"And another one gone, and another one gone, another one bites the dust."
Another day, another church burns down, and another reminder of exactly where Christians are and who and what we're up against right now. So: "Ooooh, watcha gonna do?"
Sadly, it’s a familiar refrain these days, but...
Here we go again.
On Sunday, June 9, the iconic and historic St. Anne’s Anglican Church in downtown Toronto’s west end was completely gutted by fire.
The church, built in 1908, was a unique example of the Eastern Byzantine style of church architecture. It was also the home of the only religiously-themed artwork produced by Canada’s historically renown Group of Seven artists.
That architecture’s completely destroyed, save for the charred stone and brick left standing; and that irreplaceable, original and unique artwork is now lost forever.
Local and national media rushed to immediately declare there was nothing suspicious about the fire.
Despite that, a police and fire services investigation into the cause of the blaze is still ongoing; the media is tight-lipped about it; and as of this writing, no information about the investigation’s findings to date, has been made public.
According to an article in the Toronto Sun:
“So far, what is known about this mysterious blaze is that it burned hot and rapidly.
“‘It was fully engulfed by the time fire fighters got there,’ one Toronto Fire insider said.
“So what created the elements to make a large brick structure with wood interior go up that fast?”
Now over 2 weeks after the fact, there are still no answers to that question.
The Toronto Star offers up the explanation that because the roof of the church caved in on the structure, the instability of everything remaining makes the site unsafe for investigators. A private salvage company has been commissioned to remove as much debris (along with any evidence of arson?) as possible, to make it safe for investigators to do their job. The article concludes the results of the investigation won’t be known for a number of weeks.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Because recent history’s taught us it’s no hysterical exaggeration to be immediately suspicious any time we now hear the words “church” and “burning” in the news, this is neither an isolated nor an infrequent incident; but only the latest in a string of church burnings, vandalizations and attacks that have resulted in 47 churches destroyed by arson in Canada since the summer of 2021.
And with those ruined or significantly damaged by vandalism or destructive attack, that number’s now reached over 100 in just 3 years.
Readers of this Substack will recall in April 2023—in an article on the rise of liberal-woke, government/media/organized-crime/activist anti-Christian reaction to the current wave of Christian revival everywhere—we discussed the burning of one of the most famous churches in the world: the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France.
That’s when we also told you how the scandalously suggestive and zero-evidence-based, Catholic Church Residential Schools/Mass Grave psy-op narrative unleashed by the Liberal government in the summer of 2021, was the spark that ignited the wave of arson, vandalism, violence and destruction against Canadian churches.
To which the burning down of St. Anne’s Church can now reasonably be added, in the absence of any information to the contrary.
In fact, the absence of any information to the contrary for over 2 weeks and counting, is probably all the information we need to support our natural assumption, given the current socio-political climate in Canada and the circumstances under discussion here.
The owner and CEO of Rebel News (the most visible and active of Canada’s literal handful of remaining independent media outlets), Ezra Levant, visited the site on the day of the fire. In a lengthy X-Twitter post, he remarked:
“I don’t know if it was arson, or just an accidental fire. The church was old; it’s in a high crime community. But the fact that a major church burns to the ground and the entire political class just shrugs, shows that there’s a double standard when it comes to protecting religion in Canada.”
What’s he talking about?
In that Substack we just cited, we told you how, when asked about the rash of church burnings sweeping across the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shrugged it off with a non-committal statement; in which he said the church burnings may not be all right, but the anger behind them was “understandable,” appearing to tacitly approve of them while not unequivocally condemning them.
Should anybody be surprised?
A TNC News article contains a whole list of public comments made by prominent Canadian public figures, not simply dismissing the church burnings and destructions, but enthusiastically supporting them and encouraging even more; with comments like “Burn it all down!” “Tear it all down!” “Burn the churches all down!” And one even going so far as to say the arson wave isn’t crime, but legitimate acts of “decolonization,” supported and protected by government treaty.
In case someone says, “Well, that’s just liberal-woke Canada for ya! Haha!” Hold your judgmental horses there, pardner.
