For many of us, 2020 spun us around, threw off it’s gloves, and smacked us in the mouth. Many Christians were not ready for what happened this year. Civil magistrates told churches not to meet, and the pastors said “we must submit.” There was indeed a lot of submitting to governmental decrees and not a lot of submitting to God’s decrees. At first they told us it was a global health emergency and it was just for 15 days, then it was for a month, and now here we are still. Now some places are more open than others, and I am grateful to be in a mostly open place. But what all this revealed is that churches, by and large, had not adequately thought through biblical roles of governmental jurisdictions, and if they had, they either had a wrong view of said jurisdictions, or had no back bone to defy illegitimate decrees. On the one hand I want to be gracious, understanding, and longsuffering with my fellow ministers, so I have. On the other hand, I have seen far too many Christians who have desperately longed to partake of the means of grace and gather with the brethren this year but have been prevented from doing so because their pastors wouldn’t open the church doors and administer the Word, and it makes me righteously angry. We are called “ministers” because we’re supposed to be ministering something.<\/p>\n
When God called me to shepherd the flock of God among me, He called me to give my life to feed and protect His sheep. It was a call to not be scared. He put certain things in my jurisdiction to do, and those things I don’t have the authority not to do. I don’t have the authority to withhold the administering of the Word and Ordinances to those Christians whom it belongs to.<\/p>\n
When our civil magistrates told us that we couldn’t meet for worship, I didn’t have the authority to obey that. I am grateful that by God’s grace my co-elder and I had already studied, discussed, and had been on the same page with what the government’s role is and is not, and what ours is and is not. We had no idea this would be the year that the rubber met the road. I am not patting ourselves on the back, I am thanking God who did in fact know that this would be that year.<\/p>\n
But let us not think that we have just about made it out of this year and all will soon go back to the way it was before. Let us not think the beating is about done. I think God has actually been very gracious to give us the year that He has. I hope I am wrong here, but I think we have just been shown the enemy’s hand and 2020 was just the warm up. What’s coming could be more intense.<\/p>\n
So what do we do to prepare? We repent for where we have sinned, we open our eyes to what has just been run on us, we tactically prepare for how to deal with it, and we put on some manful courage. To that end, our church, Hope Baptist, is putting together a conference where we will deal with these things.<\/p>\n
The only thing that has been abused more than governmental power this year is Romans 13. As such, Romans 13 will be the meat of our conference. We won’t stop at the word “submit;” the text keeps going. We hope to give good expositions on this passage and shed light on a much abused text of Holy Writ. It did not used to be abused by our forefathers, and we hope to revive their old ways.<\/p>\n
We hope this conference will honor our God and King, our Sovereign Lord, and give Christ His crown rights. We hope this conference will be of great help to God’s people. I also hope that this conference will correct and embolden other pastors to do what is right. I know this conference will be a blessing and encouragement to many, a shot of courage for others, and others still who will be royally ticked off. So long as God gets the glory, so be it. If you haven’t took the gloves off yet, now is a good time to do so.<\/p>\n
More details will come as we get closer to that time, but here is what we’ve got so far:<\/p>\n
Saturday, January 16th, 2021. Hosted by Hope Baptist Church.<\/p>\n
Location 1001 N. Rogers Ave. Springfield, MO<\/p>\n
8am: Breakfast<\/p>\n
9am: Pastor Joshua Jenkins: “For Christendom: Christocracy and the Separation of Church and State”<\/p>\n
10am: Pastor Brandon Dodd will give an exposition of Romans 13.<\/p>\n
11am: Pastor Josh Eaton from Crosspoint Baptist Church in Caney Kansas will speak on applying the sword of Romans 13 to the issue of abortion.<\/p>\n
12am: Lunch<\/p>\n
1pm: Missouri State Senator Mike Moon will be speaking on Honoring Christ in the Legislature.<\/p>\n
2pm: Panel Discussion\/Q&A on a grab bag of topics chiefly including what it means to submit to the governing authorities. Panel moderated by Adam and Dave from the TAG Podcast.<\/p>\n
Event is free and Psalms and Hymns will be sung in between messages. There may also be some book giveaways.<\/p>\n
If you would like to be a sponsor of this event or have a booth please contact me.<\/p>\n
For Christendom!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For many of us, 2020 spun us around, threw off it’s gloves, and smacked us in the mouth. Many Christians were not ready for what happened this year. Civil magistrates told churches not to meet, and the pastors said “we must submit.” There was indeed a lot of submitting to governmental decrees and not a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":4249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,28],"tags":[1429,1428,557,565,678,699,819,1430,1426,1427],"class_list":{"0":"post-4248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"category-government","9":"tag-announce","10":"tag-conference","11":"tag-god","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-jenkins","14":"tag-joshua","15":"tag-mike","16":"tag-moon","17":"tag-trigger","18":"tag-warning","19":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2020\/11\/paul-before-agrippa.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4283,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/the-doctrine-of-the-lesser-magistrates\/","url_meta":{"origin":4248,"position":0},"title":"The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates","author":"Joshua Jenkins","date":"December 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"No Christian should take defiance to the civil authorities lightly. 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