Pastor of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, California, John MacArthur raised eyebrows recently with claims at his State of the Church conference urging evangelicals to stop fighting for religious freedom.
The Gospel offends the sinner and seeks to break the sinner’s comfort and contentment by bringing him into stark realization of the eternal judgement of God. Evangelicals have become like Peter. They are looking for alliances with Satan that they think somehow can aid the Kingdom.
I told our congregation a few weeks ago that I could never really concern myself with religious freedom. I wouldn’t fight for religious freedom because I won’t fight for idolatry. Why would I fight for the devil to have as many false religions as possible and all of them to be available to everyone?
MacArthur also noted that even with religious freedom, Christians continually are the target of “the hostility of sinners.”
Well, people would say that’s a terrible thing to say. What about Christianity? Christianity advances whether there is religious freedom or not. And there’ll always be religious freedom for all the lies. Every false religion is going to be free because it’s linked to the kingdom of darkness that operates in the world. And Christians, whatever the label of religious freedom might be in its broadest sense, Christians are always the target even with religious freedom, of the hostility of sinners.
The Apostles turned the world upside down with no help from it. No social action. No alliances. The evil kingdom of darkness hates what God loves and loves everything that God hates, and the kingdom of darkness is never a friend to the light. Even rulers have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. … They function under the liar Satan himself who [is] the liar and father of lies. There is absolutely no reason for us to make any alliance with him.
MacArthur then quoted from Ephesians 5:5-8 in the NIV and spelled out what he feels is the ‘church mandate.’
For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Repeating verse 7, he said, “Do not be partakers with them. You have no alliance with the kingdom of darkness.”
Pushback
Not everyone agrees with MacArthur’s claims.
Adam Groza, writer for the Christian Post gave criticism to MacArthur’s speech.
Here is some of what he had to say:
The essence of his argument seems to be as follows:
False religion is bad. Religious liberty promotes false religion. Religious liberty is therefore bad and should not be supported by Christians.
The keen observer will notice an immediate problem with the soundness of the middle premise: Religious liberty does not, in fact, promote false religion. Religious liberty does not promote religion any more than gun companies promote suicide by making guns that are routinely used by individuals to commit suicide. Being against suicide by gun no more requires that you oppose gun companies than being against idolatry requires that you oppose religious liberty.
Religious liberty is the view that citizens should be free to make individual decisions in regard to lawful worship (i.e. whether they worship, what they worship, and how they worship) and that such decisions should be governed with equal protection under the law. Religious liberty implies the inherent religiousness of humans; a position found in the Bible (Ecc. 3:11) that dates back to Cicero and was popularized most recently by Mircea Eliade’s notion of homo religiosus (e.g. that humans are religious by nature).
What about MacArthur’s claim that Christianity has flourished without religious freedom and that Christians don’t need any help from government? Well sure, Christianity doesn’t need any help from Utility Companies, either, but I am guessing Grace Community Church is kept cool in the summer and warm in the winter thanks to Southern California Edison (or some other provider). It simply doesn’t follow that if something is not needed that something is not good.
MacArthur thinks that religious freedom amounts to the promotion of false religion, but this is empirically false. Many false religions have diminished and died in the marketplace of religion where the free exchange of religious ideas and religious competition have corresponded to the growth of Christianity. Again, religious liberty in Korea has corresponded to the meteoric rise of Christianity and the decline of Buddhism in Korea over the same time period.
To read more of his thoughts, check out his opinion on the Christian Post.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
[5] And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes, [6] And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem. [7] And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this? Acts 4:5-7
[14] And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; [15] I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. [16] So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. [17] Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: [18] I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. Revelation 3:14-18
If you look up the definition of ‘hireling’ you just might see MacArthur’s face in there. This DEVIL in the flesh has made a scrumptious living and “empire” of talking out of both sides of his mouth. All within one “sermon,” we’ll call it, religious freedom translates to going to the government for permission to exist, or the God given rights to freedom of liberty and conscience.
But you see, MacArthur does this ALL the time. He is never clear on purpose because he is a minister of Satan the mixes truth with lies.
