Medical Freedom Rally

Spokane, September 25, 2021

 

I’ve been asked to speak on behalf of many of your pastors in our community.  But first, I want to ask any pastors here today to stand/join me on the stage today. 

These are some of the more courageous spiritual leaders in our community.  We aren’t people who are looking to be controversial but neither will we be cowed into silence about God and His truth.  Just like you, we are sinners who make mistakes.  Just like you, our judgment is sometimes flawed and our wisdom incomplete.  But unlike you, we will answer to God for how we have led you, His people.  We will give account one day for how we have faithful taught God’s Word or unfaithfully misused it. 

So, I stand before you today, fearing God first and foremost.  I stand before you today wanting to be true to what God has stated in His word and clear in how that applies to this issue of health freedom.  I’m not a medical doctor.  I’m not an attorney.  But I am a pastor of people who has dedicated his life to Christ and to helping people understand how to apply the truths and principles of God’s word to life. 

You will not find the word “vaccine” in the Bible.  Neither will you find “Covid-19”, “medical mandate” or any host of terms we’re addressing today.  So, lacking any direct declaration of God’s Word on this matter, we are left to apply the clear biblical principles and truths about God, human life, health and our bodies to our present situation. 

First, we must not be surprised that a culture and government that is increasingly rejecting the truths which our founding fathers recognized as the foundation of liberty and human rights will try to restrict those liberties and replace those rights with government control.  The preamble to our Declaration of Independence acknowledges that a belief in “nature’s God” and “laws of nature” or Natural Law as we now refer to it, is critical to the formation of a just government and society.   When our Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” our forefathers were recognizing that no nation on earth is able to build or sustain a truly just and equitable government unless they do so recognizing that God, not they, are the ultimate Judge, Authority and Arbiter of truth.  So, when we talk about what is “loving” towards our neighbor, we need to ask how GOD defines ‘loving.’  When we talk about how we are to use our bodies and how we are not to use them, we must ask what GOD says our bodies were made for.  So here we go!

1. God is clear that every human being is of equal and intrinsic value no matter how young or old, how small or large, how smart or simple, how gifted or plain, how red, yellow, black or white we are.  From the first moment God brings a soul into existence at conception (Psalm 139:13-16; Isaiah 44:2; 49:1, 5; Jeremiah 1:5) to the last moment he takes their soul in death, every person deserves to be treated with all the love and dignity God showed in creating them.  We ALL bear the image of God and that is what gives us all our rights and liberties, not other humans and certainly not some government bureaucrats.  (Gen. 1:26-27)
2. These bodies we inhabit for a few short years were designed to be the very residence of God himself.  The Scripture tells us that if you are in right relationship with God and have His Holy Spirit living in you, that you are “the temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you…,” the residence of God himself ( I Cor. 3:16 & 6:19).  As such, it follows that no one has a right to require you to engage in actions that you believe may compromise, defile, degrade, destroy or harm your body OR are against your free, informed will and choice.  Only tyrants and slave holders believe they have that right over other people, regardless of the perceived or believed benefits they may think it brings to others. 

Author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote in 1948 just after WWII, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.”  [Found at Quote by C. S. Lewis - Liberty Quotes (libertytree.ca); in his book God In the Dock, 1948.] 

Your right to decline medication for yourself, particularly medication that is experimental or has known dangers of possible serious injury and death, is inviolable.  This right to bodily integrity has, both regularly and repeatedly, been long recognized by our U.S. Supreme Court. 

3. For many Christ-followers, and even some people of other religions, the fact that all of the currently used Covid vaccines have been either developed, tested, manufactured or produced using stem cells derived from the tissue of aborted children renders these vaccines morally unacceptable to many of us and must be sufficient religious grounds for both our government and an employer to grant religious and conscience exemptions. 

I will be the first to acknowledge that not all sincere Christians believe they are defiling their own bodies by receiving these vaccines.  Some will contend that it is akin to receiving something good, say an organ transplant, from someone who was killed by a horrible means—a drunk driver or an assassin’s bullet.  We are free to disagree.

But regardless of your belief on this point, to require that someone else take a substance into their body which is morally objectionable to them in order to continue employment is a violation of individual conscience, of religious freedom and of numerous long-standing laws of our land.

4. Having said that, the Word of God is equally clear that, when we as Christ-followers feel compelled to engage in civil disobedience—to disobey some human law so that we can continue to obey God’s divine law—we must be willing to suffer under the unjust human authorities over us for that decision. The O.T. prophet DANIEL is our mentor and model in this:  he went willingly to what was certainly going to be his death (baring divine intervention) just to avoid violating his conscience (not the Mosaic Law even), which called him to maintain a 3-times daily practice of prayer.

CHURCH…people of God…and even you who may be non-faith patriots, we must not be surprised or dismayed when we suffer for obeying either God, our conscience or both because we cannot obey our authorities.  And we must do so with a charitable spirit—not hating those who abuse us but praying for them, loving them and showing them both the kindness and patience of God that may lead them to repentance. 

5. If we are sincere in our beliefs about the imperative nature of medical freedom and bodily integrity, we must be willing to suffer with those who are suffering for their like-conviction. This will mean we must be ready to help coworkers, fellow believers, family members and friends who lose their jobs due to their stand on this issue.  As a Christian, if I see an injustice, I am called to oppose it.  When I see others being fired, I feel obligated to support them, whether by risking my own job for them or helping them when they lose theirs. 
   1. Those of you who own businesses needing workers: make these people who will be paying the employment price your next employees. 
   2. Those of you who have friends and family members who lose their jobs and careers: help them make it through the transition to a new job or career in every way possible. 
6. Finally, to those who would try to tell us that taking the vaccine is the “loving thing for us to do” for our neighbors, may I say two things?
   1. Paying a price to preserve God-given freedoms in this nation, whether my neighbor recognizes their importance or not, is more loving than caving to fading social and legal pressure by temporary government officials.
   2. Actually contracting and suffering through Covid (as many of us have) in order to acquire natural immunity that endures longer and is more effective than engineered vaccines is more loving of my neighbor than getting a vaccine whose efficacy fades over time, which still may leave me susceptible to the disease and which doesn’t protect me from being a carrier of the virus and infecting others unknowingly.

Thank you for your attention.  May God bless you…and may God, despite our many failings, bring spiritual revival of soul to the United States of America!