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-There are particular moments in history that can go unnoticed
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by most.
These little moments can sometimes be the spark
That inspires people in ways they could never have imagined.
Granted, there are massive events
that shape history and build nations,
but there are also little moments
that slip by us yet still deserve
Their place in historic dignity.
Take for example this little stool.
This is no ordinary stool.
It's a 500-year-old three-legged wooden stool.
Also called a cuttie-stool back in the day.
-History gets perspective.
It means we're not always trying to reinvent the wheel.
It's absolutely vital if you don't want to repeat
The follies, the tragedies, and the mistakes of the church.
-This little chair means absolutely nothing
without the lady who sat on it,
And she was on her way to church.
-Jenny Geddes was this little market trader.
She wouldn't be well to do at all.
She would belong to the working class,
and doing anything and everything
That would enable her to eke out a meaningful existence.
There was an escalating tension and it reach the Christiandom
when the king foolishly decided he would impose a royal rule
In the church.
She believe the king was replacing
the divine right of Jesus Christ as the king and head
Of the church.
When news got around that on that Sunday,
the Dean of St. Giles was going to read prayers
And do so from a prayer book foreign to the Scottish church.
The Book of Common Prayer was a means whereby the king
Could exact his despotic kingly authority over the church.
A form of worship devised by men.
Worship would have been the compelling desire
of her life, but at the same time,
a frustration that she experience
with everyone throughout Scotland
and that the king was seeking to usurp,
The headship of Jesus Christ.
On July 23, 1637, the Dean of St. Giles
Read from the Book of Common Prayer.
Jenny Geddes effectively said enough
Is enough.
-God at times raises up the most unexpected of people.
It wasn't one of the great dignitaries
In the Scottish church.
It wasn't one of the nobility.
It was this little market trader.
God takes the weak things of the world to confound the wise.
-Satan has always pursued the power of governments
To control the church.
Nothing has changed
Except maybe his strategies.
-The novel Coronavirus continues
to spread worldwide starting point
in Wuhan, China.
-It's time now to declare a state of emergency.
-40 plus thousand new cases a day.
-We are still struggling to get this virus under control.
-It's like experiencing a new 9/11 every day.
-There now seems to be an international agreement
that to end the pandemic, we have
To stop people moving around.
-Our economy will struggle longer
because we didn't take this seriously
As early enough as a country.
-People are not listening to the health warnings
Which mean we'll be taking strong action.
-More and more people are saying,
"I think I can work around this and just play it by ear."
A bad decision.
-if you don't follow the rules, the police will have the powers
to enforce them.
-For most people, a nudge in the right direction is
all that it takes.
-Confidence in the government's handling
Of the pandemic is wearing thin.
-You must started a series of public health measures.
-This woman's door was kicked in by police when she refuse
to go to quarantine.
-Officers were forcing people out
of their rented apartments
So they could turn them into temporary quarantine facility.
-It's time to cancel everything
And if it isn't essential, don't do it.
-I knew that they had succeeded in scaring the population.
It worked and it worked with people in our church
like it did with everyone else.
-The World Health Organization just declared health emergency
with the elderly, immune suppressed,
with children.
They're particularly vulnerable
And unfortunately deaths will occur.
-Put into practice the 15 days to slow the spread.
-This is a moment where we need some straight talk and we need
To tell people the truth.
-I'm reading this executive order
from the governor's office basically saying
That everything is shutdown.
-We direct a statewide order for people to stay at home.
-I'm immediately trying to reconcile what the governor
Is saying with we've got to have church on Sunday.
-It was our premier who would have ordered Alberta to enter
Into a 14-day lockdown.
-Now that time we didn't see them necessary
As lockdowns, restrictions.
We just saw them as this is just the government providing
Some guidance and some guidelines.
-Canada is here for you.
-The week the close down notice came
from the governor's office, there was
A scheduled Elders' meeting on that Thursday night.
-From the very beginning of my ministry here,
we said the decisions of the Elders which are
the defining decisions of life in the church are going
to all be unanimous.
-By the time we all got to the Elders' meeting
that night, it was clear and it was
All over the news, everything will be closed starting Friday.
-We had several medical doctors on our Board of Elders,
and the message that they gave to us
in the first Elders' meeting was very simple,
so many people are going to get sick that they're going
To overrun the entire health system.
-The projections for this virus are
that it could kill 2 million people
Inside of a couple of months.
-New Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations
are exploding.
-Hospitals like this one are bracing for the worse.
The big concern is that they'll ran out of space
Or supplies to help people.
-What we were told was, this is going to be
a couple weeks. Then after two weeks,
then we should have a better view
Of what's going to happen.
-Yes, we decided to comply,
But that was the going rate across Canada and the US.
When you look to certain churches
that would be a model of how to approach something
like this, Grace Community Church being one
of those models.
We all recognize that we were ignorant
with respect to COVID-19, ignorant in terms
of its severity.
-Wouldn't have been any different
if somebody said a hurricane is coming
and a hurricane is headed this way,
you need to send the people home,
You need to get them in a place where it's safe.
-Anybody that was around Southern California knew
That this place completely shutdown.
The 40 miles driving in to church
That usually there's a lot of other people on the road.
I remember calling my wife and saying,
"I haven't seen another car yet."
It was really, really strange.
Then to get to the church campus and nobody's here.
Yes, after being here for 50-something years,
that was a little weird.
-That first Sunday, John was going to preach.
-John came,
Preached to a nearly empty auditorium.
It was surreal.
-Well, I don't like preaching to no one.
Standing at the pulpit at Grace Community Church
in a completely empty
building that's supposed to have 3,000 people in it,
and talking to the empty pews is not a wonderful experience
By any stretch of the imagination.
-I don't think I had any sense that this was really going to go
On for a long time at that point.
-Grace Community Church had a pastor die,
And it was the second pastor.
The first one died of a heart attack,
The second one died similarly.
They asked me to preach on a Sunday night.
When I finished, this is famous line,
My dear wife, Patricia.
I walk down after I finished and she looked at me and say,
"Well, that's the end of that church.
Do you know how long you talk?" I said, "I have no idea."
She said, "You talked an hour and 20 minutes."
After the service was over, some of the Elders came up
and said, "if you were our pastor,
Would you teach us like that every week?"
I said, "I would, but I apologize for being so long".
They said, "No, we just want to know
if you would teach us like that every week if you were
Our pastor." I said, "I would".
I came back next week.
There was one change.
There was a massive clock on the back wall.
It's still there. I can see it from here.
[music]
-The great calling of the church is to give itself to reaching
into the kingdom of darkness
and plundering it and rescuing as brands from the burning
those who have been deceived by the devil,
the god of this world.
By the mighty power of the gospel of God,
bring them out of that darkness into the marvelous light
Of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
-I loved coming to church.
My whole family did.
My mom heard this young preacher
in Sun Valley named John MacArthur preached
A sermon on how to study the Bible.
She's very upset by that because she came out
of a Catholic background and her perspective was, why
Is this guy telling his church how to do his job?
She was so upset that we came here
The next Sunday and never left.
-Two things I wanted to do.
One was teach the word of God, exposit the Bible.
Secondly, I want to train men.
I'm not going to pay any attention to tradition.
I just want to do what the Bible says.
-When we first got here, we had 20 members,
And it was probably 60 people on a Sunday morning.
My desire just to simply preach the word as best as I can.
There's no tricks, no gimmicks.
-I had an overwhelming desire to be used by God at that time
And so I prayed accordingly.
Then over time, he began to work and crystallize
What it was that I wanted to do.
That was to be a Bible expositor and preach His word.
-I watched all the construction happen.
I used to go to Sunday school classes out
in the back of what's now the parking lot
where the chicken coops were because that's the only place
They could put us for a Sunday school class.
I mean this place was just teeming with people.
I remember specifically when Pastor John taught
through the book of Acts, it changed my whole perspective
on the church and an understanding
of the enormous mission and impact that the church
Is going to have in the world.
-We live on the authority of the word of God,
and the Bible
Is unambiguously clear.
By His Spirit, He continues to reign and rule
In the life of His church.
-The church universal consists of all those
Who have been called out of the world.
Those are the ones that make up the universal invisible church.
From there, though,
the invisible church needs to gather
Into local congregations and become the visible church.
-The church gathers
Around one great reality.
The true church is a gathering of people who belong to God
By faith in Jesus Christ.
We meet to worship God, to give Him honor,
To give Him glory, to praise Him.
We speak in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
We sing, we read the scripture.
We preach and proclaim the scripture.
We fulfill what the New Testament calls
the one another's, love one another,
edify one another, confront one another,
Pray for one another, all the one another's.
It's this intensely deep fellowship of people
who come together in life
because they have a common salvation through faith
In Jesus Christ.
That's a church.
-The church is the community of faith.
It's the body of Christ, it's the family of God.
It's the temple of the Spirit.
We are living stones built into the temple.
We stand together
And we fall together.
-Do you have any message for religious leaders
who are arguing that the services
That they provide are essential?
-Well, with all due respect, it's essential
that we practice physical distancing everywhere,
Period, fullstop.
-The outreach to folks that are confined to home,
whether it's because of a disability or age,
those people were completely cut off
From the church family here.
The church family here does enormous amount of ministry
And meeting physical needs for those people.
There are people in our church who died never having been able
To say goodbye to their family.
The access to hospitals was completely cut off.
As an Elder in the church, I'm very accustomed
to getting phone calls and on my way
to a business meeting or back or on my way home from work,
going by a hospital and visiting with somebody,
Reading scripture, and praying with them.
I'm not the only one,
All of that was completely ended.
-This is what the church is made for.
What happened back in the ages when the plague came,
the black death or the bubonic plague was
the pastors out there visiting people,
Putting their life at risk.
The more dire the circumstances, the more necessary the church.
