Juno News - Pastor speaks out after Ontario government locks his church’s doors

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:06.580 We've had over the last more than a year now,

00:00:09.640 what are we talking about here, 13, 14 months,

00:00:12.060 a number of churches that have been forced

00:00:14.360 along with other places of worship

00:00:16.300 into this yo-yoing of restrictions.

00:00:19.460 They can operate, then they have to shut down,

00:00:21.640 and it goes back and forth.

00:00:23.240 And all of this has been, many people argue,

00:00:25.820 a complete violation of religious freedom.

00:00:29.140 Now, governments, including in Ontario,

00:00:31.420 have been laying a number of charges against churches.

00:00:34.260 They have the ability to fight these in court,

00:00:36.380 but you can't fight in court necessarily as easily

00:00:40.020 when your building is locked.

00:00:42.420 This is what happened to Trinity Bible Chapel.

00:00:45.140 The Attorney General of Ontario went to court

00:00:47.320 and asked for an injunction to literally lock

00:00:49.780 the pastors and congregation out of the church.

00:00:52.720 A court granted that.

00:00:54.440 They are locked out right now until Saturday,

00:00:57.200 and this could potentially be renewed.

00:00:59.140 The pastor for the church in southwestern Ontario,

00:01:02.300 Pastor Jacob Rayom, joins me on the line now.

00:01:05.320 Pastor, good to talk to you.

00:01:06.400 Thanks for being with me today.

00:01:07.980 It's an honour to be with you.

00:01:08.960 Thank you, Andrew.

00:01:09.780 Now, you would normally be doing this interview

00:01:11.840 from inside your church,

00:01:13.320 but you can't even get there as a pastor right now

00:01:16.540 to do administrative work.

00:01:17.980 Am I correct?

00:01:19.100 Right.

00:01:19.420 The locks have been changed,

00:01:20.560 and there's signs on the door saying

00:01:23.200 that we've been ordered out of the building.

00:01:25.700 And this isn't just a ban on having a service.

00:01:29.700 This is a ban on you going in.

00:01:32.120 Were you given notice to go in

00:01:33.920 and get things that you had in there, at least?

00:01:36.860 Yeah, so the court order came on Friday,

00:01:39.220 late Friday afternoon,

00:01:40.200 and we were given until, I believe,

00:01:42.400 two o'clock on Saturday

00:01:43.520 to do what we had to do.

00:01:46.180 This is the second time we've been before the courts

00:01:48.320 about having our building locked,

00:01:49.740 so we were prepared to do this.

00:01:53.860 Yeah, we were prepared to pack things up.

00:01:55.900 And the timing of this is, of course,

00:01:58.020 not coincidental.

00:02:00.980 On Sunday, you would have been in there having church.

00:02:04.980 Right, so the Ministry of the Attorney General

00:02:06.880 had an emergency hearing on the Friday

00:02:09.760 because they wanted to make sure

00:02:11.660 that we didn't worship our Lord and Saviour on Sunday.

00:02:14.140 So what's the basis for this?

00:02:16.980 Is it that they're convinced

00:02:18.460 that the tickets they've been giving

00:02:20.000 are just not good enough?

00:02:21.820 I believe so.

00:02:22.840 So we've received so many tickets.

00:02:25.020 I think our church now, as an entity,

00:02:28.260 has upwards of over $40 million, perhaps,

00:02:31.760 in maximum fines.

00:02:33.820 Personally, I think I'm up to $700,000, $800,000

00:02:36.220 in maximum fines.

00:02:37.860 Every elder has been fined.

00:02:39.300 We had people, we had police cars

00:02:41.340 waiting outside of our church

00:02:42.720 the last time we held a service

00:02:44.120 and they would tick people off

00:02:45.380 as they left the facility

00:02:47.280 and ticket them on the side of the road.

00:02:49.420 And even last Saturday,

00:02:50.820 there were people praying in the church parking lot

00:02:53.060 as the doors were about ready to get locked.

00:02:54.600 And we must have had 20 authorities watching us.

00:02:58.560 And then as they left, they got ticketed.

00:03:00.520 And then people received visits

00:03:01.660 from the police last night

00:03:02.600 for being at a small little prayer meeting

00:03:03.980 in a parking lot.

00:03:05.360 You wrote something about this

00:03:07.220 on the church's website.

00:03:08.740 And I want to read the title

00:03:10.260 because I think this is very important.

00:03:12.000 And certainly for people

00:03:12.880 that are not within the church family,

00:03:15.140 they might not understand this.

00:03:16.580 You say, we lost the building

00:03:18.180 and kept the church.

00:03:19.820 We often refer to churches as buildings.

00:03:22.800 But in this particular case,

00:03:24.240 you've been forced to confront the reality

00:03:26.540 that the building is not, in fact, the church.

