A church building in Mississippi was burnt down by arsonists for holding church services in defiance of stay at home orders. The arsonists, who were obviously spelling bee dropouts, also left graffiti in the parking lot denouncing the church faithful as "hypokrits."
At another Mississippi church, churchgoers were given $500 fines for attending a drive-in church service, while a drive-in Sonic 200 yards down the road had 25 cars.
In Kentucky, churchgoers were warned that police would take their license plate numbers so that they could be sentenced to 14 days under house arrest for attending church.
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has vowed that churches will be among the last things permitted to reopen, in spite of the fact that things like pot shops and abortion clinics have never been shutdown.
California's Governor Gavin Newsom has been sent a letter from the US Department of Justice chiding him for his obvious unequal treatment of California churches and his clear discrimination against them.
The Kansas State Supreme Court has established stare decisis by unanimously ruling that Kansas Governor Laura Kelly has the constitutional right to punish Kansans for attending church.
A recent op-ed in the Washington Post suggests that Christians' belief in eternal life is "a malignant delusion" that "devalues actual life" and presents a real threat to public safety, because Christians are less fearful of death, more willing to reopen our economy, and ready to return to normal life. Of course, this, as the Washington Post suggests and the Mississippi arsonists suppose, makes the church out to be pubic enemy number one when it comes to public safety.
In light of all of the above, which is by no means an exhaustive lists of the atrocities being perpetrated against the church in our country today, it is beyond me how America's evangelicals have shut their eyes to the ever-growing spirit of antichrist that is spreading throughout our land. Oh, I know many evangelicals are holding out hope of our irredeemable predicament being remedied by our president's recent declaration that houses of worship are “essential places that provide essential services.” These evangelicals will find great solace in Trump's bravado to override governors who refuse to permit churches to reopen in their states, in spite of the fact that Trump has no constitutional power to do so.
Still, Trump's johhny-come-lately opposition of states' shutdown of churches, has all the trappings, as did his initial lockdown of our country, of being another knee-jerk reaction motivated primarily by political expediency. Christians cannot, as well as must not, overlook the fact that all that has happened in America since March 16, when President Trump locked down our nation to stop the spread of the coronavirus, has transpired under Trump's watch. In addition, we must not fail to discern that Trump's primary motivation in all that he has done has been the saving of his political skin, not of our churches nor of their witness in our society. Our failure to discern the times in which we live, will not only result in our deception, but also in our inability to know what we ought to do (1 Chronicles 12:32). May God raise up in America's present-day churches what they are presently sorely lacking, "children of Issachar"!