C@VID REVISITED

Hello, and thanks for listening to the Testing the Spirits podcast. This episode I've titled COVID Revisited. So now that the dust has settled, I wanted to take a few minutes and address this issue because quite frankly, you couldn't talk about it before without people freaking out and losing their minds.

Of course, that didn't really stop me, but still, maybe some people will be a little more willing to listen right now than they were before. And if you disagree with some of the things I say, you know, just pray for me.

But I also hope that some people will consider what I have to say. So some of the questions I want to address in this podcast, number one, did churches do the right thing by closing down? Was there more to it than meets the eye?

What did churches learn, if anything? But first, let me just say, I can't really tell you exactly what I think because depending on how you're listening to this, whether it's Spotify or YouTube, social media, including YouTube, still heavily censors videos on this subject and podcast.

So I just have to be careful in what I say because it will be taken down. So let me just start out by reading this article. These are not my words. This is the Wikipedia article on the subject. It says, The Great Reset Initiative is an economic recovery plan drawn up by the World Economic Forum in response to the COVID -19 pandemic.

The project was launched in June of 2020 with a video featuring the then Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles. He released this video to mark its launch. So the Great Reset, its launch was marked, that's an interesting way to put it, by this video put out by the now King Charles of England.

So this is an economic plan. If you read the book of Revelation, chapter 13, you can hopefully get some insight concerning this. So for those who have an ear to hear, please understand that just as Jesus said that no man knows the day nor the hour of his return, we don't know when end time events are going to take place.

And I'm not claiming that that's what's going on here. But I will say this, that the God of this age has attempted this type of thing many times and it started with the Tower of Babel. Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Some of you do. And I would just encourage you to maybe look into some of these things. And the God of this age, the enemy of Christians, the enemy of God, the devil, he is trying to bring about his plan right now.

He's always trying. So whether or not this is it or this will lead to it, whether it's successful, I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm not foolish enough to make predictions except to say that what is described in Revelation 13 will happen whether five years from now, 50 years from now, or it could be longer.

God knows. But back to the article, it said that the initiative, the Great Resets, stated aim is to facilitate rebuilding from the global COVID -19 crisis in a way that prioritizes sustainable development.

World Economic Forum Chief Executive Officer Klaus Schwab described three core components of the Great Reset, creating conditions for, quote, a stakeholder economy, building a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable way.

The meeting held in Davos in 2022. Its theme was history at a turning point. And the summit was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And then the Wikipedia article goes on to talk about conspiracy theories.

And again, let me just remind you, although I did make a connection to Revelation 13, not saying that this is the same, but someday the book of Revelation will be fulfilled and we should have our eyes open and be looking.

So this could lead to it. It may, it may not. But I haven't really given you my opinion. I'm just reading you what the Wikipedia article says, but now it does get into some of the conspiracy theories again, which I am not on this video or this podcast endorsing or denying, but the Wikipedia article says that the term Great Reset is also known as the liberal world order or global liberal order.

And it can also refer to a conspiracy theory called the New World Order. OK, so here's what I find interesting about that article. If you say liberal world order, then that's fine. That's what the Great Reset is.

That's what they're calling it here. But if you say New World Order, then that's a conspiracy theory, even though government officials from all around the world on live television have used both terms.

OK, so just to wrap up this part of the podcast, I'll leave you to connect the dots. Just notice once again, those are not my words. Those are from the official Wikipedia article. I have not told you what I really think.

I just pointed you to a book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, that tells us about what's going to happen in the future. And I have a playlist on my YouTube channel. Go to Pastor Michael Grant on YouTube.

I have a playlist titled The Book of Revelation. So if you want more on that subject, you can check it out. But going back to the spring of 2020, you know, when this all started, I guess the first time I heard about it maybe was in December or January, it was on the news.

There was some cruise ship where there was an outbreak and they were quarantining everyone. But it was in the spring of 2020 where we started hearing rumblings about this thing called coronavirus. But if you didn't turn on your television or if you weren't watching the news, then you didn't really notice anything different.

Two weeks before the lockdown started, I had actually flown to California and attended a conference, that's John MacArthur's Shepherds Conference in Los Angeles. And there were a few people there talking about it.

And at the airport, I saw the first person ever, you know, wearing a mask, but nobody seemed worried. Then the stay-at-home orders came down from on high. And within a matter of just a couple days, everything changed.

Everyone started to panic and all of the churches closed down, or might I say 99 of the churches closed down. Now, here's the thing. This is just the way I think, and I think it's the way you should think.

