By Colby Malsbury
He might not be possessed with the eloquence of Jonathan Edwards.
He has not authored great theonomic treatises against the state, as per J. Gresham Machen.
He would be the first to admit that both Van Til and Clark would leave him in the dust in propounding systematic theology.
But none of that matters. By their fruits ye shall know them, and the fruits of Pastor James Coates have been bountiful indeed. When it comes to fidelity to the tenets of Christianity in the face of tremendous opposition, Pastor Coates can hold his head proudly beside the likes of R.L. Dabney.
Who would have ever believed that one of the primary nexuses against global Scarybug oppression would emerge in Canada, the land where hysterical devotion to the belief in the legitimacy of the patronizing State is considered unholy writ? Granted that someone could swallow that tall tale, who then could further believe that the stand would be taken by a Canadian church – the Protestant variety of which takes its national cues from the dominant and intractably left-wing United Church of Canada, which is dedicated to liquidating itself as thoroughly as possible, that every racial and socioeconomic minority with a grievance and a megaphone might get a temporary whiff of its dubious virtue? But then, in times of crisis God does use that which the world has deemed weak to confound those who have deemed themselves mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27).
GraceLife Church of Edmonton, Alberta did not start off the plandemic by being radical. Indeed, looking over the official statement posted on their website – by the bye, a scathing document making a solid Christian case against the New Plandemic Order that in itself deserves to be shared widely – we learn that the church initially took every precaution mandated by the provincial health authorities. During the first declared state of emergency, they switched exclusively to livestream sermons when two members of the congregation tested positive for Covid – even though subsequent testing proved neither individual actually had contracted the bug. After the initial furor died down, though, GraceLife resumed in-person gatherings with a determination not to let the “authorities” dictate their conditions for existence, in accordance with Jesus’s words in Matthew 18:20: ‘For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’ With that assurance to sustain us, what theoretical plague can have the mastery over us?
Alas, the “authorities” did not have this assurance. And thus they responded to this faithful gathering with vituperative hate.
After ignoring a bogus ‘cease and desist’ order from the third-tier NKVD, Pastor Coates was arrested on Feb. 16 and detained in the Edmonton Remand Centre. On what charge, pray tell, given that the enforcement provisions of the second public health emergency restrictions were exceedingly vague, to put it mildly? Let’s just presume ‘contempt of statism’, since that’s what it boils down to. Other prisons release rapists and murderers en masse because of Scarybug panic, but an unassuming clergyman gets tossed into one on star chamber pretexts. Justice. He was held in solitary confinement during the entirety of his month long ordeal – supposedly for his own safety, but more likely because the Hells Angels jailed therein might have made common cause with him and turned into very vocal advocates on his behalf, and wouldn’t that have been just a public relations boondoggle?
Of course, Alberta premier Jason Kenney and his demented bat of a chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw didn’t need any further help in the boondoggle department. Past Twitter’s pre-programmed algorithm designed to simulate a chorus of woke support, public support has been entirely on the side of the good pastor. And much to the government’s despair and our delight, and contrary to the prevailing norm that what happens in Soviet Canuckistan stays in Soviet Canuckistan, Coates’s plight went viral around the world. Clergy from the US, Europe, and South Africa – of all denominations – wrote to offer support, and sent forth prayers on his behalf from their congregations on various sabbaths, knowing full well the heavy hand of the State could be falling upon them next. Mrs. Coates was even featured in a March 18th segment on Tucker Carlson , advance notice of which prompted Coates’s release from jail a couple of days before, but did not prevent the segment from airing anyway. To save a bit of face and to engage in a last-ditch bit of petulance, the judge granting Coates’s release also slapped him with a parting $1500 fine because his actions ‘could have been of danger to the health and safety of those in the community.’ Such conjecture belongs in the world of Minority Report, not in a court of law. No matter. His 35 days in illegal stir were ‘graciously’ counted towards the fine, and it was tossed out. It’s hard not to see the protective hand of God shielding one of His good and faithful servants during this entire ordeal. May He continue doing so, if it be His will.
So: given that this is obviously the time for Christians to rally round the Cross and support each others’ endeavors against state encroachment, the solons within Reformed ranks should be leading the charge, right?
Ha ha ha. Yeah, that’s a loaded question. You knew that.
