The abysmal and disgraceful failure of Christian leadership during the coronavirus scare-demic – Part 2
Zoom church is failing to feed the needy sheep, it also dishonours the Lord by failing to take communion in remembrance of His suffering. Zoom church is no substitute for in-person Christian gathering and perpetuates the problem of isolation, loneliness, hopelessness and despair. The true church is a care facility and to shut its doors to hurting and needy people is both irresponsible and cowardly! Pastors who have closed their churches have thus abdicated their Christ-delegated duty
In closing of Part 1 we asked the question as to what changed so much since the days of the apostles, and since the plagues of the Middle Ages, that professing Christians should give up so easily their sacred privilege and duty of assembling together for the purpose of worship? Why did most Christians including their leaders so passively capitulate to the government order of shutting down or severely limiting church services in order to allegedly curb the spread of a virus that ~99.8% of people will overcome without any major trouble? And the one reason I see that explains this catastrophe is that most of Western Christianity consists of what the great missionary C. T. Studd (1860-1931) called “Chocolate soldiers”, who are interested only in the blessings of the Christian faith but not its crosses, and who love the praise of men more than they care about the honour and the glory of God. And they further falsely believe that by misguided pietism, escapism, retreatism and non-confrontationism they bear a good witness for Christ and love their neighbour. However, there is another important change that has occurred since the days of the apostles and the faithful martyrs of the Middle Ages and of the Great Reformation that factors in the current terribly apostate Christian church situation. And other than the fact that in the Western world persecution and martyrdom for the sake of upholding the faith were the norm rather than the exception, people back then did not have internet, sermonaudio, youtube and Zoom, but we do! And so allegedly we ought to take advantage of this technology that enables us to conduct worship services in times of pandemics “safely”! But what about those who do not have internet – such as the poor and the needy, and many old people as well? Do they not have the right to worship and spiritual support in these troubling times? Is it just supposed to be “tough luck” for them? Are not Christians above all other people commanded to care for the weakest of the weak? Should these considerations not bother Christians? It is not however at all surprising that they do not bother in the least our public health officials who have been quick to say that church is not a building, in order to cover their restrictions on church gatherings with a veneer of legitimacy. And very sadly, some of the proponents and members of the Zoom church movement have apparently fallen for this crafty argument, which frankly shows them to be without Biblical discernment. For this is a typical devil’s argument, based on false exegesis that cherry-picks one truth out of context and separates it from the rest of Scripture in order to justify disobedience to God’s commandments (Luke 4:1-4, 9-12). I can hardly refute this false argument better than another faithful shepherd of the Lord’s flock:
“We hear a lot of people say that the church isn’t about the building and we completely agree. But the Bible defines the church as a gathering. In fact, there is no such thing as a church without a gathering. And in order for us to keep God’s day holy, bound up in that is the gathering of God’s people for preaching, singing, prayer, fellowship. So without those things we can’t keep the Sabbath…the Lord’s Day. We can’t actually keep any of the first four Commandments. I know a lot of churches have tried to adapt and they’ve given reasons to justify it, but I believe that they have gone quite far astray from the Bible and that they’ve compromised.” – Steve Richardson (pastor, Faith Presbyterian Church, Tillsonburg, Ontario, Tillsonburg Pastor Charged for Failing to Comply With COVID Restrictions)
And therefore, since the Bible does in fact define the church as a physical in-person assembly or gathering of God’s people, there is indeed no such thing as a church without gathering! And thus as John MacArthur very aptly pointed out – a non-assembling assembly is a contradiction in terms.
“The church by definition is an assembly. That is the literal meaning of the Greek word for “church”—ekklesia—the assembly of the called-out ones. A non-assembling assembly is a contradiction in terms. Christians are therefore commanded not to forsake the practice of meeting together (Hebrews 10:25)—and no earthly state has a right to restrict, delimit, or forbid the assembling of believers. We have always supported the underground church in nations where Christian congregational worship is deemed illegal by the state.
