Macarthur vs California

Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie? Or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke,

Pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

And when they brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying,

We strictly charge you not to teach in this name. Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.

But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than men. What's up, guys?

Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. You guys can get more at ApologiaStudios .com.

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this Friday. Right on, man. Thanks for all the work you're doing, bro. So, hey, we're going to get into the show right away today.

We want to try to do as much as we can as quickly and as concise as possible. So a lot's been happening, and there's been a lot of questions.

So we're going to talk about Todd White today. Many of you guys had the opportunity, perhaps, to see his message from two weeks ago.

He talked about repenting. He talked about being convicted over not preaching the whole gospel. He talked a lot about sin and the call to repent from sin and trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.

It was a very tear -filled message that he gave, and it started a firestorm online of people discussing whether or not their repentance was real, whether it was true, people saying this is really a good, it's a hopeful thing, we should all be invested in praying for him and hope for the best sort of a thing.

So obviously that's a big deal right now. We're going to address that with a few thoughts today, but also I'm going to talk about John MacArthur, Pastor John MacArthur, versus the state of California, Pastor John MacArthur.

Many of you guys have heard me say that when I was coming out of my drug and alcohol addiction,

I had a profession of faith in Jesus, and when I came out of my drug and alcohol addiction, I don't even know how

I got the book, but it was The Gospel According to Jesus by Dr. MacArthur. I do constantly want to thank

God for that work because it brought me back to the scriptures and what the Lord Jesus taught about coming to him in faith, what that meant, coming to him as Lord, trusting in him as Savior.

So it was Dr. MacArthur's book that really helped me to get to some of those passages that I was just overlooking, ignoring, and not really meditating upon.

So I praise God for that. Dr. MacArthur and Grace Community Church in California, they actually did close down when

COVID -19 was really hitting us when there were, of course, the state of emergency calls from the national government and also the state governments.

Dr. MacArthur and the other elders at Grace Church actually closed down because, according to Pastor MacArthur, they wanted to really show concern for the people that they had care over.

They were being told that there was going to be millions of people dying. This was in the early stages of people not really knowing a lot about COVID -19, coronavirus, and so it was a precautionary measure from his perspective, but he opened back up for public worship.

And, of course, you have the state of California saying things as asinine, as, you know, no, just, okay, we all know what they're saying in terms of, like, the size of the gathering, what's possible.

The inconsistencies abound in terms of being able to go out to Walmart, to Target, to any of the grocery stores with a mass of people, and you have, of course, abortion mills have still been in operation during the

COVID shutdown in California. There's many, many inconsistencies. Pastor MacArthur saw that, and so they responded and rejected the call not to sing.

They rejected the call not to gather for worship. He calls the worship of the church and the gathering of the church essential.

So I don't know if you want to add anything to that before we go into any more. No, that pretty much covers it.

Just very encouraging. Like you said, I think MacArthur's had an impact on evangelicalism as a whole.

I mean, compared to him, I don't know if anybody else has had that impact. I remember when I was in elementary school, getting ready for school, my mom blasting

MacArthur through the hallways. This is like mid-'90s, early-'90s. Is this also when you were like in between you were listening to Carmen?

It was probably around that time, DC Talk. Yeah, that's right. But no, MacArthur's had an impact on my life.

I love the guy, and I'm praying for him and just encouraged by the stand he's taking.

Okay, good. All right, so everyone, welcome to the show. See all you guys in the chat live. Thank you guys for joining us.

We're going to go right in here to playing. I thought the best thing to do, I mean, obviously, MacArthur, if you didn't listen to his message he delivered on the day that they have formally and officially opened back up for the gathering of the saints, for the worship of the

Savior, if you didn't listen to that sermon, go on to Grace. Is it Grace to You? That's the ministry.

Yeah, I think that's their channel though, right? Yeah, that's the parachurch. So go to Grace Church, John MacArthur.

Watch that whole sermon. It was really, really well done, very encouraging, and hopefully emboldening to pastors, elders, and believers across the country.

Go watch it. I thought a better thing to do was actually to play the concise thoughts from Pastor John while he was on Fox News, and so I pulled up the clip here, and let's go ahead and play that right now.

