Christian Day of Visibility?

We witnessed police officers in multiple cars break up a family gathering on private property a few miles down the road across the county line in broad daylight.

It had been just a few days since President Trump issued the lockdown orders.

The scene played out in slow motion etching itself vividly not just in my memory, but in the deep where pain is stored.

It was a paradigm shift in my soul…

Everything I ever believed good and beautiful about my country and my birthright died that day.

Fear—for the first time in my life—became a most unwelcome companion.

Never fear of “Covid” or even death…

Fear of my government…

Fear of the Police State…

I could not shake it.

Yet almost as quickly as it had arrived, fear gave way to resolve, and resolve turned to hope as has been the pattern in my life.

It is in the shadow of greatest darkness that the light of courage shines most brightly.

I was never more confident in my life than I was in March of 2020 that the visible church would arise.

This was to be not just our “day of visibility”, it would be a whole new era against the backdrop of unprecedented darkness on American soil.

With great expectation, I waited…

Within just a few days, we received word that our church was going to obey shutdown orders.

And then our daughter’s church…

And our former church…

And with news of each, my heart sank a little more.

And then despair…

Two and a half years later, I wrote and published “An Open Letter to the American Pastor.”

Amidst new calls for a “Christian Day of Visibility”, I find myself confounded.

We chose invisibility when we abdicated Truth and Courage, sacrificing them on the altar of Fear.

It is not something to be rightfully regained by demand or declaration.

Only by obedience…

April 5, 2024—four years later, I am still waiting.

“An Open letter to the American Pastor”

It has taken me nearly 2.5 years to process what I want to say to you.

And to attempt to do it in such a way that you will hear me and receive it.

Maybe we can even figure out a way to reconcile at some point?

But there isn’t even a chance of that happening until you hear what I have to say.

In 2020, in a historically unprecedented move, the United States government and state and local authorities across our nation mandated fear.

They even went so far as to criminalize fearlessness.

We were told to be afraid to the point of locking ourselves in our homes, labeled essential and non-essential, separated from our hospitalized family members even in death, forced to participate in the degrading and humiliating self-harm of masks and experimental injections.

We were told that obeying Scripture, laying hands on the sick and physically caring for them was now illegal.

We were required to forsake even the gathering together with the saints for worship and instruction and encouragement despite the biblical mandate of Hebrews 10:25.

We were forced to participate in fear and to abide in lies.

I had no fear then.

Only hope.

Deep in my heart, I believed the church would arise.

And that in my lifetime, I would not only live to witness the greatest assault on humanity ever perpetrated, but the 3rd Great Awakening and the bird’s eye view of the light beaming from that City on a Hill whose light could not be hidden.

I was actually excited.

Like a child on Christmas Eve, I waited for you with great anticipation.

I waited for you to speak against the darkness and the lies.

I waited for you to obey God and not man for the decree of man so clearly violated the law of God.

I waited for you to rise up as on the wings of eagles and soar above the deception with the banner of Truth hovering for all to see.

I waited for you to remind the people of God as Wurmbrand did that there are at least 365 “fear nots” in the Bible and that no government has the divine authority to mandate fear and criminalize peace.

I waited for you to peacefully resist.

I waited for you to open your doors and turn on all the lights.

I waited for the church to be the lighthouse and house of Hope where the lost and dying and frightened could come find peace, and courage, and a respite from government mandated fear.

I waited for you to unite with your fellow pastors and in large numbers, visit the sick and dying in hospitals-demanding that you be allowed in to bridge the gap between those being crushed under a wicked government decree and the desperate family members often physically removed and threatened with use of force for the crime of not being willing to separate from their loved ones in death.

I waited for you to speak the Truth.

I waited for you to hold super spreader events where the contagion of courage from the powerful preaching of the gospel would rally men to leave your services emboldened by the kind of bravery that comes with the Truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the proclamation that he came that men might no longer live in bondage to the fear of death. (Hebrews 2:15)

I waited for you to remind your sheep that a man’s days are determined and that he can do nothing to add to even one of them including masking, social distancing, vaccinating, obedience to a lying government. (Psalm 139, Job 14:5)

I waited for you to preach that he who the Son sets free is free indeed and that the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

I waited for you to speak for those who had no voice and ensure justice for those being crushed. (Proverbs 31:8)

I waited for you to remind all within the sound of your voice that freedom is God’s idea and that man does not have the authority to take it away.