00:03:29.880 That's absolutely correct.

00:03:31.160 So my goal as a shepherd of our church

00:03:33.640 is to defend, one of my objectives,

00:03:36.720 I have to feed my sheep

00:03:37.600 and I have to defend my sheep.

00:03:39.420 And right now, since March of last year,

00:03:41.640 our sheep have been under assault

00:03:42.940 from the province of Ontario.

00:03:44.820 And the province of Ontario

00:03:45.920 has sought to dictate to us

00:03:47.660 how we should worship our savior.

00:03:50.480 And my assertion is that Doug Ford,

00:03:53.660 while he has not claimed this explicitly,

00:03:57.160 he has asserted himself

00:03:59.080 as the de facto head of the church in Ontario.

00:04:01.620 And we are resisting his headship over the church

00:04:04.040 because we believe that Jesus Christ

00:04:05.400 is head of the church.

00:04:06.600 If you say that the church is not the building,

00:04:09.420 I have to ask,

00:04:10.200 why does it matter that you worship inside the building?

00:04:13.100 Why have the concessions,

00:04:14.880 such as drive-in services, virtual services,

00:04:17.360 why have they not been, in your view, good enough?

00:04:20.720 Well, first of all, we own the land.

00:04:23.040 The Lord Jesus Christ has allowed us

00:04:25.320 to steward that land.

00:04:27.280 And so we want to use that land

00:04:28.680 for his glory.

00:04:30.140 And we have used that land for his glory

00:04:32.360 by inviting our community

00:04:33.480 to come worship with us

00:04:34.880 and to gather in the church physically

00:04:36.780 and to sing his praises

00:04:38.520 and exchange greetings

00:04:39.660 of warm Christian fellowship.

00:04:42.740 And so we wanted to assert

00:04:44.880 Christ's crown rights over the church. 0.91

00:04:47.280 We want to assert Christ's headship 0.88

00:04:48.840 over his own worship.

00:04:50.860 And Christ has commanded us to gather.

00:04:53.800 The very word church,

00:04:55.380 people don't understand this.

00:04:56.460 The New Testament was originally written in Greek

00:04:58.680 and the Greek word for church

00:05:00.420 is ekklesia.

00:05:01.780 And it means gathering.

00:05:04.500 Where you don't have a gathering,

00:05:05.640 you don't have a church.

00:05:07.160 And an online gathering is not,

00:05:09.220 gathering in pixelated images

00:05:10.620 is not a gathering.

00:05:12.480 You can't have a marriage on the internet

00:05:13.900 and you can't have a church on the internet.

00:05:16.180 You can't raise your children on the internet.

00:05:18.160 And in fact,

00:05:18.980 the Apostle John referred to his congregation

00:05:21.000 as his little children.

00:05:22.280 And so there was a season there

00:05:24.060 where I was doing sermons on the internet

00:05:25.620 and my heart would break

00:05:26.760 after every time I did it

00:05:27.820 because I thought,

00:05:28.820 I felt like I was interacting

00:05:30.060 with what John affectionately referred to

00:05:33.080 as his little children.

00:05:33.880 I'm having to raise my little children

00:05:35.400 through the internet.

00:05:37.680 And any parent would understand

00:05:39.060 that that would be absolutely gut-wrenching

00:05:40.920 if they can't understand

00:05:42.060 what the role of a minister is

00:05:43.440 towards his congregation.

00:05:44.940 And one point that I think you raised

00:05:46.860 that's very important there,

00:05:48.040 because a lot of the time,

00:05:49.000 critics of churches

00:05:50.640 that have been doing what you're doing

00:05:51.980 have said,

00:05:52.600 well, you know what,

00:05:53.280 all these other churches

00:05:54.140 are going online.

00:05:55.340 Why can't they?

00:05:56.280 But the reality is

00:05:57.180 even the government has conceded

00:05:59.060 that weddings and funerals

00:06:00.940 need to be done in person.

00:06:02.540 Now with reduced capacity,

00:06:03.780 but the government even concedes

00:06:05.360 that certain things

00:06:07.600 have to be in person to be real.

00:06:10.260 And I think you're very right

00:06:11.180 to point out that if that's the case,

00:06:12.940 you can't be married on the internet,

00:06:14.520 you can't have a funeral on the internet,

00:06:16.760 then why should you be expected

00:06:18.160 to have a service on the internet?

00:06:20.740 Well, that's absolutely right.

00:06:22.440 But what it's coming down to

00:06:23.480 is I've been told by people in government

00:06:25.580 and people in the media,

00:06:26.520 well, why can't you just go online

00:06:27.900 and do what the government says?

00:06:29.820 At the end of the day,

00:06:30.920 it boils down to one issue.

00:06:32.680 Who has supremacy over the church?

