Yet there is good news. Pastors and Christians in Canada and the United States are pushing back.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
—C. S. Lewis—
Key point: When tyrants are becoming more powerful and flaunting their “authority,” citizens must risk losing their freedoms by exercising them. Here’s the catch. If citizens do exercise them, they might lose them, but they also might preserve them. On the other hand, if they don’t exercise them, they will certainly lose them.
You can access all the articles in this series from this page.
As we have indicated in two previous posts (here and here), Canada’s new law that took effect after January 7, 2022 — C-4 — targets God and biblical teachings. It does far more than ban all therapy designed to help people overcome unwanted same-sex attraction (as tyrannical as it is to ban such therapy). C-4 is so broadly written it would criminalize Christianity. It would
allow for the criminal prosecution of Christians who would speak biblical truth into the lives of those in bondage to sexual sins like homosexuality and transgenderism… Even a mother or father who offers their children freedom from sexual sin through repentance and faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 6:9-11) could be threatened with five years in jail.
C-4 Is an Affront to God and the Influence of Christianity and the Church on People and the Culture
In the new law, all of the information in our previous two posts about
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- God’s and nature’s design, about
- heterosexuality as the norm, and about
- Jesus’ and Christianity’s transforming people and making it possible for them to overcome homosexuality — all of that —
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are deemed harmful. Canadian resident and Christian spokesman and blogger Samuel Sey explains that C-4
suggests the Bible is filled with hateful and harmful myths about sexuality, equality, and human dignity.
What blasphemous thing to suggest about the word of God—what a blasphemous thing to suggest about God!
God created all people in his image—so he gets to set the rules about the right way to protect human dignity, not the government.
God created all people in his image—so he gets to set the rules about the right way to protect human dignity, not the government.
—Samuel Sey—
Nevertheless, Bill C-4 says:
“conversion therapy means a practice, treatment or service designed to
(a) change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual;
(b) change a person’s gender identity to cisgender;
(c) change a person’s gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth;
(d) repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour;
(e) repress a person’s non-cisgender gender identity; or
(f) repress or reduce a person’s gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”
Therefore, anyone who influences a person to undergo conversion therapy or provides conversion therapy to that person could be fined or sentenced to up to five years in prison. And anyone who promotes conversion therapy could be fined or sentenced to up two years in prison.
Meaning, under the vague law: anyone—especially Biblical counsellors and pastors—who promote Biblical sexuality could be penalized for practising or promoting conversion therapy.
Of course, Mr. Sey is putting himself right in the bull’s eye of those who are anxious to use C-4 to target Bible-believing and devout Christians. Quite probably Mr. Sey already was there and realized this. Still, either way, he is doing freedom-loving people everywhere a great service by writing truthfully about the new law and warning about its repercussions.
Taking Action
Fully understanding the details and implications of C-4, Liberty Coalition Canada wrote an open letter to the nation’s pastors, ministers, and elders. It reads in part:
Last week the federal parliament of Canada passed Bill C-4 with the support of all political parties and no opposition from any elected member of parliament. [You can find the timing of the passage of C-4 here.] This bill, while purporting to protect individuals from coercion and abuse in the form of “conversion therapy,” will instead criminalize Christianity in our country.…
Our King and Head is greatly displeased with our MPs for their sinful disregard for the spiritual and eternal well being of Canadians. But it is important to note that they have also committed high blasphemy by referring to biblical teaching as “myths” in this legislation. We all must therefore tremble to consider what terrifying judgments will be visited upon our nation for this bold gesture of hatred towards the most high God. May the bride of Christ commit herself to mourning, fasting, and crying out in solemn prayer for forgiveness for the sins and worldliness in the church of Canada that have led to this calamity.
May the bride of Christ commit herself to mourning, fasting, and crying out in solemn prayer for forgiveness for the sins and worldliness in the church of Canada that have led to this calamity.
—Liberty Coalition Canada—
We now request your congregation’s help in standing against this attack upon the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are requesting all bible believing Christian churches in Canada to unite together in faithfulness to Christian sexual ethics and the biblical gospel.
