This week our Prime Minister made a historic decision to invoke the Emergencies Act which is designed to give the government power to quickly handle matters of national security. The Act will give the government and police extended powers and grant them the ability to direct financial institutions to freeze accounts they believe are a threat to national security.

Many are deeply troubled by all of this. This appears to many to be an escalation that was not utilized during previous protests under Prime Minister Trudeau, and it is also quite clear that Prime Minister Trudeau escalated to this level of force when a much simpler and more humble option was available: simply go out and talk to your fellow Canadians in the streets surrounding Parliament and hear what they have to say. After the trauma of the past two years and in the face of these new threats, we continue to be deeply angered by the unfair treatment of our friends and neighbours who have lost their jobs because they did not trust the new mRNA technology, and they believed the vaccines to be ineffective, a view now proven to be mostly correct. We are angered by the poor treatment of our seniors locked up in their homes, denied access to family and loved ones. We are angered by vaccine mandates that restrict the freedoms and liberties of our fellow citizens to patronize restaurants, sporting events, movie theaters and other leisurely activities. We are deeply enraged by the government’s attempt to intrude upon our worship of the Lord. In these seasons of deep anger over these unrighteous actions, the feeling of revolution hangs in the air…

But the unrighteousness that we deplore in the government will not be undone through protest alone. I am in favor of peaceful protest and continued resistance, but as Christians we must do more than protest. We must preach of the King of Heaven. We must remember true and lasting change can never come through civil protest, political maneuvering, or a even (dare I say it?) a new government.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent eleven years in Soviet labor camps came to realize that revolution never brings an end to oppression. He wrote,

“In the intoxication of youthful successes, I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power, I was a murderer and an oppressor…. Even in the best of hearts there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil. Since then, I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being…. And since that time, I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history: They destroy only the those carriers of evil contemporary with them.”

In other words, without change that deals with the evil of the heart, revolution will only lead to today’s oppressed being tomorrow’s oppressor. Here is where the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the truth of His Word is so important as our weapon to fight against the strongholds of unbelief today (2 Corinthians 10:3–5). Our hope of lasting change in this age and the one to come is when Jesus conquers the sin within through the power of the cross and implants in us a desire to do His will through His Spirit. When He does this in the lives of many, we see a culture transformed through grace with an eager longing to do His will.

What shall we do? Continue to protest peacefully. Continue to resist. But above all else, preach the Gospel!