Canada Now Has an Underground Church

by Ken Ham on April 13, 2021
Featured in Ken Ham Blog

Canada now has an underground church. Let that sink in for a moment—Canada, the “true North strong and free”—has forced a church to go underground. Due to the church reopening and refusing to close during yet another lockdown order, the pastor of GraceLife church in Alberta, Canada, was arrested and spent over a month in a maximum-security prison. But the government tyranny continues despite not a single case of COVID–19 being traced to that church in the months they’ve been open.

The government tyranny continues despite not a single case of COVID–19 being traced to that church in the months they’ve been open.

After Pastor James Coates’ release, officers set up a fence barricade around the church and have been “guarding” the building to ensure members cannot gather to worship the Lord. Church members and other concerned Canadians showed up outside the church on Sunday to worship together and protest government overreach and religious persecution. Some people, who reportedly were not members of the church, tried to tear down the fence. In response, two hundred riot police showed up in addition to the dozens of officers who were already there.

On Sunday morning, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California shared this update about the church:

This morning, GraceLife Church up in Alberta, Canada, is meeting somewhere—we don't know where.

James Coates said at this point it's not for the public to know.

It is amazing to think of an underground church in Canada.

This is because the government of Alberta triple-fenced the church in and locked it so people couldn't go there.

There's no legitimate reason to do what they did to this church, especially at this point.

I think the latest statistics I've seen are that two thousand people have died through the months of Covid, eighty percent of them in senior homes. The remaining ones had some kind of co-morbidity out of the millions of people who live in Alberta. So there's no legitimate reason to do what they did to this church, especially at this point.

But they did, and this is a first for the Western world, to have the government lock out believers from church—and that after imprisoning James Coates, who's a graduate of the Master's Seminary, in maximum security prison. They led him away in chains and he was there for about thirty-five days.

Many of you have been praying for GraceLife Church, and the scene is changing. There is massive outcry against the government for doing this.

I'm praying along with you that this will draw attention to that church, to him, and to the Gospel. And it's already beginning to do that.

We need to be praying for GraceLife Church in Canada and for the rest of our brothers and sisters in Canada. Religious persecution is on the rise, and sadly, many are using the pandemic as an excuse to unfairly target Christians and to restrict various freedoms.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.

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