I once ended one of my blogs and a sermon with the story of Charles Peace, I find that I am back there again tonight but I am going to place the story at the beginning.
On the morning of his execution, Peace ate a hearty breakfast of eggs and salty bacon and calmly awaited the coming of the public executioner, William Marwood, inventor of the "long drop". He was escorted on the death-walk by the prison chaplain, who was reading aloud from The Consolations of Religion about the fires of hell. Peace burst out "Sir, if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!"[2] Peace was buried in Armley Gaol. He was 46 years old.[2]
Please pay close attention to his words there at the end. That is an indictment of all the peoples of today's church.
There was a pandemic and all the churches folded up shop, but to assuage their guilt they went online for their viewers. Yet ,as we know so well, there are so many channels and we humans only watch a few of them, yet we glutted the internet with our caterwauling's to make our conscience feel better.
But the pandemic, but our health, but, but, but.
What about the souls dying from the pandemic who needed the church, who needed the comfort and where were we? by and large we were at home because of the coronavirus.
Now here we are a year later and what exactly is the church doing today? The same thing they were doing 1 year ago because you know, the coronavirus. The doors of the churches in America are closed more than they are open, and where is the world to turn when our doors are closed? Why they turn to government and politics. And what does the church do? It let's them, why? Cause there was a mandate.
John Bunyan spent 12 years in prison because he would not give up preaching. In those years he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress which has changed lives.
William Tyndale gave his life to get the Bible in to English, he spent a year and a half in prison then was strangled and burned for the crime of translating the New Testament into a language for everyday parishioners.
We are afraid to have a service for fear of a virus.
Timothy was the celebrated disciple of St. Paul, and bishop of Ephesus, where he zealously governed the Church until A.D. 97. At this period, as the pagans were about to celebrate a feast called Catagogion, Timothy, meeting the procession, severely reproved them for their ridiculous idolatry, which so exasperated the people that they fell upon him with their clubs, and beat him in so dreadful a manner that he expired of the bruises two days later.
Timothy died from standing up to the crowd, reproving them for their ridiculous idol worship. Yet we can not open our doors for fear of a virus, we will not stand and call sin - SIN because we might get mean things said about us.
Oh, but we are smart about it, yes we are, we claim that we can not judge, that is God's job, thereby washing our hands (Pontius Pilate style) of any guilt of not taking a stand. We do not condemn the sin instead we tiptoe around it.
We don't have services because the government mandated it, mandate? what exactly is that? Well a mandate is a strongly worded suggestion, not enforceable by law. Yet we turned tail and ran, I too did the same. Remember back at the start of this thing they shut everything down because 2 million were going to die, we have to flatten the curve. I too did the same, but here we are a year later and we have not gone back to what we are required to do. REQUIRED. And who is it that requires it?
GOD.
Yet the government has our loyalty and fealty for fear they might yell at us, fine us, take away our tax exempt status. Oh no, what ever will we do?
Act 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
Now you are going to ask how we disobeyed God right? Well we did not assemble as we were instructed to, we did not gather at the Temple and sing and praise. We did not put God first in all things.
Walmart, liquor stores, government, Home Depot they all stayed open! and the church, the ones who are supposed to have all the answers closed up and ran and hid.
Aren't we the failures, aren't we the guilty ones. We cried out you can't do this to us, as we slowly backed into our houses quietly, and secretly pleased we did not have to expose ourselves to the corona virus, government took that responsibility away from us, and gave us an out.
Church look at yourselves. You claim to have the answers that will fill the voids in their lives yet at the first sign of adversity you do not place your faith or trust in Him.
Act 5:41 And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.
Act 5:42 And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
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