“Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:” (Isaiah 55:6)
“I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;” (Prov. 1:26)
I recall watching a short video clip of some nurses seeking the Almighty’s assistance from a helipad on the top of a hospital, while the doors of the churches remained locked. I personally witnessed the pastor of a church posting flyers in a local business on the importance of corporeal worship, of the gathering of the saints together, and then the next week locking the doors of his church.
As far as I know, and I could be incorrect, there were no hastily formed laws passed that required those doors to be shuttered, they were called mandates, and as such were no more than intense suggestions.
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1st Cor. 15:55)
Apparently, even for some of the saved, death was too close for comfort in those days.
And then when those days expired, when the all clear was nonchalantly offered, they flung the doors open and began to behave as if a great victory had been achieved, as if all was now back to normal.
“If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.” (Prov. 24:10)
Many will never return to those churches, they heard those preaching that those who have been born-again are to stand on the Rock of their salvation, yet those who preached those words fled. “Behold,” they would quote, “I stand at the door and knock,” yet they locked those doors.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4 was the sermon they offered online, for they feared, excuses abounded, but few if any with a broken and contrite heart, those days are over, best to just move on, chalk them up as nothing more than a minor mistake, return to the pulpit, return to the pews, and once again place that smile on your face as you worship the Almighty in the confines of the safety of that building with a cross in it somewhere, that place most agreed should be boarded up when the danger was a little too close for comfort.
“And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” (Job 2:4)
And what did all those give who agreed to lock those doors? The witness that they trust in the Living God no matter the circumstances they find themselves in.
What did they reveal? That the consequences of the possibility of losing their life for His glory at that time was too great a burden to bear, that being ostracized and hated by the world if they did not lock those doors was too heavy a yoke to bear.
That Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” is a wonderful verse, as long as that life lived for Christ is one of the safety and security of the flesh.
And this Sunday morning as I pen these words those that remained faithful to their church are not giving one thought that they were not faithful to the Savior in those days, but instead they ran and hid, put on that mask, received, many of them, the promise of safety by rolling up their sleeves, and waited, separated by six feet of distance, for the world to tell them when they could return to, I dare say here, worship whom they claim to serve.
“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Heb. 10:25)
Unless of course there is the possibility of pain, of suffering, of death.
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?” (Gal. 3:1)
The world did, and it will do so again.
Those who will come after us, those who will not love their lives to the death, will not see those this short letter speaks of as their example to follow, and those whom this letter is written about must contemplate this question, was their hand ever on the plow in the first place.