[13] For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. [14] And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. [15] Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.2 Corinthians 11:13-15
[1] But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. [2] And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. [3] And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.2 Peter 2:1-3
Not that I totally agree with what Groza of the Christian Post says, but even he calls out the blatant hypocrisy of MacArthur. MacArthur does not want to stand for “religious liberty” (in the context of getting permission from the government to do what he wants), but he himself and his organizations are government incorporated and give him the right to exist: he is part of the public sector, therefore he has to abide by their laws, whether they be good or bad. This why MacArthur last year, and even now, have been facing legal challenges because MacArthur defied California’s edicts to shutdown, and looked for any loophole he could find. I am do not defend the tyrannical government, not one bit, BUT when you sign a legally binding contract to do what the government says you are going to do, you must abide by that. So he is breaking the law. Simple as that.
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Take away the law establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity
Thomas Paine. The Rights of Man, 1791-1792
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson. Letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802
But all of this double-talk from MacArthur is clearly indictive of where this once great nation is at. As we have been hammering on in our reports, the American people are spoiled rotten; they are immensely lazy, lovers of themselves more than the Lord, extremely proud and mentally-conceited. This nations loves to be oppressed and controlled. If you want religious freedom, YOU DON’T ASK FOR IT, YOU JUST DO IT AND THE LORD WILL REWARD THAT NATION ACCORDINGLY.
Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.
Proverbs 14:34
[9] By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry: they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty. [10] But none saith, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night; [11] Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven? [12] There they cry, but none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men. [13] Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it.Job 35:9-13
Let us hear your thoughts on this in the comment section below.
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I guess John considers his “religion” to be the real one with its paganistic 3 Gods and building worship.
And his new “bible” – the Legacy Standard Bible as the one true bible!
He’s nothing but a wicked devil.
That so-called bible and his MacArthur study “bible” the only thing they’re good for is firewood. John MacArthur thinks he’s so great, he probably thinks he’s God. We’ll see how great he is or thinks he is when he winds up an agonized invalid in a hospital and can barely feed himself and then he winds up on life support and then slips into hell. God’s curse is upon him so that fate could very well befall him.
I used to listen to MacArthur & wonder why, since I was learning so much, his preaching left me so cold. Then I realized he didn’t care for souls & was elitist, as well as undermining faith with his Bible correcting & teaching all that stuff ‘from the Greek’ and the ‘Church Fathers’. He’s Augustinian in his teaching, ESV and ‘Rome is our mother’…and comes of a very Masonic Canadian family.
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He’s also been preaching Romans 13 for years as ‘proving’ the American War for Independence was an illegitimate rebellion against the ‘proper’ authority and order.
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I appreciate James Beller’s work, America in Crimson Red; and The Coming Destruction of the Baptist People; as well as his history of the persecution of the Bible believing peoples through history & prior to America. His ‘Battle for the Soul of Saint Louis’ is good, too. Gives some of the early background with the Catholic influence on the Mississippi, and the tensions through the Civil War, the splits and denominations that formed….and the waning power in the preaching & influence in the country.
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The Methodist circuit rider, Peter Cartwright, wrote, too, that the power of God waned as the seminary men softened and effeminized the ministry, and replaced the strong circuit riding men. Sheffey reminded me of that. It’s easy to critique when you’re not in the heat of life & history being made. Isaac and Christiana McCoy were amazing people, too. They take a lot of heat today, but without his tireless work, and Christiana’s great sacrifices….the Manifest Destiny crowd would have surely gone with total annihilation of the native peoples.
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I was thankful to find their history with the ancient baptist stuff. Letters & period stuff which gives you the context the revisionists hide & slander. When I was homeschooling & looking for that period of history & missions to the native peoples, about all I could find was the Whitman’s, and Mormon stuff. I knew there had to be more. Daniel Boone’s brother was a baptist preacher, and I believe Rebecca Boone’s father was. And David Crockett who fought the Indian Removal Act, though they doublecrossed him & it was a losing battle, had a baptist background.
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Beller taught at a Bible college in Indiana and wondered at the lack of baptist history in all those ‘America’s Christian History’ curriculums. I’d been finding the same thing. The curriculum writers always lumped the baptists in with the ‘mystical’ and the social radicals like the Shakers, Quakers, and the Owenites….& said the baptists began in England. But I’d read a quote from an Inquisitor about those terrible baptists from the Continent during the Reformation era, and kept coming across inconsistencies.
