Come Down, Lord!

  I want to offer here a brief update regarding my court case.  I do so with a measure of trepidation.  I have heard some say that if I believe my cause is just I should just quietly accept the penalty.  Some might think my updates have been motivated by pride.  They may feel that what I have done - in keeping my church open - was wrong and that spreading the word about my charges is self-serving and arrogant.  I can say this with a fair degree of certainty. Such men do not know my heart.  If they did I expect they would find it worse even then they believe.  I am nowhere near the man I would like to be, and if there is anything praiseworthy in me it is by the grace of God.  The truth is I am probably far more proud than I know.  Though I want to eschew pride, and while I desire humility, pride seems strangely natural to sinful men.  But I also know what motivated me through 2020 and 2021; and I can say that at every step I ac...

  The Church of God in Aylmer has been made ‘famous’ by Henry Hildebrant.  Because of their recent stand for freedom and for the right of churches to gather, Henry and his congregation have become well known and even admired.  It is no secret that they are actively pursuing a wider audience and seeking a greater influence in the churches and communities of the province.   My concern is that many in the Church look to them as something like noble freedom fighters.  Still others - who ordinarily wouldn’t - have begun attending their church; and even some faithful pastors are making common cause with them because they have defied the government’s interference with the churches.  Initially I was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt (as I wrote previously ). I wanted to treat them, at very least, as co-belligerents. I now believe this was a grave mistake.  A little research reveals that they are not another Christian church or denomination...

  In a recent series of Facebook posts Gerhard Visscher (former professor at the Canadian Reformed seminary in Hamilton) offered a critique of James Coates’ recent sermon on Romans 13.  Visscher worries that Coates’ sermon is “causing confusion” in their church community.  I assume he means the Canadian Reformed churches.  He writes, “I am not posting the sermon itself here because I do not wish to promote its content, which I find wanting… please be careful how you share it.”   Those are strong words.  Not “be a Berean and search the Scriptures to see if these things are so” not “here’s how the passage should be understood” but “be careful how you share it” and don’t listen to it yourself.     I won’t attempt here to respond to all that Visscher wrote.   Instead, I would like to address a couple significant problems with Visccher’s position as he articulated it.   First , he claims that it is an exaggeration to say that...