“GraceLife Church in Canada is meeting somewhere, we don’t know where,” related veteran Pastor John MacArthur to his thousands-strong Los Angeles-based congregation on Sunday, April 11.
“Amazing to have an underground church in Canada,” he continued. “This because the Alberta government triple-fenced the church in and locked it so people couldn’t go there.”
MacArthur, who is in an ongoing legal battle of his own for keeping the doors of Grace Community Church open despite California Governor Gavin Newsom’s severe lockdown restrictions, received an impassioned letter from Pastor James Coates, following the April 8 seizure of GraceLife Church, near Edmonton.
On Wednesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), following directives from Alberta Health Services (AHS) and aided by private security companies, erected a triple-walled, heavily surveilled barricade masked with black tarp around the church building and property.
Coates, a graduate of the Master’s Seminary, which MacArthur founded in 1986, explained in his earnest message that “at this point, the congregation’s meeting location is not for the public to know.”
GraceLife Church is facing persecution for continuing to hold services in defiance of an AHS “closure order” issued back in January. Coates, who was jailed in a maximum-security facility February 16–March 22, was initially charged with multiple violations of the Canadian Crown’s Public Health Act. He currently awaits a trial date set for early May for a single violation of a health order.
On Sunday, protestors who were allegedly unaffiliated with the church attempted to tear down the barriers. In response, more than 200 RCMP, clad in riot gear and gas masks, arrived on the scene, forming a human chain around the facility in a brutish show of force.
Rebel News journalist Sheila Gunn Reid, who has closely followed GraceLife’s story as the church has resisted the unconstitutional shutdowns over the past two months, explained in a Daily Wire interview that “the agitation was not because of anyone at the church.”
“What I can tell you is that most of the congregation was with Pastor Coates today, who was holding services at an undisclosed location off- site to avoid any trouble. For them, this is not about a building,” said Reid. “It’s about being able to gather in-person. That’s why they got in trouble in the first place for not limiting the congregation for 15% of fire code capacity.”
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