There is much good in the Australian Church. Pastors in many different contexts have done a fantastic job of caring for people, reaching out to people, ministering to people, and just all around pastoring. The Church is a vital institution and most pastors genuinely want the best for people. This is evident across the Church.
However, though this may be the case in general, more and
more evidence is coming to light that, for whatever reason, the Church overall,
not all churches, but the Church overall, is dropping the ball massively right
now, with regards to covid injuries and the effects of mandates. Many people
have spoken about this and have been advocating for the injured for some time.
But there appears to be a situation in some Australian churches where people
with injuries are feeling pressure to keep silent about them.
Matthew tells us something powerful in his
gospel that can give us some insight into this situation. In Matthew chapter 9 we
read;
“35 And
Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues
and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every
affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for
them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the
laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of
the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Jesus is going about the cities and villages
in Judea and constantly seeing that his people are abandoned by their
shepherds. They are being left shepherd-less. Now, he did not mean that
religious services were not happening, because they were. He did not mean that
there were not religious leaders busily going about their religious duties,
because they were. He did not mean that religious leaders were hard to be
found, because they were not, Jesus encountered them everywhere he went. What
Jesus is observing is that the way the religious leaders were leading was
increasing the burdens on the backs of his people. He says this directly in
Matthew 23:4 - “4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,
and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move
them with their finger.”
We could apply this in so many ways, to so
many situations, but if you read Matthew 9 in full what you see is that Matthew
shows us how harassed and excluded the sick are, and how uninterested the
religious leaders are in their suffering. Note the context: Jesus encounters a
paralytic man, a bunch of lost sinners needing to hear about salvation, a sick
girl who has died, a chronically bleeding woman, two blind men, and a man who
cannot speak because he is possessed. The religious leaders who see Jesus’
activities in healing and reaching these people call him a blasphemer (9v3),
question why he is associating with sinners (9:11), obsess about why he is not
fasting (9:14), and accuse him of being possessed by the devil (9:34).
The religious leaders in Israel were more
concerned about their agendas and hobby horses, rather than caring about the
suffering that was going on around them. Hence why Matthew says, “36 When
he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and
helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” It’s not that the shepherds were not
there, it is that for cultural reasons they were overlooking so many of the
hurting.
The one question the religious leaders should
have asked in this passage was: Lord, teach us to heal the sick like you do,
teach us to cast out demons like you do. Lord, teach us to be attuned to how
our people are suffering like you are. It looks as if these suffering people
were invisible to the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, at least largely so. But
this could not happen today could it?
People who have read this chapter could not
be doing the same thing today? Shunning and ignoring the sick? Well maybe not
some types of sick people, but there is a class of untouchables, a class of the
shunned sick who are experiencing exactly what Jesus saw in his day. I was
shocked to here about this myself. However, the pressure to ignore vaccine
injuries is so strong in our society, we should not be surprised that it can
even effect good men. The sad truth is that for whatever reason many who were
injured by the vaccines are being either ignored, or actively shunned and
mocked by some Churches and much of society right now. This is not
hypothetical, as Leanne Bartrim is going to explain. There are people observing
this and experiencing this and telling Leanne about it. Here is what Leanne has
been seeing.
Leanne, Advocate for the Injured
I, Leanne, have worked on numerous investigations for
various official bodies, including for the Crime and Corruption Commission,
Queensland Health and for Centrelink, so I have a lot of experience
investigating injustice. For the past 7 months I have been helping those who
have been injured, or had their loved one die due to having the covid
injection. Some were pro-vaccine, others anti-vaccine or neither. All who have
taken the injection have been coerced. Those suffering with deteriorating
health shared why they took the injection.
53 year old:
“I took the vaccine as I believed
this was the only way to stop lockdowns and bring life back to normal. I also
believed by taking it, I was going to be able to travel again. This was very
important to me, as my family lives overseas.
Everything I was seeing in the media,
from the government advertisements and news encouraged me to be vaccinated. I
had no reason to doubt what I was seeing from these sources and it encouraged
me to get the vaccine.”
38 year old:
“I took the vaccine because I worked
in a hospital only metres away from a testing clinic and I had been told that
the vaccine would keep me safe and stop me spreading the virus. I felt
significant pressure from what I was seeing in the media as I saw them
scapegoating individuals who had contracted corona virus and were not
vaccinated. I got vaccinated because I trusted what the health service had told
me and what I had seen in advertising and news media.”
45 year old:
“I felt extreme pressure from the
government as I heard it being said that all the mandates were coming in and if
I didn’t get vaccinated by 17 December 2021 that the government would not allow
me to work. I felt further pressure from my father who was concerned for my
financial well-being.