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I used the history curriculum that Answers in Genesis put out, amongst some others, and the positive presentation of the Revolutionary Era shocked me. I didn’t know what that was, but I knew it wasn’t ‘Christian’. I had pre-ordered & had hope that the curriculum would be honest, and was thoroughly disgusted. I wrote, but was ‘handled’ as those masters of dialogue always do: silence or talking for twenty minutes about something I HADN’T asked.
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I didn’t get my money back either. Now I know that ‘revolutionary’ era in Europe was Jesuit, and reflected a power struggle within Rome herself, as well as with the old Romish political order & the new statists of the Reformed & Protestants. All of that extended here, of course, with the French & Indian War, but the real causes get hidden in the ‘secular neutrality’ selective censorship where distinctions are erased. All of that was utterly of a different character than our ‘Revolution’ here: which men called the War for Independence and NOT Revolution until the revisionists linked it with France’s & progressivism.
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We were British subjects denied representation & our due rights as colonial citizens, and the colonists exhausted every means of appeal & negotiation, and reacted against the denial of every appeal & the heavy hand King George III’s most trusted advisors urged. There were men like Pitt who warned against it & sided with the colonists who were not heeded. And Christians of every stripe in the U.S. were as appalled by the French Revolution as the British were.
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The elites who pushed that first Constitution did not want the Bill of Rights, and men like MacArthur, Piper, Warren etc who work with the globalists and back -t-o Mama stuffed shirts fall right into the ‘bad America’ and global corporate world governance ideals. The reason they hid baptist history was because it exposed the persecution & elitism of the New England Puritans, and they have hated the loss of their nicolaitan semi-aristocratic standing and gubmint money church taxes and the peace of religious toleration, not to mention the pushback of public preaching, freedom of the press etc that came from ‘the great unwashed (unseminaried)’ ever since the baptists won the inclusion of the Bill of Rights for the common people & several of the colonies refused to ratify without it.
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The dumbing down had to get rid of baptist history, revise the history of the Civil War, & go with Cotton Mather’s version of ‘America’s Christian History’ to make it easier for them to merge back with the old Romish European order & ultimately Rome and her social justice, politicized religion gig. The baptists weren’t much for Horace Mann’s government ‘public’ education, preferring local and independent church schools. In addition to the King James Bible, most homes had a Webster’s and the Blue-backed Speller & McGuffey’s….but in baptist homes there was Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in the place of Calvin’s Institutes.
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The Fundamentalist union was a mistake by the baptists, too. And following the ‘big church’ movement of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century like Moody, and the colorful preacher from Texas who also had a church in Chicago who’s name escapes me at the moment. (I tried to look it up online & witnessed once again how censored & skewed the search engines & content is now, even compared to when I was just learning these things. Beller was right about his warnings to Bible believing baptistic people. I know it will come to me in the middle of the night & I’ll be kicking myself for forgetting it.) The Southern Democrat machine that spawned Colonel House who handled Woodrow Wilson and got the Fed and Federal Income Tax past those Constitutionalists who were resisting it, and later L.B. Johnson, actually sent an assassin against him for ‘hindering business’, and the preacher shot him stone cold dead through his church office desk drawer. So, it’s easy for us to criticize….but those were trying times.
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I have a couple biblical differences with David Cloud, but his histories are informative, and he’s proven himself faithful & fruitful over the years. So are Bill Grady’s (not to mention Final Authority), and the old baptist writings like Leland’s and Isaac Backus.
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Beller took sabbatical & began looking for baptist history. It just didn’t make sense to him that there was such a dearth of baptist history when there were baptist churches down the coast and all across the South. He found a wealth of it in old cemeteries, smalltown libraries, attics, little old church basements ….and began warning. He never went back to collegiate level teaching, but preached….given his ministry afterwards to small and independent local churches, he likely was only too aware of the problems at Indiana. I’m thinking he pastored in Missouri, maybe Texas. He died of cancer in 2014. I wonder about some of these convenient deaths of men pushing back against the ‘common ground’ conservatives merging with Rome, the CFR and all of that corporatism, sometimes.
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The Lord knows. I’m ten years into my own cancer diagnosis living outside that standard system of care. They’ll kill you or cure you with their drastic methods, and I have my suspicions of what happens to ‘troublemakers’ who ‘hinder business’. In many ways, things haven’t changed much from turn of the twentieth century Texas & Chicago. And corporatist crony Rome and the Jesuit-ized Masons were in it up to their necks then as now. They could claim to be ‘Protestant’, even ‘baptist’….or whatever else the chameleon Jesuits wanted to do with the Masonic cloak.
