Easter Sunday is coming up fast. Churches world-wide will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and proclaiming triumphant victory over sin and death. Very few will mention that His death and resurrection give men the power to be free in the physical here and now, not just in the spiritual or future sense. Even fewer will dare to say that this freedom means that we no longer need endure bondage to other men, who are even more evil than ourselves.

“Then, in February, 1932, again in Leningrad, many churches were closed simultaneously…” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Fast forward 88 years and paraphrase.

“Then, in March 2020, in the United States, many churches were closed simultaneously…”

History, it is said, does not repeat, but it often rhymes. To be sure, the circumstances are not the same, but the pattern is. What was once done in the totalitarian regime of Stalinist Soviet Union (USSR) is now being done here in the growing totalitarian regime of the United Socialist State of America (USSA).

Does it really matter whether a statist, centralized government closes churches to eliminate adversaries to the Communist doctrine or to eliminate adversaries to the modern-day doctrine of the New World Order, recast as The Great Reset? Does it really matter that there is not a great amount of ideological difference between Uncle Joe Stalin and Uncle Joe Biden, both of whom typify the description of megalomaniac? The fact is that Christian churches everywhere, IF they are true to the original mandate of Jesus Christ, DO pose a significant threat to power-brokers who are determined to destroy all opposition to their self-imposed rule.

I have written before (see here and here) about churches closing their doors because they were issued an order to do so, supposedly as a safeguard against the Dread Corona Virus which was going to kill us all unless we completely dismantled society as we knew it. I have nothing good to say about those pastors and church boards which instantly gave in to the ‘Edicts from on High’. Many of those “leaders” are still groveling in quivering puddles of obeisance. Neither do I have any respect for those church parishioners who exemplified, embodied, and exhibited the attitude of slavery at a moment’s notice. Pity, perhaps, but not respect.

Where is the courage which is supposed to be infused into a man of God? Maybe the more appropriate question to ask is this: “Who or what is God anyway?” Well, at least both God and Government begin with the same letters—Go, but from that point on they diverge widely. Jesus tells His disciples to go and follow His example in the power of His Spirit. The President (whoever that might be) tells everyone, disciples or not, to go and do as they are told. Or Else!

But, enough of the rant. Let’s go back to The Gulag and the lesson learned too late.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking:  what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?  Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?  [They] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!  If . . . if . . . we didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation . . . .  We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” — Solzhenitsyn

How far would the Statist cause in America have advanced if moral, courageous men had stood in the doors of their churches and declared that they would not be shut down nor shut up? What would have happened if the governors, mayors, and local health boards had experienced real resistance to their unlawful decrees and edicts, to the point of widespread refusal to obey them? What if…what if…? If this had occurred, might not the Cursed Machine be grinding to a halt even now?

Like Solzhenitsyn, we did not love our freedom enough. Unlike him, we have no excuse for being unaware and have not learned our lesson yet. Purely and simply, we deserve everything which is going to happen from here on out and many of us will have ample time to rue the day we did not resist the tyranny which came for us. The tyranny which came for us in the broad light of day, not even trying to hide its sin by resorting to the cover of darkness at midnight.

We must not be quiet or we will be silenced.