LTRP Note: The following news story is posted for informational and research purposes.
By John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
There’s nothing like a crisis to bring clarity. The response of some mayors and governors to the coronavirus pandemic in recent days has made it clear they think they have unlimited and arbitrary power over their fellow citizens, that they can order them to do or not do just about anything under the guise of protecting public health.
We’ve now witnessed local and state governments issue decrees about what people can and cannot buy in stores, arrest parents playing with their children in public parks, yank people off public buses at random, remove basketball rims along with private property, ticket churchgoers, and in one case try—and fail—to chase down a lone runner on an empty beach. All of this, we’re told, is for our own good.
Some Authorities Are Targeting Christians
The most egregious example of this outpouring of authoritarianism was an attempt by Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Greg Fischer to ban drive-in church services on Easter. On Holy Thursday, one day before Christians were to begin their most important religious celebrations of the year, Fischer declared that drive-in Easter services would be illegal. Click here to read more.
Related Articles:
Philip Zodhiates – Remains in U.S. Prison For Helping Former Lesbian Mother
What Will You Do When America—As You Have Known It—Is Gone?
Authorities To Arrest Canadian Father If He Refers To Trans Child As Her Real Sex
“Your Job Is on the Line!” – A Look at the Past, A Glimpse Into the Future
(photo from bigstockphoto.com)
Additional reply to AC and CW, Liberty Counsel: SCOTUS Door remains open for all churches and houses of worship in Illinois https://lc.org/newsroom/details/052920-scotus-door-remains-open-for-romanian-churches-1
Reply to AC and CW, Liberty Counsel: Court Rules for Church Against KY Governor https://lc.org/newsroom/details/050220-court-rules-for-church-against-ky-governor-1
Fourth Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFDJCYg5g6M
This reply was meant to appear after the next reply.
You are right about the on-going effort to erradicate church life from our American tapestry.
In the following comment, I am talking about civil liberties for churches, not necessarily about the Church of True Believers.
I reiterate.
“American government is mandated to support, protect, and defend my right as long as America endures”.
The government, whether President, Vice President, Congress, Justice of the Court, Governor, County Board, Mayor, Police Chief, whoever, requires my permission to interdict my sovereign right to meet to worship Jesus of the Bible, not vice versa.
To petition for permission to exercise my already established, non-debatable, non-vote-upon-able right is to concede a critical skirmish in the on-going battle to retain the liberty guaranteed me by our Constitution.
Contrary to embedded cultural and media projections (of citizens as dim-witted, dumbed down, sheeple, cog-bots) , the vast majority of Americans remain independent, sound-minded, entrepreneurially-creative problem-solvers, capable of reason and proactive action in emergency situations.
Individual church bodies have the capacity to self-solve a medical emergency in their midst. For example, leaders and congregants will surely respond appropriately to large numbers of people dying in the streets, or in their pews, or among the congregation. To assume otherwise is egregious.
Iow, neither I, nor most church-goers will vaunt our right to worship over the necessity of responding to a life-threatening situation. To assume otherwise is not only an insult, but also poses a real risk to the life and limb of individual citizens.
Churches already have permission to gather for worship. To see the responses of various church leaders is intriguing, to say the least.
~*~
One other thought . . .
What if a major mega-church, with like over ten thousand congregants, meets on Sunday? Who is going to arrest all those people? Especially when, most likely, many civic leaders and members of the police department are in attendance?
The fact that the mega-churches even hesitate is interesting to me.
Yeah, the worldlings sure are playing the “virus card” for maximum totalitarian controls.
What our adversary failed to push through from “the left,” due to citizen pushback in the 2016 election, he seems to be managing to force upon the U.S. through “the right.”
The deception is fascinating.
“ . . . our battle is not against flesh and blood . . . “ Ephesians 6
Fight the Good Fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub4SVEfJ9w0&index=19&list=PLQdUFhtZy-2XnZW2M4PnNyXBJzSo994Jq
Reply to A.C. and CW: Why harass, intimidate and shut down churches? Because in communist countries the State has become their god. And because the “church” is where people might learn and discuss Bible prophecy and warn about the Mark of the Beast. See the New American: ID2020 / mandatory vaccinations / mark of the beast https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/item/35414-fauci-mandatory-coronavirus-immunity-cards-under-consideration . See also White House Petitions https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/we-call-investigations-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-medical-malpractice-crimes-against-humanity , https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-id2020-investigate-bill-gates-assets-stocks-and-companies
As an American citizen, I have an immutable, non-negotiable RIGHT to worship my Lord Jesus according to my conscience, any minute of any day, of any week, of any month, of every year of my life in America.
