Letter to believers in fear of covid (1/2)
https://files.catbox.moe/rury4g.pdf
To all CHRISTIANS in fear of covid:
The Pilgrim Church, by E.H. Broadbent, first published in 1931, shows the “continuance through succeeding centuries of churches practising the principles taught and exemplified in the New Testament.” Let us read of our brother Konrad Grebel, in the 1500s, who died of the plague after escaping from prison and attending secret meetings with other believers in the forest:
>…Konrad Grebel, son of a member of the Zürich Council…distinguished himself in the Universities both of Paris and Vienna…[he was] untiring, travelling, visiting from house to house, preaching, exhorting, and great numbers accepted the Gospel and were baptized and gathered as churches… The Council forbade all these things… persecution became relentless…endeavouring to exterminate the churches… The meetings, which were held secretly at night in a forest, were discovered and scattered, and fresh places of gathering had to be found. At this time Grebel died of the plague (1526)…
Let us also read of our brother Anthony Norris Groves: Around 1829, facing a plague in Baghdad, he and the other believers with him refused to flee and refused to stop their assembling together:
>…Rapidly the plague increased, and although half the population had fled, among the 40,000 remaining the mortality soon reached 2000 daily. …As to the little missionary household, their hearts were rent at the sight of the indescribable horrors going on around them, yet Groves was able to write at this time: “…the Lord has kept us of His infinite mercy in personal quiet and peace, trusting under the shadow of His Almighty wing, and has enabled us daily to assemble in undiminished numbers, when tens of thousands have been falling around us…”
In both these cases, the believers did not abandon their assembling together, no matter the threat of plague, persecution, and death. Let us consider Hebrews 10:22-25:
>Let us come forward to the Holy of Holies with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope unwavering, for He who has promised is faithful; and let us consider one another so as to incite one another to love and good works, not abandoning our own assembling together, as the custom with some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more as you see the day drawing near.
Groves was separated from Grebel by 300 years, and we are separated from Groves by 200 years. We are hundreds of years closer to the Lord’s coming than both of these brothers. How can we put the torch down now, after so many have gone before us? How will we face these ones who willingly and joyfully risked life and limb to meet together as the Lord commanded us to do? Consider the slaves of Jesus Christ who this very night are being slaughtered in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban. This week on social media you could see posts like this:
>Just FaceTimed with [my parents]! They are hiding, surrounded by gunfire and bombs. Everyone is hiding in their homes. The Taliban are taking women, and slaughtering anyone who resists them. They will kill all foreigners and anyone who has worked with foreigners over the past 20yrs. Yet, my mum and dad are full of peace and joy.
We should never be careless and carefree. But we should not be fearful and faithless. Has the Lord not commanded us to meet together for His testimony? We should be deliberate and decisive in our faith, that should the Lord choose to take our lives because we are following His command to assemble together for His testimony, that this would be our honor and a crown.