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Harvest House Publishers - Nathan Busenitz

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104 pages

English

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';Welcome to our peaceful protest.' In the spring of 2020, government mandates forced churches across North America to close their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As societal fear and unrest increased, Christians were forced to grapple with how God wanted them to respond to these state-imposed restrictions. After all, didn't the closure of churches pose a serious threat in a time when people needed spiritual direction more than ever?God vs. Government follows two churches' courageous decisions to reopen despite orders to remain closed. Guided by the command in Hebrews 10:25 that churches not forsake meeting together, pastors John MacArthur and James Coates led their congregations to return to in-person meetingsand were swiftly met by unsympathetic governing authorities ready to shut them down again. The ensuing legal battles raised important questions about religious freedom, and more importantly, illuminated what it looks like to take a stand when Christ and compliance collide. How do we react with wisdom and discernment when the state encroaches upon the church? God vs. Government tells two incredible accounts that affirm our need to be faithful to the Lord's commands no matter the circumstances.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Religious intolerance

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Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	01 mars 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736986335
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0900€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
All Scripture quotations are taken from the (NASB ) New American Standard Bible , Copyright 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org .
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is a federally registered trademark of the Hawkins Children s LLC. Harvest House Publishers, Inc., is the exclusive licensee of the trademark.
God vs. Government
Copyright 2022 by Nathan Busenitz James Coates
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97408
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
ISBN 978-0-7369-8632-8 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0-7369-8633-5 (eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947103
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
DEDICATION
To the dear members of our respective church families at
Grace Community Church, Los Angeles
and
GraceLife Church, Edmonton
CONTENTS
Dedication
Foreword by John MacArthur
Why We Wrote This Book
PART 1: OUR STORY
Chapter 1: The Grace Community Story
Nathan Busenitz
Chapter 2: What Can the Righteous Do?
Nathan Busenitz
Chapter 3: The Statement
Nathan Busenitz
Chapter 4: Lawsuits and Liberty
Nathan Busenitz
Chapter 5: The GraceLife Edmonton Story
James Coates
Chapter 6: Closures and Convictions
James Coates
Chapter 7: The Battle Begins
James Coates
Chapter 8: A Minister in Chains
James Coates
Chapter 9: Trusting God from Behind Bars
James Coates
Chapter 10: The Underground Church of Canada
James Coates
PART 2: OUR STAND
Chapter 11: Five Biblical Principles
Nathan Busenitz
Chapter 12: Biblical Exceptions and Pastoral Implications
Nathan Busenitz
Chapter 13: The Time Has Come
James Coates
Chapter 14: Directing Government to Its Duty
James Coates
Chapter 15: Christ, Courage, and Noncompliance
Nathan Busenitz
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Publisher
FOREWORD
John MacArthur
I n view of recent events, three basic biblical truths must be emphasized. First, the church is essential. Second, the church must gather regularly and corporately. Third, the church is duty-bound to obey Christ even when doing so violates governmental regulations and restrictions. Given the fundamental nature of these New Testament priorities, it s hard to believe they would prove controversial, especially among evangelicals. But here we are. There has been a great deal of both controversy and compromise, which is why the message of this book is so necessary.
A company of believers is not a church if they don t gather. The word for church in the original New Testament manuscripts is ekklesia . Even before the founding of the New Testament church, that word signified an assembly, a gathering of people. It is comprised of two Greek roots that literally mean called out, and more specifically, it refers to a body of people called out from their homes (or summoned out of a larger group) in order to muster together. Like the English word congregation , the concept of a group coming together is built right into the term.
The church specifically comes together for worship , but the vital benefits of the assembly include fellowship, instruction, mutual encouragement, and accountability. Believers are commanded not to forsake the assembly (Hebrews 10:25), and that command comes immediately before the New Testament s most somber warning about apostasy. Fellowship and corporate worship are therefore absolutely essential aspects of spiritual health for individual Christians, and they are also (obviously) vital for the very life of the church.