As it turns out, according to an article in Gateway Pundit from Feb. 25, 2024, in the US...
“Experts are warning a ‘skyrocketing’ number of attacks on Christian churches ‘mirrors the general anti-Christian tenor of the Biden administration’s policies, at home and abroad,’ according to a new report from the Washington Stand that detailed how such incidents of violence have exploded 800% over six years.”
Worthy of citing in detail, the piece goes on to explain:
“Some 915 ‘acts of hostility’ have been identified as being launched against churches from January 2018 to November 2023.
“There were 709 acts of vandalism, 135 attempted or accomplished arsons, 32 bomb threats and nearly two dozen gun-related incidents.
“Also, assault, threats and deliberate disturbances of worship...
“During the first 11 months of 2023, there were 436 ‘acts of hostility’ against churches in America, including 315 vandalisms, 75 arsons, 20 bomb threats and 12 instances of ‘satanic graffiti...’
“Perhaps the most shocking act of anti-Christian bias took place last March 27, when transgender-identifying Audrey Hale opened fire at the Nashville Covenant School, operated by the Covenant Presbyterian Church, killing six people, including three young students...
“On July 17, a man threw Molotov cocktails through the windows of Living Stones Church in Reno, Nevada. In March, four people fired 50 rounds into Clearview Mennonite Church of Versailles, Missouri.”
Frequent fliers on KFCXPress Airlines may expect all this is leading to another of Gene Kaye’s Matthew 23-style, anti-lousy-authority rants.
You may be surprised by what you’re going to read next.
We’re resigned to the fact the world in the hands of the wicked sucks, and all the rest of us just have to deal with it. We’re also encouraged by God’s true and faithful word that teaches us: “Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong.” (Psalm 37:1)
That same true and faithful word assures us in Colossians 3:25 that “…if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites.”
Because God’s prophet tells us in Isaiah 61:8, “For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing.”
No sincere believer in and follower of the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah, should be surprised, astounded, offended or frightened by any of what we see going on today.
Because the Lord himself told us it was going to be this way.
And, as the spiritual assembly comprising the Body of Messiah commonly called the Church...
That over the course of over 2000 years since its inception in Jerusalem on the Pentecost following the Lord’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension...
Has overall degenerated into a sinful and spiritually unfruitful corruption of the Lord’s vision for our collective being...
That’s barely recognizable as anything the Lord Jesus and his apostles and the Old Testament spanning about an additional 2000 years of the experience of God’s word in the world, teaches us...
We’re getting—with everything we’ve just described above and as people claiming to worship in his name—exactly what our proud, ignorant, arrogant disobedience, rebelliousness and disregard for faithfulness and obedience to God’s word and the sovereignty of his will, deserve.
There are two reasons arguing against getting all lathered up into hysterically enraged, righteously indignant froths over rising Christophobic violence.
First, James 1:20:
“...human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”
Second, Romans 12:19 (citing Deuteronomy 32:35):
“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”
Because what we really should be doing is hanging our heads in remorseful shame, getting on our knees, and praying to the God we claim to love, whose word we claim to keep and whose commands we claim to follow, to forgive us for our sins and lead us back to repentance and redemption.
Because 1 John 1:9 tells us:
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
What’s more, all the church burnings and all the anti-Christian violence rising like the rolling swell of a tsunami right now, are only confirmation of everything the Lord Yeshua warned us about through what he told his disciples it was going to be like for them in their day, and for us in ours.
In John 15:18-19, we learn:
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
The sinful, proud world—concerned with itself and its own power and pleasure—hates God, hates the Lord Jesus, hates his faithful, and hates everything associated with the faith that exposes the world’s spiritual emptiness, impotence and moral bankruptcy.
And whenever conditions are favorable for it, it expresses that hatred in exactly the ways we see it being expressed in everything we’ve been describing in this article.
In Matthew 24:9-13, the Lord Yeshua tells the disciples how that’s all going to look when the time comes:
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
That last clause offers the hope on which to focus that’s always there for us.