The mandate scared me. I wasn’t even
considering getting the vaccine after the adverse event I witnessed my friend
endure. I don’t watch the news, but I was continually told by everyone around
me that if I didn’t get vaccinated, the government wouldn’t allow me to work
due to the mandates coming in. I heard the government continually assuring that
the vaccines were safe and effective. I was told that I wouldn’t be able to
visit my family or participate in society if I was unvaccinated.
I felt so much pressure and extreme
stress. I am the only source of income for my daughter and me. I was building a
house. My family means the world to me. I was so upset that I had to get
vaccinated, but I really felt at that point, that my choice had been made for
me and I had no choice at all.”
52 year old:
“I was aware all these vaccines are only a clinical trial
but I had no choice if I wanted to stay employed. I had several discussions
with the manager who told me “no double vaccine, no job”. I was aware of the
possible heart side effects but not the neurological side effects.”
44 year old:
“My brother-in-law was ‘you don’t want to have blood on
your hands and kill your mum’ because I live with my mum. My brother-in-law
pushed it. He has friends in the UK and kept going on about the science. It
made me feel really upset. I felt the pressure from my brother-in-law that I
needed to get it to protect my mum.
I had heard of a number of people passing away and
getting injured from the vaccine and sent it to my brother-in-law. My
brother-in-law said it wasn’t true and for me to ‘give cold hard facts’. A lot
of what ... said made me think that if my mum had covid it might kill her.
I needed an income to live. If it wasn’t for me earning
an income I wouldn’t get the vaccine at all. I have usual expenses that anyone
would, so I need a consistent income every week. I wanted to please my
brother-in-law and not be in any arguments with him or my sister
and also so he would say ‘that was good.”
32 year old:
“My fears included the fact that the vaccines are in the
trial period. I also considered that I would like to have another child soon.
I was also anxious that if I have the vaccine that my cancer may come
back. I begged my Haematologist and GP for an exemption. Both declined. I was
distraught. So much is unknown regarding the vaccines and I
have many questions that still aren’t being or cannot be answered. I would have
much preferred to wait just a little longer before deciding to receive
the vaccines. I experienced a lot of anxiety and pressure from having a deadline
to be vaccinated by 18 December 2021 in order to keep my job.
I tried to keep my composure going to the clinic. It was
a strange situation where I wasn’t hyperventilating, I just felt an
overwhelming sadness, despair and helplessness. I was flying the white flag I
was so adamant I wouldn't do. When I got there, tears flowed from my eyes. I
was trying my hardest not to cry because I felt embarrassed as I'm not a big
crier, but they just flowed from my eyes. I could not control it. It was like
my body was subconsciously telling me to get out of there.
I should not have ever had to experience any of this. I should
not have to be feeling any of these emotions. I feel depressed, anxious, teary
and hopeless. At no time did I undergo the procedure to receive the two
vaccines of my own free will. I was coerced and received the vaccines under
duress in order to retain my employment. I would never have willingly received
the vaccine if I did not have to in order to keep my job.”
The covid vaccines are still experimental (in phase 3
clinical trial) and the long-term effects, on its recipients are largely
unknown. Advertising the covid injection as ‘safe and effective’, when
the clinical trial has not been completed and the safety data has not been
assessed, is fraud.
Everyone taking part in a clinical trial must give ‘informed
consent’, or have a parent or guardian or other legally authorised person
give consent.
You cannot be entered into a clinical
trial if you don't want to be. If you are asked to take part, you are free to
say yes or no at any time. There should be ‘no pressure on you to enter a
trial’. If you are ‘under 18, a parent or guardian has to give legal
consent’ and ‘you have to give your permission as well’.
https://www.australianclinicaltrials.gov.au/how-be-part-clinical-trial/informed-consent
Pastors and ministers have ‘encouraged’
vaccination from the pulpit. “It’s ‘safe and effective’ and ‘I’ve had it.’ This assurance was all some needed to go
against their own conscience and have the injection. This is coercion. Here is a link to famous
pastors who did this very thing[i], but it
was not just famous pastors. You may not think this is coercion, and if you do
not we would be happy to hear your reasons. But to push for something in a time
of great pressure from the pulpit can have the unintended pressure of making
people feel like it is their god-ordained duty. Perhaps some people did this
without intending. But the effect is no different.
Christians have said it’s ‘unchristian’ if you
decline to take the injection. This is coercion. When people are told that it
is their “Christian duty” or “it is how they should love their neighbour”, or
it is “not Christian” to decline it, this is telling people that they are
falling short of the Christian standard for not choosing a medical procedure.
This is not right. Worse still are those who encouraged pregnant women it was ‘safe
and effective’ to take while pregnant or breast feeding. This has resulted
in a number of spontaneous abortions, still births and birth defects.
Coercion is not consent.
