted right to assemble and use good wisdom and self -government, I'll protect my people from the virus and honor

God at the same time you go do your job and stay out of my church business, stay off our property.

I'm having to do that right now, but I could be arrested. The police could come, put me in handcuffs and haul me to jail for doing what?

For obeying the Constitution that the governor is not obeying, for obeying the Constitution the police are actually violating, and for honoring the law of God all at the same time.

So literally what you have is Romans 13 flipped on its ear. You have government punishing goodness, and that is untenable in Romans 13.

Yeah, yeah, very, very good points. I wanna ask you about the, because we've talked about it, but Romans 13 is sort of the theological issue, and then there's the government issue, the more political issue of the violations.

And I wanted to go over with you kind of what violations to the state of Iowa Constitution, and if you believe an incorporation to the

United States Constitution are happening. We have, obviously, assembly,

I would say, right? We have free speech, we have freedom to worship. Why don't you talk about some of those a little bit, why those are important, and how, why online church doesn't qualify as free speech, because that's one of the things that we're told now, is you can still have free speech, you can still worship, you can still assemble online.

So talk to me about that. Okay, well, theologically, the doctrine of private property begins in the book of Genesis, and one of the first analogies that God gives us, he says to Adam and Eve, there's a tree in the center of the garden, don't eat the fruit of that.

Now, he doesn't say they can't touch it, or they can't enjoy sitting at the base of it in the shade, and looking at its beauty, but he says, don't eat the fruit of it.

And this is God's introduction to the world of his idea of private property ownership.

It's really, on a kindergarten level, your first glimpse as an introduction to the eternal law of God, summarized in the 10

Commandments. And, you know, Moses, I think sometimes you'll forget, he wrote the book of Genesis, and he was given the revelation of the 10

Commandments, and handed them in stone. So Moses used this story to illustrate, thou shalt not steal.

So when the Hebrews first found out about the story of Genesis, they found out about the story of creation from the prophet

Moses, who saw backwards in time, they found out all of these lovely stories we learned in Sunday school, in the context of learning how to apply the 10

Commandments to their life. So private property is a major doctrine of Christian faith, and has been for 2000 years.

Only in the last 100 years, I would say after the Civil War era, did the churches stop understanding and stop teaching this.

You can go to seminary, you can go to Bible college, just about anywhere in the United States. Unfortunately, and to our ruin, you will not be taught the theological doctrine of private property.

Now, let's move ahead. There was a time when this nation was founded, and men did understand the theology of private property.

And that's why I would argue the First Amendment specifically says, not only do you have the freedom to speak, but you have the right to assemble yourselves on physical dirt, property, and you cannot legally or intellectually afford to separate the concept of free speech from the reality that we are also told by the...

The law tells the government, do not hinder the assembly of people together on private property for religious purposes.

They're forbidden from doing that. Because as soon as you remove property from free speech, you've literally destroyed free speech.

The idea that free speech should exist separate from property is absolutely dangerous.

It's completely destructive to freedom. Because here's why. If I don't have the right to draw a little three foot square on the ground somewhere on planet earth, and stand on that dirt with my feet and stomp a little bit, and say, this is mine.

And God gave me rights and I can use them.

And you can't violate those rights because that would be an offense to God. If there's no place where you can plant your feet and say, this is mine, and you can't steal it and you can't take it, then you have no liberty.

You have no freedom and you have pure tyranny. And so property has to stay tethered to our understanding of every other command

God has given us. Because we're given these commands with the assumption that we're standing somewhere on the earth on some dirt.

And that we ought to obey God rather than men. And rights, just so everyone knows as well when we're talking about this, because I know the libertarians immediately want to say pornography and all sorts of horrible things can happen if it's your space.

The founding fathers, I know, understood that rights were for, they were tethered to responsibilities and doing the right thing.

God has given you commands, you have to be able to fulfill those commands. And so this would not apply to doing like a public evil kind of situation.

And I know we don't have time to get into that whole discussion, but I just wanted to, go ahead. You just sparked my mind.