No, these cretins fell back on their default setting and immediately began jeering and sneering at Coates for daring to heed God rather than government, and for not even attempting to spin a Calvinist gloss onto the whole lockdown/mask/social distancing scenario, thus staying in the State’s good graces. I hate these people. They would have been petitioning the Soviet invaders of Hungary in 1956 to put Jozsef Mindszenty up against the wall, not so much because of the Catholicism of the latter as because of his boat-rocking tendencies. Their entire credo boils down to not being able to spell sophistication without the ‘sophist’.
Leading the pack of curs baying ‘he didn’t attend our seminary’? Why, Mr. Subversive himself, “Dr.” Joel McDurmon, naturally! He has the temerity to accuse Pastor Coates of being nothing but a publicity hound – something McDurr himself would never, ever dream of degenerating into, of course:
If this doesn’t scream ‘R2K mentality’, I don’t know what does. Apparently, to address any societal evils is to ‘posture and lie for Jesus’, and the churches ought to concern themselves exclusively to sermons on supralapsarianism in order to ensure they remain entirely ethereal. Oh, but Black Lives Matter sermons are OK. Pope McDurr has graciously granted that indulgence. Also, is it not rather insular to insist that as long as they are granted some very limited vestiges of worship, there isn’t a problem? Curious that McDurr would demonstrate this callous regard towards missionary activities, considering that the only reason he’s a ‘doctor’ is because some diploma mill in South Africa took pity on him. But I digress.
Of course, the paeans of praise from the few remaining diligent pastors notwithstanding, one must expect the majority of the ‘Church’ to remain thoroughly Laodicean in its attitude towards the state, that Nimrod might be glorified. And the corps of apple-polishers that has emerged among the Canadian clergy in deference to all lockdown procedures is repugnant in the extreme. Their mentality is aptly described by this self-described ministerial friend of Pastor Coates’s, albeit not in the manner he was intending:
Now, let’s give credit where due. He, too, remained open during the lockdown lunacy. Yet he completely annuls his principled stand by falling back on the bane of the respectable conservative mindset and attributing our enemies with the best of intentions in the spirit of heathen Athenian democracy. Enough of this unequal yoking! And by graphically listing the very relevant liabilities to be debited against these churches with the very weak prefatory accusation of ‘libel’, the only conclusion that can be drawn is: methinks the pastor doth protest too much.
Unless…..this is a genius bit of roundabout accusation, akin to a prosecutor saying of a defendant ‘I don’t believe the accused is a wife beater. I repeat: I don’t believe the accused is a wife beater’? Probably not, but if so: well played, sir. Well played.
A further grievance against GraceLife mounted by the Reformed world is that, despite the church’s Calvinist doctrines, it is unaffiliated. Anyone familiar with the odious nature of the aforementioned United Church of Canada and its Marxist influence across the Canadian Protestant spectrum can only count this an asset, although I’ve never accused the modern Calvinist clergy of being familiar with much of anything beyond the Frankfurt School. Rather, they resort to their fallback position of curling the lip at anyone they deem a ‘low’ church, and they have made an effort to paint GraceLife in those colors. Well, let’s play devil’s advocate and presume this to be the case. If the ‘high’ churches possessed even a smidgen of the testicular fortitude of GraceLife, maybe their congregations would be standing-room only every Sunday too, rather than the glorified mausoleums they are at present….and that they have been for the past century or so, come to think of it. The faithful will come from miles and miles away to hear good doctrine rather than a treatise on how your ancestors were irredeemable.
Pastor James Coates is a brave man. It takes Godly fortitude to withstand the tsunami of Woke in the 2020s, particularly in the Trudeauvian Communist Duchy of Canada (George Soros, central bank head), and his example of heeding God’s Sabbatarian strictures over man’s Scarybug strictures is one we must all take to heart and live daily, else God will not lift this curse from upon us. Let the tyrants tremble over this one Samuel, and may a whole host follow in his footsteps. And may Pastor Coates take great comfort in the words of Isaiah 32:7, which foretold the zeitgeist of these times so accurately: ‘The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.’
And to all the saints: please continue to keep the Coates family and GraceLife in prayer. This article was posted on Good Friday, and it is not outside the realm of possibility that the provincial health commissars, in conjunction with the RCMP, will try a heavy-handed raid against the congregation when they gather this Easter Sunday. Pray for their continued solace and protection from on High, and that this proves to be an erroneous alarm.