Is defying Governor Gavin Newsom's new coronavirus restrictions, hosting indoor in -person services at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles County.

Pastor says he's apparently been warned he could face fines or even arrest if he carries on, and yet he does.

Pastor John MacArthur joins us live to talk about that. Pastor, good to have you with us. Thank you,

Shannon. My pleasure. Okay, let me start with this headline, a piece written by a doctor. He says churches could be the deadliest places in the

COVID -19 pandemic. He says the combination of singing in close quarters and decreased ventilation is nothing short of a

Petri dish or cell plate for viral growth. So just addressing that, this is really, really important, and it's one of the things that Pastor John has pointed out publicly in these news shows and radio interviews, and of course, during his message, this issue related to the spread of COVID -19 is very important.

Now Pastor John argues that early on they took precautions and they closed down the gathering of the saints on the

Lord's Day because they were being told that this was going to kill millions of people, there wasn't a lot known about the virus, and so they were trying to take precautionary measures to love their people.

That's what they did. Now, of course, as the data has come in on COVID -19, things have to be seen in a different light.

This is so vitally important, and if you guys are in a place where you're undecided on this and you're just not really sure and there's still fear surrounding the virus, people with compromised immune systems and the elderly, all that is known now, but the information now is here and it's consistent.

The data shows us that COVID -19 is on par with, on par with, it's not the flu.

I've heard people even saying it's just a mild flu. Well, I would say that depends on who gets this thing, so that's really not accurate. It's not a hoax, it's a real thing.

It does hurt people, it definitely kills people, but we know now details about this virus, knowing who it discriminates against, and we know that it is on par with other sicknesses, other viruses, other illnesses that we have to actually contend with on an annual basis.

Now, this is, I think, a linchpin sort of a thing, and this is where I hope we can all consider this in terms of consistency.

When you think about COVID -19 and all that we know about this virus now, when I say it's on par with other viruses and things we deal with on an annual basis,

I think consistency matters here, because we live in a fallen world. We live in a fallen world, and we are constantly facing diseases, things that can kill us.

All of us are going to probably go out today and drive in our cars, and there's a danger of getting into a car accident, either being killed ourselves or killing somebody else in the process.

This is a fallen world. We don't live in the eternal state, and so we're going to be dealing with things like this on an annual basis, and so we have to use wisdom when we're facing down things like this on a regular basis and ask the deep questions, like, is this the

Spanish flu? Is this like that? Is this the black plague when we're talking about losing more than 50 % of the human population?

Is this something that affects everybody indiscriminately? It takes down children, teenagers, young adults, elderly.

Whoever gets it, it's going to affect you the same. Is it like that? And the answer is no. Like Pastor John's going to point out here in a moment, you have over a 99 % survival rate with this virus.

We know that now. That's a fact, over a 99 % survival rate.

It's not diminishing the seriousness of the virus itself and what it can do to impact people.

It's to say consistency matters. If you give the government the right to tyranny over the people to destroy families, livelihoods, businesses, which it has done and is doing,

I am actually, I'm not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I can see which way the wind is blowing.

And I know that when you have businesses closing down, people losing jobs, at a certain point, money runs out.

Free money will run out. And at a certain point, we're going to have to face the reality that all these businesses are closed, all these people are out of work, and we're going to have to face the economic ramifications and consequences.

And so we have to ask the question, if it's on par with things we deal with on an annual basis, then why are we shutting down the world?

And why are we destroying businesses and families and livelihoods? And why are we closing down the most essential thing, which is the worship of God?

And people say, no, you can just be the church. This is where I want you to add into this. People will just say, this is the argument, and we'll extend this and get into John's discussion here.

They will say, no, we're the church. And the answer is, okay, yes, but we need to get down and dig down a little further there.

What does the word church mean? Well, it comes from a word, ekklesia, and that word is essentially, it's the gathering of the called out ones.

Congregation. Right. The word itself, ekklesia, that word within it is the context, is the definition of gathering.

So yes, we're the church, but if there is no gathering, if there is no assembling, that's not what the church is.