The Australian Immunisation Handbook
states for consent to be ‘legally valid’…. ‘It must be given
voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation’.
https://immunisationhandbook.health.gov.au/vaccination-procedures/preparing-for-vaccination
Section 348 of the Criminal Code Act 1899 (Qld)
defines “consent" to mean consent freely and voluntarily
given by a person with the cognitive capacity to give the consent.
(2) Without limiting subsection (1) , a person’s consent to
an act is not freely and voluntarily given if it is obtained—
(a) by force; or
(b) by threat or intimidation; or
(c) by fear of bodily harm; or
(d) by exercise of authority; or
(e) by false and fraudulent representations about the nature or purpose
of the act; or
(f) by a mistaken belief induced by the accused person that the accused
person was the person’s sexual partner.
(3) A person is not to be taken to
give consent to an act only because the person does not, before or at the time
the act is done, say or do anything to communicate that the person does not
consent to the act.
(4) If an act is done or continues
after consent to the act is withdrawn by words or conduct, then the act is done
or continues without consent.
http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/qld/consol_act/cc189994/s348.html
Section 245 defines what constitutes an assault:
(1) A person who
strikes, touches, or moves, or otherwise applies force of any kind to, the
person of another, either directly or indirectly, without the other
person’s consent, or with the other person’s consent if the
consent is obtained by fraud, or who by any bodily act or gesture
attempts or threatens to apply force of any kind to the person of another
without the other person’s consent, under such circumstances that the person
making the attempt or threat has actually or apparently a present ability to
effect the person’s purpose, is said to assault that other person, and the act
is called an "assault" .
http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/qld/consol_act/cc189994/s245.html
Being coerced to be injected with the covid vaccine is an
assault. Saying the covid injection is ‘safe and effective’ is to obtain
consent by fraud.
Other possible criminal charges include section 229(1)
assaults occasioning bodily harm; section 320 Grievous bodily harm, assault
which is likely to cause permanent injury to health or serious disfigurement;
and other possible criminal charges when the result of taking the injection
causes death.
In November 2021, the niece of a 65 year old who died,
after having one injection of AstraZeneca, wrote to the Prime Minister Scott
Morrison and a number of other politicians. In part she wrote:
I write to you today with a heavy heart and to express my
strongest objections to the discriminative measures the Palaszczuk government
is proposing to introduce on unvaccinated Queenslanders on 17 December 2021.
On 14 October 2021 my Uncle passed away 10 weeks after
one shot of the Astrazeneca vaccine. He was a fit, healthy and active 65 year
old.
He blindly trusted the health advice from the government
and had the vaccine so he could travel interstate for his employment. He died
of a massive cerebral and gastrointestinal haemorrhage (side effects synonymous
with the astrazeneca vaccine). Throughout his 12 days in hospital doctors
coldly told the family they do not have room to rehabilitate him. The doctors
would not report his condition to TGA or ATAGI. They brushed it off as a
stroke. With the knowledge that our family has no history of stroke and the
inconsistencies displayed by the doctors we decided to INDEPENDENTLY request an
autopsy through the coroner court. The health professionals of our society, who
we look up to, to protect, us have sadly let us down. This has been deeply
heartbreaking and a confusing time for our family.
I now find myself at the same mercy with the mandated
vaccination program required in Queensland. I stand to lose both of my avenues
of income. I can't get an exemption from this vaccine, even though it killed my
uncle, my mother’s brother. I cannot sleep, I am anxious, stressed and cannot
focus on everyday activities at my place of employment. I have been going to my
employer and crying almost daily since it has been announced but they say they
are bound by the government mandates. My children are also suffering due to
experiencing the loss of their uncle and being forced to have a vaccine that
killed him. My hands are tied as I am a single mother raising two children. I
have limited resources and we are in a position of becoming homeless due to the
lack of housing.
As of 17 December, I won't be CONSENTING to a
vaccine, but will be FORCED to RECEIVE a vaccine for my EMPLOYMENT,
not for my HEALTH!
Mr Morrison’s response letter stated ‘the
government ‘did not support mandatory vaccinations’. However he wanted ‘as
many Australians to get vaccinated as quickly as possible to reach our goals
under the National Plan and say goodbye to lockdowns’.
Her mother told me last night that her daughter had no
other option but to be vaccinated.
Labelling vaccine injuries as an ‘adverse event’ makes it
sound a rare and uncommon occurrence but it is not. It is not until you start
preparing an affidavit for an injured person, hear their story and study their
medical records, that the full extent of their injury becomes clear. They may
look fine on the outside but their bodies are riddled with injury and disease.
We have compassion for those with cancer but what we are seeing is disdain for
those who say they have been injured from the injection. Will we also dismiss
those who are or will be grieving that they took the experimental injection or
worse still gave it to their children. This is not only people within our
churches but also amongst the unchurched.
