What should do when the government shuts off access to their churches? What should they do if their properties are confiscated? Our discussion centers around Pierre Viret's advice to pastors who have found themselves in this predicament.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life. We're praying for a reformation of church and family life. And so I have with me Jason Dome. Hello, Jason.

Hi, Scott. Good to see you, pastor right down the street at Sovereign Redeemer Community Church, and Gavin Beers. Gavin, welcome. Good to be with you again, Scott. So here we are again, we're going to talk about this book, Quintus Disobey, and we're going to deal with chapter seven today, which brings a particular situation that the church was in.

Also, too, I just encourage you to go grab this book off our website. We've also written a study guide that we think will help you think through the issues that are there. This book, Quintus Disobey, Case Studies in tyranny, insurrection, and obedience to God. So that's what we're talking about. Now, in chapter 7, Verre, he discusses two different situations.

One at the hands of a Catholic government, the other at the hands of a Protestant government. He first deals with the situation where the church was forbidden to meet inside their buildings. They turned over their keys to the government, and Vire, Pire Vire writes a letter to pastors encouraging them not to lose it, not to break into insurrection. And then the second situation happened actually five years before this where he addresses a time when the civil government usurped basic functions of the church, the appointment of pastors, who can take the Lord's Supper, just all kinds of things like that. They even had forbidden the gathering of pastors together.

So this chapter focuses on both of those situations that we find here. So let's look at the situation. I'm just going to read two sentences that describe the first situation that we want to discuss. The royal edict issued by the French crown January of 1562 granted French Protestants freedom to meet for worship but forbade them from assembling inside church buildings. The decree stipulated that the Huguenots must, quote, immediately leave and vacate the churches without ever presuming to reenter them.

So That's a, what a wild moment. Imagine a situation like that. Well, a situation kind of like that just happened in Canada where the government told a church that they couldn't meet in their building and they built two fences around it and put the pastor in jail. You know, it's funny, I had a person who grew up in Canada at our church on Sunday, and she said, I never dreamed that my country would have the underground church. It's kind of what it's like now there.

We'll see how things unfold. Maybe the Lord will grant some relief to them. So this situation, so brothers, what are your thoughts about this situation? Well, I thought it was very interesting. You have two very distinct case studies here.

You've described the first one, and it's a Catholic government. So, I think our disposition, just reading the first sentence and not going further is to think, oh, this is not going to end well. But really, all the Catholic government was keeping them from was meeting in the church buildings. They were actually free to continue to worship, to kind of fast forward to the end of the story, they end up renting schools and other rentable facilities and meeting and worshiping according to their conscience. But it was the biggest decision in areas in France that had a strong Protestant population because they actually sort of had a power base in those regions and they were all trying to decide together what they should do.

Some in very Catholic areas, but some areas that were Protestant strongholds. Yeah, when I read this, it raised the question in my mind, what was the political situation? What was the relationship between church and state at that time? You're right in the midst of the Reformation and in France particularly, things are not stable. So we read this and think 21st century, we own the church building, we have freedoms, etc.

I imagine that this may have been something more like these churches were originally Roman Catholic, they become Protestant. Are they ecclesiastical property? What's the relationship between the church and the state? So is the state saying you process need to get out of these churches? They're not yours.

I wonder if that's a part of it. Or were they little chapels or something that the Huguenots had built? My reading into the background here is not sufficient to answer that question. I did want to look into it a little bit more closely. So the political situation is interesting, but I think it's wonderful the way Verre, no matter what that was, You know, they may have had rights in law if they were their own buildings, to contest that at law, that's a separate issue.

But he's able to penetrate straight away and say, this is not a primary issue. You know, the church does not depend upon a building. Therefore think very carefully whether you want to raise such an issue by merely being denied access to these buildings. So that's helpful, especially today. Last year we had the option of going outside.