Okay, then go for it. Is there ever a time when the government would have a right to come into the church and say stop?

Yes, please. I was gonna ask you this. The answer is yes. Okay. As soon as I start doing something that God says is evil, they have the right to stop me.

But when I'm doing what God tells me to do and it's not evil, they absolutely do not have the right to stop me biblically, or under the constitution of the

United States, or under the constitution in my case of the state of Iowa, article one says the same thing as a first amendment essentially in federal level.

Can you give me an example of that? Like what kind of evil are we talking about? Because obviously the government is not gonna come in and tell you, well, your theology is wrong because of the, you're talking about like you murdered someone, it's a violation of civil law, right?

Right. So let's say, under biblical law, under Romans 13 and the authorization of Almighty God to civil authorities, if I was an apostate church and I said, we're going to marry gay people today, the state would have a right to stop my church service and say, you're doing evil in the sight of God, you must stop.

Wow. Okay. That wasn't the example I was expecting you to give. That's an interesting thought. I hadn't really considered that.

So your position then is that, yes, the government can stop church

I mean, because morality is tethered to theology. I mean, these things are connected. And so the government has to have some concept of what a violation of God's moral law is.

Right. In order to have a successful government anywhere in the world, it's biblical.

In order to be free, in order to have liberty, here's the reality. The individual citizen, the city government, the county government, the state government and the federal government must all agree to the exact same definitions of good and evil.

And they must adopt those definitions under the authority of Almighty God. That was the mentality at one time.

Yeah. Beginning of this nation. And because we have jettisoned that one simple truth that holds us together as a union, we're fighting a war against cosmic humanism.

That's what's going on. Pastor Gordon, you know, you spark my mind now. I remember a couple of years ago,

I was reading William Bradford's of Plymouth Plantation. I don't know if you've read that. I have. Yeah. And there's a section in there where he talks about marriage.

And I've always remember this. I forget everything else. But for some reason, I remember this. He says that marriage is a civil institution.

And I remember reading that and I'm like, hold on a minute. And this was years ago when this whole issue was being debated.

And I was thinking it was like 2015 when the Obergefell decision came down. And I'm reading this and I'm thinking, wait a minute.

Marriage is a civil, he's not saying it's a religious institution. It's a civil institution. And then

I thought, well, I guess that would make sense because God instituted it actually at the beginning, at creation for everyone.

And so your example actually makes sense to me in a way that, you know, the state does have an interest in preserving families for the benefit of the community.

And - The state has limited, marriage is an interesting, I love how you're thinking. Okay, thank you.

The institution of marriage is a sacred religious institution and also a civil institution at the same time.

There you go, yeah. And this is why, but the government's role is much more limited than the church's.

But the government does have a limited role in marriage and it does cross over into both jurisdictions.

And here's why. Because of sin. The government has to deal in court with custody battles between people who insist upon divorcing one another.

Moses was frustrated with divorce and he had to deal with this. So do we. So the state has to, well, who gets the inheritance after the -

That's right. So there's just really no way for marriage to not have ramifications in civil government.

The problem is, our government wants to be God. Our humanist, our cosmic secular humanist government wants to completely take over the entire institution of the church, violate all of the principles of limitations placed upon them by natural law and by ecclesiastical law.

And it's the duty of ecclesiastical authorities to remind the governors, you don't have authority and jurisdiction in these areas.

Not even under your own law are you allowed to do this. Certainly not under biblical law.

Stay in your lane, do your job, submit to God, be a good Christian. Our governor says she's a

Christian. Then why is she doing things that are sinful? So, you know, but marriage, yes.

It crosses both religious and civil institutions. Let me pitch a hard question to you.

Someone's infected with the COVID -19 and it sounds like they,

I don't know what direction we're going at this point. It changes every day, but let's say it's like South Korea to implement some kind of testing.

You know, you go out to the store, you get tested, or you, I don't know how that works, but let's say they know that this person has

COVID -19 and that person intends to come to church on Sunday or go out to Walmart or wherever.