You need to recognize, I think most people recognize this, but there's a disconnect somewhere. Governments do not tell the truth, okay? I know, right? The politicians lie, you can't believe it, but no.

Governments do not tell their people the truth. And certainly, I hope everyone has recognized by now that the news media spreads propaganda as much as it gives us the straight news. So when I heard about all this and when I heard the orders, I'm not going to automatically take their word for it, just not going to do it.

I was not going to change the way I live simply because Dr. Fauci or the federal government or the World Economic Forum said so. So that's just the way I live my life. And if you disagree with that, that's up to you.

You choose, you know, you do you, as they say. Now here's the thing. Our church, 99 of the church is closed, but our church, because Morse Corner Church is a pastor-led church, it was my decision, our church remained open.

If somebody didn't want to attend, if somebody didn't want to go to church, fine, that's their choice, but I wasn't going to close down. What we did was we met outside as a precaution and we were not shaking hands and doing, so we met outside, we were trying to be safe and all the rest, but I did not cancel and I was not going to cancel.

So all the churches in, I'll just speak for Western Massachusetts, Franklin County, all the churches in the area closed down. All the pastors, they didn't dare come out to meet for our local pastors meeting.

This went on for what, six months, eight months, in some cases a year. There were only three churches, our church is one of them, two other churches. So three total did not close. All the other churches closed.

Now, the liberal rainbow churches, the progressive churches, which are really not New Testament churches at all, they stayed closed for, in some cases, up to two years. But our church and two other churches in the county remained open, all others shut down.

Why? Why did I choose to remain open? Why did the other pastors that I talked to and I kind of know where they're coming from, why did they choose to stay open? Well, I'll just speak for myself. I remained open, Moores Corner Church remained open because we follow Christ, not Caesar.

Okay? We obey Christ. We want to obey Christ, not Pharaoh. So, if this was so deadly that people were dropping like flies, if this was really the plague that they made it out to be, you wouldn't have to demand that people stay home.

People would figure that out for themselves. So to make a long story short, the first few weeks or the first month or so, yeah, attendance was sparse. So we met outside, not that many people were coming, but here's the thing.

After the George Floyd incident and all the BLM rioters took to the streets and the politicians defended them, so, you know, you need to close down your church, but the Black Lives Matter protesters, oh man, they can gather by the thousands with no social distancing.

They could do whatever they want, but you cannot go to church. You know, once that took place, people started to wake up. So after that, myself and other pastors, you know, I mean, we sort of knew what was going on anyways, but that made it even more clear.

And of course, I tried telling people and a lot of pastors brought this up, you know, that the liquor stores were essential, the pot shops were essential, but the government said the church was not essential.

Yeah, that doesn't fly. So there were people that started to come back after that. People were starting to figure it out. God bless them. However, many remained cautious and that's fine. But again, there was no way I was going to cancel the worship of God for six months because of this.

In full disclosure, I do know one person who died from complications due to COVID, but they were, I think they were 89 years old and he was in very poor health. So I do know one person who died as the result of COVID.

It turned into pneumonia and he passed away. But again, he was 89 years, doesn't make it any less sad. But he was almost 90 years old and in poor health. You know, the real tragedy in my mind with folks like that and others who died during 2020, 2021, in my mind, the real tragedy is that there are so many people who lived the last year or two of their life in isolation, many times being separated from grandchildren and friends and church family.

And it's just very, very sad. But here's the thing. I did know several younger people, you know, younger is not elderly. I do know several healthy middle-aged people who died, not because of COVID, but because their doctors refused to see them.

So because they did their appointments through Zoom, the cancer that was growing inside them went undiagnosed and because they could not get in to see their doctor, because they could not get any treatment, they died.

So in my mind, the lockdowns, you know, the cure was worse than the disease. And that's not to mention the economic collapse, which some people believe was on purpose. Others don't buy into that. But you know, that's not to mention that element or the mental health crisis that many people really were pushed over the edge during this time.

They haven't been the same since. There's all sorts of people who committed suicide and really will probably never know the damage that was done. But very few people were even considering that. All we heard for two years was shelter in place, stay home, don't gather with family, don't gather with friends, cancel Christmas, cancel Thanksgiving, do what the government says.

And to make matters worse, many liberal pastors tried to use the Bible and passages like Romans 13 to say, hey, you just do what the government says, period. And it's like, okay, well, but there's people in government saying one thing and other people saying something else.

And the Constitution is supposed to be our highest rule of law. That's being violated. It was argued. And of course, for Christians, what's our highest rule of faith? Well, we go by the Bible, which is why I said we follow Christ, not Caesar.

