underground church – Protestia

Breaking: Gov’t Forced to Drop Charges Against Illegally Jailed Canadian Pastor

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has announced that the contempt of court charge against Pastor Tim Stephens of Calgary’s Fairview Baptist Church has been dropped and will not be given a hearing, lifting the specter of further arrest on that charge. For now.

The move comes after it was discovered that Alberta Health Services (AHS), the manically prosecutorial organization that has been responsible for jailing three pastors and locking their churches, never actually served the court order for which Pastor Stephens was arrested and thrown in jail.

In fact, they served the court order to a different Tim Stephens, and by the time they arrested the pastor, the court order he was charged with had already been abrogated and modified by a judge, making it so that it wouldn’t have applied to him anyway.

Because AHS messed up twice, Stephens was incarcerated illegally, the victim of a rabid government entity hellbent on persecuting anyone who doesn’t abide by their anti-scientific rhetoric.

Ultimately, it took three days for JCCF to secure Stephens’ release, but this was three days too many. Stephens is out and completely free, with the case against him being dropped and the AHS licking their wounds as they plot their next line of attack.

Despite the contempt of court charge being dropped, Pastor Tim Stephens and his congregation are not in the clear. Like Pastor James Coates and GraceLife Church, they have gone underground and been meeting in secret in order to stave off further attention and persecution.

Pray for the persecuted church of Alberta.

An Update on the Occupation of GraceLife Church

For the third week in a row, GraceLife Church had their service in secret – an undisclosed location somewhere within a 100-mile radius of the city.

Whereas previously hundreds of protesters attended the rally at their facilities, driving hours to wave flags, give speeches, listen to speeches, pray, and protest the occupation of a Christian church by a tyrannical government, the property now lies empty and has been empty the last two weeks, attended to only by a handful of security guards and RCMP officers.

Meanwhile, at their undisclosed location that is still being attended by hundreds of people, Pastor Jacob Spenst preached the sermon yesterday from Colossians 3, going through some heady passages about dying with Christ and having our lives hidden with Christ in God.

Based on the backdrops they are using to conceal their location, as well as the rippling effects on the screen and the lighting, the clothes they are wearing and the backround noise, it appears that the last two services have been held outside in the sun rather than indoors.

At this point, all indication is Parkland police officers and Alberta Health Services (AHS) have decided to leave GraceLife Church alone. They have not crashed or disrupted their newest gathering, despite having the ability to do so. They have not released any public statement to that effect and no major media sources have asked AHS why they have backed off, thereby keeping it out of the news. There is currently no political pressure to chase them down and there haven’t been constant complaints from neighbors and concerned citizens at seeing them gather openly.

In effect, the people have been assuaged by seeing a building boarded up while the body belts out praise to the Lord away from prying and watchful eyes.

With no large crowds gathering at their facilities, there have been rumors that the church is going to have a service near their church property soon, but that has not been confirmed by anyone and should be taken as mere speculation.

James Coates is expected to be in court Monday, May 3rd to fight his remaining charge of violating the Public Health Act, where the Justice Centre will argue that the government and law enforcement violated multiple Charter rights and freedoms by ticketing, arresting, and jailing the courageous pastor, and therefore need to abandon the last charge.

Continue to pray for GraceLife.