Now, are there instances where we're going to have to work out in a fallen world, how are we going to actually gather and do the worship of God in the midst of the black plague, where we're losing half of the human population?

Yeah. Wisdom would dictate that we figure things out. But in a situation where you're dealing with a virus that's on par with the other viruses we deal with and contend with annually, you've got to ask the question, is this wise?

Right. Is it wise to destroy the world for something that 99, more than 99 % survival rate number?

Is it wise to destroy all of the economy because of something that's over a 99 % survival rate?

My answer is no. And Pastor John addresses that. He says, no, this isn't what they said. We're not talking about what they said.

And now they're making a decision as elders over the people of God saying this is the most essential thing. You're not going to tell us that we can't worship and sing to Jesus over something with a 99 % survival rate.

You can't do that to us. We're going to obey God rather than men. I stand with Pastor John MacArthur here.

He's a hero. Now, I'm going to say this and I'm going to move it over to you. This is so important. Pastor John is a hero of the time right now.

He absolutely is. And we need to praise God for him. We need to support him. We need to send money if necessary if this thing gets difficult for them.

We need to do what we can to support the hero of our time. But it's very important for us to acknowledge all of the small congregations that no one ever even heard about.

Pastors who faithfully gathered anyway. They examined the data.

They thought through the consequences and they thought through biblical principles of wisdom. And they said we're not going to stop worship.

We're not going to stop baptisms. We're not going to stop singing. We're not going to stop the Lord's table. We're going to continue to gather and come what may.

And there are brothers who faithfully led their churches through this pandemic and they never shut down.

And guess what? No one's ever using their names. No one's going to talk about them. And I want to say to those men, praise

God for you and praise God for your faithfulness. Jesus knows. And we need to praise God for all these faithful men.

And right now, especially Pastor John who's all over the news and right in the midst of this. And they're talking about things like shutting off water and shutting off power and throwing them in jail.

And they're talking about fines of up to $1 ,000 a day. All kinds of things. And Pastor John is saying essentially go pound sand.

We're not stopping. Yeah, no, I completely agree.

I think there's a command clear in Scripture that the church is to gather. That we're not to neglect, of course, coming together.

I think for every pastor, of course, he has to make... There's an element of judgment, as you said, when it comes to specific circumstances.

But in this situation, I think a church needs to be faithful just based on, of course, what we know this to be.

Right. The only thing that's kind of been a little discouraging for me to see when it comes to more prominent, let's say, pastors.

Because like I said, there's been faithful men throughout this whole ordeal. Smaller churches, maybe they don't have much of a name compared to MacArthur.

So he's the one that's kind of out in the front, which is great. But there's a lot of pastors too that could also take a stand.

That could be a huge example. Right. But I'm seeing inconsistencies when it comes to their willingness to break up the church in a time like this.

And the arguments they're using to have either like a multi -site or home gatherings or a video feed, the arguments they're using are the arguments that they were condemning prior to COVID.

I don't know if that makes sense, but that's to me.

If you think that there is an issue as a pastor, and you think that your congregation is not going to be safe, then yeah, you make the judgment call as a pastor to protect your congregation.

But when you're using argumentation that is inconsistent with argumentation you used before, then

I think there's something there that is prompting you more so to make the decision rather than just the safety.

Right. It could be, of course, the public ridicule, whatever it could be. Right. We got that.

We never stopped worship. We never closed down. We never halted the gathering of the saints.

We even had to move out of one of our locations that we're renting from now to go to one of the only other churches in the valley that was still gathering for worship.

And we met there. It's a 45 -minute drive away. It took a long time. Our church still showed up.

It was difficult for us. We never stopped the normal experience and command of worship at Apologia Church.

And that was, of course, difficult. God has blessed it. He's blessed it big time. We've actually grown as a church through coronavirus.

Believe it or not, we really have grown as a church. People are coming to Apologia Church. As a result of coronavirus and sort of the stand that we took, which was surprising to us.

It was surprising to us. But I want to say that early on, we were ridiculed. People told us that we hated our neighbors, that we were going to kill people, that we're guilty of murder.

