WHEN IS IT TIME TO RENDER UNTO GOVERNMENT THE THINGS THAT ARE GOD'S?
This incident took place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The pastor, Artur Pawlowski, told the Toronto Sun newspaper: “I grew up under communism and my grandparents lived under the Nazis. My family escaped the communists in Poland and first went to Greece and then to Canada to get away from it.” He said that, “he drew the line with guns in his church. “This is a place for worship and no place for weapons," he said. “We have people praying here. They were scaring the kids. This was Passover. This is Easter.”
It’s this posture that American pastors need to be prepared to take and the response they need to be willing to give wherever this sort of governmental, jack-booted harassment of churches occurs here. Satan has many “wiles” and “devices” (1 Cor. 2:11; Eph. 6:11) some of which are overt and some covert; some psychological, and some physical. If the sort of thing going on in this video doesn’t fit somewhere in the category of Satanic “devices” and “wiles” I don’t know what would. And if this isn’t of, inspired and perpetrated and driven by the devil, I don’t know what is. God’s Word tells Christians to:
“Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore
take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and
having done all, to stand” — Eph. 6:11-13).
It is true of course that ultimately the real enemy we wrestle against is not flesh and blood, but spiritual in nature (Eph. 6:12),. It’s true that the most indispensable and effective “weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Cor. 10:4). But this doesn’t mean, and was never intended to mean, that we shouldn’t lift up our voices and cry out against sin. The Bible doesn’t rule out any sort of resistance to evil by Christians. For example, The Bible doesn’t forbid Christians taking recourse to civil law when such recourse doesn’t conflict with biblical teaching. For example, the Bible tells us that it can be wrong to go to law against a fellow believer (1 Cor. 6:1-8). On the other hand, there is nothing to indicate that Paul sinned when as a Roman citizen he appealed to the civil law relative to his being persecuted for his faith (Acts 16:30-40).
Christian leadership in America needs to divest itself of, and dispel and disavow, any idea that they are taking any kind of “high road” by assuming and encouraging the position that there is some sort of virtue or supra-spirituality involved in Christians keeping their mouths shut and sitting on their hands in times like these while reminding one another of the very real and blessed reality that God is still on His throne and still in control. Jesus said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matt. 22:21). This implies that resistance is unavoidable whenever and wherever we might be commanded to render unto Caesar, in terms of obedience or anything else, that which clearly belongs to God. (See Acts 5:29; Rom. 6:16).
Satan uses human flesh and blood to do his work and attack the cause of Christ using every means spiritual, and material possible. Just so, Christians are to be the vessels, instruments, and agents of God to carry out and advance the cause of Christ on earth. Any confusion about this certainly doesn’t come from God, “For God is not the author of confusion” (1 Cor. 14:33), leaving only one other source for it, and that source is Satan himself.