Everyone dies at least once, and every person will receive either heaven or hell depending on the choices that he or she makes. The Lord tells Christians to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves because wisdom and innocence are essential to faithful living in an evil world. They are especially pertinent to Christian leaders who will answer for their words and actions.

In Jesus’s day, it was the Jewish leaders who rejected and betrayed Jesus, but their evil behavior does not justify any person’s hatred toward Jews. Matthew 23 describes Jesus’s warnings to His disciples and the crowds. Jesus warned them not to follow the Torah’s professional interpreters (the scribes or Teachers of the Law) or its theological experts (the Pharisees). Jesus pronounced woes upon them for their false leadership. God would deal with them.

In our day, rejection and betrayal of God by professional leadership is most consequential. Jesus tells us that church leaders will be held to a higher degree of accountability. In the meantime, however, these false leaders have maimed the institutional church and caused the spiritual death of innumerable people. Christ’s Church, the true church, lives in the spirits of the godly who worship and trust God and His Word before all else.

Every week brings news that appears to be new but really is not because it builds upon what was. This week started with the news of the decommissioning of a church that my parents had helped found six decades ago in the basement of a small one-stream school. Some of my family members faithfully attended this church from its inception to their deaths.

Upon talking with my 95-year-old mother about her church being decommissioned she was of course incredibly sad, about that church particularly, but mostly over the fact that people have lost sight of the God who created them. She was aware of many churches that had closed its doors but had hoped that it would not happen to her own. But it did, and it will continue to happen to countless other churches unless people wake up, repent, and return to God.

As with other church communities, this closure did not happen overnight or in a vacuum but rather it is the accumulation of years of degradation. It is painful for many, nonetheless. For Bible believers, there are no surprises when church leaders disobey God’s call and direction, deny Jesus, and accept the devil’s lies. Jesus pronounces woe upon them and upon all whom they lead astray under their false leadership.

Gradually, Anglican churches in our small Canadian province have closed their doors due to the revisionist agendas of progressive leaders. But so have the churches of other denominations. In the meantime, some faithful Christians have either joined more biblically aligned groups or started congregations of their own. This is a global, not a local, phenomenon.

The Bible includes instruction for Christ’s Church and its leaders. One teaching example features King Uzziah (also called Azariah), tenth king of Judah and son of King Amaziah. King Uzziah ruled c. 792–740 BC for 52 years (see 2 Kings 15 and 2 Chronicles 26). At age 16, the humble Uzziah sought God, was loyal, and ruled faithfully for Him. But over time, his strength became weakness as he became proud, thinking that he did not need spiritual oversight, and ignored God.

King Uzziah fell into disobedience and did things his way as his ancestor King David had done before him. But King David repented of his sin and was faithful to God thereafter. In fact, King David is the only person in the Bible which God deemed to have a heart like His. King Uzziah’s prideful end was disastrous personally and for Judah.

My family church was Anglican (Episcopalian) or Church of England which is how I referred to my church and my faith as a child. But, decades ago I began to see myself more as a Christian and a child of God saved by grace than by any denominational moniker. I knew of other Christian denominations in my community and gradually learned the differences between them.

I have followed how members of the British monarchy, supposed head of the Church of England through the Archbishop of Canterbury, have led lives quite contrary to the teachings of Jesus. I have also watched leaders of the Church of England abandon the faith once delivered to the saints. Both grieve me.

While Anglicanism developed out of apostasy within the church, it, itself was birthed in dishonor (i.e., specifically that of King Henry VIII). I often ponder how hypocritical leaders can lead the faithful, but I am also mindful that we indeed are all sinners. The significant difference is that of truly repentant sinners whose greatest accomplishment is biblically faithful teaching in love.

Over time, with life experience, greater faith, and Bible knowledge, I have come to question the wisdom of tying the church to the state as I watch governments, kings and kingdoms, and nations on the world stage who emphasize finances, numbers, and power over faith, truth, and God. But for their faith, all people would be eternally lost.

My faith is strong and rests solely on God and His Word. It depends on no person. Because of the sad happenings within organized institutional churches, especially in recent years, I experienced conflict over whether I should remain within my childhood denomination or worship elsewhere. I left my birth denomination for my first marriage, returned in my second marriage, and continue to stand in it because God knows His children in every Christian denomination. In a world of divisive political narratives and rhetoric over whomever is cancelled or hated, faithful Christians are sheltered in God’s awesome arms regardless of their political party or denomination.