When officials restrict church attendance to a certain number, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible for the saints to gather as the church. When officials prohibit singing in worship services, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible for the people of God to obey the commands of Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16. When officials mandate distancing, they attempt to impose a restriction that in principle makes it impossible to experience the close communion between believers that is commanded in Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:26. In all those spheres, we must submit to our Lord.” – John MacArthur (pastor, Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, Christ, Not Caesar, Is Head of the Church: A Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open)“Embedded in the definition of church is gathering together. The New Testament word for church is the Greek word, ekklesia. Etymologically, ekklesia is the combination of two words that together mean “called out,” as in a group of people called out to gather. The definition of the word demands that a church not be reduced to less than a gathering of people. The lexical range of ekklesia includes “assembly,” “gathering,” “a specific Christian group assembly, gathering ordinarily involving worship and discussion of matters of concern to the community,” and “the totality of Christians living and meeting in a particular locality.” Where there is no physical gathering there is no church. For the church to exist it must gather.” – Jacob Reaume (pastor, Trinity Bible Chapel, Waterloo, Ontario, Here We Stand: The Church Must Meet)
“ἐκκλησία [ekklésia], ἐκκλεσιας, ἡ (from ἔκκλητος called out or forth, and this from ἐκκαλέω); properly, a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place; an assembly; so used...in the Christian sense [e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:18; 1 Corinthians 14:19; 1 Corinthians 14:34].” – Thayer’s Greek Lexicon
I hope that you can see from here why Zoom church simply does not at all fit the Biblical definition of a church. In other words – Zoom church is no church!
“The church must be together to fulfill its mission because its mission depends on togetherness and physical presence. The Scriptures command the church to partake of the Lord’s Supper together (1 Corinthians 11:17-34), to baptize new converts (Matthew 28:19), to anoint the sick with oil (James 5:14), to ordain elders and pastors with the laying on of hands (1 Timothy 5:22), and to greet each other with a holy kiss (1 Corinthians 16:20). None of these actions are possible while separate or isolated. Each must be done in person because the New Testament presupposes that the church will be together [in person].” – Jacob Reaume (Here We Stand: The Church Must Meet)
Another reason why Zoom church is no church, and is therefore doomed to fail, is because nothing can substitute for real human contact. I know this as someone who has lived away from my home-country and my parents for the last 20 years. Even now as I am writing this I am thinking – if I could only hug my mum. Christians are a family because through Christ God has adopted us as His children (Ephesians 1:5). And because we are a family we ought to meet as a family, teaching, admonishing, comforting and supporting one another in the Lord and bearing each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2; Colossians 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:11). We are also to be breaking bread together in memorial of Christ’s sufferings for us by which He redeemed us from this present evil age (1 Corinthians 11:17-34) – a remembrance moreover, which He Himself explicitly commanded when He said, “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). None of this can be effectively done online. Zoom church therefore cannot be blessed by God because God cannot and will not bless what He never endorsed. And the greatest testimony of its illegitimacy and utter inadequacy is its abject failure. The Zoom church is hurting the sheep, failing to provide for their fundamental human needs, and is also dishonouring the Lord.
“Love has to be practiced, and you can’t practice it over Zoom either!...this idea that we have to be separated either through technology, or distance…that is not human, it’s just not human…this terminology like ‘social distancing’, these are Orwellian terms, these are Orwellian descriptors. You cannot be social and be distanced!” – Randy Hillier (MPP for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston and one of the founders of End the Lockdown Caucus, Interview: Randy Hillier on the Arrest of Pastor James Coates)
“We are not designed to be isolated and to be alone [Genesis 2:18].” – Christian brother and congregant at Heights Baptist Church, Medicine Hat, Alberta (“Without Hope, People Have Nothing”: Pastor Criticizes Alberta COVID-19 Response)
“You know a teenager said to me recently, ‘I would rather get sick and die from a virus than live the rest of my life like this.’ And that’s saddens me when I hear that because what I am seeing in society troubles me. You know I don’t deny the existence of COVID-19 [for the record, neither do I] but I believe from my experience the more widespread public health crisis is hopelessness, and depression, and isolation, and despair, and loneliness, and it is important to have the church open because we are giving people what they need – people need human contact [God’s Word says so, as does good science for good science can never contradict its Author], they need friendship they need community, they need relationships, they need the Word of God, they need a hope rooted in Jesus Christ…This past December we had a Christmas Eve service and an hour after the service was over, half of the congregation was still there visiting with each other because they are so lonely. There is so much isolation in the world. The church has to be a place where we can bring people together and minister to the loneliness, the despair and the depression that is widespread in our society.” – Patrick Schoenberger (pastor, Heights Baptist Church, Medicine Hat, Alberta, “Without Hope, People Have Nothing”: Pastor Criticizes Alberta COVID-19 Response)
“If you are looking at COVID as a health concern for everybody, then you need to consider that health is an all-encompassing thing. You need to consider the amount of suicides we’ve had ever since this pandemic has been on, the amount of alcoholism on the rise, drug abuse, domestic violence. You better consider health as a whole…because watching your neighbours perish because they have nobody to talk to, they’ve got nobody to confide in, nobody to be there for them when they desperately need it. This [the church] is a care facility and this is 100% essential in a time like this when people are passing away of more than just COVID.” – Christian sister and congregant at Heights Baptist Church, Medicine Hat, Alberta (“Without Hope, People Have Nothing”: Pastor Criticizes Alberta COVID-19 Response)
The church is indeed a care facility – it is a spiritual hospital and a nursery – and to shut its doors to hurting people is both irresponsible and cowardly! It is to abdicate the duty assigned to you by the Great Shepherd to feed and nurture His sheep. Zoom church is starving the sheep!