That those who came before us didn’t grant us rights in our founding documents but merely affirmed those given to us by our Divine Creator…

I waited for you to encourage me…to help me…

Instead, you crushed me.

You used Romans 13 out of context to abuse me and all who refused to comply with the fear mandate.

You told me to obey man rather than God.

You told me to participate in fear and to abide in lies.

You told me that loving my neighbor was wearing a mask and obeying a wicked godless government.

You denied the truth that loving your neighbor is preaching that the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

You took government funds to close your church and to buy your silence and your consent.

And in doing so, you became a State Church and a State Actor, and I no longer trust you.

Others who did not accept government blood money continued to take donations from your congregants justifying this act because you offered counterfeit “online” gatherings.

You remained silent while people died not from COVID but from hopelessness and alienation.

You remained silent while the sheep in your flock were beaten and bloodied sometimes literally for the crime of non-compliance with fear mandates.

You remain silent to this day about the genocide at the end of the needle and the truth that we are witnessing a depopulation program that begins and ends with death.

You remain silent that the abortion industry funds and fuels the vaccine industry including all C19 injections on the market while claiming to be “pro-life”.

I am not a hopeless person by nature.

I am a fighter.

I might even be a warrior.

Long before COVID, I had grown accustomed to being mocked and even persecuted inside the American church for the crime of living counter culturally.

I was always the punch line at the end of the anti-vaxxer or home school or home birth joke.

I had grown very skilled at smiling through the wounding.

But in 2020, you broke me.

Previously, I had thought I understood some things about persecution, loneliness, isolation…the narrow road.

I now realize I had not even begun to experience what it truly meant to be (church) homeless and abandoned.

Believe it or not, I forgive you.

I know that you relied on your own strength, trusted your own instincts and put faith in your government over your God.

Many of you even made government your god and bowed to worship the 21st century trinity of Science, Government, and Medicine over the Holy Triune God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I can only imagine the crisis of faith you must have found yourself in to have surrendered Truth at the altar of fear and led your sheep to worship there.

My heart aches that you will be held accountable for that when you stand before the Father upon your last breath and at a much higher standard than that of men who do not presume to teach.

My hope is that you will repent.

You know that “repent” comes from the Greek word “metanoia” which means to change your mind.

It’s an action verb.

I hope that you have not only changed your mind and your decision to obey man over God but have asked all within the sound of your voice to forgive you.

I hope you will pledge to never do it again.

I implore you to do so sincerely and swiftly.

For there is no doubt whatsoever that the criminalization of peace and faith and the government mandate to fear under the threat of police powers and police force will come around again.

And when it does, you will not be able to say you did not see it coming.

Of all of the attributes of God that I long to know more of, mercy and grace rise to the top.

Our God is merciful and gracious and quick to forgive.

I am begging you to repent and to ask for forgiveness.

I am begging you to make things right with God and man.

And while it is true that you broke my heart, not unlike my first boyfriend…

I want to thank you.

God used your cowardice to make me courageous.

I never volunteered for the battlefield nor would have, but when I was forced onto it, God showed up.

He showed up when I (who despises public speaking) stood before crowds and preached the gospel when men wouldn’t.

He showed up when my knees shook going into public spaces knowing I was small and vulnerable and almost always the only one who would not comply.

He gave me courage and emboldened me with the gospel that makes me brave and used me to stiffen the spines of others.

He has given me words that are not my own as I have sat before kings.

And He has given me the grace to forgive and to continue to challenge the pastor and the church who abandoned me during our nation’s darkest hour.

The American church’s darkest hour…

We serve a God who gives beauty for ashes.

I will never again be part of an institutional church.

What an incredible blessing to have been set free.

What the enemy meant for harm, God has worked for good.

I am and have been for 2.5 years part of a “garage church” model that I believe will replace brick and mortar churches in the absence of mass pulpit repentance as the last century church will finish the way it began-in homes apart from the authority of Caesar and the corruption of religious leaders.

I have learned more about God and studied scripture more intensely and with people more committed to truth than at any point in the nearly 5 decades I’ve been alive and part of the institutional American church.

When you closed the door and turned off the lights, the remnant found each other.

And God showed up.

How I long for you to be part of the miracle I’ve been part of.

How I long for you to awake and arise, O Sleeper…

And how I long for you to be spared of the judgement to come if you do not.

Our God will not be mocked.

And a city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Come out of hiding and resolve to never do it again.

Let your light so shine before men that they see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.

Maybe then and only then, we can be reconciled to one another.

Tara Niebaum

2CM