The long road ahead
Multi-generationally rebuilding the ruins of Canada
The conquest of Rome
The Christian church was birthed around 34 AD, and it was allowed to spread and grow relatively unscathed for about 30 years. Then, in 64 AD, the Emperor Nero burned down a portion of Rome to free up the real estate for his new temple. He proceeded to blame the Christians, commencing the first formal, Empire-sanctioned persecution of Christians. The intense, geographically localized persecution persisted for almost 200 years.
In 241 AD, under the rule of Emperor Decius, the persecution of Christians broadened in scope and continued unabated all over the Roman Empire for another 70 years or so. Finally, in 313 AD, under the direction of Emperor Constantine, Christianity was made a legal religion in the Empire, and in 380 AD, under Emperor Theodosius, Christianity was made the official religion of the Empire.
If we put all that together, we have a total of about 250 years of Christian persecution, and 317 years before Christianity takes over as the religion of the Empire.
Brick by brick
The building of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris began in 1163. It wasn't completed until 1345. For anyone who is quick with math, that means it took a total of 182 years to construct this cathedral. Let me contextualize that number. Every single person who was alive when construction of the cathedral began was dead long before it was completed. Moreover, every single person who was alive when the capstone was put on the completed cathedral was not alive when the foundation was laid.
What’s astounding, given the amount of time it took to build Notre Dame Cathedral, is the fact that not one person who was alive when the cathedral’s construction began ever met or even set eyes on any of the people who were alive to see the finished product. There was no overlap. There was at least one generation between these groups of people because of the almost two centuries it took to construct the glorious cathedral.
Unknown Proto-Reformers
Most historians date the beginning of the Reformation “proper” as October 31st, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. John Calvin, who was just a child at this time, would later enter into the ministry and produce his Institutes as well. Ulrich Zwingli began his preaching and Reformation work in 1519. William Tyndale, who began translating the Bible into English in 1525, did so illegally. John Knox embraced Reformation principles in the 1540s.
Everyone who knows anything about Church history (and even some people who are less familiar), know about these men and their connection to the Reformation. They love the Reformers and the work that they did in drawing attention back to the supremacy of God's Word and to the ultimate authority of Christ alone as the Head of the Church.
However, there are some lesser-known characters who are integral to the work of the Reformation. You may or may not know about Peter Waldo who began to speak out against excesses and decadence in the Roman Catholic Church in 1170. He translated the Bible into the language of his people. The Church forbade him, as a layman, from doing this, but he did it anyway. He was excommunicated and forced to flee to the northern mountains of Italy.
John Wycliffe, known as the Morning Star of the Reformation, also worked towards translating the Bible into the language of his people, even though Bible translation was made illegal in 1229, before Wycliffe was born. In 1377, Wycliffe condemned Pope Gregory the 11th for the decadence, prosperity, and corruption within the Roman Catholic Church. Wycliffe was denounced as a heretic. He and his followers were persecuted, and after his death, his body was posthumously dug up, burned, and his ashes were drowned.
Jan Hus preached the Bible – illegally, by the way – in the language of the Moravian people in 1402. He was a proponent of Reformation principles. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, just 100 years before Martin Luther was saved. Girolamo Savonarola criticized the corruption in the clergy and the exploitation of the poor. He was condemned, hanged, and burned along with three other friars in 1498.
All of these Proto-Reformers – most of whom no one knows about – played a significant role in the Reformation proper. Without these and other men laying the groundwork for faithful service to Christ, there would be no Luther, no Calvin, no Knox, no Zwingli, no Tyndale, and no Reformation breaking out in Europe.
Our place in history
Most Christians would probably say that they would rather live in 380 AD and not in 64 AD. They want to be there when the transformation is complete, when Christianity has taken over the Empire, when you have the emergence of Christian thinkers and a fully flourishing Church. People would rather bask in the success of the church in 380 AD than in the persecution of the church in 64 AD, when Christians were burned alive and quartered by horses; when they were impaled by poles, covered with pitch, and then set on fire as torches to light the streets of Rome; when they were crucified upside down. Most people would rather be there when the work is done.
