It’s shocking to me how quickly states are cracking down on churches with their stay-at-home orders. Meanwhile, places like Home Depot, abortion clinics, liquor stores and even marijuana stores are still open for business. Is the government beginning to show its true colors?
I think so—and so does Gen. Jerry G. Boykin, a retired general officer who now speaks in defense of biblical values and constitutional rights. In fact, Boykin says many of those who are influencing these strict lockdowns are extreme leftists or Marxists at heart, though they may call their beliefs socialist.
I invited Boykin on my podcast today to discuss what he’s seeing in our culture today—and the dangers we need to watch out for.
“I think what you’re seeing now in regard to the targeting of ministries and targeting of Christian churches—and Jews, quite frankly, in terms of what happened up in New York at the Jewish funeral—what they’re doing now is they have an environment where we’re willing to accept and we’re willing to tolerate this usurping of our constitutional privileges, our constitutional rights,” he says.
“They’re going after what they have been targeting for a long time. And at the same time, they’re letting the bars and the marijuana shops and even the abortion clinics continue, and we’re seeing what they are really all about.”
Boykin says this is especially troublesome because we have five constitutional rights in the First Amendment that are all focused on the freedom of religion. Those five include our religious liberty, our free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to peaceably assemble and freedom to petition our government for the redress of grievances. All five of those rights, Boykin says, have been usurped during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Some pastors are sticking up for the rights and refusing to back down. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne in Tampa Bay, Florida, was arrested March 30 for holding in-person services at his church. Other pastors have been similarly punished for exercising their free right to assemble. One church in Mississippi got in trouble with the law for simply having a drive-in service! Every churchgoer was fined $500.
Boykin says Christians must take a stand for their constitutional rights—even if it’s not the popular thing to do.
“The real concern is if we are willing, at this point, to give up our freedoms in the interest of security, particularly when we now realize that we have not been told the truth by every doctor or by every health care professional that has been on national TV,” he says. “The reality is, we’ve been given a lot of nonsense. These models that we were given have not proven to be true.”
That’s why we must be discerning about the information we’re given regarding COVID-19, especially from the media. Boykin says the virus didn’t even originate from a wet market as many outlets claimed. Instead, it came from a biological warfare lab near Wuhan.
A recent investigation by the Trump administration into the situation recently revealed that China has mishandled the pandemic. It also revealed that China hid crucial information about the severity of the virus so they could hoard medical supplies.
I wrote an entire chapter about China in my book God, Trump and COVID-19, which is a follow-up to my recent book God, Trump and the 2020 Election. In God, Trump and COVID-19, I talk about how the pandemic unfolded in the United States and how the president has handled the situation admirably.
To purchase your own copy of the book, go to stevestrangbooks.com. And be sure to listen to my full interview with Boykin because he shares many more insights about how to protect your religious liberty in this tumultuous time.
Joyce Meyer 
Stephen Strang 