“I am getting a lot of feedback as to people that are hurting, their churches are closed, they are struggling spiritually. There was one comment where a woman said – we have been abandoned by our leadership.” – Erin Coates (Interview w/ Wife of Jailed Canadian Pastor)
And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost...And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered. – Ezekiel 34:1-5.
“There is a supernatural ministry that takes place in person…there is the manifest presence of God when we gather in person. A parent who relies on the internet to raise a child is negligent. And 3rd John, the apostle John calls the church his “children” [3 John 1:4].
Zoom church is starving the sheep, but the shepherd still gets a pay-check…If a pastor touts the government line and has not risked anything to minister to people in person, or to get his people together, eventually you’ve just got to say he is negligent.” – Jacob Reaume (The Problem Behind Our Problems: Where Are the Shepherds?", Ezekiel 34:1-10)“Our observation is that these times of isolation, due to the government’s restrictive actions, have harmed people and society by perpetuating loneliness, hopelessness, fear, poverty, division, anger, the deterioration of relationships, and a plethora of other evils which will become more evident with time. These observations do not surprise us because the restrictive actions of the government have wrongfully reduced human beings to biological units with little purpose to existence other than to avoid contracting and spreading a virus. Scripture teaches us that people are much more than biological units. We are created in the image of God with dignity and worth to live free, love one another, worship together, grow families, eat with each other, laugh and cry together, embrace one another, exchange goods and services, and build things. Central to the Christian life is the ministry of the church, and TBC asserts that the church must remain open.” – Jacob Reaume (Here We Stand: The Church Must Meet)
Here then is another reason why no Christian should bow down to the edicts of the COVID state-cult, namely, because its underlying philosophy is secular humanism which regards that humans are just one of the many products of unsupervised random evolutionary processes, according to the most absurd formula:
Nothing + time + chance = all creation!
Now, my worldview is the same as pastor Reaume’s – that humans are made in the image of God and by His deliberate and marvellous design (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 2:7, 21-23), and therefore they have a much higher purpose of existence than avoiding a virus!!
If after all this you still want to insist that we should meet over Zoom because after all, it is only temporary, I will ask you two questions:
First, how do you know it is only temporary? In March 2020 the government and the public health officers told us that it was going to take only 2-3 weeks to “flatten the curve”, but here we are, almost 12 months later, still under lockdowns and restrictions worse than at the start! And why is that? Because most people just mindlessly and uncritically go along with this tyranny for the sake of the alleged benefit of public safety!! John MacArthur was therefore correct when he pointed out that, succumbing to governmental overreach may cause churches to remain closed indefinitely, and therefore, there is only one way in which the true church of Jesus Christ can distinguish herself in such a hostile climate – by bold allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. Further, the climate we as Christians are facing in Western countries taken over by the spell of radical cultural Marxism which now permeates not only the mainstream media and the educational institutions but also the high places of the government, is indeed exceedingly hostile. And the fact of the matter is that by surrendering our right to assemble we have effectively made it so much easier for the Marxist Christ-haters in our governments to extinguish the preaching of the Gospel:
“If the authorities remove the church’s’ right to assemble they have robbed from the church the right to preach the Gospel. Do you understand that?…If we can’t gather we can’t preach! But because of technology we don’t seem to see it…It is easier for the government to take away the technology that permits life-streaming, than it is to take away the right to assemble…and the fact that what we bless God for, as [being] able to stream across the internet and so on, this might not exist forever! And what happens when it doesn’t? And we’ve already resigned the right to assemble?...If we give up the God-given right to assemble for the preaching of the Gospel, it will be even easier to take away the platforms used to communicate online. The time to oppose the abuse of authority is not when it gains momentum but to nip it in the bud.” – Armen Thomassian (minister of Faith Free Presbyterian Church, Greenville, South Carolina, The Case for Gathering Physically)
Now, if this still does not convince you to leave the Zoom church then my second question to you is as follows: is temporary obedience to God – i.e., when it is convenient and non-controversial – real obedience? Is that what Daniel did? The prayer prohibition was supposed to be only temporary for him too, remember?