Does the state have an interest? I would think it would, but I want to hear your opinion in -

The state? Yes, the state does have an interest. But here's how I would say it. Biblical law authorizes religious authorities primarily to quarantine people who are sick.

Moses did not allow sick people to just come meandering about amidst the people. And it could be enforced by civil authorities in the

Hebrew government. So you could say that both religious and civil authorities are given authorization by God's law to quarantine sick people for the safety of everyone else.

And that by doing so, that is an expression of love for your neighbor, which all the law and prophets hinges on love.

I'm glad you said that. Always has, always. So it would be wrong for someone who is knowingly sick to infect other people.

That's absolutely wrong. The government has a right to stop that. But what the Bible does not authorize is it never authorizes either religious authorities or civil authorities to quarantine perfectly healthy people.

That is tyranny and abusive. And so, I mean, it's even just kind of common sense.

You shouldn't do that in a free society. Yeah, that's a good answer. Okay, and we haven't even talked.

You know, it's funny, Pastor Gordon, is you're the first person to bring up the laws of the

Old Testament, how Moses would quarantine lepers and so forth. In this situation, you'd think people would be running to those passages.

I haven't heard one example given of trying to implement or even go back to apply that in some way.

And so, kudos. Well, and on that juncture, thank you for saying that. At that juncture,

I would like to just throw this in. We see Jesus and the apostles violating existing quarantine laws as religious authorities for the purpose of praying for the sick during the time of Romans.

And it is the role of the church in the middle of a pandemic, historically and thoroughly scriptural, that the ministers of God should not run away from a plague.

And we should not teach society to run away from the church in a plague. We should be running to the church.

The most grievous thing about this, what if, what if America was rife for a third great awakening?

Right now, everyone's afraid. Our materialism has been interrupted. Our stupid idolatry with sports has been erupted.

Every vice that Satan creates to distract the fallen man so that he's happy and entertained and doesn't think that he needs

God has been stripped away and the churches are closed. What if we opened our churches and we finally saw salvations like we read about in the history books?

It just grieves me that right now we could see a mass turn to Christ and our doors are shut.

It bothers me. That was very well stated. I think that's excellent. Man, I couldn't agree more with that.

I know that some people, when they hear this, they're saying amen, but they might also have a question. And I'm gonna ask you that question.

What are you doing at your church to try to ensure that people, that you take proper precautions and that people don't get sick?

Okay, so when I first heard of the coronavirus reaching the United States and that people were getting sick and it was scaring a lot of people, at that point, our governor had not ordered us to do anything.

And this is just an example of good self -government. One of the first things I did is I had lunch with a medical doctor and I spent two hours talking through this thing because I care about my people more.

I hate to say this this bluntly, but it's the truth. I love my congregation. I would lay my life down for them and I care for them more than some stranger a couple of hundred miles away in the

Capitol. They don't know my people. They don't care for my people. I marry them and I bury them.

I'm there when they're born. I'm there to do their eulogy. I care about these,

I've given my life for them. So I met with a doctor. We have medical experts in our church.

We have more than one doctor in our church. So I spoke with them. What do you think we should do?

What are your concerns? You know, all of them, their biggest concern was that the government was overreacting.

That was the biggest concern. So here's what I do. I complained that when I go visit the hospital because I visit the sick and the dying and I go see new newborn babies.

One of my peeves, I don't like germs, okay? I'll just tell you, I don't like germs. So I go to the hospital all the time and I've always just, this is so dumb to me.

The medical world is supposed to be experts on germs. You cannot get in and out of a bathroom at the local hospitals without touching those disgusting door handles, public areas.

And I'm just like, why wouldn't you design a bathroom at a hospital of all places where all the sick people come and all their germs are there?

Why wouldn't you make it so people can go in and out of the bathroom and not get contaminated? It's always befuddled me.

So I got on the phone and I looked some things up on my smartphone and I spent about $1 ,400, $1 ,500 to add hand cleaning stations all through the public spaces of our foyers at our church.