The church could still worship. We didn't have to make a huge stand and say, only in a building. Scott, this made me immediately think of Hebrews 1034, where the author of Hebrews says, "'For you had compassion on me and my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and enduring possession for yourselves in heaven.'" So it seems to me, if the government, even if they're overreaching, gives us the liberty to continue pursuing the possession in our real home country, which is not the country here, we can joyfully endure the plundering of our possessions, which is really what happens in this chapter in a very real way. Pete And he bases it on a principle. He says, this is not a matter of first importance.

I thought that was interesting that he used that terminology. You know, what is a matter of first importance? The worship of God, that's the matter of first importance he's talking about. And the location of the performing the matter of first importance isn't as critical. Now, imagine, you know, Americans getting their buildings confiscated.

It would be a big deal, but frankly, it's not that big of a deal in terms of the kingdom of God. The matter of first of importance is the people of God gathering. Your building doesn't mean that much. We think buildings are good. We like to be in buildings, but we may be in other kinds of facilities.

Yeah, there are circumstances of worship. They're not of the essence of worship. You know, the New Testament church could meet in synagogues and kind of progressed out of the synagogue. Sometimes in a house, Paul goes out and preaches by the riverside in Philippi to Jews who were evidently meeting there. And so the building is a circumstance.

It is interesting, however, when you read here that he emphasizes, for we aren't forbidding from assembling together or from practicing all that pertains to true divine worship in our assemblies, but only from occupying the churches. I think that's interesting when you consider the last year. He's saying the building is not of first importance, but assembling is. Right. And you sort of praise the Lord that they didn't have the internet in those days.

It was clear to them what an assembly actually was, you know, that it was a physical thing that they gathered together to do. And it seems that he's saying that is primary, physical assembly of the people who've gone together. You know, that's been one of the great lessons that I think God has taught the church, is that we must assemble. And this recent situation has forced everybody to think about how critical that is. And some have thought, well, it's not that critical.

You can go play pajama church online if you want, you know, and or you can actually assemble the way that the Bible has us to do that. So I, You know, this last year has been helpful, I think, to clarify that issue. I think, you know, we have a different view of assembly today than we did a year and a half ago. I mean, we always thought it was important, but, you know, it becoming absolutely indispensable was something that we didn't think we'd ever have to think about. You know, I thought it was interesting.

He's really, really hard on the insurrectionists in this letter. This is a letter to the pastors. And he says, we cannot disregard this order without disobeying God and without being taken for, and listen to this, seditious mutineers and rebels. Okay? Mutineers and rebels.

I mean, he's trying to hold back the flood of passion and rebellion on the part of those who are saying, no, we're going to command these buildings. And Scott, immediately after he says that, he says, if we take that posture, we'll actually be inviting the government to employ force. So it's a really forceful warning about what they would be inviting by disobeying. And essentially, he's making the argument, what's at stake is not nearly worth that. He says it's a quote, dangerous thing to do it.

And he, I mean, he feared the loss of life. But What I also thought was interesting is he said, they want us to rebel. That government wants us to rebel. They want to make use of this situation. And of course, governments and media outlets, they always want to make use of whatever's happening.

The other side of that coin is that he says, if they obey, so if they hold themselves back from disobedience and actually turn over the keys to the churches, says that we'll cover for past faults and we'll give the government reason to subdue our adversaries. So, I mean, he makes this argument that it'll keep the government focused on their rightful duties before God to subdue the real adversaries and keep them off of us and keep them focused on our adversaries. Yeah, it made me think about a number of things in our own context. You know, we do own our buildings and we have rights secured to us in law. And it would be theft and an invasion of those rights for us to just let the state confiscate them.