-You depend on fellowship face-to-face,
and knowing people, and seeing people to do
The shepherding work of a pastor.
-You're effectively preaching to a camera.
I mean you're looking at the camera even
while you preach.
There isn't anyone in the building to look
To as far as having eye contact with the congregation.
You just come to the end of that and know
that you can't even interact with the people to whom
You've just ministered the word of God to.
It's a horrific experience.
-Without gathering together, without being
in fellowship together, that it was
So spiritually detrimental for us.
It was so hard for me as a pastor
Who's we're always used to having people in our home.
Hospitality is a huge thing in our church.
There's one Sunday in particular that I had given that address
To our church congregation.
I'd signed off and I'd said goodbye.
I'm looking into the lens of the camera.
As soon as I said goodbye to the folks at church,
I just began to weep on my desk because there they are sitting
On their couches or wherever they are.
Here I am not able to be with them.
I can't see them. I can't hear from them.
We can't fellowship together.
This is going on and on.
I can't be a shepherd
Of the flock if I can't be with the sheep.
-We needed to open our doors.
To do that, I'd have to address these issues.
-It was at that point that I began to write
to our church seeking to persuade the church
that we need to meet together regardless
Of what the government might say.
-COVID was the main thing on everyone's mind.
Then it became the BLM riots.
That was the news.
That was the big issue facing everybody.
-The nation erupted into scenes of chaos.
-They can do that, but we can't meet
And sing hymns?
Because of the cause they were involved in,
It somehow made them exempt from the threat of the virus.
-I distinctly remember seeing
Mayor Garcetti going out and participating in the riot.
-if you're feeling hurt, you should,
and I do too.
If you're feeling in pain, you should.
If you are a truth-teller, and I do too.
-It's almost as though he's looking at you
Through that and saying, "This is the right cause.
If you don't agree with this, you have no right to gather."
-I was a deputy chief of the San Fernando Valley
responsible for all police operations
when all that discussion of defund and abolishing
The police and all this negativity.
--Point as officers dangerously outnumbered, surrounded.
-Officers are being chased by the group here.
-Their cars on fire.
-I just scratched my head and I said, "Oh, boy.
We're in for some turbulent times.
It's going to be very difficult."
We never experienced as many assault
On peace officers as we did during that timeframe.
-One Sunday, the police came,
the Los Angeles Police Department started showing up
and their families came as well even before
Our congregation had come back.
-They told us we need Grace Church open,
Which I found very interesting.
These are guys that don't go to church.
They're very brave men.
They're very accomplished men.
They don't necessarily love the Lord but they knew
the restraining role that the church
Has on a culture.
-if you want to bring your family as police officers,
our church is open to you.
We not only love you and respect you and thank the Lord
for what you do, but we understand
That you are fulfilling a God-ordained role in society.
-They described for Pastor John,
the homeless population was exploding,
suicides, horrific domestic crimes, abuse,
Sexual abuse, assaults.
Just described a culture that was blowing apart.
-We had a Sunday when we just invited
all the law enforcement officers, said,
Bring anybody you want, bring your family.
We'll have everything you need.
We'll have lunch for you.
-That was a fantastic day.
John livestreamed the sermon.
In the auditorium that morning were uniformed police officers.
As some of them described it, it was calm in the middle
of a storm.
-The word came down that don't turn anyone away.
People started to come to go to church and we'd let them
in the worship center.
-I'd been there every week and I noticed
as the successive weeks went by,
larger groups of people showed up.
It wasn't just eight people in the room anymore.
-The word had gotten out to Grace Church families
that there was a lot of police officers
At church last Sunday.
If they can come to church, I want to come to church.
-I started preaching in an empty auditorium.
I did it two weeks, three weeks, and the people without us saying
A thing started coming back.
They didn't buy the narrative.
-At that point then maybe there was 500
to 1 000 people coming
Into the main service on Sundays.
We're breaking the law at a number of different points.
We didn't have a very good articulation of why
it was okay that we were breaking the law
and a number of people were trying
to give good reasons for that but people were continuing
to have to think of new ones show that none
Of them were really sticking.
-"Were you ever a fly on the wall
During those elders' meetings?"
-Yes.
-Do you remember any of the arguments
that were given?
-Why don't we open up and keep all of the rules?
-This book of Common Prayer was the king's attempt to ensure
that all the ministers in England
And Scotland conformed to Episcopal practice.
What they were opposed to was imposing that form
on the life of the church,
making it really a creature of the king
Rather than a creature of the King of Kings.
-California mailed us this big stack
Of things that we had to do.
-Here are the basic orders, no indoor meetings at all,
preregistration of every person
who comes onto church property. If anybody gets
within another person within six feet
for more than 15 minutes,
They have to be quarantined for two weeks.
-I think that means if you're near someone
Who has tested positive.
-No, no.
If you get within someone other than a family member.
-if you come within six feet
of a non-household member not wearing a mask
for 15 minutes, you should consider yourself exposed
to COVID-19 and consequently quarantine
For 14 days.
-Everyone always wearing a mask, every other parking space
must be left vacant,
disposable seat covers changed between services,
And the services have to be shortened.
[laughter]
Restrooms are to be used during the service to minimize
The rush.
That would be interesting.
We all must maintain six feet of social distance
at all times everywhere,
Including the parking lot and the restrooms.
No hymn books, no communion,
no offering containers, no singing,
No hugging.
Obviously, this is not constitutional
but more importantly, it goes against
The will of the Lord of the church.
-There was no end to the restrictions.
It was entirely up to whenever Governor Newsom wanted
To change things.
-When did you start to hear rumors
Of it not being unanimous anymore?
-I know they had Elder meetings
where they discussed opening back up
And I know that they didn't go over great.
Pastor John, some other Elders,
They said, "No, this is the right thing.
We do need to open up.
This isn't so serious.
The church is more important."
Other Elders said, "Okay, well, then explain to us how that fits
With Romans 13."
-We have a history of supporting law enforcement,
Supporting government.
Romans 13 until 2020 had pretty simple application
that you obey the government, you pay your taxes,
You obey the speed limit.
-Romans 13 is the text that we are looking at
under this heading
"Of the Christian and government."
"Every person is to be in subjection
To the governing authorities."
-The culture and the understanding
of the people of Grace Church has always been, not only do
You obey government, but you honor government.
You pray for those who are in leadership.
You support those who are in leadership and it wasn't
a political decision.
It was an obedience to Christ to honor His political leaders.
-You're bound by passages like Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2
to comply with those orders because every person is to be
In subjection to the governing authorities.
There's no authority except which is of God and those
Who resist authority are going to be found to be resisting God.
Those commands weighed heavy on all of our consciences.
Is it a sin to obey this order, this mandate?
I have a friend from seminary who serves as a pastor
and he would message me and say, there are a lot of people
who were looking to Grace Church to sort of their course
in response to this.
He began sort of pressing me on whether it's lawful
to disobey these orders.
I would say this is the order from the government.
It's not sin to not meet for this defined period of time.
We're not being asked to do it is sinful.
At least that's our conviction.
It's not sinful.
if they ask us, it would be sin because it would be in violation
Of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 to go against those orders.
He was saying,
I don't think that's what those texts say.
I'm just saying, why not, show me where my error is.
It seems fairly plain to me.
He would make his case and I remained unconvinced.
He says you've got to read Martin Lloyd-Jones' commentary
on Romans 13 and so I had the set and started reading
And started to go, I see why this is compelling for them.
I don't necessarily agree yet.
What I was finding out
as I was reading Martin Lloyd-Jones
was that I had a functionally Erastian view
of the relationship between the church and state
without having ever heard of this guy named Erastus
or the movement that there are these institutions that God
has instituted, the church and the state,
and where Papism said, there's God
and then the church who rules the state,
Erastus said, "No, there's God who has ordained the state
and they rule over the church,"
and that became what is called Erastianism
And I'm just finding these to be convincing.
There is the civil sphere, there is that which belongs
to Caesar and then there is
the spiritual ecclesiastical sphere,
Those things that belong to God.
Jesus says, give the one to the one
And the others to the other.
It's not God, church, state, it's not God, state, church.
It's that God has instituted the state
and the church to be coordinate institutions
with respect to one another
And of course each subordinate to God.
What happens is we think that one
of these two coordinate institutions
has to subordinate the one
to the other and that's where problems
All throughout history have ensued.
Martin Lloyd-Jones was helping me see, we need
to be neither Papists nor Erastians, but we need to see
That the church and the state are coordinate.
I and some others begin to speak up and say, "Hey,
I think that there's a better argument for why
We don't have to pay attention to any of this and that is--"
-The government really doesn't have any authority
To tell the church how we can worship.
-We were there just talking through what are
the biblical principles that would justify ignoring
The mandates and going back to meeting as normal.
-We went over it for a while and we talked
about the Puritans and then Pastor John,
he showed up. Once we gave these arguments,
especially related to the Puritans,
he was like, "Oh, yeah,"
That stuff had been at the back of his mind.
He started citing some other historical examples.
I think he brought up something about the Scottish and the woman
with throwing the stool, putting ourselves
in this historical vein too but we do find some security
in being able to say faithful believers have
Also done this before.
-I collected that seven pages of notes in an outline.
I sent it to Phil Johnson to see if he could pull
A draft together.
-We can't let some government politician decide
whether we should sing hymns or not, whether we should gather
For prayer or not, whether we should visit the sick or not.
We can't let somebody sitting in an office in the Capitol make
Those decisions, pastoral decisions for us.
We have to render to God that which is God's
And the church belongs to God.
-The split of the Elders between wanting to reopen
the church and being very concerned
about opening the church
And not really being there yet was 50/50.
-Years ago when we first started to put
the Elder ministry together, we said from the very beginning
that churches split when there's discord
At the leadership level.