On the first Lord’s day after the Bill C-4 comes into effect (January 16th, 2022), please publicly preach a sermon that specifically proclaims the Biblical truth that homosexuality and transgenderism are serious sins condemned by the law of God that exclude a sinner from salvation without repentance.
Also, in this sermon please proclaim the Savior Jesus Christ in His atoning death and life-giving Holy Spirit as a perfect and complete Savior to all those in sexual sin. Finally, we request that your church prayerfully commit to doing the same thing in one year, and every year following, on the anniversary of Bill C-4’s passing.
David Cook of the Campaign Life Coalition writes, “The emphasis of ‘Biblical Sexuality Sermon Sunday’ is to faithfully proclaim the biblical view of marriage, family, and sexual morality in this time of great confusion and error.”
The United States Is Traveling Down the Same Road
John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, is a friend and ministerial ally of Canadian pastor James Coates. Coates has spent time in jail for defying Canadian edicts closing churches in Canada and limiting the number of worshipers at local churches during the COVID-19 pandemic. Coates alerted Dr. MacArthur about C-4, its dangers and implications, and the effort underway to counter it with sermons on biblical sexuality in churches everywhere on January 16. In an open letter to pastors in the United States, MacArthur declared,
I am eager to support our Canadian brothers and to preach on biblical sexual morality on January 16, and I invite you as a faithful pastor to do the same. Our united stand will put the Canadian and the U.S. governments on notice that they have attacked the Word of God. We are all well-aware of the evil power and destructive influence of the homosexual and transgender ideology. Our government is bent on not only normalizing this perversion, but also legalizing it, and furthermore criminalizing opposition to it.
I am eager to support our Canadian brothers and to preach on biblical sexual morality on January 16, and I invite you as a faithful pastor to do the same. Our united stand will put the Canadian and the U.S. governments on notice that they have attacked the Word of God.
—Pastor John MacArthur—
In other words, the United States is headed in the same direction that Canada has been traveling. Here is the audio portion of the a video message that Dr. MacArthur posted with his open letter.
Of course, if a pastor did not preach on biblical sexuality on January 16, his not doing so does not necessarily indicate a lack of support for pastors in Canada and the US who did speak out on that particular day. Samuel Sey put it this way in the same article we cited above.
[W]e should all be grateful for the pastors, especially Canadian pastors who love homosexual and transgender people enough to preach on Biblical sexuality today—especially since that act of love has become a controversial and possibly a criminal act this morning.
However, we can be grateful for these pastors without bitterness against the others who won’t preaching on Biblical sexuality today. This isn’t the litmus test for faithful preaching.
The Holy Spirit sets the preaching schedule for pastors—not me, not you, not anyone else. So although I’m grateful for the pastors who will be preaching on Biblical sexuality today—I know they agree this morning isn’t the only day or only way to preach on Biblical sexuality.
Therefore if your pastor isn’t preaching on Biblical sexuality today, do not burden them with your preferences. If they submit to the Bible, you should submit to them.
Then, after citing Hebrews 13:17 in the English Standard Version, Sey concluded his post with this statement: “We should obey our pastors because we obey God, and we should disobey our government on Bill C-4 because we obey God.”
[W]e should disobey our government on Bill C-4 because we obey God.
—Samuel Sey—
Incidents of Censorship of Free Speech and Freedom Are Widespread
Christians everywhere need to be aware that it isn’t just government that has effectively declared war on God; it’s also the culture in general, including (and perhaps especially) Big Tech. On January 17, 2022 on Facebook, professional psychotherapist Andrew Rodriguez directed his readers to this report from Fox Business. You Tube had deleted the account of the Reintegrative Therapy Association (RTA), which specializes in effective therapy for clients dealing with sexual brokenness, especially unwanted same-sex attraction. Rodriguez stated,
As expected, the LGBTQ lobby doesn’t debate the evidence, just silences all alternative narratives. YouTube just deleted the Reintegrative Therapy Association’s channel, depriving thousands of inquirers of the wealth of info in those videos.
In an email, the RTA had this to say:
We got banned from YouTube!
