Join me in this episode as I read from a sermon I delivered at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in February of 2022. This sermon was delivered in response to a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada on the issue of worship during a pandemic.
00:00:00.000I was sentenced today for continuing to assemble for worship with our congregation in 2020 and 2021 as the Bible directs.
00:00:11.020A Justice of the Peace fined me $65,000 for an outdoor church service that was live-streamed and open for all to attend on June 6, 2021.
00:00:23.240Even though most pandemic-related charges have been dropped, and many are being dropped in Alberta, the recent ruling there does not apply to Ontario, as it pertains to a technicality of the issuance of the pandemic mandates in Alberta, not the constitutional validity of the tyrannical orders imposed by Conservative governments in our provinces.
00:00:52.080I admit it today to one count of obeying God rather than man.
00:00:58.000I freely admit that we violated the Reopening Ontario Act, an act which brazenly violated Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the underpinning of the Canadian Constitution.
00:01:11.580In her decision, released on February 28, 2022, Ontario Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerantz ruled that the orders stemming from the Act directly violated our freedom of religion
00:01:28.860and accepted that these mandates had a negative psychological impact on the well-being of Church members.
00:01:38.920However, she ruled that such violations of our freedoms and negative impacts were justified in a free and democratic society.
00:01:48.520This decision was later upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeals, as well as by default the Supreme Court of Canada, by even refusing to entertain our appeal on this matter of national importance.
00:02:03.180After much prayer and consultation with leaders and wise counsellors, I made a decision to accept a deal that will end further legal battles as it pertains to myself,
00:02:16.860the Elmer Church of God, my family, and all others that have been ticketed and summoned for worshipping with us in Elgin County.
00:02:25.300I was personally fined $65,000 for apparent harm that I caused the surrounding community for continuing to gather for worship during a declared pandemic.
00:02:38.240All other charges relating to gathering will be dropped, which, if taken to trial, could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees if acquitted,
00:02:49.420and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if found guilty.
00:02:54.040As gathering for worship was declared a harmful act in the community to the Court today,
00:03:00.980I, along with the Church of God Congregation, offered, in lieu of the fine, to donate $75,000 over the next year to the Elmer Food Bank
00:03:11.860to make amends to the local community that was most impacted by our actions.
00:03:17.700Sadly, this offer was declined outright by the prosecution, and the $65,000 fine will be going to the Ontario government, not the local community.
00:03:30.180This raises the question whether our actions were a harm to the community or a harm to the government narrative.
00:03:39.040Our congregation didn't have a single funeral in 2020, 2021, or 2022.
00:03:45.500The local public health unit has been unable to trace a single case of the virus to our gatherings during the entirety of the pandemic.
00:03:54.880We were threatened by neighbors, persecuted by Christians, defamed by the media, vandalized by radicals, surveilled by the police,
00:04:04.180and fined by the government for offering the gospel to the lost, hope to the fearful, comfort to the hurting, refuge to the outcast, food for the hungry, and a hug to the rejected.
00:04:18.600That, my friends, is the fundamental duty of the Church, the people of God.
00:04:23.500When we abandoned that duty, we bowed to man and turned our back on God.
00:04:29.380By God's grace, I will always obey God rather than man, regardless of the consequences.
00:04:40.660We now have the privilege of hindsight, and our position on the pandemic is broadly and scientifically validated, regardless of your faith in God.
00:04:50.140Public trust in our governments and institutions is collapsing with no end in sight.