Believers may be forced by illness, imprisonment, warfare, natural disaster, necessary travel, or some other significant emergency to abstain from the corporate gathering temporarily . But there is no justification for the entire church to suspend congregational worship on a prolonged basis. Plagues, pandemics, and persecution have frequently (if not constantly) threatened the people of God since that first Pentecost. Never have faithful churches responded to such obstacles by simply shutting their doors for months at a time and declaring distance-learning technologies a sufficient substitute for corporate worship.
Christians in America and other Western democracies have been blessed and privileged to thrive for more than two centuries under governments that formally affirm and have seldom challenged the right of worshippers to assemble freely. But COVID is a wakeup call and a reminder to believers of how tenuous that liberty is. Pastors in supposedly free countries were literally jailed for weeks because they led worship services during the 2020 lockdowns. The example of James Coates, in that regard, serves as a compelling testimony of pastoral courage and unwavering conviction.
Despite court decisions favorable to churches, a strong current of public opinion favors giving governments more power to force churches to comply with restrictions inhibiting attendance, fellowship, and congregational singing. But the world s opposition to the church and her teaching should not catch believers off guard. Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you (1 John 3:13). Jesus said, Because you are not of the world the world hates you (John 15:19). We are citizens of heaven-mere sojourners and aliens here in this world (Philippians 3:20). And even the world sees the church that way when we are faithful to our calling.
That is one of the main reasons why the people of God need to come together regularly for mutual encouragement and instruction. Times of crisis and hardship don t make the church assembly expendable; that s when it is most essential for believers to congregate. We must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).
Faithful churches must assemble even if they have to go underground to do it. That s how churches in the first three centuries survived and flourished despite intense opposition from Caesar. It s how the church in Eastern Europe overcame communist persecution in the twentieth century. It s how many churches in China and elsewhere meet today.
Scripture gives us several examples of godly people who resisted the ungodly tyranny of rulers who hated biblical truth. Under a despotic Pharaoh, the Hebrew midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them (Exodus 1:17). Elijah opposed Ahab and was labeled troubler of Israel because of the stance he took (1 Kings 18:17). John the Baptist rebuked Herod to his face and ultimately was killed for it (Mark 6:18-29).
Western evangelicals now need to have that same resolve. We need to prepare ourselves for more pressure from the government and more persecution from the rest of society. When COVID has run its course (if it ever does), other crises are already lined up for government officials to exploit, claiming emergency powers to assert more and more regulatory authority over the church.
Now is not the time to forsake our own assembling together. The church must be the church-a pillar and buttress for the truth. We cannot cower in fear. We cannot hide our light under a bushel. We are not called to feed the fears of a world that is perishing. We have been commissioned to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation (Mark 16:15), and we are soldiers in a spiritual war. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
It is past time for the church of Jesus Christ to confront the prevailing falsehoods of a depraved society and show hopeless people the way to true hope and abundant life. That, again, is why the message of this book is so necessary. We are the Lord s ambassadors, and we must stand confidently in that role, with joy and not fear, in bold unity-and all the more as we see the day of Christ drawing near (Hebrews 10:25).
-John MacArthur
WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK
C hristians and churches have become divisively polarized over the issue of compliance with government authority. Because civil powers have, in ways not seen before, acted aggressively and intrusively in usurping control over the kingdom of Christ, believers have had to face the collision of their duty to government authority and their submission to the lordship of Christ. Our purpose is to explain the clear truth of Scripture on this apparent conflict and, based on that, to show the biblical rationale for why our respective churches took a public stand against governmental intrusion. When civil authorities tried to close us down, both Grace Community Church and GraceLife Edmonton insisted on staying open. The question this book answers is why ?
The focus of this book is not COVID itself. Studies have demonstrated the pandemic was not nearly as deadly as initially projected. 1 At the same time, as with any illness, we believe churches ought to respond to those who are sick with Christlike compassion and pastoral care (cf. James 5:13-14). That has been our attitude since the onset of the outbreak.
Instead, this book is abo