Baptist pastor John-William Noble has launched a direct rebuke of church leaders who surrendered their authority to the state during COVID.

An outspoken critic of “two weeks to flatten the curve, turning into totalitarianism”, Noble called leaders to repentance while addressing this year’s UK Health and Truth conference.

Although people may be tired of hearing criticisms about the response to COVID, he said, its lessons all need to be reheard.

In effect, Noble pushed to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach, saying we cannot allow the compliance and subsequent compromise of churches to be brushed under the carpet.

Learning from the dysfunction isn’t about living in the shadows of past mistakes – it’s about making sure the past’s mistakes are not relived in the present. 

For instance, COVID revealed the true “spiritual condition and problem of the church in countries like the United Kingdom in the present day.”

“One thing that COVID did with regard to the church is expose so much folly and even sinfulness,” Noble argued.

“That,” he asserted, “is something we cannot forget.”

Speaking from a Pastor’s heart, Noble said that hand in hand with the Word of God, “our churches, and the future generations of our churches, depend upon it.”

Referencing Numbers 32:1-24, he preached a comparison between the people of Reuben and Gad – 2 of the 12 tribes of Israel – and the UK.

“Think about the heritage of the church in our nation, going back many hundreds of years.”

“How and why do Christians today have the freedom to worship and proclaim the Gospel?”

They have that freedom because “there were Christians who believed the Word of God, were bold and forthright enough in proclaiming it even unto death.

“Blood was literally shed,” Noble recalled.

“Lives were lost to enable people to uphold the freedom to worship the living God.

“That is our heritage.”

This is why the UK is blessed. This is why there are such “clear moral foundations” for English common law.

So, “what happened?” he asked.

“What happened to the culture, and more specifically for today, what has happened to our Church?”

This, Noble explained, is where the “example of Rueban and Gad’s attitude and approach” to the promised land finds relevance.

The two tribes were “well-dressed in compromise.

“It’s a spiritualising of the fleshly.

“If we consider what we saw Churches do in recent years, particularly on the issue of COVID, one thing is clear.

“The real tragedy – the real heartache – is that Reformed and Evangelical churches were behaving,” Noble noted.

They were well-dressed in compromise, too.

Listing the how, he said, first, Churches were acting on what they saw.

They “walked by sight, and not by faith; walked by self and not for Christ.”

As Paul in Philippians 2:21 warned, “For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”

They were, Noble asserted, acting on what was “right” in their own eyes.

As a result, they were “driven by fear, and not by faith. Fear of what was seen, and not by faith in whom we trust.”

The apostle John warns against this behaviour.

Quoting 1 John 2:16, Noble said, “Note the words of this verse.”

“For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

Herein lies the tragedy: “when we see this, the desires of Reuban and Gad, what these two tribes are doing, they saw what was good with their eyes.”

The tribes had their own self-interests at heart. They saw a profit; “what was best for them as a means of their own self-preservation.”

John also talks about the pride they took in their birthright status among the Israelites, Noble exposited.

At the heart of the problem in this context isn’t just self-preservation, it’s self-exaltation.

The parallels are sharp. 

During COVID, Church leaders took their eyes off Christ and put them solely on the Government, he observed.

Their great concern, Noble remarked, was what the Government was saying and following its orders.

Most, he added, failed to remind the State that while it has jurisdiction over society, “it does not have the authority over how, when and why the Church of Jesus Christ worships.”

Like the people of Reuben and Gad, those churches “acted on what they saw.”

“They acted because of their own self-preserving pride, where literally, like those 2 tribes with the promised land, they were effectively saying, ‘don’t make us open the churches.”

All for fear of COVID, the government, and of losing their congregation’s approval.

Consequently, those churches “had to fumble together some nonsensical interpretation of Romans 13, and love your neighbour.”

“They had to redefine what it means to worship to justify ‘Zoom’ church.”

Worse, instead of heeding the red flags, churches “entrenched themselves” in the government narrative.

Noble slammed the compromise with mask mandates, government telling churches they were a non-essential service, PCR testing, and medical segregation via vaccine passports. 

Describing it as “utterly intolerable and unacceptable,” he recounted that “we literally had pastors on their social media feeds boasting about the [so-called] vaccines.”

“What an utterly shameful way to behave.

“If you were a church leader who went along with this narrative, promoted and drove it,” Noble exclaimed, your sheep were without a shepherd.

“At a time when church congregations needed you most, pastor, you were promoting the very thing that was crushing them, and you must repent before the living God!

“On so many levels, this was a significantly dark moment in recent church history,” he said.

We cannot dilute Christianity. This is why we “must declare that the Church of Jesus Christ is essential!”

“No government, nobody on this earth has the right or grounds to try and change that in any circumstance. And we dare not redefine it.”

Noble then challenged Pastors by asking them what they would do the next time around.

“Let’s say, for example, the situation with immigration continues to escalate,” he said, “and our country becomes ransacked by a false religion.”

This ‘false religion is then enforced, and people are made to do certain things that contradict God’s Word.”

“Are you then going to stand boldly and proclaim that there is only one true living God and this is a false religion?”

Are you going to “risk your life being laid down for that purpose?”

“Are you ready now to speak and uphold the truth of God’s word and risk being imprisoned for upholding the sanctity of life in the face of abortion?”

Are you going to stand against “the mutilation of the flesh that is impacting even children in schools?”

This, Noble said, “where learning the lessons of what happened over the COVID narrative has such an important bearing.”

“The Church of Jesus Christ is not called to stand and live according to their cowardice.”

Yet, like Reuben and Gad, Church leaders have settled on the safe side of the Jordan.

“They’re watching the world burn, but that’s not what the bride of Christ – the Church – is called to be.”

The Church is “a spiritual fortress of such magnitude and weight, it’s something the world fears, and something the devil should shriek at.”

“We’re called to go forth,” Noble concluded, “with a readiness to proclaim the Truth, even if it means dying for the sake of the Gospel.”

“The gospel is what our culture needs. And the gospel is what we must be ready to unwaveringly proclaim.”

Hear. Hear.

May the Lamb who was slain receive the reward of His suffering.