The way you protect the church from splitting is to make sure
That you have unity at the top.
Grace Church was at stake as we know it.
if the Elders are divided, then people start calling Elders
and individual Elders say things like,
"Okay, we talked about it, we couldn't agree on it.
I disagreed with that statement."
That causes people to be confused,
To question the leadership of Grace Church.
-I was calling Elders, making sure they were going
to be there, trying to prepare them
For what we were going to be talking about that night.
Before the meeting, I was in John's office.
I told him, "I'm concerned.
If we're looking for unanimity we don't have it."
He says, "Oh, Chris. I trust you."
-I remember riding in that day and thinking,
"This is a critical point for the life of this church."
[music]
-I was praying and I was praying that the statement
Would be clear and that the men would be gracious.
I got some looks from guys when the statements in front
Of them and they know we're voting on it tonight.
We're going to go around the room
and every single one of you I want to hear
Whether you're in support or you're not in support.
You need to say "yes" or "no".
Then you have the floor.
You can say anything you want.
-We realized that there was the potential for fines.
-It could be that we decide to meet as a church
And all of us go to jail.
-We have men on our lay Elder team who work
for the city and have government jobs
and it's like, "What are the implications
Of this?" People could lose their jobs.
-The conversation was a invigorating.
-When we went around the room that first pass, there was still
some disagreement.
There were still some nays,
And there was, "I'm just not sure.
Here's how I'm struggling with it."
-We probably have 35 Elders, and there might have been four
Or five who felt like we should restrict everything.
I didn't want to just ride roughshod over even
Those guys who were more protective.
-As the statement was drafted,
One Elder in particular and I were very close.
I got permission to share that statement
with this particular Elder because I knew he was going
to struggle.
Being the man he is, he didn't say he was opposed
But he said, "I need to think about it and pray about it."
That was probably the day before the Elder meeting.
I keep looking this way because I remember
He was sitting over here.
The whole meeting, I was watching him.
I was looking at him and we were making eye contact
And I was wondering, "What are you going to do?"
In the portion of the Elder meeting
where we went around and had each Elder express
whether they were in favor or oppose and why,
we kept going back to the perspective of, "Look,
we're going to open the church and we're going to tell
our church, if you're not comfortable,
Don't come."
Then it was, "Okay, we open the church
Under what circumstances?
How are we going to socially distance?
Are we going to require masks?"
The answer was, "No, we're not going
to require masks."
That was a real hard stop for a few people.
-We'll have masks.
If you want a mask, they'll be here.
if you want to sanitize your hands,
The sanitizer will be here.
-People can socially distance if they want,
But we're not going to require it.
He was very firmly opposed.
Very respectful and very appreciative
Of the statement, but indicated that he could not support it.
I finally said to the men, "Look,
We're reopening Grace Church.
I think we need to do it Sunday."
Why then?
It was getting to the point that so many people were
at Grace Church on Sundays
that if we didn't officially open the church,
people would just start looking around at each other saying,
"What are we doing here if the church isn't open?"
This statement is going to go out.
The question at this point really is,
is this going to be a statement of John MacArthur
or is this going to be a statement of the Elders
of Grace Community Church
And be sent out from Grace Church?
I had not talked to anybody ahead of time
about that.
That was just how I was going to reconcile the fact
that the Elders aren't unanimous,
but this statement needs to be issued
Because we're reopening.
We have to reopen.
This particular Elder stepped right up
and immediately said,
"This needs to be a statement by the Elders
and it needs to be issued by Grace Community Church,
and it needs to be understood by our church and the world,
This is what we're doing and why we're doing it."
Very quickly after that, the rest of the Elders that were
in opposition eventually gave their approval also,
so that at the end of the discussion,
We had unanimous approval of that statement.
He just had a very difficult time
and in fact, resigned from the Elder board
Within 43 hours.
I love the people of Grace Church.
They led us to reopening the church.
When we voted to issue that statement
and to open Grace Church, we knew we were in defiance
of government.
We knew we were in defiance
of a very powerful government
And that there would be consequences.
-The church says to every authoritarian government,
"There is a power and authority higher than you.
You need to acknowledge that.
You need to live in the light of that.
Our calling is not first to comply with your laws.
We must obey God rather than men."
It's remarkable throughout church history
how often
a little seemingly insignificant incident
that the world would pass over becomes in the wisdom
of God, the means whereby other Christians
Are suddenly galvanized.
Most Christians, I think,
however frustrated they are longing for change,
We just continue.
Then suddenly were confronted by someone
Who is willing to risk everything.
It's as if the Lord says,
"Do you see how important this matter is?"
She threw the stool and from the various accounts
that we have, the Dean of St Giles
is dumbfounded.
He asks or insists that the woman be removed,
But people begin to protest.
The service ends in confusion.
When people spilled out of the High Kirk of St Giles,
News spread very quickly.
People were coming out and venting their anger
that their church, now, that's not to say
All of them were believers.
That was far from the case, but they were feeling
that their church and their nation
was being imposed upon
By an alien authority.
They would band together
and they would append their signatures to a document
which they called a covenant,
and because it was to go through all of Scotland,
It was called the National Covenant.
They signed the National Covenant
In the Greyfriars churchyard.
What they were doing was really signing
their names to a document that said, Jesus Christ
and not King Charles I is the sovereign head
And the lone ruler of the Church of God in Scotland.
A number of people signed in their own blood.
They wanted to so identify with this cause
that they were saying, "Even though it cost me my life,
I'm going to stand for Jesus and His kingship
And the church."
Truth trumps consequences.
Copies were immediately made and sent throughout Scotland.
-In California, the battle is over church services.
Pastor John McArthur is defying Governor
Gavin Newsom's new coronavirus restrictions.
Posting in-- - I had been wondering
In my mind why it was that Grace hadn't opened yet.
When they came out with this statement
that was revealing where they were
on this whole issues, that meant that, okay,
We're seeing eye to eye.
-GraceLife has been the site of ongoing Christian resistance.
Pastor James Coates received a $1200 fine for violating
the public health order.
-People made a connection between us reopening our doors
And Grace Community Church coming out with that statement.
For John MacArthur and Grace Community Church
to step up and take the same stand,
It was hugely fortifying.
-The ministry of John MacArthur and Grace Community Church
is very influential.
The statement came out from Grace Community Church,
And that was significant to our congregation.
Read the statement where he essentially declares
the preeminence of Christ over his church,
and the different rules and institutions of government
and authority, and how the church must meet,
And a call upon the church to meet.
When that happened, I just rejoiced.
I sent that out to our congregation.
They were all excited.
-Pastor Tim Stevens of the Fairview Baptist Church,
police say Stevens was served a Court
of Queen's Bench Order related to public health measures
and the pandemic.
They say AHS has tried to work with the pastor
For several weeks to no avail.
-The first Sunday after we signed
the statement was really something
because it was just okay,
Now it's time to come back, open the floodgates.
-I remember that sermon was, yes, it was an amazing sermon
And it was just so invigorating.
-All that, and I haven't even said anything.
-That Sunday, the Sunday after that,
August 2nd, August 9th, I mean, these were amazing times.
-We're having church.
[applause]
-I was able to sit on the front row
and Pastor John preached a message
On Daniel's civil disobedience.
-Daniel disobeyed the king,
because the king told him to disobey God,
not to pray.
-That message, it was just sort of like--
It's hard to describe.
It was just like, this is where we should all be.
-He only asked for 30 days of submission,
Temporary mandate.
Daniel threw open his windows, and for those 30 days,
Prayed publicly and openly three times a day.
-People were in the worship center
And teeming all around the worship center outside.
It was great that we didn't have any incident,
that there was no police involvement,
That there was no locks on the doors.
It was just like, all right, everything's good.
Great.
Let's just have church.
-We received an overnight FedEx package
from the county.
I was upstairs with Pastor John in Pastor John's office
And begin to read through it.
It was a cease and desist letter saying,
"if you continue to meet
in the manner that you're doing
on Sunday mornings for church, that they were going to come
Against us legally."
There was threats of fines and jail time.
-We didn't want to embroil the church in a legal battle
that we couldn't win.
We didn't want to spend the church's money on something
that was ultimately fruitless.
-Grace Church may not be
what it once was by the time
the court system was done with us.
-There was a famous case, I think, that went
to the Supreme Court from churches in Nevada
who complained that, wait, you're opening
the casinos before you're opening the churches,
That's not fair to us.
They lost their case in the Supreme Court.
-Another similar case from another one
Of these churches was ruled against them.
It was hard to imagine that their case
Would be unsuccessful and ours would be successful.
That was one of the dark days, if there was a dark day
where reality kind of kicked you in the shins and you realize
The trajectory here illegally doesn't look real good.
-Today, my guest on the Truth Matters podcast is
the Executive Director of Grace To You,
Phil Johnson.
Phil-- - I hear Phil Johnson,
who usually sits at the head of the conference table
to my left.
He just calls out, he says, "Hey, Darryl,
you know Jenna Ellis, don't you?"
-I said to him, "You should get in touch with her."
-I found that she was knowledgeable,
Exceptionally knowledgeable on constitutional law.
She had taught constitutional law.
-He expressed and asked, "well, would you be able or interested
to represent the church?" I said, "I absolutely can,
I would just have to affiliate with a local counsel."
-We have a private firm, LiMandri and Jonna.
Our firm acts as special counsel for the Thomas More Society.
-The few cases that had been decided
At the trial court level had not gone particularly well.
-South Bay United Pentecostal Church tried to sue
in order to allow mass gatherings but yesterday lost,
Upholding Governor Gavin Newsom's ban on in-person.
-A Lodi Church that wants to hold in-person services
Has lost their fight for a restraining--
-A sharply divided Supreme Court has ruled Nevada
Can limit church attendance as a measure to--
-There wasn't any good legal precedent
At that point when I met with him in our favor.