The response from the majority of doctors and specialists
is to refuse to acknowledge the injury is from the injection. The injured are
shunned and turned away and told heart pain, extensive bleeding, seizures, is
caused by stress, anxiety or broken heart syndrome. They are not admitted to
hospital, because then they would be eligible for government compensation,
instead they are kept in outpatient areas and then discharged.
One young mother who was taken to hospital thought she
was dying because she was having so many seizures (3 seizures at home in front
of her children, 8 seizures in hospital) and had also become paralysed down one
side of her body. She was not admitted to hospital but discharged after 17
hours, while still paralysed, to find her own way home. She was told by the
hospital neurologist, ‘the seizures were stress related and that she sees it
a lot with mothers’. However the neurologist she visited later said it was
due to the covid vaccine and he had been seeing numerous patients suffering the
same. She said her neurologist was preparing a ‘quality of life plan’
for her. She was 41 years old, a single mother, who needed to decide whether
she would have the ‘booster’ to keep her job.
Many others have told me they thought they were dying and
had to say their goodbyes to their husband and young children. Others had to
deal with the trauma of hearing of their diagnosis alone, without their loved
ones by their side, because of hospital ‘lockdowns’.
All I have spoken to have recounted the same journey of
being coerced to take the injection to keep their jobs; it was the ‘right thing
to do’; and to remove the restrictions on their life. However once injured,
they lose their jobs/health/freedoms, they are labelled ‘anti vaxxers’, are
treated appallingly by the medical professionals and in the hospitals. They are
alone and can’t talk about it as others don’t understand. Some are now
homeless, most can’t afford the medical costs, that is, if they can find
someone who believes them and knows how to treat them as most
injuries/illnesses are novel. The best results are being found not with more
drugs, but with natural remedies.
Those that have lost loved ones are also being treated
appallingly and in their grief they have to fight for the recognition that
their child, husband, wife, sister, brother, parent was killed by the covid
injection.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what
is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans
12:2
Pastors prepared their congregation that ‘one day’ we
will have to stand against the government. It has been two years now and that
day has not come instead they have distanced themselves from the
‘anti-vaxxers’.
If the Pastors do not recognise they have conformed
to this world and repent, then how can we rely on them to understand the
plight of those injured or have lost family, friends and loved ones after
taking the covid injection.
We need to pray. Pray for those
suffering due to the mandates, pray that the government overreach will end,
pray for those who are injured and dying from the injection, pray for those who
have lost loved ones due to suicide because of the lockdowns/mandates, pray for
those who have spontaneously aborted due to the injections, pray for the
elderly who have been put on end of life protocols which imitate ‘covid’
symptoms, pray for those who have lost loved ones because they were coerced to
take an injection which killed them. Pray that they will come to know Jesus.
We need to share the gospel. As Christians
we need to acknowledge the covid injection has injured many. Through your own
ignorance don’t treat the injured as the world has. When they come into your
church treat them with kindness and believe them. So they will be open to hear
the gospel. The only hope we all have is in Jesus.
If you would like to contact Leanne with your story, if
you would like to see how you can get justice, if you would like to know how to
make a police report contact her here at: lucyb4457@gmail.com.
Conclusion
The Church has an opportunity here to step into a gap.
Some pastors and leaders care more about raising up leaders in their churches,
than leading the harassed around them to better pastures. Some pastors care
more about their visions than looking at what is happening to the injured
people around them. Some pastors care more about associating with the
culturally accepted than being seen publicly with the culturally shunned. It
doesn’t matter what you believe about vaccines and the government, it is
irrelevant, all that matters is that sick people are hurting and large portions
of the Church refuse to acknowledge their existence. How could this happen?
Because a few decades ago the Church made being accepted by the culture its primary form of evangelism, and the culture is telling the Church right now: you had better not acknowledge those conspiracy theorists over there. Well, it needs to be acknowledged and shame on all those who aren’t; your God is watching and he sees the state of the Australian people, and whether or not his Australian Church is fed and cared for by leaders, or harassed and helpless. Pastors, we know you care for people, and we know the pressure of this time has been immense, but how do you respond to people who share how they were coerced and hurt? Because sometimes how a pastor responds to injustice is the most important thing for an injured person. Pastors don’t control the levers of power in society, and no one expects them to, but maybe creating an atmosphere where people can talk about their injuries might remove some stumbling blocks for some lost people who need the gospel. The Church should take this opportunity to step into this gap, outside the camp is where the Church is at its best.
List of references
[i] Meghan Basham, 2022, “How The Federal Government Used Evangelical
Leaders To Spread COVID Propaganda To Churches”, Illinois Family Institute,
https://illinoisfamily.org/religious/how-the-federal-government-used-evangelical-leaders-to-spread-covid-propaganda-to-churches/
.
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