What's Up With TGC Canada?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. What is up with the

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Gospel Coalition Canada? What is up with the Gospel Coalition Canada? I mean, really. Maybe someone can put in the comment section and write something and explain it to me because it just doesn't quite add up.

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It doesn't make sense to me. One of the articles that they have up there, someone from Canada reached out to me, sent me the link, wanted me to respond to it, but Canada is farther ahead than us, it seems like.

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As far as losing civil liberties, Canada is a little more, at least the government up there, they're more willing to do it.

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I don't know why that is exactly. Maybe they're more post -Christian than we are, but yeah,

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Canada is not on my list of countries to go to. There was one time it was. I liked the beauty of,

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I mean, I've driven through parts of it, but places that I haven't been, especially out in western Canada, I thought were just gorgeous, but as gorgeous as they are,

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I just don't think I'd want to live with the restrictions that are going on up there. The people that I know who have connections to others up there tell me it's no fun.

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This is what's going on, and it may be coming to us, and so I think we should talk about it. The reaction of the gospel coalition is disturbing to me, so I want to talk about it a little bit.

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First of all, let's talk about some things that are crazy going on here, because Canada doesn't have the corner on that. The state of Washington's governor signs a bill mandating critical race theory training in public schools, so while there are many conservative states trying to limit the teaching of critical race theory,

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Washington is saying, no, we're going to mandate it. Here's something that happened not too long ago in Texas.

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I'm going to mute it just because there's some profanity, and if you have kids that are listening as well, we're just going to mute it.

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This is a situation in Texas. I'm not even exactly sure where this is. This is in Dallas or Houston or where.

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There is a Black Lives Matter, I guess it's supposed to be in March.

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This does not look like a march. This looks like a protest where they're just blocking the road and keeping traffic from flowing.

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I'm not sure what time of the day. I think one comment I saw said it was during when people are going to work, but regardless, they're just standing there in the middle of the road.

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They're not walking anywhere, and they're provoking this man who's angry.

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He probably has somewhere to go, and the police are doing nothing about it. This is in the United States of America.

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Online, people are going after this guy, saying how he was so horrible. He was threatening them and stuff, but the thing is, and I'm not justifying some of the things coming out of this guy's mouth, but they're blocking traffic.

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Where is the law and order? Where in the world is the law and order? I'm very confused.

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Traffic's just going back, you can see, forever, and there's no consideration for the people that need to get to work, need to actually pay the bills for others who aren't working.

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I just don't understand why the police aren't doing anything. Maybe this is one of the cities in Texas that's controlled by progressives who like this kind of ...

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I don't know. I don't know. Maybe someone can put in the info section, but this is happening in a place like Texas, which is amazing to me, and I understand.

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I think there's a bill that's coming forward to try to ban people blocking the roads for political purposes, which you'd think that's an obvious thing, kind of.

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If you want to get a permit, you want to have a parade, that's one thing. That's not what this is. Then we have ...

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This is just ... New York. New York court, New York state, threatens to take away child over Confederate flag rock.

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I read that correctly. New York court threatens to take away child over Confederate flag rock. I grew up a lot of my early life in upstate

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New York, and going to county fairs up until maybe 2017, 18, there were

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Confederate flags everywhere at a county fair. You're used to seeing them. It's banned now. You can't sell them in New York.

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The way things have changed so fast is incredible to me, but now we're to the point where if you have a rock, and this is an artist's rendition.

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They didn't even take a picture of the rock. This is an artist's rendition. If you have a rock that's got a Confederate flag type painting on it, then that now is ...

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Are they banning the Dukes of Hazzard? You can't show that to your kids? How far are they taking this?

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No old Hank Williams Jr. albums, and no learning about history either, because if you learn about the

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Civil War, you may see a symbol. This is insane. This is, in a different world, the world that I grew up in, this would have been considered insane.