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Still, and all is going along as foretold, and the Lord is in control, and I am confident of finding Brother Beller in heaven and the kingdom. No doubt, along with many others who succumbed to the cup of Borgia & other stealthily persecuted men and women. As for me, I’ll probably rule the corner of an attic somewhere & be grateful for it, but I’ve had my battles.
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Craft doesn’t fight in the light, or come at you head on. And the Lord deals with his children one by one, and in accordance with his greater wisdom, plan, omniscience and foresight.
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Most recently I have found Major Jeffrey Prather to be a very deceived man, promoting mystical syncretistic things as one continues with him as an information source, but he’s now been plainly warned from the scriptures. Likely not the first time. I know the Lord still has some good men in the chaplaincies, though they are being pushed out.
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The emergent guys aren’t much for the frontlines with the men taking real risk, and more often than not being betrayed by the upper echelons & brass, and some small church missions and chaplaincy training programs are still faithful. So there’s a niche & a remnant of strong men of God in the chaplaincies. But it’s a dwindling one. The window is closing. The rapture must be near.
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I believe that as psych-sorcery progressed, and the espionage and intel agencies modeled after that old Babylonian, and the Jesuits…with some healthy smatterings of apostate Jewish kabala….that our agencies and artists and many elites are very much influenced by, steered, and filled with devils and familiar spirits. You look at Freud, the Frankfurt School, the social Darwinists, and all that history up through Project Paperclip and Monarch, the corporatists, the Jesuits and their techniques & disciplines, the transcendental meditation movement, yoga, and men getting deep into the Eastern martial arts …….and what is going on in the world alongside the Bible, & it makes sense. Even our business schools teach men and women to look to Napoleon Hill and other occultists to ‘excel’….and there was a whole ‘Christian’ so-called branch of that with the Christian Businessmen’s Association, Peter Drucker, and those guys. They used to promote it as doing all things as unto the Lord, and with excellence, etc. But I just never had peace with any of that as folks in churches would bring it up or promote it as a program or system. The Lord saved me out of that world, and you couldn’t pay me to go back….and here were all these church folks running back the way the Lord had saved me out from.
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They said it was because I was just self-educated and without degrees or success in that world. Funny terminology isn’t it? ‘Degrees’? I’m all for literacy & education, especially biblical….but ‘degrees’? Go figure.
John MacArthur is a snake! I heard someone call him John Mac-garbage and John Mac-satan. Well said! Guess what John Mac-Retard, your religion will go down too along with the rest of them, you’re not exempt. The government goons came in and told you to shut your Babel building down and you did it in a snap without question or protest!
My late relatives left a Baptist church to attend John MacArthur’s Grace Church around 1973 and stayed 20 years until my aunt died. My aunt said her Baptist minister told her and several others not to go to Grace Church but they did anyway. She bought numerous tapes for herself and others and took out a life insurance policy recommended by Grace.
When she died the $ went to John MacArthur’s Master’s College. I went to Grace 3 times while visiting my relatives. I grew up in Hollywood during my teen years 1960’s and we didn’t attend church. Dad was a Catholic, and mom didn’t like Catholic Priests, so we quit going to mass when I was 8. I thought John MacArthur ran his church too much like a cult when I was around my relatives 1970’s-80’s. I have great respect for my Christian relatives who were lifelong Christians, however I could not understand why they felt they needed to buy all the tapes at their age and study more when they were already saved. I was baptized Catholic and around age 10 baptized again in my relatives Baptist church. I remember her saying that Baptists were legalistic. I think that is what John MacArthur was telling them. When I was a young girl my parents were alcoholics and my aunt changed from a Protestant church to a Baptist church because Baptists don’t drink. Their adult Protestant group had a B.Y.O.B. New Years party and my aunt was against drinking. I wondered in the 1970’s why she would leave the Baptists to go Grace when John MacArthur came from a long ancestry of Protestant Theologians. She said John MacArthur said it was okay to drink wine:( My parents went to faith based A.A. meetings in Hollywood. Back then A.A. was faith based:) I moved away from California in 1992. Christians are too confused living there.