YouTube bans Reintegrative Therapy for alleged ‘hate speech’
Earlier this week, YouTube deleted our account for alleged “hate speech.” The indefinite suspension came days after The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a report attacking the Reintegrative Therapy Association. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Jr. pointed to this GPAHE report and a Forbes article – which faulted online platforms, including YouTube, for enabling “conversion therapy” to spread – for explanations as to why YouTube banned the video channel. See our press release and get the full story on Fox Business, Free Speech America and NewsBusters.
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News Updates
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- You won’t find our videos on YouTube anymore, but we’ve moved to a new platform: Odysee. You’ll still be able to find all our videos here!
- The Christian community, Joel 2:25 International, will be hosting a live-stream discussion with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Jr. on Sunday, February 27th, 2022, at 12PM PDT. For those interested in attending, please reach out directly to the organization for additional detail.
- Dr. Nicolosi Jr. [founder of the Reintegrative Therapy Association] will be teaching an introduction on the Reintegrative Protocol at the 7th International Conference on Neuroscience and Neurological Disorders in London, UK via webinar on March 18-19, 2022. Please contact us if you’d like to attend.
- Are you aware of the ongoing legal battle to defend truth? Learn more here and here.
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The Bottom Line
Here are several important takeaways from this series of articles.
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- In the name of freedom and with a claim they are acting to protect innocent parties from harm, leftist and other ungodly influences are causing society to unravel. In their ideal world, anything goes! Yet, sadly, if they get what they crave, everything will go, including societal cohesion and authentic liberty and freedom.
- Sexual freedom actually means sexual anarchy, with those seeking to uphold biblical morality being falsely accused of hate and bigotry and of wanting to be society’s moral police.
- The real target of the forces of evil is Christianity. As Pastor Wallace Henley has written, “Some nations suppress Christians, their beliefs and messages violently. Current Western culture, however, has its own style of trying to silence the real church. It follows a specific sequence, which has accelerated in recent years. The chain moves from [1] caricaturization to [2] marginalization to [3] vilification to [4] villainization to [5] criminalization to [6] elimination.” We are currently at #5.
- As committed Christians, we must support our pastors who are speaking out against evil and upholding God’s design for humanity — a perfect design that includes heterosexuality, marriage, sexual faithfulness within marriage, and the natural family unit.
- We must endeavor to help our friends and neighbors in a post-Christian, but also a pre-Christian, society see that sexual anarchy leads to bondage, and that an appropriate illustration of God’s moral law is that of a guardrail preventing disaster.
- While we respect everyone, we must uphold man-woman marriage and warn of the dangers of redefining marriage in any way different from the union of one man and one woman committed together for life. Here and here are some articles that will inform and equip along these lines.
- We must relentlessly contend for client’s rights with regard to counseling and therapy. Here is a series of articles addressing that issue.
- We need to dispel the myths about therapy. Here’s what effective therapy looks like.
- Pray for a spiritual awakening (or for spiritual awakenings) to occur in Western nations, especially the United States and Canada.
- Thank God for the freedoms you still have. Use them in ways that ultimately will preserve and protect them. Doing this may prove costly in the short-term, but failing to do it ultimately will put an end to those freedoms. The founding document of the United States — the Declaration of Independence — upholds government recognition of God-given rights. If we fail to exercise those rights, government will certainly cease to recognize them, despite the fact it has a God-given duty to do so.
- Listen to these sermons — a small sampling of the preaching on biblical sexuality that took place on January 16, 2022.
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- Rev. Jeff Kliewer, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Mount Laurel, New Jeresy ~ This is the entire service. Pastor Kliewer begins his sermon at 37:00 in.
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- Pastor Sam Jones, Pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Hudson, Iowa
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- Dr. John MacArthur, Pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California
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- Pastor James Coates, GraceLife Church in Edmonton, Alberta ~ This is the entire service. Pastor Coates begins his sermon at 38:00 in.
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You can listen to and download Pastor Coates’ sermon from January 16 here. It is titled “The Wrath of God Revealed.”
Copyright © 2022 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image credit: Pastor James Coates, GraceLife Church in Edmonton, Alberta, You Tube video of the sermon he preached on September 19, 2021
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
One Scripture passage has been taken from the English Standard Version (ESV). The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®) copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV® Text Edition: 2011. The ESV® text has been reproduced in cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers. Unauthorized reproduction of this publication is prohibited. All rights reserved.
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