Romans Ch 13 Pt.1 with Dana Coverstone

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Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God with Mike Zwick, today we have Pastor Dana Coverstone back on the show.

And Pastor Dana, it seems like you got some exciting news. Is that right, your, was it your daughter just got engaged? Yes, my youngest daughter is going to be getting married sometime here later this year. My son got married last year, and now my youngest daughter, who we thought would be the first one to get married, she's getting married. It happened over this last weekend.

The guy asked for the marriage. She's been dating a really good, solid guy, a strong believer, incredibly gifted guitarist, and they're going to be working in music ministry and things, so I'm excited. It's been a great weekend for me. Awesome, man. So I believe you also have a book that's out, is that right? Yes, I wrote a book. It's called Simple Accountability. It's just the way I've done accountability for 30 years, and my hope is it's going to help men especially, but anybody who's looking for accountability in their spiritual walk, being able to be transparent and open with people. It's available on Amazon, places like that, so it's just called Simple Accountability.

I hope it's blessing people right and left out there. Gotcha, so go pick up that book, and well, we're just going to get right into it today. We've got Romans chapter 13, and what we're going to be looking at is, it's really broken up into two parts, if you look at this, and I've got the NASB version of 2020, but I'll start off, and it says, every person is to be subject to the governing authority, for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear, for good behavior, but for evil.

Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For it is a servant of God to you for good, but if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing. For it is a servant of God, an avenger, who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore, it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

For because of this, you also pay taxes. For rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Pay to all what is due to them, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom is due, respect to whom respect, honor to whom honor. And so, Pastor Dana, when I read those first seven verses, you know, one of the things that comes to my mind is that, as Christians, we should absolutely 100% obey the laws of the land. Give you an example, we're not supposed to go out there and murder people.

We're not supposed to steal. We're not supposed to, you know, whatever the the temple laws are that are obviously according to the will of God, we are supposed to obey those laws. But as we were just talking about before the show, there have been times and there have been countries where people have taken Romans chapter 13 and they've said, well, you need to obey the government no matter what. But let me ask you this, Pastor Dana, are there, could there be some reasons or could there be some examples where we may need to actually disobey the government?

Absolutely. Any law, any rule, any mandate, any standard that violates the Word of God comes against the principles of God's Word, violates our individual understanding of who God is, comes against moral values. I believe that the abortion laws are violations of God's Word.

The Bible says, choose life. And so if and when, like, and right now, you know, in America, in Canada especially, there are truckers who are disobeying the government. There are truckers who have stood against this emergency usage of emergency laws that Trudeau has put into power. There are people standing up against that.

Truckers were handed pieces of paper that said, hey, you're going to be arrested. And most of these protesters are peaceful. And so there comes a time when, well, if you're parked in a certain place, you're not supposed to park, that's different.

But for the most part, people are waking up. And one of the reasons that we have to be careful, though, is because a lot of folks, a lot of churches say, oh, we've got to just listen. So with the mandates and things in America, what we have to come to is, okay, God, what's, how do you feel about this word? How do you feel about this law? And where do I as a Christian stand?

What side do I stand on? Because there will be times when the laws violate God's purpose, God's plan. I do not agree with Roe v. Wade. I do not agree with any law that allows for people to just abort a baby for any reason.

Why? Because God's word says, do not murder, do not kill, choose life. We know that. But at times, governments, because of the way that they are functioning, the way that they deal with people and the needs of the culture, it's going to be very, very likely that they put laws out there that violate moral standards, such as, 2016, we saw the Supreme Court redefine what marriage is. The Bible is very clear, as it was in the beginning when God made them male and female. Marriage is between a man and a woman. And so no church can change what that looks like. No government can change what that looks like.

That's God's word. We also see now where identity, gender identity is a big deal out there. You've got folks that are saying, well, I'm a woman, I'm actually, you know, a man saying I'm a woman, I'm a woman saying they're a man, when biologically, they are not. And yet, the laws would come and support that. Well, I'm still going to continue to speak against those sort of things.