00:06:35.820 So a pastor friend of mine

00:06:36.860 recently noted that

00:06:38.060 something to the effect of

00:06:40.640 we live in a day and age

00:06:42.200 where the government seems to think

00:06:44.260 they have the right

00:06:45.000 to dictate our terms of worship.

00:06:46.680 But if the church or ministers

00:06:48.860 speak into government policy

00:06:50.620 and government actions,

00:06:51.840 we're yelled at and shouted down

00:06:53.700 for violating separation

00:06:55.340 of church and state.

00:06:56.300 Well, that's a complete misunderstanding

00:06:57.760 of separation of church and state

00:06:59.400 because the separation of church and state

00:07:01.040 means that the government

00:07:02.140 has no control

00:07:03.280 over our terms of worship,

00:07:04.900 over our polity,

00:07:06.300 and over our governance as a church.

00:07:08.340 And there have been wars

00:07:09.080 that have been fought over this.

00:07:10.320 People have shed their blood over this.

00:07:12.320 And I'm not about to hand

00:07:14.040 the bride of Christ

00:07:15.000 over to the province of Ontario

00:07:16.740 because it's my job as a shepherd

00:07:18.240 to stand up and defend

00:07:19.820 what God has entrusted to me.

00:07:21.140 And when I stand before Christ

00:07:22.180 on Judgment Day,

00:07:23.080 I want to be able to say

00:07:24.300 I did whatever I could

00:07:25.240 to protect his bride.

00:07:27.480 One thing that I think

00:07:29.140 the government has not acknowledged,

00:07:31.860 and perhaps they're not aware

00:07:33.120 or perhaps they're just being

00:07:34.400 willfully ignorant

00:07:35.520 with a lot of these restrictions,

00:07:36.900 is that the 2,000 years

00:07:39.620 of Christianity that has developed

00:07:42.200 has included gathering.

00:07:44.700 And this is very biblical.

00:07:46.200 It's very clearly defined.

00:07:47.700 And the idea that man

00:07:49.080 could change that overnight

00:07:50.820 is a fundamental inversion

00:07:53.100 of what the Christian faith

00:07:54.340 or what any religion

00:07:55.300 is actually about.

00:07:57.040 Right, and the true Christians 1.00

00:07:58.240 will gather.

00:07:59.460 I mean, there has been governments

00:08:00.440 in the past

00:08:01.160 who have attempted

00:08:01.640 to do similar things.

00:08:02.560 I don't know if it's ever been done

00:08:03.440 in the name of public health,

00:08:04.620 but it's certainly been

00:08:05.500 in the name of submitting

00:08:08.020 to some sort of state dogma,

00:08:09.940 whether it's a state religion

00:08:11.980 or something else.

00:08:13.080 But churches managed to gather.

00:08:15.720 The early Christians 0.98

00:08:16.460 didn't have buildings.

00:08:17.420 They gathered under the city of Rome

00:08:19.540 in the catacombs.

00:08:21.100 During the Reformation,

00:08:22.180 the covenanters in Scotland

00:08:23.440 had to gather in fields.

00:08:25.800 And the punishment,

00:08:26.720 if they were found out,

00:08:27.640 the covenanters were found out,

00:08:29.340 they could be killed.

00:08:30.260 And some of them were.

00:08:31.480 John Bunyan was a Baptist minister

00:08:32.860 in the 17th century.

00:08:33.960 He spent many years in jail

00:08:35.860 because he believed

00:08:37.220 that God had called him

00:08:38.200 to preach the gospel

00:08:38.860 and he would gather

00:08:39.480 his congregation in forests.

00:08:41.100 So the reality is

00:08:42.520 that true faithful ministers

00:08:44.360 have always gathered

00:08:45.800 their congregations.

00:08:47.500 You are locked out

00:08:48.380 until Saturday.

00:08:49.980 What's happening

00:08:50.760 between now and then?

00:08:52.660 So we're in court

00:08:53.320 Thursday morning

00:08:53.940 at 10 o'clock

00:08:54.580 to talk about this again.

00:08:56.260 And the government

00:08:57.360 is seeking to extend this?

00:08:59.300 Is that their goal,

00:09:00.080 to keep you locked out indefinitely?

00:09:02.220 My understanding

00:09:02.840 is the Ministry

00:09:03.400 of the Attorney General

00:09:04.140 would like to see us

00:09:04.980 locked out of our church

00:09:05.940 until COVID's over,

00:09:07.020 whenever that is.

00:09:08.940 Wow.

00:09:09.520 Interesting thing is

00:09:10.260 it happened in court last week

00:09:11.600 and the judge

00:09:13.040 commented on something

00:09:14.640 that was going on

00:09:15.120 because you know

00:09:15.420 that all the courts

00:09:16.060 I think in Ontario

00:09:16.760 are doing it on Zoom, right?

00:09:17.980 Mm-hmm.