We told him that, that it could be a problem given
the current state of the law.
-We were spitballing at the very beginning trying
To figure out what's our strategy moving forward.
How are we going to defend Pastor MacArthur
and Grace Community Church?
-We actually filed a lawsuit
to challenge the legality of the shutdown orders
In as much as it was violating the First Amendment right.
-We wanted to attack the health order
as unconstitutional because you can't be held
in violation of an unconstitutional
or illegal order.
-We thought the odds of prevailing
in the case were all-- I mean it's hard to quantify,
But very, very difficult.
-We found the audio recording of Pastor John's preaching
through 1 Corinthians from the mid-1970s
Where Paul talks about lawsuits.
-if, for example, some ordinance came
along and tried to close down Grace Community Church,
Would we say, "Oh, it's all right. We forgive you.
We'll all go home and just forget the work
Of God."
Not on your life.
We'd be down there with every legal thing
you could imagine, trying to prove that we had
The right to exist.
-It just shows the consistency.
It's what you expect from a life that's grounded
in conviction,
And the convictions come from an unchanging source of truth.
-You love that.
You love that for some consistency.
-Christianity is the truth.
You could say to a guy, "Well, I want to go to Chicago."
You could say, "Well, there's no way to Chicago.
You can go anywhere you want.
Just start off in any direction."
Well, that isn't true.
if you're going to go to Chicago,
There's a direction.
The same thing is true in terms of God.
if you're going to go to God, God says,
"Here's the way."
It isn't that God is trying to be unkind or unfair
or narrow-minded or picky, it's just that he wants to tell
the truth.
I could say, "Well, I'd like to tell anybody,
just do what you want, and you'll be all right,"
but that isn't the truth, so you don't do a guy a favor
to tell him that.
-Pastor John talking to the attorney said,
"I know you're here to win, but this is a road that we have
To go down even if we don't come home."
-We told him there could be legal consequences.
You could end up having to pay big fines.
There could even potentially be a jail sentence if you violate
A court order and you're held in contempt of court.
-if they want to come into Grace Church and write us
all up and take us all away, well, okay,
Come and get us.
-It's possible that officials will come in and arrest John.
-They're going to come and take John.
He says, "No, they'll take me first."
-if that happens, I'm going to go down there
And be arrested with him.
-I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to stand
in between the police officer and John and tell him,
"Sir, you're going to have to take me as well."
-People around here argued who would get to go to jail
with John MacArthur.
-We're not meeting because we want to be rebellious.
We're meeting because our Lord has commanded us
To come together and worship Him.
[applause]
-Pastor MacArthur said, "We're not following
Any of these rules. We're going to hold church."
This was that time when services were pretty much shut down,
completely indoors.
He was having 10,000 people in church,
Shoulder to shoulder, no social distancing, no masks.
-Sang hymns, did pretty much everything
that the government restrictions said
you shouldn't do.
-We were placed in almost an impossible situation where,
here we have a guy who's on Fox News admitting
That he's openly defying these rules.
Really in the eyes of the county
And the state embarrassing them publicly.
They're already sending him cease and desist letters,
And he's still going on Fox News.
I mean it's pretty amazing.
-Paul and I had to drive to Los Angeles, started out
With the judge saying, "I've got your papers.
Wait here for an hour while I go read them."
We had a very, very small chance of coming out of there
with anything less than a full grant
of the temporary restraining order
Saying, "Grace Community Church, you need to shut down."
-There's not a more scared group of people than the folks
With black robes on in this whole COVID era.
-We've lost this. I know we've lost this already.
-I was telling everybody, if you're looking
for the court system to save us in all of this,
It's not going to happen.
-We don't know what this judge is thinking.
We have no clue
How he's going to respond.
-Paul was saying, "I want you to respect
The First Amendment and allow us to worship."
The judge was like, "Yes, I know.
I know that. That's okay.
What specifically do you want me to do?"
-He was skeptical of the county's position.
He didn't think there was a basis to shut down church.
-It was about halfway through Paul's argument
that I realized,
We're going to win. We might actually win this.
-He wanted to rule for us,
but he didn't want to give Grace of pass
On every other restriction.
-Attorneys for the Council of Los Angeles get up.
This is when they also realize that things aren't going
As they would hope.
They quickly start arguing that, "Yes, Your Honor, you're correct
that they should at least have to wear masks
and at least practice six-foot social distancing, at least,
But you really need to shut down this church."
-"Your Honor, maybe our client will be willing
to temporarily comply with the distancing
And masking requirements if he can hold services."
He right away said, "That would be great."
In my mind, I'm thinking, I can't believe
what just happened.
He would be the only church in California
That would be allowed to have services indoors.
This is a massive victory.
Obviously, I also knew in the back
of my mind that Pastor MacArthur wasn't going
to be happy.
[phone ringing]
-I was one of the people that called
and asked to speak to Pastor John,
And I said, "What in the world is going on?"
I will confess here for the whole world to see,
I wavered.
I don't want to say I didn't trust John,
but I questioned him.
I was like, "What are you doing?
I am not going to wear a mask at church,
And I don't think most of Grace Church is."
-My response to this was, look, they're not going to be content
with us giving some small amount of ground,
Because I already knew that what they wanted was everything.
-He gets what's going on.
He understood the chess game.
-Pastor John said, "Yes, we will go ahead and do that."
He said, "And you know why?
It's because I don't think that LA County is going
to be okay with this.
They are not going to be okay with the fact
That we actually get to be open under any circumstances."
-The county went straight into the appellate court and got
An emergency ruling to stay that judge's decision.
-They granted the county's request,
that ruling didn't exist for more than, I don't know, 24,
36 hours.
The Court of Appeal put a hold on that ruling,
And we were back to square one.
-By virtue of agreeing to masks and social distancing,
and the county instantly filing
an appeal,
They completely expose themselves.
They were not interested in the Grace Church meeting.
They were making it clear
They wanted Grace Church shut down.
-They wanted to stick it to the church and say,
basically, we are closing your doors,
and you have to acknowledge that we get to discriminate
Against you. That's what they wanted.
They wanted him to sit down and shut up and be okay
with having the church closed
For as long as LA County wanted.
-Pastor MacArthur said, "All right,
if that ruling doesn't exist anymore,
then I'm going back to the status quo, which was,
I'm having church every single Sunday,
Shoulder to shoulder, no mask, no social distancing."
-Whatever they showed of their hand wasn't even close
To what they were really after.
-I think Christians need to realize
that governments aren't neutral,
That governments aren't even necessarily good.
God has ordained them, and they serve a good purpose.
To the extent that they're faithful
To that purpose, they are good.
We have to be cognizant of the reality
that we should see the spirit of antichrist at work
In the government.
When the government goes to war with the church
over a matter like COVID-19, we need to understand
that that's not a neutral thing,
that the spiritual battle is taking place
At that level as well.
-Many Christians don't see Marxism as an issue
of spiritual warfare because we don't really understand
what Marxism is.
They don't really understand that to the Marxists,
Christianity is the enemy.
Unless you understand that, you don't get the significance
Of the spiritual warfare that we're dealing with.
Marxism is a statist ideology.
For the Marxists, the state has to be the vehicle
Through which all things and people are controlled.
When people think about Marxism, they think
About classical Marxism.
They think about Karl Marx, economics, the bourgeoisie,
and the proletariat.
What they don't tend to think about is neo-Marxism being
more of a cultural revolution, changing the culture
from within.
The idea that the world is divided between oppressors
And oppressed groups.
-We are trained Marxists.
We are super versed on ideological theories.
-Ideological subversion.
It's a great brainwashing process,
Which goes very slow.
It's divided in four basic stages.
The first one being demoralization.
It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation.
Why that many years?
Because this is the minimum number of years
Which requires to educate one generation of students.
-Then you have a proliferation
of disciplines,
and often they have the word studies attached
To them.
Women's studies, gender studies, queer studies,
all of these things are proliferations
Of cultural Marxist ideology.
-Most of the people who graduated in '60s, dropouts
or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions
of power in the government, civil service, business,
Mass media, educational system.
You are stuck with them.
-Our history illustrates that a commitment
to improving health
means incorporating health practice in a social
And racial justice framework.
-What's your beef with the mandate?
-There are 53 counties in California.
Most of them have actual doctors running
Their public health department.
In Los Angeles County, we have a fake doctor running
our health department.
She's not a medical doctor.
She's a social worker.
She's not qualified to give medical advice.
-People in authority in California,
They were operating off of their Marxist assumptions.
-One of the reasons that Barbara Ferrer claims
for bringing the mass mandates back
In Los Angeles County is equity.
All we hear from her is equity, equity, equity, equity, equity.
-Within the challenges that define
our healthcare system today,
are enormous opportunities to fundamentally shift our focus
from disease care models to prevention
and building health equity,
From primarily fixing people, to also fixing systems.
-if you are going to take over cultures and take
over power structures,
you can't have
A formidable ideological opponent.
Religion, in general, and Christianity, in particular,
Represents a formidable ideological opponent.
God has given us three spheres.
He's given us the sphere of the church,
The sphere of the state, the sphere of the family.
These three jurisdictional spheres.
For the Marxist, the sphere of the family,
And the sphere of the church.
Those things are subsumed under the sphere of the state
Or the civil government.
Marxism is essentially a statist ideology.
It believes that the authority of the state usurps
all other authority, and the state is the one
who has the authority when it comes to the limits
That are going to be put on the church.
-Dr. Deena Hinshaw is the Chief Medical Officer
Of health for the province of Alberta.
-The issues of racism and even the issues
of who's going to be impacted by the significant
economic repercussions of COVID
and differential impacts on women differential impacts
On racialized communities.