I support only traditional merit between a man and a woman. And although the law says, hey, these things are right, I say, no, God's word says they're wrong. And therefore, that law is, to me, a violation of God's word. And because it violates the principles of God's word, I have every right to say, I will not follow it, I will not endorse it, I will not support it, I will not stand with it. And that's where a lot of churches right now are trying to bend and compromise. And we started listening to culture a whole lot more than we listen to what the Bible says. God's word is the final authority, not the Supreme Court, not the House of Representatives and Senate.

The word of God is the final authority on these things. And so, yes, there are times when we as believers have to say, I cannot follow that law, I cannot support that law. But that's also the time and place when we as believers contact our elected representatives. We let our senators or congressmen know exactly how we feel, either at the federal level or at the state level. And so that's why we have to be vocal. We can't just, we're not going to do it. We have to be vocal and say something.

And I'll give you an example. When I was a youth pastor back in Indiana, there was a gas station in town that started selling pornography, actual magazines, that sort of thing. And a pastor came to one of our pastor meetings and said, I just want you guys to know that we're boycotting that store and we're telling our people not to go there. Well, the senior pastor I worked with asked that pastor, he said, well, have you talked to the people of the business, the company?

No, no, no, we're just talking to our people. So we left that meeting my pastor and I, and we went to that gas station. And we asked to speak to the manager. And speaking to the manager, we just said, hey, there's a church that's doing this. And we said, hey, we work with youth and kids.

We're in this community. And we're just going to ask, we were very nice, but we said, you know, we're not here to tell you how to run your business. We just like to ask that you would stop selling this stuff because it ends up in the hands of kids and youth and teenagers. It makes a big mess.

It ruins marriages and everything else. And the guy said, well, I'll think about that. Well, a week later, you know, we go back and just, he said, you know what, I'm going to get rid of this stuff.

I'm not going to sell it. And we asked if he knew the pastor of the church that had boycotted him. He said, no. You know, so the boycott at that church wasn't impacting this guy at all. So when two Christians, two pastors went and talked with him face to face and just said, hey, we're just concerned about this. We didn't yell, didn't scream, didn't make demands. We just said, we got a concern about this. That guy responded perfectly, got rid of the stuff.

He showed us it was all boxed up ready to go back to the company that sold it to him, that they were selling it for. So we can make a difference when it comes to law. We got to open our mouths. We got to speak the truth, preach the truth, declare the truth, and let the world know why, you know, it can't just be, well, we're just not following that because of this. We have to say, this is what God's word says, and this is why this word by this law violates those things in God's word.

So we've got a responsibility to not just not follow the law, but explain why God's principles and know them. Yes, that's true. We were actually talking about this before the show. You were actually talking about Acts chapter four. Is that right?

Yeah. In the book of Acts, you know, in the book of Acts chapter four, Peter and John were on their way to pray, and on the way they end up praying. This lame man had been lame since birth. He puts his hand out, Peter says, you know, silver and gold, I do not have what I do have, I give to you in the name of Jesus the Nazarene, walk. And the guy is healed. He enters the temple, he's jumping, he's leaping, he's never walked before in his life.

People see this, they come running, they're all excited. Peter preaches a message. Well, then the leaders of the church show up, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the leaders, and basically they put them in jail until, you know, for the next day. And then, crazy enough, in verse four of chapter four, it says that the many of those who heard the message believe.

Well, they also saw the miracle of healing. And so the next day they tell these guys, you need to stop preaching in the name of Jesus. And they say, hey, you know, whether it's right inside of God to give heed to you rather than God, you be the judge.

But we cannot stop speaking what we've seen and heard. And although this wasn't the Roman law, this was the religious law, basically Peter said, we're not going to listen to you. We've got a higher power to answer to. And they were mad because of what the name of Jesus had done in healing that lame man. But Caiaphas who was there had also been around, he'd been talked to after Lazarus had been raised from the dead in John chapter 11. In that moment they were like, you know, if we keep this, if this guy keeps preaching like this, we don't shut him down and silence Jesus.

He's going to do more and more miracles and pretty soon we'll be so distracted by him that Rome will come and take us over. And so instead of seeing the fact that Jesus just raised Lazarus from the dead, or in the name of Jesus this man had been healed, they're more concerned about their political power and their connections. And so we look at things like the abortion laws today. If they really, really served God and knew who God was, they wouldn't be putting laws out there that allow people just to kill their babies for any reason.