The Lord tells us we’re going to be hated for being his faithful, and that we’re going to be persecuted for it. He also tells us not to lose heart or hope, because he’s with us all the way through it to the victorious end.
The victory that’s guaranteed by the work he finished on the shameful Roman execution stake.
He also comforts and fortifies us with reassurances like in Matthew 5:10-12:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
His apostle, Simon/Peter, while repeating that reassurance in 1 Peter 4:16-17, also warns us at the end of the passage that:
“...it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household.”
So while the persecution we may suffer comes about because the world hates God’s faithful, some of it’s also the judgment God allows to be unleashed on us by the world, as a correction for our unfaithfulness and disobedience.
In the Seven Letters to the Churches of Asia Minor from the Book of Revelation, the common theme throughout them is that a lot of the flack like we see happening right now, we’re going to get because of our own proud, arrogant, ignorant, sinful disobedience and rebelliousness against God’s word and his will.
In every letter (except to the suffering church at Smyrna and the faithful church at Philadelphia), the Lord praises them for the good they’ve accomplished, while rebuking them for their sins and warning them to repent of them before they’re forced to face God’s wrathful judgment as a result.
In the letter to the church at Smyrna faithfully and obediently suffering Roman persecution, he comforts and encourages them (and by their example, us as well), in Revelation 2:10:
“Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.”
In the letter to the church at Thyatira—along with Laodicea, the two churches representing the most sinful degeneration and departures from the Lord’s true faith—he warns in Revelation 2:20-23:
“Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.”
And in the letter to the church at Laodicea, he wraps it all up in Revelation 3:19 with the simple conclusion to be drawn by all of us from all of the above:
“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.”
The Moral of the Story?
If we want to be true believers in the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah—and a true, spiritual assembly of them—in anything but name only, we have to repent of our proudly sinful, individual and collective departures from his word and will, and return to faithfulness and obedience to them on the model of the Lord Jesus, if we want to be back in God’s favor again.
Because like the LORD tells King Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:14 about disobedient Israel:
“...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
The Lord Yeshua’s letters to the churches in Revelation is a long-form reiteration of that same principle applying to his church and his faithful.
We all know what the Lord tells us about what each of us individually has to do to receive the gift of his grace (salvation) and the blessings associated with it (sanctification).
Ezekiel 34:1-10, Matthew 7:15-16, Acts 20:28-31 and Jude 1:3-4 all explain to us clearly and precisely where the problems arise in our collective life as a spiritual assembly in the Lord’s name.
About our own personal accountability and responsibility to straighten up and learn to fly right as individual believers before it’s too late, the parable of the faithful servant in the Lord’s lesson about watchfulness in Luke 12:35-48 is one to which to look.
If we’re calling ourselves believers in the Lord Jesus and carelessly sinning like devils while we do it under his name, time to take stock and take right action.
About our collective accountability and responsibility to straighten up and learn to fly right as a spiritual assembly in the Lord’s name before it’s too late, the words of the apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 5:12 are a good place to start forming a plan of action:
“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.’”
If we’re calling ourselves a spiritual assembly in the name of the Lord Jesus, but our church leaders are women, or men wearing pink clerical clothing; our churches are plastered with BLM, LGBTQ banners and Pride colors, and; we conform more to the sinful world that hates us than to the holy and righteous God who loves us, time to take stock and take right action.
None of any of this is to suggest the hatred of Christians and the persecutions and violence to which it’s increasingly leading these days, is all right; because obviously it’s not.
What it is saying is what we see going on today in the hatred and violence against Christians, is nothing compared to what it’ll be when the program really gets under way. This is just the preview of what’s in store for those of us who don’t smarten up in time.
Meanwhile, if we’re faithful and obedient believers and are getting persecuted by the world, the Lord Yeshua warned us that’s the way it was going to be, and gives us the full power of God’s omnipotence, love and grace to lead, strengthen and protect us through it.
If we’re not (faithful and obedient, that is, as individuals and as a spiritual assembly), and do nothing about it, what we see and what we get as a result is exactly what we deserve.
(Photo Credits: Patrick Morrell/CBC; StShank, Getty Images/iStockphoto;)
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