Most people would rather see the finishing touches put on the cathedral than move the heavy stones out of the way with their bare hands to clear the ground for the digging and the laying of the foundation. Most people prefer glamour to drudgery. Most people want to put the capstone on and say, “Look at what we did,” not look at an empty field and say, “It's going to be a lot of hard work, but by God's grace, there will someday be a cathedral, which we will not live to see.” Most people would rather be there when the work is done.
Most people would rather be Luther or Calvin, not Hus, nor Waldo, nor the men who were burned alive, whose bodies were dug up and then burned so their ashes could be drowned, who suffered in obscurity with most people not knowing about them. These names don't come up in the history books like Luther and Knox and Calvin. Most people would rather be the 16th century Reformers, not the Proto-Reformers. Most people would rather be there when the work is done.
The lay of the land
We want to see it done. We want to see the effect of the work, but not the unglamorous, difficult, heavy work that involves suffering and pain and persecution. We're not clamoring for that. “Show me the finished product,” that’s our desire.
My honest assessment of Canada is that we are nowhere near the work being done. We are nowhere near a right belief about God taking over the Empire. We are nowhere near the finished construction of the cathedral. We are nowhere near Reformation. We are simply not there, and we will not be there for decades, if not generations.
That's my honest assessment of the situation. We're not close to having a Christian nation. In fact, what we are living in is a post-post-Christian nation. We're running on the fumes of godly men and women who established this nation upon Biblical truth hundreds of years ago. The sad reality is that we have essentially squandered every last cent of inheritance that they bequeathed to us.
What is visible in the culture is that we are closer to the open, legal, state-sanctioned persecution of the church than we are to the Christian church taking over the Empire. We are in the Proto-Reformation phase. If we are waiting for things to turn around and get better in maybe one, or two, maybe three election cycles, just hoping that it will okay, and we can keep doing what we've been doing the way we’ve been doing it for 50 years, and we’ll live to see the turnaround, we won’t. You won’t, and I won’t. We have to get that reality out of the way and be honest about our current situation in the West.
We are far away from what we want to see, from what by God's grace, I believe our children and grandchildren will see. If we're faithful, if we understand the times, if we work diligently, then we will also die and hopefully hand off to future generations that which is needed to rebuild a Christian Canada. But, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, I don't think any of us are going to live to see it, and I include myself in that.
An optimistic long-view
Having said all of that, I am neither discouraged nor dissuaded from doing the work that needs to be done. There is work that must be done in order to complete and accomplish a reality that none of us are going to live to see. Right now, we are in 64 AD. We are at the beginning of the cathedral’s construction. We are in the Proto-Reformation.
This optimism, by the way, has nothing to do with your flavour of eschatological belief. It is not determined by whether or not you affirm the Doctrines of Grace. It has nothing to do with whether or not you choose to baptize babies. I know men of all stripes and all tribes that are committed to the work that needs to be done, hopeful of God’s blessing in the future, knowing they won’t live to see it with their own eyes.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the narratives concerning rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and the surrounding city walls within those books, will provide the necessary perspective and direction needed for Christians to engage in the long-term, laborious, and optimistic work ahead of us.
As we build
After Nehemiah assesses the damage done to Jerusalem, and what lies ahead, we read this in Nehemiah 2:17-18:
“Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.’ And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, ‘Let us rise up and build.’ So they strengthened their hands for the good work.”
First, we need to recognize and be honest about the fact that there is work to be done. There is difficult work to be done. It will require all of the strength in our entire beings. It is not for the fainthearted. It is not for those who are weak in spirit and mind. It is not for the person who just wants to sit back in their Muskoka Chair and enjoy the finished product. Anyone who adopts that mentality needs to either smarten up or sit this out. There is hard work to be done. It will be hard physically. It will be hard emotionally. It will be hard mentally. It will be hard spiritually.