They have a whole lot more concern. And I appreciate the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church is the most vocal group out there when it comes to pro-life and supporting the unborn. But there's so many of our senators and congressmen that are Catholic and yet they are pro-choice. And that's a violation of their faith. And I wish the Catholic Church would come out more and more against these folks. I know that some came out against President Biden when he was first in and not taking communion with things, but when it violates God's Word, when someone says, hey, start preaching the name of Jesus, I'm not going to do that. I know that censorship is the big deal right now, but they're also going to try to come up with ideas of why that's hate speech. And pretty soon all I've just said on here will be literally considered hate speech.

And they're going to say that I'm anti-people. Well, I believe God's Word says one thing about marriage. I believe God's Word says one thing about justice. I believe God's Word says one thing about truth and speaking the truth.

And we've got to stand on it. So even in the book of Acts, the religious people became intolerant of the message of Jesus. And if the religious people will not like what Jesus says, well, we're definitely guaranteed those in the secular world, the political world, the leaders in the echelons of government and power and authority, they're not going to like what Jesus said either. So we know what's coming.

We just have to continue to stand up against those things we face. Yeah, you know, it's funny, in the whole Bible, I've read the whole thing, and I never saw a time when Jesus kind of licked his finger and stuck it up in the air and saw which way the wind was blowing and said, I'm going to go this way. You know, he had his convictions. He knew what was right.

He knew what was wrong. And he said, I'm going to do the right thing. You know, and I think a lot of the listeners today would say, yeah, we agree with you on the abortion thing, and we agree with you on the marriage thing.

We know that marriage is between a man and a woman. But they'd say, well, what about these mandates? And, you know, what's wrong with that?

Well, first of all, I would ask the question, what is the legal, what's the legal background for these mandates? You know, the news items that I look at on a daily basis are talking, I get information from Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe, other countries, even Canada. And we're finding that in the last year, they've seen over 100 athletes in the professional soccer league that have either dropped dead or had massive heart attacks.

We're talking about teenagers and children. In Ireland, there was a 10-year-old kid that had a heart attack on the playground. EMT is bonding back to life.

You're seeing an incredible increase in mitochondria. And if you remember that when this all came out, it was under emergency authorization usage. Well, I as a type 1 diabetic, I had the question, what are the side effects of the COVID, what are the side effects of these injections for type 1 diabetics?

And as a type 1 diabetic, I should have access to those records. So the FDA has not given a whole lot of information that research out. It's just been kind of like, well, we have to pass the bill before we know what's in it. And the trials and the tests were not long enough. They did not follow FDA regulation standards. And, you know, in the sense, the pro-choice movement always says, well, it's my body, my life.

But if I turn around and say, well, it's my body, it's my life, I get looked at as I'm a crazy fool or something. But just the fact, you know, anytime in history, have you seen where every nation was requiring a vaccination? You go back to 1918, 1919, the Spanish flu broke out. They started developing vaccinations and things for the Spanish flu. But even then at that time, it was not every country saying you better have this, you better get this.

This has been the whole different thing. We have seen, excuse me, we have seen most every government on the planet lock business down, small business down. We have seen mass mandates, we've seen vaccination mandates. We have been told that people will be fired if they don't get certain mandates. When in the last time in your life, in my time, have we ever heard that you had to have a vaccination to be employed anywhere?

When's the last time those types of mandates were there? And so it was an overstitch, overstep. It was great overreach on the part of the government. And if you stood up and said anything, you were considered to be fanatical or crazy or part of, you know, you're in league with those that are releasing COVID or whatever. And even if you questioned where it came from, you know, a year and a half ago, if you mentioned the Wuhan lab leak, you were, you know, quieted down. And now you hear that same language coming from the halls of Congress, the halls of the Senate. You hear that same language being talked about in major newspapers.

So suddenly everything's changing because people are pretty much fed up. But when it comes to the mandate, I say it's my right as an American citizen to determine and choose what goes into my body. And they can tell me what to put in my arm as far as the vaccination. They can tell me what hours I have to work. They can tell me what I have to eat for lunch.