I got these special stainless steel brackets we put on the doors of our restrooms so that you don't have to touch a door handle to get in and out of any of the bathrooms and literally made coming to our sanctuary for worship arguably safer than any hospital in our area in terms of walking into a lobby in a public space and definitely cleaner than a

Walmart grocery store or Menards Lumberyard, which by the way, the governor left open.

Those are essential. So on my way to church last Sunday when I could get arrested, I had to look one quarter mile from my church is

Menards. Our church sold them the land to build that place. Menards is a lumber yard where you can buy screwdrivers and all your tools for home improvements.

And they had 350 cars at nine o 'clock AM on a Sunday jammed full in Menards, hundreds of shoppers in the warmth inside the building.

That's more than 10 people and none of them are gonna get in trouble with law enforcement. You mean

Menards didn't do like an online shopping thing where you can stream there? I'm just kidding.

And the governor doesn't require this at that time for, I mean, the grocery stores are jammed full.

There are people crawling the walls in the grocery stores. Hundreds of people, I think some of them are lecturing me about you're gonna kill everyone and spread disease in your prayer meeting.

And they're sending their messages from the grocery store amidst hundreds of the unwashed, you know, with filthy bathrooms.

Have you ever seen the bathroom in a grocery store? I have and I don't like to remember those occurrences.

So just by exercising self -government, before the governor's unconstitutional edict, we made immediate steps to be sure that we're taking personal responsibility.

We believe in prayer and in healing, but we also know the Lord said, thou shalt not tempt the

Lord thy God. It would be foolish to just lay aside your own personal responsibilities for good hygiene, which we see right in the scriptures.

God commanded that people should wash themselves and we encourage you to wash your hands, right? Right. It's not faithless.

It's actually an exercise of faith. We're exercising our faith by obeying common sense law that comes from God.

We actually have our own compendium of divinely influenced law on how to handle a pandemic in the scriptures.

And it's superior to any humanist approach. That's my argument because I believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

We don't need the state to tell us their ideas. Now we could take guidance and be humble and listen to them.

I have no problem at all with the state saying, we really heavily recommend pastor or father, you do this and such and so to protect your people.

We have an amicable relationship with our governors. We respect them. We pray for them. I treat them very kindly anytime

I'm able when they're doing good and we could do that. That's no problem. But they can't command us to do something that is sort of like putting a thumbtack in with a sledgehammer.

That's not necessary. So then that's what I did before I was forced. Well, then she came and basically said, we weren't allowed to assemble.

We couldn't even assemble. That's a violation of the law. And I had to call her out.

I called her first personally and she wouldn't return my call. I wasn't able to speak with her. I left a message.

She never called me back. That was my first step, to speak with her personally, privately. And then secondly, when

I realized they weren't gonna communicate and talk with me, I made it public. I recorded the conversation.

And this is my conversation. Here's what I said. You judge it yourself. Everyone listened. And most of the people said, you know what, that you were a lot nicer than I thought you were.

And then the next thing that we did, we said, we're not going to submit to an unlawful order that we can't assemble.

So we cooked up an idea of a drive -through communion. And I've got the video on my

Facebook wall and the church's Facebook. You can watch the whole service. I stood out in the snow and the cold and I preached and I read the law of God and the people still got out of their cars and they stood out of respect because that's what

God said to do. Have the people stand at the reading of the scripture out of reverence and respect.

And we don't think that it makes sense to disrespect God when we need God's intervention to protect us from a disease.

So they stood outdoors, not indoors. And then they got back in the protection of their cars and their windshields.

And there's just no way to sneeze in one car and another car catches it. So everyone's totally safe.

And then at the end, we serve communion through the car windows. And I laid hands on the heads of households and blessed them and prayed a prayer over them that the

Lord would protect them from this disease. And we cursed that disease in the name of Jesus.

And it was a beautiful, difficult and frustrating, but a beautiful service. Wow. Wow. And there's some footage of that.

I know I'll put some links in the info section if you want to go check that out. Your team there, by the way,

I just can't believe how good they are at video editing and how quick they are. So I was really proud of them.

Yeah, they didn't get a lot of sleep there and we're going to have to do it again this Sunday. It looks like.