That was the charge made against us. We're guilty of murder. We're hating our neighbor. We're showing that we have a shameful testimony to the world.

So we were ridiculed for it from the very, very beginning. And we just continued to speak in service and on this show about the biblical principles that we were meditating upon as pastors in terms of how we approached the situation.

We weren't approaching it saying, I was born a free man. I'm going to die a free man.

And I'm going to resist everything. We were saying, here are the biblical principles. This is what God commands. And here's how we need to wade through this in terms of what we know about the virus.

And all we said at the time was, even knowing then what we know now, nothing's changed, is that it would be inconsistent of us because what it would mean to us as pastors is we'd be shutting down worship by a decree of the government for something that we're going to face annually.

And what we said was, this is just one of the arguments we had against it, is we aren't closing down the worship of the living

God for something that we face on a regular basis. I am not giving them this as a principle or pattern saying, you can tell me as a pastor to shut down the worship of God just whenever you please, just because you view something a certain way.

I have the ability to use my God -given mind and the wisdom of Scripture to analyze the claims of the government in light of Scripture and say, that's faulty reasoning, that's not wise, and my answer is no.

So from the very beginning, we were telling the government to go pound sand. And we had a message delivered to the governor of the state of Arizona pleading with him to do his duty before God to reopen the state of Arizona.

And that blessed some people. A lot of people hated that we did it. But let's get right back to it, guys.

Here is some more from Pastor John. Chris, do you have or not have regarding the reality of this particular virus, which seems to be very contagious?

Well, there are two ways to answer that. As far as our church goes, we have no one in our church, and we're a church of 6 ,000, 7 ,000 people that we know of who has had any effect if they've had

COVID. We don't even know of only a handful of people who had COVID, and they were without symptoms.

So we've had no issues there. In the state of California, the statistics are about 8 ,500 to 9 ,000 people have died out of 40 million.

That means in California, you have a 99 .98 chance of getting through this without any final illness.

Let's talk about that again. I think that's one of the most potent points he makes, and it can't be refuted. 99 .98

% chance, based upon the numbers in California, of survival. You're going to close down the economy for that?

It's a fallen world. Of course, every death matters. Of course, every death is tragic.

It hurts. Yes, I understand that. It's a fallen world, though. You don't destroy the entirety of your neighbors and their livelihoods as a result of something like this.

And Pastor John, I think, is right on. I think what's important here, too, is at Apologia Church, I think this is noteworthy.

At Apologia Church, from the very beginning, we said, let's obey God's law and self -govern here, under God's rule, and say, let's obey

Scripture. When Scripture tells the sick to quarantine themselves, let's hold that up as the principle.

And so when people at Apologia Church, we had nurses. We have nurses that work with COVID patients. We have nurses who work in emergency rooms and intensive care.

We have a nurse at our church that was the intensive care nurse for COVID patients.

We were, of course, constantly corresponding with her. Initially, we put her and others on quarantine.

When we brought them back, we had them all get tested. You know, we said, you should take a test and come back with a negative test, all that stuff.

We were saying, let's do this with biblical wisdom and sanity and solid reasoning, and let's do what

God says and let's quarantine the sick. And we told people from the beginning, if you feel sick, if you've had sickness, if you've had symptoms over the last couple of days, you should not be at the gathering.

We told people it'd be a great act of love right now if you're not feeling well or if you haven't felt well this week to go ahead and depart the service right now.

We'll see it as loving to us and don't be here. So we were self -governing throughout this entire process.

And we did have people at Apologia Church that came down with COVID. Of course, all of us were out and about every day.

We have to go grocery shopping. We have to go here. We have to go there. And what we did when people came down with COVID and they contacted us and said, hey,

I have COVID. I've tested. I'm positive for COVID. We put them on quarantine. We said, well, obviously don't come to church.

We're prayerful for you. What can we do to serve you? Can we help you with anything? But we kept them away. We kept the sick away from the healthy.

And we said to people, if you're starting to show any kind of symptoms, don't come to church. Love your neighbor by not coming to church. But what we didn't do is do a preemptive quarantine of all of the people of God saying no gathering for you.