They can tell me how much money I can make, you know, based on. So once again, the mandate's become an open door for a whole lot more tyranny. Just this week, the prime minister of Canada started this emergency, or he put emergency laws out there, which gives their leaders unlimited access to bank accounts. You know, he was talking about we're going to take your license, we're going to take your trucks, we're going to impound your trucks, we're going to take your licensing, we're going to take, you know, we're going to increase your bank accounts. And all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, that's an overstep, that's an overreach.

You know. So that's what I believe mandates lead to. I believe these mandates will ultimately lead to that as well. Even if things kind of slow down and they take the mandates away, I believe you're going to see more and more encroachment of the government on our rights and our freedoms. We've seen censorship go out of control this year, even things being said by Joe Rogan, you know, and having to apologize. And people, musicians come out and say, hey, unless you take that person off, I'm going to remove all my music. Well, all of a sudden it's like, I don't like this person, so unless you do what I want you to do with their music and stuff, I'm going to pull out, too. So it's like a bunch of kids on the playground fighting over who gets to take the dodgeball in or who gets to, you know, go who gets to win the game. And so those mandates literally are taking our rights and our freedoms. That's true. And, you know, the other thing that I'm hearing people say is, you know, there may be some medicine out there like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

And I don't know, are they saying anything about that? Well, I'm hearing from people, and here's the point, emergency authorization uses can only be applied if there are no medications that work. And now you've got doctors coming out saying, hey, ivermectin works, hey, hydroxychloroquine works, hey, this stuff over here works, hey, vitamin D, making sure you're taking plenty of zinc and stuff like that. So if there's already something that works, you have to ask yourself, you and I both saw the media do everything they could to demonize anybody using ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. And I'll tell you, I went to the Farm Bureau store around here, I got a bottle of the ivermectin, the injectable kind.

I'm a diabetic, so I got plenty of syringes. And I used that, and I did not go to the hospital when I had COVID. I did not go to the hospital when I was that sick. I even had pneumonia, probably sounds like I still have pneumonia, but I wasn't hospitalized when I had COVID. And I looked at it, and I realized that the ivermectin that I took helped me get through that and heal up faster. But you've got people demonizing others out there because they used it, and it just goes to show you that when people begin to demonize something that works, and hindsight's 20-20, but all the stuff that they were demonizing to say this is awful, this is terrible, it's actually helping people.

It's actually working to help people's physical situations get better and better and better. And it also got to the place where you heard a lot of people that were blaming all the unvaccinated people. Well, the first 65% vaccinated in this country, and a lot of the people still getting hospitalized, and even after they get the second and third shot are getting COVID again, then you can't blame a certain group of people because they haven't gotten something for what's continuing to be what they consider to be a pandemic. So as an American citizen, I've got rights. As an American citizen, I have the right to control what goes in my body. And there's something called informed consent. That informed consent means a lot to me, it should mean a lot to you, because it basically means, and all these companies that were saying, hey, you have to have the shots before you work. Well, those companies literally were taking responsibility for forcing those employees to get those shots. And so if somebody got sick, and Congress said you can't sue Pfizer, you can't sue Moderna, you can't sue J&J. So in other words, Congress allowed those companies that made these vaccines to just have no liability. Now, how responsible the American citizens does that make our Congress? They basically wrote us off. And so I've got a big problem with that.

And we're talking about Romans 13. I think our government has really done a disservice to the American citizen by forcing these things, and then requiring employees to do it or finding them and things like that. Yeah, I actually saw something on social media the other day, and it said, whatever the media says, do the opposite.

Yeah, I think that's very, very good advice. And even with the media, are we being told the truth? Are we speaking the truth? I can find 5,000 articles out there against the vaccine, just like I can find 5,000 for the vaccine. We've seen that news groups like CNN, they're losing a lot of viewers, a lot of listeners, because there just seems to be a mandate for the mainstream media to say the same things, the same talking points, and not expose the truth. And so as an American citizen, I have the right to examine what's being said out there. I have the right to examine articles on different places and different websites. And I'm okay with alternative news. Is all alternative news accurate?

Well, is all mainstream media accurate? You know, as an American citizen, you and I both have the right to research, to dig, to find the truth, to find those things that are out there. But when they start censoring what you can say, you can not say, when they start censoring what you have to have to go to work, that's the government overstepping its line. I'm not afraid to say that publicly. We have a right as American citizens, as Christians, to question what our government does. That First Amendment also talks about the right to assemble, the right to talk to our elected officials, want to know what we're thinking, and I'm going to continue to do all those things.

