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By Bishop David Parsons

Let’s be clear: as Christians, our foundational beliefs and practices have remained unchanged since Jesus poured out the Holy Spirit and sent His disciples out to preach the Good News! However, if we study scripture, we see patterns where God’s people wander away and forget His goodness. We are told in Hebrews 12 that God is faithful and corrects those who trust in Him. Then, as a faithful remnant listen to His Word, God strengthens His people, and many come to acknowledge Him as Lord.

This happened in the days of Josiah and Ezra, when the Word of God had been forgotten. The people had wandered away from God, turning after the idols of the world around them and going their own way. By grace and through the faithfulness of those leaders, the Word of God was re-discovered, read, and obeyed as the people returned to the Lord.

Needing another Reformation

Friends, we are at the time of another reformation. People have the Light of the Gospel in their homes, but we leave it unread on a shelf. They do not teach their children to know and love God. We only need to listen to the news to know that churches of every denomination can fall into corruption. In our own Canadian society, we are reminded constantly that the churches forgot to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God, and instead took part in building an empire alongside the federal government. It’s time for this dark age to end.

Like the reformations that have come before, this reformation happens when those who hear and believe the Word of God join the overwhelming majority of Anglicans and other Christians around the world, bowing to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and submitting to the authority of the Word of God. It’s time to repent of our sins and ask Jesus to deliver us from our own selfish and independent ways, resisting the temptation to follow the power promised by the idols of our own day.

I encourage you to gather others with you and pray, asking God to deliver us from the strange and erroneous teachings coming from the south. The early church was a persecuted church, but even facing enormous trials, they never neglected to gather and pray. We need to gather in our churches and pray. And, even more, we need to make our homes places of prayer. Weekly community worship was important to the New Testament Christians, but they also met in homes to grow, support, and encourage one another.

In times of error and confusion, we must not lose heart. We must stand firm in the faith, boldly preaching the fullness of the Gospel and submitting ourselves to the unchanging authority of God’s Word. The Bishops and Clergy of the Anglican Diocese of The Arctic accept fully the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible. We are a diocese with a mission to 95,000 people in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Nunavik. Unfortunately, most of the 30 dioceses in Canada have walked away from the Biblically faithful, traditional Anglican faith. You may have heard that there are a few Bishops and Archbishops who have rejected Biblical authority, being very loud as they try to lead others astray. They have chosen to walk apart from the 85-million other Anglicans who are ministering in 165 countries.

“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed…”

Psalm 2:1-2

When bishops arrived at the Lambeth Conference last Summer, we were given a booklet that had been prepared in advance by an aggressive, wealthy minority. This was a booklet of “statements by the Lambeth bishops.” They wanted to put their words into the mouths of the bishops.

Over the past 40 years, we in the Anglican Church of Canada have witnessed a loud, organized minority try repeatedly to pressure the church to change our doctrine on marriage. How did they set out to accomplish their desires? They asked the church to put away the Word of God and take their word as gospel instead. God warns us about this in His Word:

We also have the message of the prophets. This message can be trusted completely. You must pay attention to it. The message is like a light shining in a dark place. It will shine until the day Jesus comes. Above all, here is what you must understand. No prophecy in Scripture ever came from a prophet’s own understanding of things.

2 Peter 1:19-20

If their word of prophecy is from ‘the spirit’, then it would align with scripture. The Word of God is eternal, just as Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Why do they call us to put aside Jesus’ teachings about sex and marriage, why do they call us to doubt the Bible’s authority, and if this is the “good news” they claim it to be, why is the Anglican church in the south predicting they will be “out of business” by the year 2040? Isaiah 55:11 promises that God’s Word will bear fruit, going forth to all lands. “It will not return to me empty”, says the Lord, so God’s will is for our churches, and His Kingdom, to grow!

Jesus said He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. So, ask the question: why are those who have been blown about by these shifting winds of strange doctrine on a constant decline and predicting closure? If these new teachings about sexuality and marriage were of God, they would bear fruit. Yet, if you want to see churches that are growing, even under heavy trials, those are the places where the full Word of God is being preached faithfully, and where Christians are learning to humbly submit to follow Jesus as their Lord.

Words are powerful. But words can also be hijacked to mean things that they were not intended to mean. We cannot mistake a popular movement in our culture as gospel, for to do so would be to deny the Christian faith. We are asked to slide into the dark ages of Josiah and Ezra, to return to the dark ages when the people didn’t know the Word of God.

A time for Renewed Discipleship

Many names describe Jesus’ followers. Independent is not one of them. Neither is selfwilled or authoritarian. They were first known as “followers of the Way”, followers of the one who said he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus invited all who were hungry, or thirsty, or weighed down by the struggles of the world to deny themselves, submit to His Lordship and authority as the incarnate Word of God, and learn to follow Him.

There are 2 billion Christians across the world. Yet, as we’ve watched our brothers and sisters in the southern Anglican Church of Canada wander away from the Word of God, only 1% of Canadians now consider themselves a member of an Anglican church.

People need to hear the grace and hope offered by the fullness of the Gospel. We’ve seen the proof over generations: to preach a partial “gospel” that only echoes the message of the world is the recipe for closing churches. If our message offers no greater hope of transformation than whatever we hear in our society, then of course churches would die out! It is only the life-changing, challenging call to repentance that offers the the new life that Jesus has in store for all who hear and respond to the Gospel.