“I get that question from journalists – well why not just Zoom church or why not just wait until the restrictions are lifted? – why not Daniel?! Why not just wait 30 days? Is God really going to be that mad at you? Just stop praying for 30 days, that’s it 30 days! We are not going to extend it, it is temporary! It is only 30 days!” – James Kitchen (Pastor James Coates Arrested: His Lawyer Explains)
“I am not the man of the Scripture…but you know from my understanding, my very limited understanding of the Bible and Christianity…there are stories throughout the Bible that give us guidance, and you know, what would be the Bible without Daniel?...It shows that when in the greatest adversity of time, in the greatest adverse conditions, you must still stand by your convictions, and your principles, and your faith.” – Randy Hillier (MPP for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston and one of the founders of End the Lockdown Caucus, Interview: Randy Hillier on the Arrest of Pastor James Coates)
It is truly a sad day for the Christian church when a man not so well versed in the Scriptures understands more about the practice of Christian faith than the Christian leaders themselves!!
But moving further, there is yet a far more fundamental issue here at stake and it centers around the following key questions – Who is the head of the church? Who gets to define the terms of worship? And to whom are you to pay your highest allegiance – Christ or Caesar? And please note that this is by no means a trivial issue, because if your answer is Caesar then you are an idolater and in breach of the very first commandment for having another Lord before Christ (Exodus 20:3). If you call yourself a Christian, is this a small matter??
“Christ is Lord of all. He is the one true head of the church (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23; Colossians 1:18). He is also King of kings—sovereign over every earthly authority (1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 17:14; 19:16). Grace Community Church has always stood immovably on those biblical principles. As His people, we are subject to His will and commands as revealed in Scripture. Therefore we cannot and will not acquiesce to a government-imposed moratorium on our weekly congregational worship or other regular corporate gatherings. Compliance would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear commands…The biblical order is clear: Christ is Lord over Caesar, not vice versa.” – John MacArthur (Christ, Not Caesar, Is Head of the Church: A Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open)
“…it has never been the prerogative of civil government to order, modify, forbid, or mandate worship. When, how, and how often the church worships is not subject to Caesar. Caesar himself is subject to God…Jesus drew a stark distinction between those two kingdoms when He said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (Mark 12:17). Our Lord Himself always rendered to Caesar what was Caesar's, but He never offered to Caesar what belongs solely to God.” – John MacArthur (Christ, Not Caesar, Is Head of the Church: A Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open)
“We don’t render to Caesar everything Caesar demands. Caesar receives the coin, everything else belongs to God, that’s the emphasis in the Bible [whether Caesar likes it or no!]” – Peter Hammond (pioneer missionary, Founder and Director of Frontline Fellowship, the Founder and Chairman of Africa Christian Action, the Director of the Christian Action Network and Chairman of The Reformation Society, Countering the Covid Cult)
Who then is your lord? If you render to Caesar that which belongs not to Caesar then please do not call Christ your Lord until you repent. And further, if you do in fact call yourself a Christian, and yet comply with these un-Scriptural public health orders, then ask yourself how much do you really esteem Christ’s blood-suffering which He voluntary undertook so that hell-deserving sinners like you and me could become partakers of His eternal Kingdom?
“At the end of the day, who gets to define what the church is?…Is it Caesar? Is it Doug Ford, is it Jason Kenney, or is it Christ? And Christ has defined the church as a gathering. And one of my heart beats which gets my blood going during this is – may He find a reward for his suffering. He suffered for her so that she would sing his praises.” – Jacob Reaume (Pastor James Coates Arrested: His Lawyer Explains)
Christ suffered in order to redeem us so that we would then shew forth the praises of Him Who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9). Now tell me again, is a virus that is essentially no worse than the ordinary flu a legitimate reason to abdicate all our worship and duty to our Lord?? And further, do you realize that by your blind compliance with the public health orders which limit or prohibit Christian gatherings you are de facto endorsing the suppression of Christianity on a scale that supersedes that achieved by the world’s greatest communist regimes, and are therefore directly advancing not the kingdom of God but the kingdom of the evil one.
“This is really terrible. Not even the entire Soviet Union and Communist Red China succeeded in closing as many churches as lockdowns have managed to do.” – Peter Hammond (pioneer missionary, Founder and Director of Frontline Fellowship, the Founder and Chairman of Africa Christian Action, the Director of the Christian Action Network and Chairman of The Reformation Society, Countering the Covid Cult)
“So the Devil has won this particular round with a complete capitulation to his demands (ministered through governments on the basis of a false scare)…As a result of this easy victory, the next temptation will be far more devastating…How can churches prepare for what is coming down the road when it collapses in the face of a flu virus.” – Paul Fahy (Christian minister, An Alert to Believers)
The church that collapses in the face of a flu virus seriously ought to question whether it be the Lord’s church in name only. And when such a collapse happens on a global scale, it is a sign of a great alarm because when God gives people over to great delusions it is typically a sign of a terrible divine judgment upon a grossly apostate people (1 Kings 22:19-23, 29-35; Psalm 81:11-12; Acts 7:41-42; Romans 1:28-32; 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12).