The flood of anti-Christ has entered upon our land, and all but swept the name of Jesus Christ and His teachings from every civic and national undertaking. Is the Royal Canadian Legion the Final Target? Let us briefly review the sequence. On 4 August, 1960, The House of Commons passed Bill C-79, "An Act for the Recognition and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms", which the Senate ratified the following day, - being assured prior to passage that it incorporated no changes to the status quo regarding long-standing rights and freedoms already enjoyed by Canadians. Thirty-four years of experience with the results of this legislation and "The Charter" have proven otherwise, as these have subsequently formed a fulcrum providing legal leverage to eradicate the Name of Jesus Christ (and God's blessing) from the land.

Ostensibly to please the generally Christian people of Quebec, On 15 December, 1964, Canada's parliament tossed out the Canadian Red Ensign, (containing the Red Cross of Christ, central in the Union Jack), the flag under which our War Dead of all provinces fell in battle, and replaced it with a red leaf. Red without blue is a symbol of death which lacks heaven's promise. Although not realised by most Canadians at the time (other than perhaps The Royal Canadian Legion), this was to become part of a sequenced anti-Christ campaign of encroachment. It was a harbinger of things to come.

"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" emerged in 1981. Cursed with this humanist "Charter", Canada has, in one generation, been forced through rulings based thereon to abandon its traditional Christian heritage. On July 9, 1982, a Friday afternoon with only 13 members present (7 short of a quorum) a private member's Bill was passed to change "Dominion Day" to "Canada Day", thus rejecting the claim of Almighty God to hold Dominion over our land, as it is from Psalm 72:8 (a verse repeated in Zechariah 9:10) that our national motto was derived.

1987-88 saw objections to Bible based court oaths initiated by a Hindu. In 1988-89 Public School Prayers were struck down, A County Board of Education decided to omit opening prayers before its meetings and an elementary-school principal who continued to use The Lord's Prayer was demoted. In 1989 Metro Toronto Council decided openings would omit The Lord's Prayer, and in that year Gideon Bible distribution was forbidden to grade five students in Vancouver. (Religious invocation before U.S. high school football games was forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court the same year).

In 1990 religious instruction in Ontario Public elementary schools was declared contrary to the "Charter" and the ban on Sunday shopping was scrapped. In 1991-92 the Canadian Radio and Television authorities refused to license devout Christian TV stations, and school Christmas celebrations were secularised as county Principals were reminded to infuse non-Christian content. In 1992 mainline churches were told, contrary to Christian doctrine, that they must not discriminate against homosexual priests and similarly the Salvation Army was criticised for barring homosexuals from membership. (At that time the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed its 30-year ban on officially sponsored worship in public schools, and, co-incidentally, Manitoba bowed to a similar restraint.)

In 1994, the Canadian House of Commons removed the name of Jesus Christ from opening observances and also, in the U.S.A., the Boy Scouts of America were ordered by a California District Court of Appeal at that time to admit atheists. Thus, in a step by step encroachment upon our heritage and that of our neighbouring kinsfolk, the name of Jesus Christ has been officially removed from the Courts, the Public School systems, Metro City Council openings, and the Canadian House of Commons; Christian TV Stations are banned, and The Boy Scouts of America oath to God is over-ruled. The Canadian experience is somewhat similar in that the Girl Guides are no longer required to swear allegiance to The Queen, paralleling the refusal of the chairman of a prominent Police Board to do the same.

There remains one final redoubt of our National Christian heritage: Remembrance Day observances in our Royal Canadian Legion Halls. By far the overwhelming majority of our War Dead, who fell in defence of Canada and our kindred in The Commonwealth and related peoples, were killed as Christians, defending an essentially Christian Canada and community of nations, and consequently the essence of all our Remembrance Day ceremonies in Legion Halls and communities from coast to coast is a definitely Christian one. Every Remembrance Day Service focuses upon the moving Minute of Silence following the Last Post, (representing the deaths of those who fell). This symbol of death and mourning is magnificently broken by the trumpet sounding The Reveille; symbolic reminder of the Christian promise and expectation of The Last Trump at Christ's Second Advent when the dead in Christ shall rise to life again (I Cor. 15:52).

Thus the Christian hope of the Resurrection forms the central focus of every such observance in Legion Halls. Forcible "legal" insertion of the official symbols of religions which do not share those Christian hopes and aspirations enhances neither the quality of National Christian devotions on such occasions, nor amicable civic relationships with those of other faiths. Forcing entry of non-Christian content to such observances through the courts will be seen as the culminating step in an invasion by non-Christians, doubtless aiming, eventually, at the use of turbans in order to muffle into silence that clarion trumpet call of Christian promise, and, in accordance with the pattern of multi-cult encroachments listed above, preparing the way for the substitution of non-Christian mourning ceremonies of alien origins. Evidently, this is the climax of an anti-Christian campaign of assault upon the only remaining national occasions wherein we, the majority of Canadians, are free to honour our Christian dead and Our Lord Jesus Christ in our traditional manner.

Christian Canadians must not break faith with those who died by allowing it to happen - not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of those whose cultural origins are not of the historic Canadian tradition. In many cases, more recent immigrants have fled the economic and political results of their own national culture system, which is alien to that of traditional Christianity and sought, by contrast, the economic, political and moral blessings which were produced by our traditional national submission to Jesus Christ and the attendant cultural development. When our government and courts persist in encouraging the preservation of immigrant alien cultural baggage, this automatically destroys the Christian nature of Canada, and the magnificent national blessings attendant thereon. Thus a loving Christian perspective, not blind "hate", motivates a Christian insistence upon an admission of error, and a return to an acknowledgment of traditional Christian commitment in every official act by our legislators and courts, and (in spite of academic and political aspirations towards an "one world" mosaic), the removal of oppressive threats thereto.

Explaining that "your iniquities have separated between you and your God", (Isaiah 59:2) Isaiah prophesies in verse 19: "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him." Let us return and lift up the fallen standard of our people, conscious of the recent national drift, admitting it before our God, and uphold once more that national commitment by which our nation was blessed in generations past.

The Christian commitment requires that supreme loyalty, both individual and national, must be given to The Lord Jesus Christ. In this, we do not seek to give offence but rather that thereby all citizens may thus acquire God's national blessings. As an Ordinary Member of the Royal Canadian Legion, I am impelled to sound the watchman's cry to my fellow Canadians and state, as did Joshua to the Israelites of his time, "And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD. choose you this day whom ye will serve...but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Josh. 24.15). As with Elijah, to Israel of his day, I must demand "...How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him." (I Ki. 18.21). In the words of Jesus Christ, I appeal to Canadians who share my commitment: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matt. 6:24). Let Christ and His promise continue to be honoured in Remembrance Day services in our Legion Halls. If the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" is made a cause of interference, then, for the sake of all concerned, it is that humanistic concoction of law which must go, not our fealty to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Douglas C. Nesbit, President, B.I.W.F. (Canada) Inc.

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