Yeah. Well, how can people be praying for you and your church? And just what are your suggestions for people to be praying for in general?

This is what I'm asking people to pray. All right. This is what I prayed and I'm asking you to pray.

Just because, you know, I reached out to the chief of police and informed him of the constitution that I intend to defend it.

Our motto in the state of Iowa, if I can remember correctly, our liberties we prize, our rights we will maintain.

So I sent this letter and I've sent it to the authorities. And I said, thank you for helping me live up to our state motto.

And I want to make sure that all of you stay within the confines of the constitution. So pray this.

If they're not going to honor the constitution, pray that they would not be too afraid to come arrest me.

I would like to go to jail for the Lord Jesus Christ to reestablish that our rights don't come from men they come from God.

And at the moment, we allow this government to think that they gave us our rights and they can postpone them.

We have sowed a dangerous seed into the world. It would be an honor for me to be arrested wearing my clergy collar, standing on the principle that my rights come from God and I am capable of self -government and I can protect my flock better than the governor can protect us.

I think these are essential issues of liberty and freedom. This is what people died to preserve and shame on me if I'm not worth willing to stand for these principles and go to jail if necessary.

And I can vouch that you do not have a martyr complex from what I know about you. You're not a glutton for punishment.

You don't want tyranny. And that's just why you're asking for this is because if tyranny is going to happen.

If it would make a difference, if it would get people to think, if it would cause preachers in particular to realize the dangers of just saying, yes, sir, and bowing down before the great idol of Nebuchadnezzar.

If we could think beyond our own small bubble and remember the founding principles, if it would serve to do any of that, please arrest me and take me to jail.

I have informed the police. They can come and get me. We won't resist. Wow. You're a brave man.

I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about this. I mean, personally,

I hope you're not arrested. I mean, and I know you do too. We just hope that everyone wakes up and realizes this is a little overkill and the state doesn't have the right to do this.

But my flesh does not want to be arrested. But if it will serve the purpose of the

Lord, I'm willing. All right. Well, Pastor Gordon, I appreciate it. Any final thoughts that you have?

Well, just to reiterate the premise of it all. There is only one definition of good.

There is only one definition of evil. And there is only one kingdom. Everything else is a myth.

All right. God bless you, Pastor Gordon. Thank you. I appreciate you taking your time out to talk to me. Glad to be here.

God bless you. All right. Bye now. Church online.

You can do some things with church online. You can do teaching, those kind of things. But much of what the church does, you have to meet face to face.

There has to be a physical presence. You can't do communion. You can't do baptism off in some place.

You have to have fellowship. The ministry of the church largely is person to person as the different spiritual gifts are being used.

So some things you can, a lot of things you can't. We can use church online presence to enhance, expand our ministry.

But the church is much more than that. It's the body of Christ. If you're in a culture where you have a recognizable building known as a church, that's important for the standpoint it's a witness to the community.

The church itself is not a building. And that's important to understand. I want a constant witness. But the church is the people, the body of Christ.

Remember, back in the beginning of the church, they meant from house to house. We want to have a presence.

We don't want government shutting it down. But if it does and they do things that are contrary, we will still be the church.

We will do whatever we have to do to obey God. The current crisis due to SARS -CoV -2, which is what it really should be called, coronavirus is going to give you a problem here eventually because there's a lot of coronaviruses that cause common cold.

This was a bad one, especially on older people. But any kind of crisis gives us opportunity to increase our ministry because people start thinking more deeply in a crisis.

You have to start thinking maybe outside the box. How can I reach out to my neighbor? Your neighbor is quarantined.

Can you reach out to your neighbor and say, hey, what do you need? Can I minister to you? You have people who are frightened. What can you do to help calm their fears by pointing them back?

My trust is in God. That's why I'm calm and at peace. And I will risk my life to help you. The church has always done that.

We will continue to do that. We actually have a lady in our church.

She has cancer. Been battling it for a while. If she gets this virus, she's probably going to die. And yet she is bold.

She loves to evangelism. But right now, people won't take tracks from her. So she's looking at how can

I have a presence. So she's thinking about, I'm going to have a sign. I'll go out to where there are some people. Keep my proper distance.