-Although she's trained as a medical doctor,
She is a government bureaucrat.
She was trained with a specialization
In something called public health.
In Alberta, we have a totally public socialized
healthcare system.
The government controls all the doctors,
Controls all the nurses, controls the healthcare system.
What I discovered was fundamentally
a Marxist treatise that talked about social justice
and health equity trying to achieve social ends
Through administration of the healthcare system.
Nobody's in exactly the same state of health.
Consequently, it seems obvious
that we're all in different states
Of vulnerability to a virus like COVID-19.
What we were told constantly
by people like Dr. Hinshaw is that the virus
doesn't discriminate.
This is fundamentally a lie. In fact, it's totally illogical.
In a free society, your outcomes are largely determined
by your choices, but according to these people,
Our choices don't matter.
We're all the same.
We all have the exact same vulnerability
to this virus regardless of how healthy we are,
regardless of how old we are,
regardless of where we're from,
and that is how the socialist ethic
is applied.
-Canadian authorities have cracked down
on several churches despite no scientific evidence
showing the church gatherings
Are dangerously spreading the virus.
[music]
-We were taken to court in January.
The court ordered us to comply.
if we didn't submit, AHS could take us back to court
and hold us in contempt of court,
And that comes with up to two years in prison.
-You're living under oppression at this point, and every day
you're waking up thinking, "ls the government,
what are they going to do?
Are they going to show up at our door?
Are they going to take our kids?
Are they going to take our home?"
-We were going to be opening in contempt of court on Sunday.
-I sensed the need to preach to the issue at hand.
-There is absolutely no way to be a faithful Christian
Without being vitally connected to a local church.
Many of the imperatives
of the New Testament require belonging
To a local body of believers.
It is impossible to be obedient to Christ and not be active
In the local church.
-Tim Stevens had said to me in a text,
"You're the most hated man in Alberta right now."
-The media gets a hold of this, and they tried to use
their power
Of public shame to put the pressure on.
-We got this text, and it was a video.
It was one of our congregants in their home
With their camera on.
-Health orders AHS found the Grace Life Church
of Edmonton in violation
of the province's COVID restrictions
After worshipers were witnessed not wearing masks.
-Videoing what they're seeing on the six o'clock news,
and it climaxes in this statement where who's
the head of the church?
-Who is the head of the church?
Not Caesar.
-Is it Jason Kenney?
-Not Jason Kenney.
-Is it Dina Hinshaw?
-Not Dina Hinshaw.
-Is it the Elders?
-Not the lead pastor, not the Elders.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
-We were just like, "What?"
It was epic, and it just put wind in our sail,
and if this was going to be
an opportunity for the glory of Christ to be on display,
and His lordship to be heralded,
Then we were all in.
-I keep hearing them say, over and over,
The Lord commands us to meet, the Lord commands us to meet.
He does not.
-God requires us to meet.
The very nature of who we are,
the Ecclesia,
We are a gathered people.
[music]
-There were quite a number of faithful Christians
who refused to sit under Episcopalian ministers whom
they believed had compromised the gospel and denied
The headship of Jesus Christ.
They were gatherings of believers,
young and old.
They would walk miles through nature,
And they would meet in all kinds of weather.
Southwest of Scotland can be very wet
and very windy,
And the ground would be very boggy.
They had these heavy plaid shawls
and clothes that just would drink
In the rain.
There would be soden through.
They would go out into the moors,
Into the heathlands, into the hills.
They would try to find little ravines
where they would be secluded from the government forces,
the dragoons,
the army platoons that were on the lookout
For non-conformists.
Young and old would gather for worship,
And they would sing Psalms.
[singing]
Inevitably,
Almost always, some were caught.
It was a serious crime.
Fines,
And even the death penalty.
Hebrews 10:25, "Do not forsake the assembling together
of yourselves as some have done,
Even though it may cost you to do so."
-One of the most common responses
we heard, by meeting, you become contributors
to the spread of the virus, and spreading a virus
Is something that's not loving.
-The penalties are, you might be killing
your granddad.
-World Health Organization had proclaimed
an extraordinarily high infection fatality rate,
And that was frightening.
I started reading about this
and understood
that their calculation of the infection
fatality rate was grossly wrong,
and anyone who knew anything about medical science knew
That pretty much right away.
That's because that number is a fraction.
That top number in the fraction is the number of people who die.
The bottom number is the number of people who are infected.
When you take that fraction, and they calculated it
To be 3.4%, it ignored two things.
Number one, it ignored the data.
The first real data was the Japanese cruise ship
that showed an infection fatality rate
Of much less than that.
We know that respiratory viruses typically
have a lot of people who are infected,
but they're not sick
Or not sick enough to go see a doctor.
You can imagine that there's a lot of people who are infected
That are undetected.
You are overestimating
the fraction, you are saying
if 5 people died and 100 people were sick enough
to go to see the doctor,
but 10,000 people were actually infected,
the infection fatality rate is 5 divided by 10,000,
not 5 divided by the 100 who were sick enough to go see
a doctor.
-That is a grim milestone, is it not for Italy?
-Two new grim forecast.
-FEMA reporting deaths up nearly 30% from last week.
-3.4% mortality.
-I wrote a document called The Great Barrington Declaration
aimed at the general public, not a scientific audience,
to let them know that there were prominent scientists
That disagreed the lockdown policy.
The main thing about the declaration is
that it reflected a century of experience
With respiratory viral pandemics.
It let people know
That the scientific evidence doesn't point to lockdowns.
There is another way.
This idea was the focus protection
Of vulnerable, older people lifting lockdowns.
-I am a public health professional
with 27 years
of experience.
I have served during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
I served in H1 N1. I served in the original SARS.
I served in the anthrax outbreak.
I've served in West Nile virus, Monkeypox, Ebola,
CCHF.
Never in my life
have I believed I was in the Twilight Zone
until what I started to see happening
in the pandemic was happening.
-When you step out of your door every day,
as long as you're not pushed,
You are accepting a certain level of risk.
When you decide to drive, unless you're being forced
To drive, you're accepting a certain level of risk.
-We can make a very simple analogy here.
Almost all car accident deaths
Are on high speed roads.
Why don't we make all speed limits five miles per hour?
We would never have a fatal car accident again.
-As long as people were not being forced
to gather in church, and they were given the right
to choose what was best for themselves
and their families, they've taken a look at COVID,
they've taken a look at their circumstances,
they've taken a look at the environment
and they've decided that what is best for them,
spiritual connections, spiritual health, far outweighs
The overall risk that COVID presents.
-He was my mentor, so I'm going to have
To let him speak. [laughter]
-The small print here, it's really small print
in states with evidence of community transmission, bars,
restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor
and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate
Should be closed.
-We had a meeting, and Dr. Birx looked
across the table and said, "I just want
to make one thing clear, Scott, no one on the task forces
for a lockdown."
I said, "Oh, really?
Are you for business restrictions
And closures?" Yes. "Are you for school closures?"
Yes. "Are you for testing
And quarantining asymptomatic positive tested people?"
Yes. "Are you for limiting group sizes?"
Yes.
"Are you for stopping families from congregating?"
Yes. I said, "Then you're for lockdowns.
That's what lockdowns are."
-Lockdowns had little to no effect
On COVID mortality rates.
-70% of the spread occurred within households.
Only 1% occurred on subways or transportation.
-Political unrest and a rise in domestic violence were
just some of the more devastating effects
lockdowns had on society.
-Anxiety disorder, depression, skyrocketing
During 2020 compared to the pre-pandemic 2019.
We saw suicide attempts in teenage girls skyrocketing
During the lockdowns.
We saw drug abuse, substance abuse skyrocketing
during the lockdowns.
We saw double to triple self-harm visits
to doctors from teenagers in the United States
during the isolation of 2020 compared
to the previous year.
What do we mean by self-harm visits?
We mean teenagers putting out cigarettes on their skin,
And slashing their wrists.
-The American public health response is
the single worst public health mistake
In peacetime history, and it's not close.
-It was a late afternoon in the White House.
I looked at my email, and I had an email from a woman,
who had been emailing me several times
and saying, "Oh, Dr. Atlas,
Everything you're saying is right.
Keep speaking.
I just want to tell you my husband committed suicide
This week because of the lockdowns."
Then the same afternoon,
I had an email saying,
a different person,
this is a couple of hours later, "My daughter tried
To kill herself today.
You're the reason I'm telling her
To live, people like you."
These people that think I'm going
to stop talking and saying the truth
about the harms of the lockdowns,
and the really heinous problem of this policy,
because of their impotent
criticism and letters from people
like Stanford University Medical School professors,
They have no idea who they're dealing with here.
-People have been very concerned
to make sure people's physical lives
are protected, and the process shut down places
Where there's hope for their spiritual lives.
-By canceling church, you're not loving
your neighbor.
The real offense here is to remove the spiritual help
And testimony that the church gathered represents.
-You're interrupting a worship service,
and so at this point,
we can't let you in the building.
-Actually we're not.
In order to interrupt the service,
You have to actually do something to interrupt it.
-This your presence does interrupt it.
You're intimidating women and children.
-That can be debated in court.
We are entering. [crosstalk]
-When the Grace Life Church did not force its congregants
to wear masks during service, the church was put
under weekly surveillance by local police
And Alberta Health Services inspectors.
-You can tell me, was anything in compliance
With what we issued on the order.
-We haven't made, I don't think, any material changes
Since that order.
-Okay, and no cap on occupancy for 15%.
-No.
I still don't think you should be coming
Into our facility, that it is a disturbance.
I contacted my lawyer.
I asked him, "What are the odds of me doing jail time for this?"
At that point, I thought it was
a pretty meager possibility,
thinking to myself that they likely didn't want
To put a pastor in jail.
