Which is right in God’s eyes?
Well here we are again! A scroll through my morning news headlines quickly comes to a screeching halt with this headline from the National Post: Federal commission declares Christmas holiday is ‘religious intolerance’. The subtitle reads, The Canadian Human Rights Commission… argued that a day off on Christmas is ‘discriminatory’. Wow! Are they trying to ban Christmas? Apparently “the celebration of Christmas is evidence of Canada’s ‘colonialist’ religious intolerance”. Does anyone see the irony here? They want to do away with the Christmas holiday, as well as Easter holidays (Good Friday and Easter Monday) because they are discriminatory. As of March 2023, we added a holiday called “Truth and Reconciliation Day”. Christmas and Easter are all about truth and reconciliation – the well accepted fact that Jesus, the Son of God, God very God in the flesh, the only Way, the only Truth, and the only Life came to planet Earth to reconcile lost sinners back to God through His sacrificial atoning death on a cruel roman cross. The greatest good news story of all history has succumbed to the ‘woke’ culture of our day and is on the verge of being erased! Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Has Canada finally slammed the door on God once and for all? We’ve taken the Bible out of schools, we have exchanged truth for a lie in the whole area of sex and gender, we have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness, and now we want to do away with the Gospel message, upon which our country was founded. Lord have mercy! It is not good for a nation to erase God! “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.” (Prov. 14:34). Is there any greater sin than a nation slamming the door on the God who has brought them into being? Friends, we are already seeing the effects in this nation of rejecting God as described in Romans 1. Canada is quickly degrading into depravity, receiving the due penalty for its error!
The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden.
The Lord is known by his acts of justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.
The wicked go down to the realm of the dead, all the nations that forget God. (Psa. 9:15-17)
We have already seen an aversion from wishing someone “Merry Christmas”, to instead using “happy holidays”, so as not to offend the non-Christian. The ‘speech police’ are actively pursuing those ‘haters’ who use discriminatory language. Are we soon going to be adding ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christmas’ to that list of hate speech? What about in Quebec where it is illegal for public servants to wear religious symbols in government institutions. Yet, the whole province celebrates “Saint John the Baptist day” as a statutory holiday! We have lost our minds! People of God, we are to submit to governing authorities according to Romans 13 as long as they are submitted to God. But when those authorities are no longer acting on behalf of God and His standards and have kicked God out of office and off His throne, we must submit to God and not man. In these last days of men being “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.” (2Tim. 3:2-5). In his final words to Timothy Paul says, “avoid such men as these” – literally…turn away from them, shun them, have nothing to do with them.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I fear that we are rapidly approaching days of persecution that will separate the followers of Jesus from the lukewarm Christians. As in Acts 4 when the disciples are told not to use the name of Jesus, we, like the true disciples of old, need to have the resolve to state, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to Him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard”(Acts 4:19-20). They may try to take Christmas and Christ out of the nation, but they will never take Him out of His true followers. It is time for us to rise up with boldness and courage, and pray prayers that Father loves to answer. Let us pray in the Spirit, prayers like that recorded in Acts 4, and watch what God will do with His saints who stand up for Jesus:
On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:“ ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?The kings of the earth rise upand the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Fill us with your Spirit Lord Jesus!
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