My inalienable, solid-as-a-rock-foundation right is forged in the blood, sweat, tears, suffering, sacrifice, and victory of citizens from other lands who braved the “new world” of America for the exact purpose of living, and preserving for their progeny, lives in freedom, especially the freedom to worship our Lord Jesus of the Bible — in peaceful, mutual respect.
American government is mandated to support, protect, and defend my right as long as America endures.
Assuredly, citizens in America strive with heart, soul, mind, fortunes, tantrums, lies, corruption, blackmail, bullying, power plays, “ends-justify-whatever (as in WHATEVER) -works-means and assorted sordid tactics to ruthlessly root out my guaranteed right from the very fabric of America.
(“Whatever” definitely includes lying, as one Senate leader proudly asserted when politely tasked about his outright lies regarding a presidential candidate’s tax returns –“well, it worked!” Senator or not, he definitely did/does not work for America.)
Well, said citizens, regardless of their status, are in the wrong. They daily evidence disloyalty to and utter discounting of our Constitution. They have neither authority nor jurisdiction to suppress nor deprive me of my rightful heritage to worship Jesus, Lord of All.
Though they may ultimately succeed in taking my right away by force, they are not America. (I call them, “foe America.”) America stands true to our costly, Bible-influenced foundation of life, liberty, and prospering happiness.
I still live in the land of the free. I stand by my Constitution and my liberty to worship Jesus – unapologetically.
My understanding is that in a democracy, the government never has full reign to dictate to us “for the common good.”
I see no exception stated in the First Amendment.
However, during times of uncertainty and crisis, government officials have been known to wrest whatever dictatorial powers the citizens will bear.
History is littered with examples of such tyrants.
They served their idols, which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood.
Psalm 106:36-38
An apt description of America, as well.
Yep.
Lethal Lunacy
Imo, our nation bears more blood-guilt than China. China forces parents to kill their children in the womb.
America rabidly battles for the “right” to perpetrate genocide against our helpless, innocent young.
In America, gestating kids are locked into a deadly, national “concentration camp” without possibility of rescue by a powerful, liberating military.
Where is America’s “National Day of Remembrance” for our nation’s prenatal holocaust?
A mayor? (some sort of city leader) in MS refused to let a church group meet together IN THEIR CARS in their church parking lot — at least six feet apart — and sent police officers to arrest the pastor (maybe others?). What a shock. How ridiculous and how evil that was.
This reminds me that Wounded Warriors (I could not believe this!) refused a donation which was raised by youth groups who worked hard for the money, then sent it to WW via Samaritan’s Purse!
After that I knew I could not give a dime to WW in good conscience. So sad and so tragic — so evil on their part. Political “correctness” has ruined so many good things.
AMEN! It is a supreme and horrible irony that they defend abortion so tenaciously as a “woman’s right” (to kill her child; have they ever stopped to think that more than half of them are female???) while claiming to “care” about people who are sickened by anything, including various viruses. They are sick and evil.
My understanding is due to being in a state of emergency, our rights are temporarily halted giving the governments full reign to dictate what needs to happen in the best interest of everyone.
About the basketball hoops ~ that’s plain ol’ MEAN.
The mean-spiritedness of our adversary is on display in the sight of all.
The end result of taking God out of everything is exponential mean-ness – lethal lunacy.
On the plus side, who will sympathize with “officials” who so cruelly deprive already-much-deprived inner city youth of what is most likely their one healthy, positive outlet?
May the perpetrators of “mean-ness” receive due push-back.
Let mounting waves of powerful, righteous indignation roll!
Elocution about normative yearly deaths – caused by various flu viruses – from members of the political party responsible for the deaths of millions and millions of helpless, innocent, gestating children over several generations evokes less than zero credibility with me.
~*~
The mayors and governors may lose lawsuits in court ; it turns out that these draconian measures were against the law. These illegal mandates do not make sense and are not equally applied to all people. Now we hear that the correct way to quarantine is to only quarantine the person infected by this virus; it is illegal to quarantine people who are not infected. This applies to the U.S. Fauci was giving the wrong info to the President for a long time after the virus was discovered ; he said it was not very contagious. As I said before, experts can be wrong. The models were also wrong when applied to the U.S.
Are the police not violating their own rules by showing up like that? Total hypocrisy!
Andrew Cuomo, governor of N.Y. state refused to thank or meet with Franklin Graham after Samaritan’s Purse built a tent hospital in Central Park to help the over-crowded hospitals. The gay community lied to Cuomo telling him that Samaritan’s Purse did not allow gays into their hospital. There is so much hatred for Bible-believing Christians.