But hey, I want to pray for you. How can I pray for you? She wants to start engaging people. Show I have a trust in Jesus Christ.

I'm not afraid of this because I'm not afraid of death. How can I minister to you? Another example. Let's say you get the virus.

You're quarantined. Provided you feel well enough to do anything. You know what? You can still pray for people.

You can still call them. You can still have fellowship with people over the phone, social media. Whatever you need to do, use your gift.

Encourage others. Help them keep at peace. Even as you're at peace because of what God has done for you and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Number one. Government is not where I'm going to get the good information. And government will give you protocols that are actually contrary to your safety.

Here in New York, we're under a lot of restrictions. We've clarified what we can and cannot do.

But I'm actually more concerned about what does the health community, what are their protocols for keeping their workers safe?

We're enacting those. We are still holding services. They're smaller. And we're keeping spacing to keep anything from happening.

But we're following the protocols of health. We take their temperature when they come in. We ask particular questions. They wash their hands or sanitize their hands when they come in.

We're keeping a proper distance by family or household units. Let's face it. If you're in a household, you're riding the car together, you're already contaminated.

I don't need to separate you by, you know, three to six feet. But I can keep you in a unit, keep you space from other people.

We're not transferring it. Now, why would I do that? Number one, I love God. I want to make sure I'm following him first and foremost.

I'm going to obey the things he says. That does include doing everything I can to be able to meet together. At the same time,

I love my neighbor. And as Jesus said, I love my brethren as Christ loves the church.

So I want to be sacrificial to them. And out of that, I'm going to be more careful for them than even for myself.

I will sacrifice myself for them, but I don't want to put them at risk. So I'm not coming if I'm sick.

I don't have, if I have any of the symptoms, stay at home. Don't spread it like you shouldn't spread any disease.

The wisdom from above, the wisdom from below. I've been speaking on that the last couple of weeks and respond to this.

That's what we need. The wisdom from above comes from God. It matches his word and it's going to end up producing peace.

There's going to be humility within it. Aspects of godliness. That which is from below.

That which is earthy. That which is natural. That which is demonic. It's going to produce arrogance.

It's going to produce pride. It's going to produce anxiety and what we're seeing in our society.

They're following the wisdom from below. We can do better than that. Okay, what about the anxiety?

Most of the anxiety is caused by media hype and government overreaction. Both of those end up with a foundation that's not true.

It's not accurate. Doesn't have a breadth of knowledge and people now confuse. I don't even know what's true and of course it just increases it.

One thing you can do. Turn off your television. Quit going to the social media. We are told in scripture that we are to be anxious for nothing.

Then everything by prayer and supplication. Let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding.

So control your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. We start there. Okay, I trust

God. Jesus told us not to be anxious about the things of this world. You know what? I seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.

He's going to take care of me. I don't know always where it's coming from. I don't need to join into the panic and hoarding toilet paper.

My word, this is ridiculous. Food, the church responds. You need something, we can help you with it.

Those who are healthy can help you with it. Truth helps you to calm down. The major truth,

Jesus Christ, the word of God. That's going to help me deal with anxiety. I don't have to worry and I'm not worried.

But I know what to do. I know how to do it because I'm following what truth is. Not media hype, not government overreaction.

My name is Bill Retz and I'm a Reformed Baptist here in the state of California where I serve as a lay person, as an evangelist and a herald in the streets.

The question that came to me was this. Does Romans 13 prohibit churches from meeting if the government tells them no?

The answer is no. It does not prohibit them from having a church service on the

Lord's day. Anytime the government, either federal, state or local, anytime these authorities go against our

Christian religion, our biblical convictions and the scriptures, we can, we may resist those authorities.

You see, the scripture is our final authority. Even in the book of Acts, what I call a setting of a theological legal precedence is where the apostles kept getting arrested for preaching the name of Christ, for preaching the gospel.

They kept getting beaten and arrested. And finally, Peter said, oughtn't we ought to obey God's law rather than man's?

