Covid=19, Governments & Baptist Meetings

Posted by whatyareckon on April 13, 2020
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The Australian Federal Government has done much the same as the USA telling churches not to meet but rather doing their meeting via Zoom etc. I found what Pastor Brandeburg had to say regarding the subject interesting.

He wrote ‘The government is not the friend of churches.  A conspiracy of Satan exists against the church as part of his war against God.  I see religious liberty in America disappearing.  Is this Covid-19 shelter-in-place, no gatherings above five or ten, a part of the overall plan to stop churches?  Or is it spiritually a means by which Satan disrupts the church, the churches and their leaders sending a message that assembling isn’t essential?

I don’t want this post to be a problem for churches.  People read here whose pastors might be leading their churches to meet against government orders.  Their people could quote me against them.  If my pastor led the church to assemble, I’d assemble with them and figure out a way with my parents living with us.  I am a pastor, and we’re not meeting.  We’ve been livestreaming.  I have received comments here, which I’ve not published, excoriating me about that.  One implied that we wouldn’t visit someone in our church dying with the virus, which isn’t true at all.  I don’t know of anyone in our church, who has caught the disease, but I digress.  That’s not what I’m writing about.
If your church is meeting, good for you.  We’re not.  I’m not even going to offer a scriptural defense myself for why we’re not assembling.  I don’t fear the virus.  We made the choice right away without a feeling of pressure at all on me.  We shut down our school on a Friday, met on a Sunday for the last time, and then stopped meeting on a Wednesday.  Tomorrow is our fourth Sunday.
Several different sites online posted this page from Richard Baxter in the 17th century about church attendance during a time of pestilence.
Baxter wasn’t a Baptist.  I became curious about Baptists during the era of the Spanish flu (1918-1920).  Google Books offers material.  The History of the Wingate Baptist Church, 1810-2009 reads:

Related to this concern for member’s behavior, the church returned to its old custom of having members appear in person “concerning offenses” instead of sending another person to do so.  In October 1918 services were called off due to the “Spanish Influenza Situation.”

The Memorial Sketch of the First Swedish Baptist Church (St. Paul, MN) explains, speaking of some revival meetings that started there:

In October the meetings were held with large attendance.  Just then an epidemic of Spanish influenza broke out in the city.  Public places were closed, among them the tabernacle.  In January 1919, it was reopened and meetings were resumed.

The church closed down meetings for a few months, it seems.  The book, Baptists in Oregon, accounts:

[A]ll the churches in the State were forced on government order to suspend services for a time because of the Spanish influenza epidemic. The McMinnville First Baptist Church conducted no services from October 17 through November 13, 1918 as was the case with other congregations for similar periods of time.

The Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1918) reports:

Most of the churches were closed during the epidemic of Spanish Influenza , but in spite of that, a spirit of revival has existed.

Finally, December 22, 1918, “church services resumed after being closed for 11 weeks on account of an epidemic of the Spanish influenza.”

I’m writing this only to say that there is precedent for not meeting.  I don’t mind talking about the theological aspects of this, what the Bible teaches.  If men think they can meet, I’m supportive of their gathering.

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