He said, "It's pretty likely."
I said, "Yes?"
He's like, "Yes, pretty likely."
-He came downstairs for lunch, and he told me
that the likelihood of jail time was a possibility
And a very good, good possibility.
I sat there, I didn't really say anything.
I didn't want to add a burden to him.
He went upstairs after lunch.
I cleaned up all the dishes.
I went into the bathroom and I cried.
-The physiological impact of it on my body was significant.
I had a migraine brewing,
felt the weight of the world on my shoulders,
was kind of pacing,
and almost having a difficult time even being
on my own feet.
I laid down and just prayed it out,
And wrestled with the Lord on it.
In His mercy and grace, I came out
Of that time resolved.
What do we do to inform the government of their role?
That question was on my mind that week,
and I sensed the need to speak to government and to the role
of government.
This was another sermon
Where you're not cracking commentaries.
Your theology, your life is just going
To come out in one sermon.
What is the God ordained role of government,
And can we even ask that question?
When the government forbids what God commands.
For example, forbidding the preaching of His word.
Can't comply with that.
-This church near Edmonton
Has repeatedly violated public health orders.
-When the government commands what isn't theirs to command.
For example, the terms of worship
for a local church,
can't comply with that.
-Grace Life Church had to turn people away Sunday,
As they were busier than ever and over fire code capacity.
The church has been ignoring a closure order since January.
-I knew, following that service,
That they were going to want me to turn myself in.
I turned myself in on Tuesday.
They wanted to imprison me.
I was a menace to society,
and they deemed my imprisonment necessary
For the protection of society.
The crown said he needs to be released with a condition.
It was ordering me to comply with the Public Health Act,
And I indicated that I couldn't do that.
Had I signed,
then in some way I'd be admitting
Or agreeing to comply with that order.
Now I'm actually being constrained, I'm now in custody.
-Pastor of a church in the Edmonton area is
Under arrest for violating public health orders.
-Pastor James Coates was arrested
And sent to prison a couple of weeks ago in Canada.
What did he do?
He held a church service.
-You're going to go into quarantine
For two weeks.
Where do you want to go after that?
Do you want to go to general public,
general population, or do you want to go
To where they keep the rapists and pedophiles?
-One particular pastor, Pastor James Coates,
up in the Edmonton area Alberta Canada,
who sits in maximum security prison
at this time because he refused
to follow
the authorities' mandate not to preach,
Not to enter his church.
They told him essentially what was told John Bunyan,
"Anytime you want to stop preaching,
We'll let you out."
He said, "I can't do that,"
So he is still there.
-Bunyan would come up to London
From time to time and preach.
Bunyan had this ability to preach to ordinary men
and women.
John Bunyan then was arrested and taken to jail.
Once Bunyan was convinced about something,
There was no shifting him.
It was not possible.
He ended up then, well officially he was in jail
For the next 12 years.
As you can imagine, some of those prisons were pretty,
pretty horrible places, and so sometimes men died
in prison.
He could have left the jail at any point,
he chose, but he would not be allowed
To preach.
Now, some people would argue, well,
just go Bunyan and preach quietly or preach
where nobody can find you, but I don't think that's
The way John Bunyan's conscience worked.
He wasn't able to do that.
-The government has always done this.
I think throughout history,
you aim at the cream, the leading preachers
if you can get them either to conform,
or soul crush them in spirit
That people lose heart.
-August 14th until September 4th, we had four
Or five emergency hearings.
-The level of aggression
that I saw that was leveled against Pastor MacArthur
In Grace Community Church was somewhat unparallel.
-LA County kept coming back and saying,
"We are not satisfied, we're not satisfied."
-A law firm they hired were real bulldogs.
It was completely dominating the practice.
It was an all out war.
We were so busy, and we were literally
In court probably every week, multiple times a week.
Leading up into that, we had been winning.
-They wanted to force him to stop having church services.
-This was the bigger hearing for a preliminary injunction.
-They were going into court to have him held in contempt,
which would be much bigger fines than potentially
a jail sentence.
It was Judge Beckloff, and it was his opportunity
To make a ruling.
-At the end of the hearing, the judge
Didn't really give us much of a tell.
-When I received the order, I was pretty crushed.
There were certain places where I wondered,
"Did I mess up?", and other places
where I was like, "No, he understood exactly
what I was saying."
He just said, "You lose."
-Now there was a preliminary injunction
that said that the church could not meet
And could not hold indoor worship services.
When I called Pastor John, it was definitely not good news.
-We are beginning to see persecution
From the government.
This is the most formidable persecution.
-There were people inside the government that contacted me
And said, "Look, we know who you are.
We know what you're doing.
You understand there's a chance you'll be arrested, right?"
I said, "No."
"You're fairly prominent in your profession,
And we can change that."
There were people friendly and unfriendly warn me,
"You might want to sever your ties
with Grace Community Church because it's not going
to end well for you."
-The government has obviously turned up the heat
on churches, trying to discourage them
from gathering together.
-They call us the fringe minority.
From the last two years, six people in Edmonton,
The COVID cabinet, have ruled our country.
They have determined the livelihoods and the lives
Of 4.5 million people.
-A pastor who gathers for church outside
Is being arrested.
Yeah.
When laws are unjust, then it's incumbent upon those
Who are righteous to stand up and say, "No."
-We have one of the best systems in the world.
Even God said, "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's."
We're not getting into this philosophical debate.
-The gathering of the church is not Caesar's.
-Bye, daddy.
[cries]
-When you say that there's opportunity to go
through the legal means, we're 15, 16 months
into this and they have yet
To provide anything in court.
That's not-- A delayed access to justice
Is not just at all.
[kids crying]
-The government's taking control.
They want to take control of absolutely everything.
The church has become the main enemy
of the government,
Nothing new.
Scottish Covenanters,
amazing people.
1660, the Covenanters signed their national covenant
with their blood.
They were determined quoting, "To resist to the death
the claims of the king
to override the Crown Rights of the Redeemer
In His church King Jesus."
[music]
-The Grassmarket Memorial is commemorating not
just the men executed at the Grassmarket,
but it represents a memorial to the wider cause
of really today you would call it a freedom of conscience,
certainly religious freedom, and to commemorate a dark time
in Scotland's history when governmental authority,
under the oversight of the king,
sought to stamp out any trace of resistance
To his royal kingly authority.
The gallows were set high
because the government wanted to impress on people,
"Look what happens
When you defy the edicts of the king."
They would be given one last opportunity
to abjure the covenants and accept
the rightful legal authority, as it was said,
of the king.
Difficult to know how many were actually executed.
They represented a time in Scotland when to be
a faithful Christian could quite possibly mean
You face death all the day long.
[music]
-That I think
Is almost the saddest thing about the killing times.
Not that the government killed
these faithful Christians, though that's tragic, of course,
but that they could be betrayed
by their own.
That's hard to take.
John Brown was a semi-prosperous farmer.
Brown was betrayed, and it was Claverhouse,
Bloody Claverhouse, as he has come to be known.
He was with a number of his dragoons.
He asked John Brown to abjure.
There was an Oath of Abjuration and commit yourself to a life
Of obedience to the king.
He steadfastly refused to take the Oath of Abjuration.
It meant that he was persuaded that Jesus Christ was the King
And Head of the church.
Claverhouse commanded six of his dragoons to shoot him
on the spot.
Many of these Covenanters prayed deeply
And profoundly.
I can well understand that after Brown prayed,
these dragoons hesitated,
but rather than prolong
the wait, Claverhouse took out his own pistol,
And shot John Brown through the head.
Claverhouse turned to his wife
and said, "What think you know
of your husband?"
She replied,
"Before this, I thought of him very, very much.
Now, I think of him even better."
The issue at heart in conflict with the state
is almost always that issue,
Who has the right to govern my conscience?
Who has the right to tell me
How to live out my faith?
1635, in the Solway River,
is an imperishable example
Of remarkable Christian faith.
Wigtown, in that area, Southwest Scotland on the coast,
Was the stronghold of The Covenanters.
Margaret Wilson and her younger sister, Agnes,
had gone to visit
An older lady, Margaret McLachlan, who was 60.
Margaret Wilson was 13.
Her sister, Agnes, I think was 13.
They were known to be Covenanting sympathizers.
They were captured by these notorious dragoons.
They refused the Oath of Abjuration.
They denied that the king had any rule whatsoever
In the life of the church of Jesus Christ.
They were told to pray for the king,
Which Margaret Wilson was willing to do.
She prayed for the king to be saved.
Her father, meantime, who was quite prosperous,
had gone to Edinburgh to plead for their release,
And he paid an indemnity fine.
When he returned with the pardon, as it were,
having paid the fine, the local magistrate who was
A prosperous landowner refused.
He acted unlawfully.
The younger daughter was released.
She was 13.
Wigtown is a tidal estuary.
The tide goes out significantly,
sufficient
for the soldiers to stick these stakes
Into the sinking sands.
They tied the two Margarets to stakes
in the River Solway.
The older woman
to the front
in the hope that seeing the older woman die,
Margaret, who was 13, would recant.
The older woman wouldn't renounce her convictions,
and she drowned.
One of the soldiers cut her throat.
Perhaps he thought that would hasten her death
And save her suffering.
[music]
-They came to young Margaret again and said,
"Will you now take the oath of abjuration and abjure
the covenants and acknowledge the headship
Of the king in the life of the church?"
She said, "No."
She began to recite or sing
a number of psalms.
[music]
-One of the soldiers came and actually pushed her head
under the salty water,
And she drowned.
Another soldier cut her throat,
whether again to hasten the end,
not to prolong the agony,
I don't know.
She died.
It's bewildering to people, I think.
Why would you die
For church polity?
She wasn't dying for Presbyterianism.
She was dying for the cause of Jesus Christ.