In Nehemiah 3 the actual work begins, and there is a curious repetition in that chapter. 39 times in that chapter you will read the phrase “the son of” or “the sons of.” This reveals that, second, if you build alone, you will die, and the work will not be completed. We must get our children and grandchildren involved in the work. After all, it’s they and not we who will be continuing and finishing the work after we are dead and gone. Psalm 127 refers to children as an inheritance, as a blessing, and as arrows. Arrows are not trophies we collect and display over our fireplaces. Arrows are fired from the hands of a trained warrior deep into the heart of enemy territory. As we train our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, we prepare them to be adults that will be sent into the kingdom of darkness in order to establish the Kingdom of God more fully.
In Nehemiah 4, many people oppose the work being done. To no one’s surprise, as God is accomplishing His work, the nations rage and plot in vain. How does Nehemiah respond to all of this? “’Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders’… And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night… And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, ‘Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes’” (Nehemiah 4:4-5, 9, 14). There will be opposition to the work that must be done, both inside and outside of the Christian Church. Therefore, third, we must pray and ask the Lord for the strength and wisdom that is required to do the difficult work before us.
In Ezra 3, the walls around the city are being built as the Temple is also being built. As the foundation of the Temple is being laid, the people are worshipping the Lord, thanking Him for His mercy, and rejoicing that the House of the Lord is being rebuilt. Then we have this in Ezra 3:12-13, “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.” Fourth, don’t be the kind of old person that mourns where we are now in light of where we have been. If you are longing for a Canada of yesteryear, it is never coming back, and we don’t want it to come back. We see now how deep the cultural and moral rot has set in, and we never want to go back. Don’t weep and wail and mourn about how things “used to be.” Work needs to be done and handed off, and if your children can’t distinguish between shouts of joyful engagement from the weeping of a sad old person, they will be deeply discouraged from doing the work, and they won’t want to join us.
In Nehemiah 8, before the Temple work is finished and can even truly begin, we read this: “So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law” (Nehemiah 8:2-3). Fifth, read God's Word, love God’s Word, teach your children God’s Word, teach them to read God’s Word, and teach them to love God’s Word. Don’t assume anything. Don’t take for granted that they will be able to regurgitate whatever they hear on Sunday or in youth group. Train them to read and love the living and active Word of God. If you don’t, and if they don’t have God’s Word hidden in their hearts, they will not endure and succeed in completing the work that we begin and then hand off to them. They might join and work for a while, but once it gets difficult for them (and it will), they can’t live off of your spiritual fumes. The Word of God must be the foundation that empowers them to persevere.
In Nehemiah 9, the people of Israel have a response and reaction to the Word of God that requires examination. “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers… But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments… Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.… Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies. But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies” (Nehemiah 9:1-2, 16-17, 26-28). Sixth, we have to be honest about both our sins and the sins of our fathers. We have failed in many ways, and previous generations also failed, in similar and different ways, and we have inherited the Canada of today, in large part, because of their failures. Lest our children perpetuate the problems, we must be honest about our sins, confess them, and learn from the sins of previous generations.
History informs our future
Even though the damage done to Canada’s cultural, moral, and political foundations is deep and extensive, and even though the way forward is arduous, I am exceedingly hopeful for the future of our country, and the success of our children and grandchildren in rebuilding a Christian Canada, even after we are gone. Why?
Because I have studied history, and I know how to look at the past and see trends and patterns, ebbs and flows. When I do that, I see thousands of years of cultures rising and falling, of kingdoms and empires reigning supreme and crumbling to dust. I see kings ascend to power and persecute God’s people, and I see kings brought low by the Lord.
Yes, the church was persecuted for 250 years shortly after it was birthed, but eventually the Empire itself would bend the knee to Christ. Yes, the plans to build cathedrals seem overwhelming and insurmountable, but faithful work brought them to completion. Yes, the Holy Roman Empire was vastly corrupt and unimaginably oppressive, but the light of the Gospel broke through the darkness.
If we want to see future generations enjoy the fruit of a spiritual renewal and Reformation in Canada, someone has to clear the ground, till the soil, and plant the seed. That’s our job. That’s our role. Time to get to work!