Preparing Our Hearts to Disobey

Morning, everyone. I thought it might be good for us to meditate a little bit upon the confusing days we are in on the subject of who do we listen to. Give you a little bit of history. It's a portion of history that is very seldom talked about, but during the, just before the Revolutionary War in the 1760s, Great Britain was the leadership of the United States or the 13 colonies. And they were the authority of the day, but when the people began to rebel against the taxes and different things, they didn't appreciate about the British government being our leaders. They, of course, rebelled, and the Christian people found themselves in a contrary, not knowing who to believe. And so, north of Philadelphia was a large group of Anabaptist people who had settled there from Germany and Switzerland and different places, and they tried to be neutral. They tried very hard to be neutral, even though they were loyal to the government that they were, was their overseers, which was the British government, and yet the United States or the Americans were rebelling against that, so there they sat and not knowing who to follow or who to believe. Well, when, of course, that led to the Revolutionary War and the rebels won and established the United States of America, and then they came after those who hadn't agreed with them that professed neutrality. And what they did was come up there in the German town, various portions there in the Franconia area, where the Anabaptist farmers had been living and farming, and they came in and confiscated their property, their furniture, even in some cases their wood stove, and had an auction and sold it all out from under them as a punishment for not agreeing with the rebels, or which became the United States then. And the Christian people found themselves in a quandary, in a very hard time, and they had to suffer persecution during that time by the new government of the United States because they had not agreed with them during the conflict and during the Revolutionary War. Well, today, whether you know it or not, but we find ourselves in a similar situation. We have the federal government in Washington, D.C. that is telling us one thing. We have the local governor of the various states are telling us something different. And then we have the local authorities who kind of carry out whatever they think in our local situation. And so I hope for all of you that you can have a bit of patience as we try to find our way through who to believe. But just recently, last night or this morning, I found out in the state of Missouri, the Democratic governor there is asking for the registration of every member and every attendee of a church. They would like to trace sickness, disease as their excuse. And so they want the registration of everyone who is a member of a church. Well, without a doubt, numerous Democrats and others that are in agreement with them are trying to use this sickness as to advance their socialistic agenda. They're trying to get major control and erode the freedoms that we have enjoyed for 250 plus years. So here we are, what do we do? Who do we believe? How much do we submit to in the midst of these things? And I only make this appeal that we as a brotherhood in effort of Christian fellowship can find our way through the fog and know what to do. And that's one of the reasons we're gathered here this morning is because we made a choice as to having the sympathies of the federal government which rules over the state government. And then finally the local authorities we contacted that gave us this freedom because it is our constitutional federal right that they should not interfere with worship services as to these kind of things. And yet we understand the severity of the disease and we have to find our way through that. But what I want to do in this little talk here is to prepare your hearts for this kind of confusion and finding our way through it. If I was in and out of the Russian brethren who immigrated to Germany 40 years ago and more, if you would have told them that they needed to register their membership, you would have heard quite a storm in the unregistered Baptist and Russian Mennonite groups that had immigrated to Germany that had been part of the non-registered church in Russia. It would be interesting for you to hear their perspective. But I'm here to say this morning, prepare yourself for the possibility of disobeying some form of government. And then on top of that, we must obey God rather than men. So our first and greatest authority is God in God's word who has already commanded that we do not forsake the assembly of ourselves together, even so much the more as the day approaches. So may God help us. But I pray all of you can find your way through this fog as we call it, whether it'll remain or whether they will win to get a much greater control and erode our liberties. That is still not sure where that'll go. But may we prepare our hearts to, even if we have to disobey or suffer for Christ's sake to be able to do so. Thank you.