Since that day, the story of the two Margarets have been
an indelible mark in the history and life of the church
In Scotland.
Faithfulness inevitably brings a cost with it.
The calling of the church in every age
is to exalt the Creator
above the creature.
The great lie,
as Paul puts it in the end of Romans 1,
people believe the lie of the devil and worship
the creature more than the Creator who is God
Over all forever to be praised.
The conflict between the church
and state, the church and government,
The church and kings and queens began at the fall.
Genesis 3 is the pivotal chapter
Along with Genesis 1 and 2 in the whole Bible.
Get Genesis 1 to 3 wrong, and you get everything wrong.
-To understand the basic truth of the gospel,
You have to start with the bad news.
Gospel means good news,
but the good news is only good news
If you understand the bad news.
The bad news is we've all sinned,
Fallen short of the glory of God.
The wages of sin is death.
That's not just spiritual death, that's eternal death.
Eternal death doesn't mean eternal unconsciousness.
It means eternal punishment.
The Bible is explicit about a lake of fire
where there is conscious punishment forever
As a result of sin.
-In Adam's fall, we all fell in him.
We all fell in him because Adam is our federal head.
It's like the federal head of a nation.
if my federal head declares war,
I'm at war whether I want to be or not.
-The bad news is that everybody's
in that same category.
All have sinned, all are guilty.
None is righteous, not even one.
-All of us are born
with original sin,
which is why it's absolutely necessary
That we come under another federal headship.
-In Genesis 3:15 when in the wake
of Adam's rebellion and sin,
God immediately confronts the devil,
Satan in the guise of a serpent.
-I'll put enmity between you and the woman,
between your seed and her seed,
You will bruise his heel, but he will bruise your head.
That's the protevangelium.
That's the first proclamation of the good news of the gospel.
That there is one that is going to come from the woman
Who will crush the head of the snake.
-Sin isn't a minor peccadillo.
It isn't a little blemish that we can airbrush out
of our lives.
Sin is a deadly cancer that will kill us and destroy us
To all eternity.
-The good news is that God has a remedy for sin.
It has to be judged.
He sent his Son
to die in the place of all who would believe in Him
And take the judgment.
-He would do it so gloriously, and yet so unexpectedly,
He would do it through the very humanity
that Satan himself had sought to destroy from the seed
Of the woman.
In the fullness of time, the eternal Son of God,
unfathomably mysteriously beyond all that we can begin
To imagine takes our flesh to Himself in the virgin's womb.
In that frail flesh, He spoils principalities
And powers by His cross.
-One of the most remarkable realities
is that God was satisfied
to punish His Son
In place of sinners.
This is the essence of grace.
This is the high point of divine grace.
-When we come to Christ
in faith,
We come under His federal headship.
Christ is declared as the head of His body, the church.
Because we're under His federal headship,
We are made righteous, declared righteous sanctified.
We are united with Him.
We have our adoption as sons in Him, and eventually
our glorification in Him, all because we come
Under His federal headship.
-The church is always going to be an embattled people.
It's always going to be swimming against the tide.
if it's swimming with the tide, it's not being the church
of Jesus Christ.
[music]
-Praise God.
-Being pastor always around people,
being family man with eight children,
and then to go to jail where even the entrance process
Into jail is very humiliating.
-Being processed is a crazy dehumanizing experience
as you come into jail.
-You are brought in with handcuffs and with shackles.
-The stuff that they gotta do to you to make sure
That you're not bringing anything in.
-They perform a full strip search.
Very humiliating.
They dress you up, of course in prison clothes.
They treat you like an animal.
You don't know what to do. You don't know what's next.
You don't know about your own safety.
-I was in a cell with four other guys.
One guy ended up being my cellmate for a day or two,
And he was coming down off drugs.
-As you get into a cell with another roommate,
And he looks rough, he doesn't look pleased.
If I go to sleep here, am I going to wake up?
What's going to happen to me?
-When I went to jail, that opened up this whole avenue
For my wife to be able to be online.
-One of the reasons why they wanted to free James was
because I wouldn't be quiet.
[laughs]
I know my husband is fighting for freedom,
but more he's fighting for the Lordship of Christ
over his church.
Because I kept talking and doing the interviews,
it was putting pressure on the government,
exposing the media because we were bringing out
what the truth was.
-She's just getting the message out.
That even climaxed with a particular interview
She did with Tucker Carlson.
-A grown man sitting in prison for preaching a sermon.
This is such obvious tyranny that I've gotta ask,
Have any authorities in Canada come to your help?
This is the ruling of one judge, but you have a lot
Of politicians in Alberta or any of them--
-The interview with Tucker Carlson
we think was significant in moving the dial
in the government because it was just getting too big
And the pressure was getting to be too big.
-You grew up in the country. Do you recognize it now?
-No, I don't.
This is definitely not the nation that I grew up in.
-When I was given the opportunity to speak,
I said something to the effect that I realized
that the way this is going to be parsed up by society is
that I'm
An insurrectionist or a political revolutionary.
That's not the case.
I said, "The only reason that I'm here and at odds
with the law is because of my obedience
To the Lord Jesus Christ."
By the end of it, I was able to be released,
opened a door, and boom, my family was there
And I was now reunited with my family.
-Take your mask off. [laughter]
-I remember coming out of jail.
I just began to cry as I held them
because I realized at that point,
the battle was not over,
That these lockdowns and restrictions persisted.
That court order was still out there,
that we were still going to gather,
and that it is likely I'll be back in jail
in a very short time.
-I'm here outside GraceLife Church.
AHS is confirming that it has blocked access
To the church by putting fencing around.
RCMP are also on scene here providing support.
-The RCMP broke into our facility,
changed the locks, locked us out,
And then put three layers of fence around our property.
-They brought a locksmith in and they changed
all of our locks, so we did not have access
to our building.
-GraceLife Church and parishioners
have defied health orders for months now,
By not wearing masks, not distancing.
Our global news counters have seen people hugging outside
of the church.
Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church
Has spent time behind bars.
-I'd like to address a situation that has evolved
With GraceLife Church.
For months, Alberta Health Services
has attempted to proactively work
with this church.
These attempts to reach out and provide support
and education were not successful
in bringing the church
Into alignment with COVID-19 prevention requirements.
-In 1662, there was an act passed
In Parliament, an Act of Uniformity.
What this act said was that everyone within the Church
of England had to agree then to use the 1662 prayer book,
A new revision, The Book of Common Prayer.
-if you do not conform to the prayer book,
if you do not conform to the Episcopal rights
And orders, you'll be ejected.
The Puritans said, "This act as a whole,
we cannot stomach,"
and that's why 2,000 of them
and 300 to 400 in Scotland were ejected
From their churches.
[music]
-Although there were many good things
in that prayer book and they wouldn't object
to all of it by any means, that to be forced
into a position where they had to use that book
And no other book.
They had to conform to it, that that was asking
more than God was asking of them and therefore,
they felt they had no choice.
-The vast majority of the Puritans
Who were rejected did not stop doing church.
There was an underground church.
They had to meet quietly and they would meet
In places out of public view.
-GraceLife Church up in Alberta, Canada,
Is meeting somewhere.
We don't know where.
James Coates said at this point, it's not for the public to know.
-In Edmonton, really, outside of the municipality is
A very rural area.
Anywhere you go,
if you have 150 cars
show up down a gravel road and everybody
In that county knows something is going on.
-As we're on that road driving in,
we've got a family that's sitting
on a golf cart, a couple with a mobile phone
and they're on the phone and don't look
happy as they just see all of these cars driving
into this location.
-It was a crash course in underground church.
-Oh, no.
We're not flying under the radar here at all.
-We continued meeting in these remote locations.
Some of them made church that much sweeter.
I can remember the first time we went to one location.
It was our very first meeting together outside
of our building
And the singing was incredible.
if there was ever a foretaste to heaven,
that was it.
-Amazing to have an underground church in Canada.
[applause]
-John Flavel, one of the leading Puritans.
There's a stone.
It's in the middle of a river.
The reason he would preach from that stone was
because there were different authorities
either side of the river.
if authorities from one side began
to pursue him, he could flee to the other side
Where they had no jurisdiction.
The preacher would always preach behind a curtain.
The thinking there was that if somebody then came
into the meeting,
an informer wanted to see who the preacher was,
Then he wouldn't be able to see who the preacher was.
He'd hear the word, but he wouldn't see him
Because he was behind this curtain.
It was a church in Bristol where they would always surround
The preacher with some very tall men.
if the authorities did turn up, then they had
A trap door system.
I don't know quite how it worked,
but they were able then to conceal him beneath
the trap door.
-The Bible allows Christians to flee from persecution
And it also allows believers to hide in times of persecution.
-I think
it's appropriate for the church to be shrewd in moments
like that and to seek to be faithful to Christ.
-After the Act of Uniformity had being up
and running for some time, the authorities realized
that people were still meeting together and just carrying
On without the prayer book where they could.
They passed a law that limited the numbers
That could gather.
-The king's aged Parliament passed what was called
A Conventicle Act.
The act stated that no more than 5 or 10 people
could gather
for worship.
-All in-person events of 50 or more people
should be canceled.
-There's going to be a lot of hurt if that does not stop.
-Only 50 people are allowed at congregational
And worship services.
-These are legal provisions.
They will be enforced.
-They tried imprisoning
The ministers, the leaders.
They then came up with a system of fines.
-The aim was slowly but surely to squeeze the life out
Of Puritan descent.
-The city was threatening us and that started the cavalcade
Of continual efforts to fine us.
-if you got fined once, that would be one figure
And then it would go up again.
Really quite merciless.
-They ramped up the fines and the threats.
-It's always usually an escalating development.
-The first fine I received was $1,200.
-To see just how far you're willing to go.
