Do Church Leaders Lack the Courage of Their Convictions?

 There is more at work in the vaccine mandates, the mask mandates, and the desire to vaccinate every single person in the world.  And while certain people with certain ideologies perceive that they will gain power, it is not them that we resist. What Michael C. Hurley points out in COVID-19 and the Smoke of Satan, we fight against powers and principalities of evil.

For several years until only recently, I resided in the great city of London. I was there when Imperial College terrorized the world with a projected 3.5-percent infection fatality rate for COVID-19, after which the British prime minister, followed by a hapless American president and leaders around the world, decided to lock healthy people in their homes indefinitely. I was there when the archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic bishops of Britain pleaded with the government to close the churches. I was there when the Church of England forbade its priests to answer the urgent call of the NHS for additional volunteer chaplains to minister to the sick and dying, for fear that soothing and saving those dying souls might endanger the mortal lives of those priests. It was then that I knew that this was no ordinary crisis, nor was it "about a virus."

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For starters, there is the never-before-in-history decision of the worldwide Catholic Church, to say nothing of the worldwide Anglican communion, to shut its doors and abandon the flock out of the fear of mortal death, which the Bible plainly tells us is Satan's stock in trade.

There is no possible explanation for a decision by prelates of the Church to refuse Christ's injunction to Peter, "feed my sheep," that does not end in abject disobedience. There is no benign explanation for the willful decision to deny a starving world the imperishable bread of heaven, which is the Eucharist, and exchange it for the perishable bread of this world, which is the fleeting illusion of physical health and material comfort that the bishops sought to purchase by closing the churches. It was an astonishing, utter, and total abdication of the most obvious and fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. If we cannot recognize Satan in a conspicuous, unapologetic, worldwide abdication of the Faith by the princes of the Church, we have no hope of recognizing him in our own lives.

But there is more. There is a kind of spiritual blindness that has descended over the Church and the world that is eerily apocalyptic in its own right. Not only have the prelates of the Church abdicated the Christian faith, but they appear to be unaware that they have done so. They now cheerily pass the collection plate and propose to carry on as though what has just happened was perfectly normal, necessary, and done out of their "love" for their fellow man. Other bishops demonstrate an even more profound blindness, now proposing to withhold the sacraments of eternal life from those who cannot produce proof of having received a vaccine to protect their mortal lives. What hope of salvation would the leper, whom Jesus touched with his bare hands in violation of Jewish law, have had in the hands of these frightened hirelings?

When I was a child, there was a radio program called "The World Tomorrow" with Herbert W. Armstrong that attempted to use the Bible to scare the bejesus out of listeners, and of course ask for donations so they could continue to scare the bejesus out of listeners. I fell for Armstrong's schtick for a while, but eventually outgrew it. But like Hurley I do wonder if we are seeing the end times.

Understand that Jesus never promised to save your physical life. Indeed, he promised that his Apostles would suffer for their faith and die, but would live in heaven with Him.  But what we should understand is that we all deserve to go to hell.  But by his great grace, we may be saved.  Halleluiah.  But what the prelates of the Church have done is shown the Devil, by this fear, is an extreme lack of faith.  They lack the courage of their convictions.