Now don't get me wrong. Christians should obey the government, generally speaking, but we obey God first. So those pastors that just kept repeating Romans 13, Romans 13, you know, submit to the governing authorities.

I preached a sermon outdoors titled God and Government, where I explained some of these things. You know, by the way, if you read the Old Testament, the parents of Moses, they disobeyed Pharaoh. Daniel disobeyed the order not to pray to Jehovah.

The prophets preached against the corrupt kings of Israel and Judah. I mean, this idea of just do whatever the government says, no matter what is, this is not biblical. And of course, the apostles of Jesus didn't always obey the orders of the Romans or the Jewish council.

After all, what did the authorities tell them? The authorities told the apostles not to preach in the name of Jesus. And they said, we ought to obey God rather than men. So many of these liberal pastors, they bent over backwards to defend the Black Lives Matter movement, the protesters, they defended the government.

Here's who they didn't defend. They didn't defend Christians who just wanted to gather together on the Lord's day to worship. No, no, that was just a bad testimony. I want you to think about this. So obeying the new world order to them, that was godly, but to go to church was ungodly.

Man, the devil is so clever. He knows how to convince people that evil is good and good is evil. It really cleared things up for me as to how the world in the end times, whenever that does happen, how could the world follow after the antichrist?

How will the whole world marvel, follow him and take the mark of the beast? How will Christians be demonized? And you know, the pre-trib rapture debate aside, there are going to be believers during the tribulation one way or another.

How will believers be demonized during the tribulation? How is all that going to work? How could people be so blind just to follow along with whatever? Hey, listen, now I totally get it. It's very easy to see how that could happen.

Now listen again, if you disagree with me, if you think I'm off base, hey, pray for me. If your church closed down for the first three weeks of the pandemic, hey, we should be willing to give each other a little grace.

I'm not looking to pick a fight over this, but you know, churches that close down for an extended period of time, you know, it would be good for pastors and church leaders to admit they're wrong and say, if that happens again, we're not going to do it.

I think that would be a good thing. So this was a divisive subject and we don't need to be causing more division, but in order to prevent the world system, because as the apostle Paul said, we are not ignorant of Satan's devices.

In order to protect the church, in order to protect other Christians, in order to prevent the world from pitting believers against each other, we need to recognize what's going on. We need to recognize what happened.

We need to see this for what it is. So in conclusion, let's just address those questions. Did churches do the right thing by closing down? You know, initially, and if you had an elderly congregation and there were people getting sick around you, I think that might've been a reasonable response.

I think it's understandable. A lot of people didn't know what was happening. So if your church closed for the first two or three weeks, I think that's understandable. But those churches that just stayed closed for month after month after month after month, and then when they did allow people to come, you had to wear a mask or else you weren't allowed in.

You had assigned seating and you know, you had to make an appointment to go to church and just the church remained closed. People were given, that was the wrong thing to do. That's, hey, that's my opinion.

I believe it's absolutely right. If I thought it was wrong, I would say so, but I think it was the wrong thing to do. For churches to stay closed, wrong thing to do. To stay closed for six months, eight months, a year, not a good sign.

Because here's the real question. When the next emergency happens, sooner or later, it may not be another virus. Who knows what it will be, a climate change emergency, who knows? But when the next emergency happens, you want to know, people want to know, Christians want to know, is my pastor just going to be a pawn of the government?

Is he going to get his marching orders from the World Economic Forum or is he going to be led by the Holy Ghost? That's what I would want to know. And then the other question, what did churches learn?

Most churches, I fear, didn't learn a thing, but some did. For some people, and I think it's a minority, but there's a lot of us, a lot of people, 2020 was an eye-opener. And for those people, those are the ones I want standing with me.

Those are the people I want to stand with in whatever happens in the future. Jesus said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church. So more now than ever, we need each other, we need to gather, we need to build each other up in the faith, and for those who still don't quite see things clearly, we need to pray for them.

And as always, what we try to do on this podcast, we want to test all things and hold fast to that which is good. Look at what happened during 2020, look at churches being closed, the government telling churches you had to be closed, but the churches, while they're shut down, the government was saying that Black Lives Matter can gather by the thousands.

Listen, if you can't see that for what it is, I don't know. I don't know if there's much hope for you. I think people, they don't want to see it, unfortunately, but we need to keep fighting the good fight, test all things, hold fast to that which is good.

Be patient with people, try to explain it to them, and as this podcast, this is where we get the name, 1 John 4 1, we need to keep testing the spirits to see what is of God and what isn't. So until next time, may the Lord be with you and have a great day.