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This is from The Onion, or now the Babylon Bee, but this is real. The judge wrote, given that the child is of mixed race, it would seem apparent that the presence of the flag is not in the child's best interest, as the mother must encourage and teach the children to embrace her mixed race identity.

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That's now for courts to decide how parents are going to raise their children and what identity they're going to give them, because it's a mandate now for the court to make sure that that child has a mixed race identity, rather than thrust her into a world that only makes sense through the tortured lens of cognitive dissonance.

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The judge said that the presence of the Confederate flag, when viewed pragmatically as a symbol inflaming that already strained relationship between the parties.

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This is like getting into areas where I don't know what to say, where the judge is going to now determine what kind of ethnic identity parents are allowed to impart to their children, and then attaching this symbol to that somehow.

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This stretch is just incredible. This is Pandora's box. Where does this close?

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I mean, are MAGA hats now? Is that going to be a thing? Like the child should not be subjected to a

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Make America Great Again hat. That's just horrible. The child should not wear camouflage pants.

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Those are the people that go and kill animals. That's the same kind of logic that could be used.

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This is what's going on in our country. Right now, in New York State, and then enter

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Canada. Oh, Canada. Some of you are familiar with the

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James Coates situation, so I'm not going to talk about that. But you may not know about this. Let me show you this first. This is a situation that just recently happened.

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I'm going to turn the volume down here. Well, it looks like the police is catching us after the church service in the middle of the road.

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They waited with AHS, and here they are behind.

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So we'll see what is about to happen. Freedom in Canada, democracy in Canada, full force, unbelievable.

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The gangsters are here. So as per the injunction that was served on Arthur here and David here,

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I am to place both of them under arrest for breaching the Queen's Bench order. Both of us under arrest?

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Yes, sir. Would you please step out of the car? What's your name, officer? Andrews, 5244.

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Okay, so how do you feel being a Nazi now? And then we got a gangster here, wannabe

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Gestapo. What's his, officer, what's your name and number? Sorry?

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What's your name and number, please? 5283 Constable Garwood. I'm going to skip ahead a little here, you just see the situation there, they're out.

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Dragging a pastor, dragging him to their vehicle. So here, earlier this afternoon, my fellow pastor,

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Artur Palowski, was arrested in Calgary for the crime of holding a church service as he does every Saturday morning, are you awake yet?

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Hashtag stand with God, hashtag free pastor Artur, and there's the picture. Now this is insane, that this is happening in Canada.

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I don't know if they have Oath Keepers or I don't know what the circumstances there are with the police and why they're being so complicit in this, but this is

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COVID stuff. Now, you would think that Gospel Coalition would say that this is terrible, but this is what's going on with Gospel Coalition.

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Let me just give you some things. What if we had 50 years before the outbreak of serious persecution in Canada? How should we use that time on the 7th?

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You have that going on, you already have, now what do you mean by serious, you mean like dying?

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I mean, okay, that would be something, but you already have people going in jail for holding church services, and it's not just one person.

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Paul Carter here, says this, Pastor Paul Carter, who is writing for Gospel Coalition, there are only a handful of churches experiencing difficulty with the authorities, and it is not for preaching the gospel.

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Many of our churches are running 10 to 20 services a week without any issues, as is often the case, there is more going on than people a thousand miles away may know.

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Now, there's so many problems, so many problems with this. Number one, 10 to 20 services a week.

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Think about your church, because I think, what is it, the limit's probably different depending on what province you're in, I'm not sure, but 20 people, let's say, 20 people you have in a church service, so you gotta have like 20 services, so you can get your whole church to go to church, so you're holding them all week.

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The church isn't a body, functioning like a body's supposed to function, with the various gifts serving one another, you're slicing the body up, you're having the hand meet, and then you're having the foot meet, you're not open to the whole body.

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That's the problem with that, also, experiencing difficulty with the authorities, not for preaching the gospel, as if the only acceptable form of persecution, and I've heard this before, many times, is preaching the gospel, unless you're preaching the gospel, then it's not a form of persecution.