So there's a principle of justice that would require us to consider defending ourselves. But then there's another principle where Paul says, you know, there is a time where can you not suffer wrong? And I think to my own pre-church history in 1842, the state invades the prerogatives of the church and a third of the Church of Scotland leave. And they could have made the case, well, we're taking our buildings, we're staying in our buildings, but they walked away from the buildings, manses, ministers on, and in those days it was a well established professional position and they walked away from huge manses, huge stipends on a biblical principle and they were willing to suffer that loss. And you know, you mentioned Jason there, how he argues, you know, that that will make up for past faults, that will stop the mouth of our adversaries.

But he also does something else. He casts the church on the imprecations of the Bible. And I think that's a really helpful thing for the church today. You know, through the Psalms, you've got imprecations. In the New Testament, you've got imprecations.

Book of Revelation, how long will the Lord will you not avenge our blood, etc. And these are given to the church when she can get no justice on earth, that she appeals to the judge in heaven. And Vera says, okay, submit, appeal to the judge, that he will vindicate you, that he will arise for your help. And I thought that was an interesting point that can help us today. Just going back to some of the principles that were opened up in prior chapters and applying it to this case study, you might assert your rights.

For instance, we do have property rights here in the United States, so if the church owns the property, you might go to court and assert your rights and be justified in working within the system and working in obedience to the government by working within the system. That's a very different thing from arming yourselves and planting yourself in the building and saying, you know, pry it out of our dead hands. These are different... We have lawful methods to assert our rights. So let's turn to this, the other situation.

It was a little bit different. Well, let's wrap this up. The pastors listened to Viray, and they accepted his proposition. They heard him. What a blessing.

I just thought that was very interesting. You know, God raised up this man to be a voice, probably to save bloodshed and shame on the name of Christ, and the worship of God would continue. Just to comment on that, the unspoken declaration was, it's not buildings that we love. When they handed over the keys, their unspoken declaration was, it's not buildings that we love. We're not here for the things.

It was the worship of God that was important to them. What a blessing. One last thing, Scott, is this period, Vire is in France himself, he's already in exile, and he experiences a period of significant revival in his ministry and in the churches through this period that they're actually being persecuted. So that's an interesting point too. That's an interesting point too.

Yeah. So this situation we discussed now was five years previous to this. And here the government did, did attempt to shut down church authority, explicit authority in the preaching of the Word, the celebration of the Lord's Supper, the appointing of pastors, dismissing of pastors. They took control over that. And so this was a harsher kind of situation, you know, that actually happened before the church confiscation.

So Scott, can I read directly from the book just to sort of set? This is on page 92, and it says, though favorable to the Reformation, the magistrates of Bern, Switzerland, usurped the authority of the Church, appointing and dismissing pastors, decreeing what could and could not be preached, and dictating how and to whom the Lord's Supper should be administered in their territories. They also issued a decree forbidding all ecclesiastical synods in which pastors met to discuss church issues. So, they left the buildings alone, but they went after things that are so much closer to the heart of what local churches should be about. Yeah, the matters of first importance.

Yes. Yeah, they invaded the prerogatives of Christ in his church to govern doctrine, worship, and practice. Very actually, He refers to them in another place, not in this book. He refers to the Bernese Pope, speaking about the state, and he says that he's vying to be worse than the old Pope that they left in the church. So this idea of civil tyranny now, and lording it over the Protestant church.

Hey, and this was a really desperate time. Some of the language he uses in this letter, I mean, he says, the matters are, they get worse every day, and he says, in such a way that they have fallen into such a chaos that we can scarcely imagine how they can get worse. So, to Viré, the tampering with the matters of first importance was the worst thing to him and to the church. So this was different. This was a whole other level of persecution.

– So in both case studies, we get the writings directly from Pierre Vray himself. The first he was writing to the Huguenot pastors. The second he's writing to the ruling council in Bern. And in this letter, he says, God has made you protectors. So he really, in the letter of the pastors to the ruling council, they put them on the hook as appointed by God in order to protect the church.

And he also makes it really clear that both they and the church is in danger by setting aside these matters of first importance. And he says, if this was a fire, you'd put it out. This is a fire. It's the Lord's fire. You better put it out.