Well, I'm perfectly healthy. I'm fine. I've been washing my hands. I've been caring for myself. I've been staying away from sick people.

And we don't say, okay, well, we're going to go ahead and penalize you as though you were sick. And we're going to not allow you to gather for worship.

The answer was no. I see the preemptive quarantine in terms of principles that make it wrong the same as sort of preemptive justice, right?

Like I mentioned in I think the message that I gave the movie Minority Report, or Tom Cruise.

Well, what makes that movie so interesting is that people are arrested and tried and sentenced based upon what they might do.

And now what's the problem with that in principle is you can't assume somebody's guilt when they haven't done anything wrong.

And you can't assume things and start penalizing a person based upon what may be the case in the future.

And so when we talk about the issue of what's wrong with the Minority Report and preemptive justice, the principle applies over here in the area of shutting down all of society and destroying families and livelihoods and taking healthy people and saying, to hell with you.

And what I mean by that is treating somebody like you don't care about them. You're damning them. You're saying, to hell with you.

In other words, I don't care what happens to your life. I don't care what happens to your wife or your kids or your financial situation.

I'm going to hate you. I'm going to treat you as though I hate you by treating you as though you were sick and everybody has to quarantine.

I think that's a dangerous game to play. Yeah, I think too. I mean, we could go on as far as this conversation.

And there's so much too that I would love to learn when it comes to biblical law and the role of the government to play kind of that safety monitor.

Yeah. And I think there's an issue there as far as the government trying to... To me,

I see an overstep of boundaries Sure. when it comes to trying to keep us safe.

Yes, there's... And you mentioned it before, where you have the parapet on top of the roof.

Right. Or railing around your rooftop so that you can preserve life. And to my knowledge, you don't have so much of a forced, in a sense, you must do this, but if anything happens and your neighbor falls off your roof, you're responsible.

You're responsible. Right. And so that's much different than, of course, the government playing that safety monitor.

Right. Yeah. So the principle there with the parapet around the roof of the house is the preservation of life. God says, put a railing around the roof of your house so you preserve people from falling off.

You would apply that with the general equity today to things like pools should have fences around them so it prevents kids from drowning.

Deep wells on property should have fences so someone doesn't fall and hurt themselves. Is that correct, though, that let's say, you know,

I'm in Israel. I'm walking around. I see somebody. They don't have the parapet on top of their roof.

They wouldn't have got fined. They wouldn't have got fined. They wouldn't have got punished. Right. It's if somebody had injured themselves, the law was you preserve human life.

You didn't do it. Right. Therefore, you're guilty. And you can also bring in questions about the axe heads that are loose.

You know, if you go out and you're swinging an axe head that you know was loose and that flies off and it hits somebody, there's guilt there because you avoided the preservation of life.

It leaves room for, like you said, that self -government. Yes. Right? Completely. It leaves room for self -government and even, you know, when they talk to MacArthur about opening his church, it seems as though the assumption is that because you're opening up your church, you're telling the people in your congregation that they must come.

Of course, there's going to be a call to worship, but there still is elements of self -government when it comes to even the congregation, too.

Yeah. We had people who were elderly at first, thought it'd be wise maybe just to kind of, you know, not come for a few weeks to kind of see where this thing plays out.

That's right. We encourage that. Exactly. We encourage that. Because there's that element of self -government and I think that's important.

I think these pastors, because of the role that you guys play, there's a higher standard that you're held up to.

Right. And so I think, for a pastor, I think there are more risks you're going to have to take than a typical congregant.

Yes. And so, I agree. I think that pastors in this time, based on wisdom and looking at the numbers,

I say, open up your churches, call people to worship, but of course, leaving that room for the self -government amongst the congregation.

Exactly. By the way, guys, as you're watching this, everyone in the livestream right now, apologize for the audio.

This is the best video I could find of this, but the audio does sound a little janky there. It's not on our end, it's the video itself.

So here's more. The draconian things that have been going on to stifle this culture, to stifle it educationally, to stifle the businesses, to lock down people, and then to shut down churches is just not warranted by the reality of the virus.

So we feel like we are the most essential reality in the world.

Look, Jesus is Lord. That is the Christian confession. It's always been our confession since He rose from the dead.