Friends, know this: by God’s grace, we in the Arctic are faithful to Jesus and His Word. We remain as a faithful remnant within the Anglican Church of Canada, and we stand firm with the vast majority of Biblically-faithful Anglicans all over the world.

This is Christ’s Church, it isn’t ours

In everyday talk, sure someone might say “this is my church”. But, for Anglicans, it is important to remember that it isn’t our church at all. The Church belongs to Christ, even as those who gave money for and built the building did it as an offering to God. This should affect how we deal with differences or disagreements. Congregationalists often split over differences. Anglicans are not quick to split, because we can stand firm on a long tradition of faithful teaching that goes right back to the first apostles.

The Book of Common Prayer includes a summary of this teaching. The “39 Articles of Religion” are the standard for doctrine for faithful Anglicans all around the world.

Article 21— OF THE AUTHORITY OF GENERAL COUNCILS : “General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.

Now is the time to remember our Anglican roots, firmly grounded in Scripture. As we know, the Anglican reformation didn’t begin with Henry the 8th – it began 200 years earlier with John Wyclif making the Gospel available in the English language! Oh how our faithful grandparents would have longed to have the Word of God available so easily as we do, with so many people able to read, and the Bible available in every home and on every phone, computer, or tablet! We have better access to the Word of God than any generation that has ever gone before.

So now is the time to return to scripture. For those of you who have rejected scripture we ask you to submit to biblical authority. It is difficult to reject pride, but pride needs to be renounced. Pride caused many a bishop and many a diocese to act independent of General Synod and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many…..If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable…”

1 Corinthians 12: 12- 12-14, 19-22

By grace, and in a spirit of reconciliation The Diocese of The Arctic appeals to those of who have cut themselves off from biblical doctrines. Repent and let us be reconciled. However, for reconciliation with each other, we first need to be reconciled with God.

A message to Change the World

God called us to be messengers of the Good News, to bring that eternal, unchanging, fruitful news of the Gospel out to all lands: that there is salvation for all, offered by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone! Listen to the internet, TV or radio and you will hear bad news: it all boils down to humans seeking power over others. When one group wants to conquer another, they send in an army. One group wants wealth, so that means someone else needs to go without. A group feels like they’ve been treated wrongly, so they in turn want to be in control. Soon enough, the other side feels wronged and struggle for power themselves.

One of the devil’s tactics is to divide people into groups. God’s plan is to unite us together. Jesus teaches us a way that is very different than the world’s way. In the Kingdom of Heaven, leadership comes in the form of service. To serve others rather than rule over them. The Kingdom of Heaven has a particular way of life. It is something we all need to learn, it doesn’t come to anyone naturally. In fact, the Bible teaches us that the ways of this world are often the opposite to the ways of God! We have broken God’s commandments. The book of judges, ends with the statement that in those days the people had no king and they did what was right in their own eyes. This not unlike society today indulging in selfish self-centered pleasure.

We need to get serious about what it means to be baptized into the Body of Christ. In baptism we call people to renounce Satan, evil spirits, and selfishness, and to receive Jesus as their Savior.

Have you ever heard of an army that does not equip soldiers against its formidable enemy. Let me ask you: has your church prepared you for the attacks that Satan will bring against you, your family, your community, your country, and the world? We have not done this well, and all leaders, and I as a bishop, must repent and ask the Lord’s mercy. The Book of Joel says wake up, sober up, an enemy has invaded the land. It’s time to heed that message once more.

It’s about more than sex

As Anglicans, our biblical theology has always been that human marriage reflects the marriage of Jesus to His church. This is why, in ordination, priests and bishops are warned of the horrible punishment that awaits them if they fail to feed, care for and protect the children of God, who we call the spouse and body of Christ. We ordain people to serve the spouse and body of Christ Jesus’ spouse. Therefore priests and bishops are urged prodded, exhorted to ask God the Father for the heavenly assistance of the Holy Ghost; and to read and weigh scripture every day. Our reading and weighing of the Scriptures, teach us that family is the foundation of either cursed or blessed societies. Satan wants to destroy families and create societies that are consumed with lust of the flesh, lust of things and pride of life. These are Satan’s three powerful methods of temptation that he uses to try and lure all of us away from following Jesus. Satan wants to destroy the family, but God ordained the family and designed it to be the environment to strengthen mankind and our children.

To have a blessed society, it is crucial that men and women commit themselves to God and to each other in Holy Marriage. In marriage a husband and wife create a family, where if blessed with children a mother and father demonstrate to their children an example of mutual responsibility. Marriage and family life are far from easy. Yet the family is the institution designed by God where children can witness their parents struggles and joys. It’s in the family that children will learn about their parent’s faith and trust in God and their faith and trust in each other. It’s in the family that children will learn about disappointments and the need to seek God’s help, the need to give and receive, mercy and forgiveness.

Family, marriage, divorce; these are words, powerful words. Jesus was once told that his mother and brothers and sisters were asking for him and Jesus answers whoever does the will of my Father is my mother, my brother and my sister. In Matthew 12:50 Jesus calls us into a holy unity and fellowship, a family of believers called the bride of Christ. As believers and followers of Jesus, we are connected through belief that Jesus is God incarnate, the Good Shepherd spoken about in Ezekiel 34. In Ezekiel God says, “7 “‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 8 As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, 9 therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 10 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock…. 11 “‘For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them. Isaiah 11:1 tells us Jesus is the root and stem of Jesse and Jeremiah 23:1, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD. Verses 5-6 tells us the LORD will be the branch of David and His name is LORD GOD, ALMIGHTY OUR RIGHTEOUS.