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A couple things, number one, were these pastors not preaching the gospel, because if they were preaching the gospel, then

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I don't understand what the problem is here, and I'll get back to what I think, what is underlying this.

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Secondly, though, there are things beyond just preaching the gospel that Christians are supposed to do, and responsibilities we have.

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So, it's not just persecution against the church, if it's not specifically targeted against preaching the gospel, it can be targeted against other things.

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In fact, it wasn't a problem, even in the early church, if Christians wanted to preach the gospel, it just was, you also have to say

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Caesar's Lord, and that was where the problem was. You cannot create, you cannot take away from Caesar being

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Lord. So, this is just, I don't even understand how he can say this, and write for the

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Gospel Coalition, and be treated as a credible source here, understanding persecution. It's not, it's almost never gonna be under the umbrella of, oh, it's because of preaching the gospel, specifically.

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Usually it's something else, and the government's always gonna say it's for public safety. But that's the thing, you have to buy into the idea that this is for public safety.

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Even if you can go to a grocery store, even if you can go to other places, even if other things are open, it's not for the church.

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The church does not have that authority, even on their own private property, they don't have that authority.

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It has to be the government making these decisions. And I'm sorry, the Bible is very clear that you need the full spectrum of gifts there, meeting, being able to minister to one another, practice to one another.

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You need to be able to have the saints assembled. It's just, it's kind of an assumption that the church gathers.

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And so to say, well, you know, we can go over a year, and now, you know, who knows how long, and just not gather then, or have 10 to 20 services a week.

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I mean, why don't you just set up a confessional booth like the Catholics do? Obviously not with the same theology, but you know, then we'll really be safe from COVID.

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And you can say that everyone went to church because we had 100 different services and got all the people in. It was just one on one.

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You know, that's not, no, sorry. So this is the way the Gospel Coalition is reacting.

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So there's Paul Carter wrote a blog for them. And I'm quoting, this is what he says, this is in Canada.

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At certain points in our journey with COVID, the various protocols and safety measures prescribed by the government may have felt to some

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Christians like a form of state persecution. After all, many churches were forced to temporarily suspend their main large group gatherings and normal Christian activities such as singing, taking communion and sharing a meal together were either strongly discouraged or forbidden outright.

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Doesn't that qualify as persecution? It certainly qualifies as unusual hardship, but in most cases, it probably did not rise to the level of formal persecution.

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Persecution is typically defined as hostility and ill treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs.

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Is that the best way to understand what we've experienced over the last 14 months? It wouldn't seem so.

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I mean, what if you have the religious belief that you need to gather for church? It's this is this is what

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TGC Canada is putting out there. So don't don't go to them if you're looking for advice on how to handle actual persecution, because when that comes,

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I don't know what they'll say, but I'm I have a hunch they'll take the state side in that too, because they're already doing it.

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So there you go. That that is what I wanted to show to you today.

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And, you know, the Gospel Coalition, I don't know to what extent, you know, they're linked to the Gospel Coalition in the United States, Gospel Coalition Africa, Gospel.

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I mean, there's a Gospel Coalition websites. I know that they're all there's a board for the Gospel Coalition.

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But, you know, this is the kind of thing that just it's it's so counter what you would think that an organization called the

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Gospel Coalition would stand for. You'd think they're about preaching the gospel and they don't want limitations on that.

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And when there are limitations put on it, that they would be fighting for their religious freedom of Christians.

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But sadly, in some cases, they're at least taking the side of the state. So there you go. That's the Gospel Coalition Canada.

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Hope that was informative in some way. Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe it was discouraging. You know, the encouraging thing is always that these parachurch ministries aren't the church.

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They're not the church. God will build his church and the gates of hell won't prevail and you can't stop the church.

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But these parachurch organizations that are supposed to be supposedly helping the church, that's their design, that's their mission.

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Sometimes they're doing the opposite. And I think this is one of the areas in which that's happening. So there you go. God bless.