Well, that was a rhetorical question. He knew the answer and the answer is yes. Thus saith the Lord. We ought to obey

God's law rather than man. You know, back in many years ago, when

I served for two decades as a police officer, I was involved in some unfortunately deadly use of force incidents.

And I had a published writing on Romans 13, one through five. And that became under scrutiny by the

FBI when the FBI agents subpoenaed me and put me on the stand and a United States federal grand jury.

And he asked me in a derogatory tone as he pointed his finger at me and he said, isn't it true that you wrote an article that states you ought to obey

God's law rather than man's? Of course, my answer was respectfully, yes, sir, that is true. You see, he tried to paint me like some type of a religious fanatic, but the jurors didn't buy his claim.

We need to count the cost, my friend. We need to obey the scriptures more than man, even if you're put under pressure by an

FBI agent in a United States federal grand jury. That actually later went to trial my case where I had shot this guy.

And thankfully, the jurors actually ruled in my favor. But interestingly, so my verdict was appealed all the way to the

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And by God's grace, they ruled in favor of my verdict and they upheld that verdict.

So I guess you can say I've been kind of tested regarding my belief demonstration and application of Romans 13, one through five.

But let's just take a real brief look at verse three. For rulers are not to terror of good works, but to evil.

Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same.

It says here, rulers are not a terror for those that do good. Rulers are not a terror for good works.

I believe having a church service on Sunday is good works. And the rulers should not be a terror against having a church service, but they should be a terror against those that are practicing evil.

Thus sayeth the word of God. Then it says, do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do you want to be unafraid of the state and the government that's making all these rules against the church?

Then do what is good and you will have praise from the same. Holding a church service is a good thing.

It says in this verse that they're supposed to go against evil and they're supposed to praise you for doing good.

So have your church services this Sunday, folks. Let the saints gather together in the mighty name of Jesus.

The next question I was asked was, what kinds of ministry opportunities exist during this crisis?

And how can a church get involved? Well, the World Health Organization, the

CDC, the White House, and even the Google search page on the Google homepage, the favorite motto is, do the five, do the five.

Yes, we should practice those reasonable precautionary measures through this time while trusting in the

Lord. But the word, the word of God, again, the scriptures, command Christ's bride to do the five, minimally.

And that is to equip, send, go, stand, and preach. So what you could do as a church, as a body of Christ, when you're not congregating on the

Lord's day, is equip, go, stand, and preach, and share the word of God with the lost and dying world.

And yes, practice social distancing by all means while you're evangelizing through this time.

That's why I pulled my megaphone out of the rafters. I've called my big megaphone my social distancing apparatus.

That way, I'm not invading this space. That way, I'm providing distance between me and them, and then

I can preach and share the gospel from a distance. So that would be my solution to the problem or my answer to that question.

What kinds of measures are we taking to prepare people for this, to safeguard the health of the congregation?

Well, a couple of things. The first thing I think I need to throw out there is that I am convinced that I am not authorized as a pastor to tell people, to tell the congregation, that you can't worship or that you can worship.

Ultimately, it's God that tells the congregation that they are to do that or not do that according to his words.

So I do not have the authority as a pastor to say, no, you cannot come here and worship.

So with that out on the table, one of the things that I've determined to do as the pastor of Victory Baptist Church is to leave worship attendance up to the conscience of the individual believer.

So I have committed to being here on Sundays and working out my typical pastoral duties that I do every

Sunday. And if members of the congregation want to join me as I do that, they are free to do so.

So it's really up to the individual member of the church whether or not they want to attend.

And I'm allowing them or I'm letting them make that decision for themselves. I'm not telling them what's best for their health.

I'm not telling them that it's best for their health or best for their welfare to not come here and worship.

So it's up to them if they would like to come here and attend as I work through my daily or every

Sunday pastoral duties. Another thing that we're trying to do is we're trying to be conscious as individuals walking around this facility of the fact that there is an illness spreading throughout our nation, spreading throughout the world, really.

And so we want to not give away common sense. And we have provided points throughout the building where a person can wash their hands.