Jesus is Lord. He's Lord of the universe, and He's Lord and Head of His beloved church, which

He redeemed with His own blood. He is the Head of our church. Governor Newsom is not the

Head of the church. Mayor Garcetti is not the Head of the church. We respect them for their temporal officer leadership in our government, that when they move into the life of the church and tell the church what it can do, they're usurping a role that they don't have.

The Constitution doesn't give them the power to do that, and they don't certainly have the spiritual power to do that, to usurp the place that only

Jesus Christ has over His church. Okay, let me read you something quickly from another pastor there in California.

He says, First of all, I want to stand with Pastor MacArthur in affirming the vital importance of corporate worship, but he says it comes down to four things.

The importance of worship, love for neighbor, obedience to government, and maintaining a good witness. He says,

What concerns me about defying the state order right now is that it seems to prioritize number one, the importance of worship, is at the expense of two through four, loving your neighbor, being a witness, and obedience to the government.

What do you think about those concerns? Stop it. Yeah, yeah. This is terrible. Go for it. Yeah, all right. I'll respond after you.

Okay, go ahead. You want to go or me? You go. Okay, so I want to say this is something that has been brought up on the regular.

It's a very, very poor argument when you talk about the need to stay home, shut down businesses.

I mean, literally, closed businesses all over Arizona. Businesses closed down. We have a church in the island of Kauai. Businesses closed down everywhere.

Families left destitute because of this situation. I want to know, what about those neighbors?

I mean, just make it as simple as possible. I'll just speak briefly on it. What about those neighbors? We talk about loving neighbors.

When we're talking about a virus, in California, over 99 % survival rate.

Over 99%. And you talk about loving neighbors. What you're doing is you're saying, we should draw a circle around a small number of neighbors.

Draw a circle around them. And let's do what we can to ultimately love them. And we say to the mass, the 99 % more over here who will survive this or everybody else who's involved, we say to them, my love for you right now is on hold.

My concern for your well -being, my concern for your kids, my concern for your employees, my concern for your financial future, my concern for your home, my concern for your cars, my concern for your ability to feed yourself, that's on hold right now because I'm going to draw a circle around this small category of neighbors over here who are sick or potentially sick.

So what you're saying when you say love your neighbors, shut down worship to love your neighbors in the context of COVID is that only these neighbors count right now.

Everybody else is not of a concern right now. Everything that's necessary for their well -being right now,

I'm going to put that on hold and show no concern for it. That's really the truth of it. So when someone says to me, you need to love your neighbor,

I want to say, can I just change that to this? I want to draw a circle over everybody, including the sick and potentially sick and everybody else.

And I want to say, love your neighbors, plural, that you have to address COVID with a holistic, comprehensive perspective that considers what's best for every one of our neighbors, not just a small category of neighbors.

So this pithy, very, very poor argumentation about you need to love your neighbors, I think it's not worth dignifying in terms of feeling shame or guilt because we're opening for worship.

The next thing I would say is just in terms of obedience to government and maintaining a good witness,

I also think that's a very poor argument, a very poor argument because don't forget those Bible verses that you're quoting from, say, the

Apostle Paul or from the Apostle Peter in terms of the role of the government, the prescriptive role of the government in, say,

Romans 13, or whether it's Peter telling us to obey our governing authorities where he says, I want to remind us all that the men, the inspired men who wrote both those passages about obedience and submission to government had a context.

And don't forget, Peter, when he talks about obeying the government and submitting to the authorities, he's the one in Acts who actually says, no,

I will not obey your command. I will continue to preach Christ. So the man who says obey the government is also disobeying the government.

Why? When the government usurps the authority of God and the principles of God, they are to be resisted each and every time out of love for God and love for neighbor.

We have to have that perspective that actually contextualizes the word of God. It isn't just proof text, which is so very dangerous.

It is so dangerous. And don't forget, finally, and I'll pass it to Isaac here, that the two guys, the inspired men, the apostles, who wrote that about government and its prescriptive role in obeying the government, don't forget, they were killed by the government for resisting the government.