Absolutely, man. And you know, one of the things I think about when it comes to these mandates and when it comes to the pressure and this and that, I've actually heard it said over the years that in times where, in Christianity, in countries where it's been easy to be a Christian, where everybody was a Christian and you didn't receive any pushback or any blowback or anything like that, a lot of times the moral values kind of just went downhill, or a lot of times people's faith, when it was not tested, that Christianity didn't really thrive. But in times you look at countries now, like China, where there's the underground church, or like Iran, where you can't even publicly say that you're a Christian, or you may be killed, that in those places Christianity is thriving, and maybe there's something to the persecution. The one thing we find in the book of Acts, when the church was persecuted, it scattered. It scattered the believers everywhere, and they took the gospel with them. What happened on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, and what happened through the Holy Spirit falling, what happened through the man healed as a beautiful gate, the underlying thing there was there was relationship and fellowship, and those people loved the Lord and they loved each other. And they knew that what they had accepted in their hearts as faith, their Christianity was meant to change the world, and their Christianity was meant to transform the lives of anybody around them everywhere they went. And they took it seriously enough that when actor Stephen was killed, and they began to persecute the church like crazy, the church was scattered.

And it made a huge impact, it made a huge impact on the watching world. I mean, we have the Bible today, we have hospitals. You look at the things that Christianity brought to the world, it changed the way people were educated, it changed the way people were taken care of in hospitals, orphanages, and things like that. That all came out of Christianity. I've got a book basically called, you know, What's Christianity Ever Done for the World?

And it talks about even things like architecture, science. Christianity has made such a great impact on this country, on our world, people forget that. And it's all because the church got scattered. And Acts chapter 8 verse 4 says, Therefore those who have been scattered went about preaching the word. So the church scatters, and yet as they're scattered they keep preaching the word everywhere they go.

And that's got to be our heart, got to be our intent in all that we do in this day and age. No matter how hard it gets, we keep serving Jesus. No matter how difficult it gets, keep preaching that name. No matter how hard it becomes personally or individually or corporately for the church as a whole, we keep serving Jesus. He said, Through many trials and tribulations you will enter the kingdom of heaven. And when I baptize people in water, I always quote from Revelation where it says, Be faithful to death and I will give you the crown of life. I mean, Jesus said he wants us to endure, and those who endure to the end will be saved.

And that endurance part has to do with some of the things that we're going to face and deal with. So whatever comes, we serve Jesus. Whatever comes, we serve Jesus. And when you were talking about the persecution, one of the verses that kind of came to my mind is Acts 5 41, and I'm going to use the NASB again. It says, So they went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for his name. So, you know, I think so many times maybe in America we say, Well, thank God we're not suffering persecution, or thank God, you know, we're not living in China.

Thank God we're not living in Iran. But, you know, I heard one time where he had said that he went to a Chinese church and he said, The Chinese church actually said, Will you pray that we can become more like you? And he said, No. He says, After coming here, he says, I want you to pray that the American church is going to become more like you. We're not supposed to be afraid of persecution, but like the, you know, the silver when it's tested in the fire, man, that we are, that we're shown to be worthy of his name and worthy of to be called Christians, and that don't fall away when things get tough. And Pastor Dana Mann, it's been so awesome to have you on this first show, and looks like we're going to have to do Romans 13 on our second show.

But I think there were some things in this show that really, really needed to be talked about. And I tell you what, I just want to tell you this, those who are listening right now, if you're considering taking the shot, if you're considering doing this, before you do it, just pray about it. And make sure that the Lord has told you to do this, because I have met so many people who have said, and I asked them, I said, Why did you take the shot? And they said, Well, my mom pressured me into it, or I had to do it for my job, or I had to do it for this or I had to do, you don't have to do anything. You always have a choice. I think we're kind of on the same mind that it might not be a good thing. I really don't think it is. But Pastor Dana, thank you for coming on the show. Pick up the book, the name of the book, Simple Accountability. We look forward to having you back again next week for the second part of Romans chapter 13, if not for God.