Everyone is understanding that they need to be washing their hands. Everyone understands that they need to be washing their hands frequently, that they need to be maintaining responsible distances from one another.

Three feet is really the average distance that people maintain here in the auditorium.

Outside, we are afforded the opportunity to maintain those distances as the congregation so desires as well.

So that's kind of how we have decided to go about this as a congregation. The other question is how am

I seeing God work through the spread of COVID -19 and the government overreach that has been so apparent as a result of that spread?

And there are a few different things that I've seen. And obviously, I need to make the qualification that I don't know all the ways

God is going to work in this situation. I cannot possibly predict a thing.

And I'm probably not even thinking about all the ways that are really obvious or should be obvious.

But I do have a few here for you that I think should be an encouragement. Number one, families are being forced to be closer together.

And it's very sad that I even have to use that kind of language, that families have to be forced to be closer together.

But one of the things that's happening now is with all these quarantine measures and these lockdowns and these stay -at -home orders, regardless of their legalities and whether or not they're constitutional, et cetera, you have families that are going to be together for a prolonged period of time.

At minimum, it's going to be about 30 days. At maximum, I mean, I've heard numbers like 18 weeks.

And so you're going to have families that are going to be together. They're going to be habitating with one another for a prolonged period of time.

And I think that that is a very positive thing. I think you're going to see an increase in the strength of the family unit, both secular and sacred.

You're going to have even secular families who are not religiously affiliated become closer to one another.

And that's important for the health of our democratic republic as a nation. I once went to Plymouth and up there in Massachusetts.

And just, if you drive out of downtown Plymouth, which is where the Plymouth Plantation of the

Pilgrims used to be, there is a massive statue up on a hill just kind of outside of the downtown area.

And it is about 60 feet tall, has a lady standing on top of it, and she's pointing to heaven.

And all around it are different images and different kinds of statues showing what are the ingredients that go into a nation like ours.

And one of those things, one of those ingredients, if you will, is a mother teaching her child.

And so I think with the closures of the schools and with kids being forced to stay home and with families being forced to stay together, you're going to see a jump, hopefully, prayerfully, in the integrity of the foundational building block of the family unit.

You're going to see mothers hopefully stepping up and teaching their children during this lockdown period. You're going to see perhaps fathers taking more of an interest in their families.

And you're going to have parents hopefully rekindle some aspects of the relationship that have been lapsed as a result of their busy work schedules.

And those are all powerful things. Those are all very important things to consider, how this is going to help the family unit and thereby glorify

God in this society. The other thing this is doing is it's causing Christians to ask important questions.

One of the dilemmas that we're not used to as contemporary Christians in the 21st century is the idea of if you obey, you die, right?

And so we're beginning to ask these questions as a church, you know, how far am

I to go in obeying God? These are good questions. No matter where you currently come down at, chances are, especially if you're a pastor, you've been asking these kinds of questions.

And there's room, obviously, to disagree in a lot of these areas. But the important thing is, and I think the providential instance that we're seeing is that the church in general is being forced to wrestle with these questions.

How far do I go in my obedience to God? Those are all questions that I've had to wrestle with personally that many of you are having to wrestle with.

Is the common good a reason to stop public worship? Is the common good a reason to stop public worship?

For Christians of the past, loving neighbor wasn't necessarily trying to stop worship so that they could avoid being persecuted by the

Roman authorities. And that's not the case in the Middle East today, where there is a persecuted church, and in China and North Korea elsewhere.

It's not necessarily that. How to love neighbor is really defined by scripture. And how to love neighbor is to obey

God in your relationships with neighbor. And so there may be a lot of emotional reaction to the spread of this thing and the government lockdowns and things of that nature, but we need to be wrestling with the question.

And I think we are wrestling with the question, how far do we go? What does it mean to love our neighbors, first of all?

And how far do we go in worshiping God to ensure that we remain obedient to Him?

The most important question we could ask is not, how do I keep my neighbor healthy, right? How do

I keep my neighbor healthy? There are many ways to do that. And if that was the question we were asking, we ought to be sharing diet plans at church.