-The maximum penalty on those fines,
I think was-- one of those summons was up
To $100,000.
-To resist the encroaching power
Of the state upon your conscience.
[music]
-We had the September 4th preliminary injunction hearing
And the September 10th ruling.
-With contempt, one of the things you get
is attorney's fees awarded
The party who's bringing the contempt charge.
-You're found in contempt, not only do you have
To pay fines, but you could possibly go to jail.
-Pastor John MacArthur very seriously stood
To risk fines in the millions of dollars.
-September 10th ruling felt like the world had fallen down
on top of us.
It later became clear that that was actually
Judge Beckloff doing everything he could for us.
LA County has what it wants, technically.
They seek to enforce this order against us.
Who do they go to? They go to him.
-Part of the defense of the contempt is
these are unconstitutional.
Even your orders, judge, are unconstitutional.
We have the right to violate them
and still challenge them.
Obviously, that's not an easy argument
to make in front of the judge that wrote the ruling
that you're saying is unconstitutional, but it was
a very uncomfortable situation
Because what does enforcing this order mean?
It means contempt, which is a criminal penalty.
I don't know if the court was too eager
to do that.
-Judge Beckloff said, any contempt proceedings
will have to come after a final determination
on the merit.
-Of course, while we were being postponed
on that basis,
the Supreme Court was tackling a couple of cases
of religious freedom.
-Justice Ginsburg passed away.
She was replaced by Justice Barrett
And then this issue came back to the Supreme Court.
-The Supreme Court issuing an injunction
that New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo
cannot enforce his new occupancy limits
On religious institutions in his state.
-That ruled in favor of churches,
which made it look worse
For the county to have a shot at winning.
-This is not a pre-pandemic video.
Shoppers at this Naples grocery store aren't wearing masks.
-In about early April of 2021, the world is coming out
Of this fear-based rhetoric from the media.
-Has been caught in a massive COVID lie.
-A group of protesters actually showed up
to the home of LA County Director
Of Public Health, Dr. Barbara Ferrer.
-John MacArthur of Grace Community Church joins me now
With more of that message that's gaining a lot of traction.
-Pastor John and I went on a bunch of national media
to tell the story and the true motivation
Of church being essential.
-When the government is allowed this type of broad
and arbitrary unlimited indefinite power,
Then our rights become mere privileges.
-We really want to start prosecuting our case.
-The County of Los Angeles applies
for contempt court, and in our opposition briefing,
we raise all the arguments that a criminal defendant
would be able to raise.
We need discovery.
We need to prove
that even Los Angeles County
Doesn't believe in the science.
We should have a full trial.
We should have live testimony.
We should have the right to cross-examine witnesses.
-Our intention was to depose the health officials
And the LA Board of Supervisors.
-Let's find out what's really motivating these health orders.
Let's find out the science that says churches are
so dangerous.
-And ask them the questions that they had never been asked
And refuse to answer in the media.
-Let's get these public health officers under oath.
-They don't want to have to answer questions
About what they're doing.
-They can't leave when there's a question pending.
They got to answer the question.
They got to deal with the follow-up questions
and their lawyers can't interrupt
and stop the deposition.
-I was so ready to get in deposition.
Paul and I talked about this all the time, like, "Let's go."
Can you imagine getting these health officials,
Barbara Ferrer?
-There was a real risk that if they lied under oath,
they'd be committing perjury.
It'd have massive consequences, not only for the case
But for their professional careers as well.
-Can you imagine getting Gavin Newsom
on the stand and saying to him,
"Why were you in support of the riots,
But you're against churches."
-Why is it safe to be in Costco but not safe to be in church?
There's no answer for that question
because it's stupid and ridiculous
and everyone knows that.
-What is the statistical figure that gives us the death rate
of COVID?
Not dying with COVID, dying from COVID?
What is the age group that is most susceptible?
What comorbidities contribute to death?
Show me the efficacy of masks.
Show me the efficacy of lockdowns
so that you could actually say
it's so important to have a lockdown,
that we can destroy
An entire economy.
We can destroy an education system.
We can destroy families, we can destroy people's lives.
if you are willing to do that based on those statistics,
What in the world is motivating you?
Why are you doing this?
[music]
-They would have no justification,
But we never got to that stage.
-24 hours after we proposed that,
They shut down everything.
-Almost immediately, we started negotiating
a settlement.
-So the political climate has changed
in Alberta.
-Jason Kenney says he is resigning
After three years as Alberta's premier.
-I think we've contributed to that.
-Dr. Deena Hinshaw is no longer Alberta's Chief Medical Officer
of Health.
-On July 1st, which is Canada Day,
all of the restrictions
Or at least most of them were lifted.
That meant that there were no restrictions
On gathering and we got our building back.
-No enforcement was happening
as we recognized that the government
Has now lost its drive to put pastors in jail.
-The most difficult thing
in navigating COVID-19 was not the arrest,
not the imprisonment.
It was losing brothers and sisters in Christ whom
I loved and I labored with for years.
There was no sleeplessness because
The police might come tomorrow to arrest me.
I know what I'm doing is an honor to the Lord and it's
In the Lord's hands.
There were nights
of sleeplessness because of the disunity
within the church,
among brothers and sisters who I love dearly,
who did not see it the same way, and who I realized
I could not persuade.
They just did not see it the same way that I saw it.
-A lot of people left Grace Church.
We didn't open fast enough.
We opened too quickly.
We didn't require masks and social distancing.
We're disobeying the government.
We're arrogant.
-That actually brought the greatest turmoil,
The greatest emotional pain, and difficulty.
-There were people that called me saying
They were leaving Grace Church.
I would ask them every time, "Have you been back
To Grace Church since we reopened?"
Typically they would say no.
I would beg them
to come.
I said, "Let me know you're coming.
You tell me if you want to be inside or out in the tent.
I will set up chairs
so that you are socially distanced,
but you cannot make this decision
without coming to Grace Church
At least one more time."
Most of the people that I laid that challenge down
To did not accept it and left Grace Church.
-However when restrictions finally went away here
or loosened up,
that's when we saw a whole number of folks join
our church.
-We had people starting to come back
With some resolve and conviction that, "No, we need to be here.
We want to stand with these guys."
-What the Lord provided was a whole bunch of new people.
-They were not necessarily our people.
They were people we were not familiar with.
-I was struggling
during COVID lockdowns,
ended up getting into alcohol
A lot.
-My dad was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer
And he only had six months to live.
-I've never ever dealt with anxiety and depression
Until the lockdowns happened.
-I came under quite intense,
I think spiritual attack.
I had been on psychotropic medicine.
-I came pretty close to the end of my life.
-We didn't have physical connection
And face-to-face connection with believers.
I felt disconnected
And so therefore it affected my mind.
-I needed to find God and find a meaning for what was going on,
what was happening.
-I couldn't stand being alone and unaccountable anymore.
-I think when he finally realized
he was going to die, he was open to somebody coming
To speak with him. - Opened up the church again.
VBS started, Bible study started to open up again.
I found myself at everything I could get my hands
On or travel to.
-I needed a place to go for some answers.
I went to a little white Baptist Church
in my small community down the highway
who stayed open.
-Grace Church staying open
And there was Faith Bible Church near our house.
They directed us there and they were able
to send somebody to our house to witness to my dad before
He passed away.
-About a year ago, my dad would look at me and say,
"Chris, you don't look happy."
Now, just yesterday I hear my parents saying,
"Chris, you look really happy."
Things have drastically changed.
-I noticed that there was a massive change in our family
because the head of the household recognized
It and it trickled down to everybody else.
-I don't think
he would've been able to hear the Word if it wasn't
For churches like Grace and Faith Bible staying open.
-Really, if it didn't happen that I found this place
And they stayed open, I don't know where I'd be today.
-Our attendance went from 120 to 350 or to 400 people.
It's still at that level today.
-It was an explosive growth time.
In fact,
it's incomparable to any other period of time
in the half a century I've been at Grace Church in terms
of church growth and it's still reaping
that harvest of 30 to 100 new members
Every single month and it's been that way for two years now.
[music]
-Christ is the head of the church.
This is an absolute issue.
He's not 30% of the head of the church and we can let
The government do 20%.
He is the head of the church.
-A statement that was released from the legal team
at the Thomas More Society
"We're very pleased to see Pastor MacArthur
and Grace Community Church's First Amendment protections
Fully vindicated in this case."
-They were trying to have an injunction against the church
that we couldn't worship.
What we ended up with is an injunction
against them saying, "Sorry, you can't ever tell us ever
Again to close our doors."
-We basically operate as a church according
to the revelation of God, the Bible
and there's no room to share that headship
With any government agency.
-According to a legal summary that was presented
at yesterday's LA County supervisory meeting,
they spent so far, $950,000,
Nearly $1 million McKayla on legal fees.
-They have had to pay out a total of something
like $3.5 million across just the lawsuits
that Chuck LiMandri and the Thomas More Society
and I have handled.
-The government paid our legal fees.
That is an admission of guilt.
-When they asked us to do things
that violated biblical standards for the life of the church,
The answer was always going to be no.
-It would've been nice
For Grace to win their case at the US Supreme Court.
That's not what this case was about.
This case was about stopping the government
From steamrolling people.
This is the only case that did that.
This is the only case that was able to stop
The government.
In that respect, it was the most important case.
-We won a battle.
The opposition to the gospel
that created this crisis hasn't diminished
Just because we won this battle.
We'll face other battles in the future.
We need to be ready for it.
-We need to have a healthy detachment
from the things of this world if we're going to be faithful
In the days ahead. - God has strengthened us.
He has tried us.
He has tested us for the next battle.
-As the government gets more corrupt,
its totalitarian control has to increase,
and as they shut down any attacks against them,
The last thing standing is going to be the church.
[music].