Crandell Police singing “God’s Not Dead” Credit: Pure Flix/Facebook page capture
Over the past several weeks, cops from police stations across American have been lip syncing popular songs and posting them to Facebook. Referred to as the lip sync challenge the videos are proving quite popular and include songs by such stars as Bruno Mars.
However, things took a nasty turn, when officers from the Police Department in Crandall, Texas uploaded their song. The problem was they lip synced a gospel song called “God’s Not Dead” popularized by the Gospel group Newsboys. The song is also feature on Pure Flix’s movie God’s Not Dead.
Crandall, TX is small town of 2,900 people and Dean Winter, Crandell’s chief of police, is not shy about his faith. The song is proving popular on Facebook having been viewed over eight million times and it has been recently uploaded to other social media platforms including YouTube.
But the video also caught the attention of a group of activist atheists called the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) who sent a letter demanding the song be taken down accusing the group of violating the US Constitution.
However, Winters ignored the request and stated since FFRF’s opposition became public, the song has become even more popular and now has over 236,000 shares. The group has received support in the form of letters and emails from people and police from across the county.
Winters told Pure Flix that there are police men and women across America who are strong, Bible-believing Christians. He added that his faith makes him a better police officer because Christ’s message to those in authority was that they needed to serve the people.
As we look through the Bible, there are many stories involving people in positions of authority standing for their faith including Daniel, Joseph and even Esther.
But perhaps the least noticed of these is Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, the two men who asked Pilate if they could take down the body of Christ (John 19:38-40). The two needed to have had some political clout for Pilate to give them permission.
We first read of Nicodemus approaching Jesus stating that because of Christ’s miracles He must be from God. John points out that Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews and came to Christ at night perhaps to keep the meeting a secret (John 3:1-5).
Joseph of Arimathea was similarly called a prominent member of the council (Mark 15:42-43). These statements suggest that both these men were members of the Sanhedrin, the Jews ruling council, that had pressured Pilate to crucify Christ.
John adds similar to Nicodemus, Joseph secretly followed Christ (John 19:38).
Both men were in positions of authority giving them enough influence to receive permission to take down Christ’s body. So instead of the Romans burying Christ’s body in an area reserved for the criminals and murderers, these two men of wealth and influence buried Christ in a tomb reserved for the rich fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy about Christ:
His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. (Isaiah 53:9 NASV)
But equally important though both these men were secretive about their belief in Christ, when needed to they had the courage to stand for their faith:
43 Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent member of the Council, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God; and he gathered up courage and went in before Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. (Mark 15:442-43 NASV)
Throughout history, God has placed Christians in key positions of authority at critical times. We need to pray for them.
Sources:
OpentheWord.org 