Yeah. Okay? Yeah. No, I think there's so many assumptions in those statements as far as loving neighbor and then being a witness to the world.

Because I would say that our view of the church, the significance of the worship of Christ, as far as when we come together as a local body, to partake of the

Lord's table, to sing praise, all these elements that are involved in our church service, to me, this shows what he thinks of that in the sense of loving neighbor is opening up the church doors to let them come and worship.

That's high on our list. That's loving our neighbor. That's loving our neighbor. And then, of course, as far as a witness to the world, we're saying, in the midst of tragedy, even with risk involved, we're willing to worship

Christ because He's our Lord and there's nobody who sits higher than Him when it comes to the throne of our heart.

So a lot of assumptions in those four. And I would say, too, as far as three,

I would think that that would kind of fall to the bottom of the list. Yeah. But then also, too, the state is under the lordship of Christ.

So the church can speak prophetically to the state when the state is overstepping its bounds.

Say that again because I don't think people caught that because you need to make sure, I think we need to make sure that people understand what you just said.

The state, the authority of Christ is over the state. And we've mentioned this plenty of times, but when we talk about the separation of church and state, we're not talking about the separation of state and God.

Right. So God is over that institution of the state.

Right. And He has given commands also to the state. So the church can speak prophetically to the state because we have the same standard.

The word of God that's been revealed to all people, even to the state, we have that same standard.

And it's the church's job to teach that standard, to teach the word of God. So the state can receive information from the church when it comes to how

God is to be worshipped and the interpretation of scripture. So the church speaks to the state prophetically and informs the state whether they're doing their job or not.

That's right. So when we talk about obeying the government, is the government fulfilling its role as a deacon of God?

And when the state looks at it and says you're overstepping your bounds, we speak prophetically. But then we say, of course, we'd rather worship

God than man. That's right. So I can just tell he doesn't have, the pastor who said these things doesn't have that view.

Right. That's what's coming across. I think you're right about that. And I think we need to look at the charge of this is a bad witness for the church.

Right. I actually, I think I can make a pretty compelling argument the other direction.

Oh, yeah. In terms of worship and the value of worship and the position and authority of God. I think the churches that are minimizing the need for the gathering of the saints to worship the only true and living

God, I think that their witness is being destroyed as a result of this. Right. When you have a guy like Andy Stanley who

I debated on Unbelievable Radio program, I hope you guys go and check that out later. When Andy Stanley says, we're not going to open until 2021,

I think that's a terrible witness for the church in terms of, we're just dismissive of the gathering of the saints for worship.

Also, I think you need to consider when you say things like, hey, resisting the government here and gathering for worship is bad for your

Christian witness. I say, well, can we just read the book of Acts just sort of like as a baseline for this?

We'll read the book of Acts and we'll look at the apostles' engagement in the public square with the gospel, being thrown into prison, all that stuff and people wanting to kill them, taking oaths not to eat anything until Paul's dead.

When we look at all that, I guess modern evangelicals could say, you know,

I think the apostles and those early disciples in the book of Acts, I think they could have worked on a better witness to their communities because they're starting riots, people want them dead, they're resisting the government, they're taking beatings for not obeying the government.

You know, it's a really bad witness. I want to say, well, then I thank God for that really quote bad witness because that bad witness gave you the gospel.

Right. And gospel goodness. So I heard a pastor once say this and I've kind of taken it and just used it, but the world, they love gospel goodness, but they hate the gospel.

And what they don't understand is that what we see present in our day, anything that is a reflection of goodness, prosperity, success, health, whatever may be our freedoms, that is residue of the gospel.

The gospel comes in and it produces gospel goodness and the world loves gospel goodness, they just hate the gospel.

And so when it comes to this, as far as our witness or what you see in Acts is that ultimately they're standing firm on the gospel because they know it's only the gospel that brings that goodness that allows us to flourish as humanity.

I just realized something. Did you bring that mug in here because you want to rep the

Cowboys? I do. So I'm a Cowboys fan. Yeah, he is. We might lose some listeners at this point.

Well, everybody knows, I think, I don't know anything about sports and football and foosball and soccer and all that stuff.