You know, it's a really interesting period. This goes on for 20 years. And the VRA is in Lausanne and having to encounter this, he writes a massive work through that period on the power and use of the ministry of the word in sacrament and he deals with a lot of those issues. It's also interesting to know to bring others and Bisa is there with him as well. Bisa is the head of the theological college there and he leaves in 1558 and Vire stays on and presses the point and he and 30 men in the end are banished.

But the main issue that came to head was over the Lord's Supper and the discipline of the church. And so the state wouldn't allow the church to discipline scandals and everyone would come to the Lord's Supper when the state said so and Vire said no we're not doing that and the state would say you have the Lord's Supper on this day and he said no not not until I interview all the people and deal with with scandals and they press them hard on that and Vire just refuses to administer the sacrament. And when the state comes down, very interestingly, Biza and Vire simply appeal to Acts 529 and say, we will obey God rather than men. And in the end, yeah, he's ejected and banished from Lausanne because he refuses to give the prerogatives of Christ in the church over to the civil magistrate. You've no business here.

Christ is king. He commands and he appoints the means. He actually mentions that in this letter here. And the church is duty bound to follow him. Think about that.

You know, this man, he is banished from his homeland and he's thrown out of his church. The cost was really high. Permanently. Permanently. And he could never come back in his lifetime.

So yeah, pretty rough, pretty rough treatment. Well, okay, so we've just got a couple of minutes left. Let's just sort of go around here. What would you say are some of the important lessons for the Church today looking at these case studies. Just one point towards the end of the letter.

He uses this phrase, being constrained by the violence of our consciences. And then, so he's writing on behalf of pastors to the ruling council of Bern. And he starts picking pretty dire words, the violence of our consciences, and he's really putting a shot across the bow to say we're on a collision course and we're on a trajectory where we're not going to comply. Our consciences are not going to let us comply. So to me, this was an exemplary, It was an example to us of forewarning, making a case for warning, trying to ward off the time of crisis by tipping your hand to the government to let them know that you're on a collision course.

You don't want to collide, but your conscience is not going to allow you to comply if you keep going down this track. I think that's an important principle. Rather than just wait until you're to a breaking point before you say anything at all. It's good to just sort of tip your hand and let it be known that you're not going to be able to continue down this track. What about you, Gavin?

What's a final principle for the church? I think it reminds us really of three things. And the first is we need to know when to fight and what to fight over. And sometimes there are things that we could contend for, you know, the property, et cetera, that we can let go. But when it comes to the main issues, we cannot be confused.

We must, this past year, must crystallise in our minds what is non-negotiable. And we need to teach the church about that. You know, the first letter, Vireh is writing to the church. And then we need to be able to assert our biblical duty toward the civil magistrate and teach him from the Word of God. You have limits and you are not to cross those limits.

And we can do that by way of letter, the way VRA does here. And we can do it by way of resistance if it comes to that where we say no on these issues, we can comply on these issues. We will obey God rather than men, and we don't give the rights of Christ in His church over to the civil magistrate. Yeah, you know, and I'll just close with this. You know, we were told last year that the church is not essential, and we came back and said, no, it's indispensable.

And I think That's the lesson that the last year should teach us, the indispensability of the assembling of local churches to practice things that God has commanded. And I was struck by Vire's diligence, first of all, to shepherd other pastors. And then secondly, he worked very hard, particularly in this second instance, he worked very hard to write directly to the civil magistrate and visit the civil magistrate. He did both. He made personal visits and he wrote letters.

His letters were theological. His letters really appealed to the indispensability of the church and how dangerous it was to violate the crown rights of Christ over His Church. So I think those are the biggies for me. So there you have it, a really interesting case study. I wish we knew more about all the things that were going on.

Thank you, Gavin, for filling us in on some of those details. But I think these are very helpful to think through these issues. So there you have it. So thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope to see you again.

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