00:09:18.760 And so the judge

00:09:20.120 made a comment

00:09:20.740 about some interaction

00:09:21.740 in the Zoom call

00:09:22.800 and he said

00:09:23.760 something to the effect

00:09:24.720 of I'm sorry

00:09:25.220 this is very unnatural

00:09:26.140 to do this on Zoom.

00:09:27.560 You should enter that

00:09:30.400 as evidence on Thursday

00:09:31.620 that if court proceedings

00:09:34.080 aren't natural

00:09:34.720 then how can church services be?

00:09:36.420 Well, exactly, exactly.

00:09:37.960 And again,

00:09:38.420 the churches have been meeting

00:09:39.760 for, I mean,

00:09:41.120 if you want to go

00:09:41.980 into the Old Testament

00:09:42.680 we've been meeting

00:09:43.100 since creation

00:09:43.880 at least once a week

00:09:45.320 and gathering together.

00:09:46.020 Look, if I thought

00:09:48.520 that this was as big

00:09:49.500 of a threat

00:09:50.080 as the media

00:09:51.520 was drumming it up to be

00:09:52.760 and as the government

00:09:54.120 was drumming it up to be

00:09:55.280 I might be more sympathetic

00:09:57.460 in limiting the capacity

00:09:58.800 of our church.

00:10:00.460 Okay, but my observation

00:10:01.700 on the ground

00:10:02.640 and as I have

00:10:03.400 as I have looked

00:10:04.580 at the numbers

00:10:05.520 the government's own numbers

00:10:07.240 I'm not seeing

00:10:08.400 an overwhelming

00:10:09.100 amount of deaths

00:10:11.460 if you compare 2020

00:10:12.840 with 2019

00:10:14.600 or if you compare deaths

00:10:16.240 year for year.

00:10:17.000 I mean, if we really had

00:10:18.360 a massive outbreak

00:10:21.000 of some serious contagion

00:10:23.300 we would all know

00:10:24.820 multiple people

00:10:25.760 would be

00:10:26.820 who would be dead

00:10:28.120 and not only that

00:10:29.240 the whole stay home

00:10:30.260 stay safe thing

00:10:31.180 would be a misnomer

00:10:31.980 because they'd be begging us

00:10:33.300 to go help them

00:10:33.940 bury the bodies

00:10:34.800 and minister to the dead people

00:10:37.080 as their

00:10:37.560 or the dying people

00:10:38.800 on their deathbeds

00:10:39.800 but that's just

00:10:40.720 that's not going on

00:10:42.480 it's not going on

00:10:43.940 and I've

00:10:44.820 I mean, I've lived

00:10:45.480 in this country

00:10:46.020 all but five years

00:10:47.160 I lived in the states

00:10:47.900 where I did my training

00:10:48.680 but all but five years

00:10:49.760 I lived in this country

00:10:50.560 my whole life

00:10:51.260 in my whole life

00:10:52.640 I've heard about

00:10:53.420 hospitals at capacity

00:10:55.580 and hospitals

00:10:56.440 having massive wait times

00:10:58.800 and ICUs being flooded

00:11:01.180 and all of a sudden

00:11:03.140 this year

00:11:04.380 it's different

00:11:05.340 we need to shut down

00:11:06.260 all of society

00:11:07.060 because the ICUs

00:11:08.240 are being flooded

00:11:08.900 that's not

00:11:09.680 that's not my primary

00:11:10.580 area of interest

00:11:11.460 my primary area of interest

00:11:12.740 is the supremacy of Christ

00:11:14.080 over his church

00:11:14.980 I'm a minister

00:11:16.180 John 10 tells us

00:11:17.480 that if there is a threat

00:11:18.920 to the church of God

00:11:19.840 and if the ministers run

00:11:20.960 they're not true shepherds

00:11:22.020 they're hirelings

00:11:22.700 and so I don't want to be found

00:11:24.200 as a hireling

00:11:24.800 on the day of judgment

00:11:25.580 Amen to that

00:11:27.360 Trinity Bible Chapel

00:11:29.020 Pastor Jacob Rayom

00:11:30.440 joining me now

00:11:31.660 from not the church

00:11:33.140 where he belongs

00:11:34.280 Pastor, thank you so much

00:11:35.540 for coming

00:11:35.920 Yeah, thanks Andrew

00:11:37.700 for having me

00:11:38.420 Thanks for listening

00:11:39.680 to the Andrew Lawton Show

00:11:40.860 Support the program

00:11:41.920 by donating to True North

00:11:43.160 at www.tnc.news

00:11:46.340 You

00:11:48.860 Thanks for listening

00:11:51.200 You

00:11:51.500 You

00:11:51.740 You

00:11:52.420 And

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Juno News - May 05, 2021

Pastor speaks out after Ontario government locks his church’s doors

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