This is American football. But that's the best team? This is the best team. That's the best team.

I mean, we haven't won a championship in over 20 years. Right, but it's still the best team.

It's still the best team. Even though they don't ever win. I'm also a Dodgers fan too. I don't know if you caught the game last night. You probably didn't. I don't watch.

Okay, great game. Yeah, I watch people hitting each other. I'll show you some highlights later. Oh, great. You know who also is a big

Cowboys fan? Who? Pastor Luke. He's a huge Cowboys fan. Yeah. I thought so. And I was going to say too, if you guys want to bless

Pastor Luke, they can find our P .O. Box, right, on the website? It's P .O.

Box 1545, Chandler, Arizona 85244. Send Pastor Luke some

Dallas Cowboy memorabilia, items. That's his favorite. He'll love it. He loves it. Okay, good.

All right, do that, everyone. All right, let's go quickly. Moving on to the next subject because we want to get some stuff on Book of Revelation.

I'd love for Isaac to talk a little bit about overarching themes and scripture in the Book of Revelation. We have plenty of time, right? I think we got time, but I want to make sure that we do this quickly.

So I do want to address the Todd White situation. I think I've mentioned this on the show before.

I actually met Todd White in Kauai while we were there for, we were like in between, like we did mission stuff.

We did some teaching across the islands and stuff of Mormonism. I remember I came back to Kauai. I think I was on a mandatory sabbatical for like a week there.

And while we were there, I was with my family on this, not like a, it's not like a, well,

I guess it's a popular beach for people on Kapa 'a. But it's not like one of the best beaches in Kauai.

But I'm on that beach and for some reason, there was like nobody out there that day. But I'm out with my family. I'm out a little bit in the water and I see somebody on the beach.

I'm telling you, he looks just like Todd White. And these, he's a unique looking guy. There's not many guys in the world that look like, you know.

I wouldn't have recognized him, but. Beefy dreadlocks. He's beefy and he's got dreadlocks. I will say this too.

He has the same style of jeans that you do. Does he really? What?

I just noticed in the video I saw, he was wearing the same jeans that you wear. Oh really? Yeah. Well, like, I don't know what that means.

What kind of jeans do I wear? I don't know what jeans you wear. I don't know. They look the same. They're not skinny jeans. They're not skinny jeans, no. But yeah,

I don't know. Just, I don't know. I mean, if you watch the video, you'll see.

So we wear the same pants. You'll be like, I like those pants. Okay. Okay. So I was on the beach and I see the guy that looks just like Todd White and he's with his family and I'm in the water and this little girl was like swimming around me a bunch and with my son,

I think, and Candy, I think, was out there. And so she starts striking up a conversation with me and she was super sweet and she just straight up asked me, like, do you believe in Jesus or do you know who

Jesus is? And I was like, yeah, actually, I do and I'm a pastor and so I'm talking to her and she's like, oh, that's really cool.

I just want to make sure you knew who Jesus was. And I was like, wow, this is pretty awesome. So then I look out there and I'm like,

I know that's Todd White. So I said, is that your dad? And she goes, yeah, that's my dad. I said, is that Todd White?

And she goes, you know my dad? That is Todd White. My dad is Todd White. I was like, I thought so.

She's like, how do you know my dad? I was like, I just know. And so I go out and on our way out,

I ended up talking on the beach with Todd White for, I don't know, half an hour or so and super sweet guy, really nice.

We talked for like half an hour. Even took a picture with him, but I wouldn't share it on social media because I knew people would just try to do nasty things with that.

It was just a matter of meeting the guy. We had a conversation and I had to go and he had to go. So he's a really nice guy.

However, I know that there's a lot that is troubling about his praxis, about his theology, about the things that he engages in.

I think there's a lot of stuff that he's done I've seen on video that's straight charlatan in terms of, I'm not trying to judge the man's heart, but when you talk about the whole illusion of extending legs and all that stuff, you have to know how to manipulate that so it looks like you've extended somebody's leg.

Okay, that's a trick. It's a trick that you learn and charlatans do it. And so Todd White, I've seen engaged in that sort of a thing before.

And so I don't know the man's heart, but I'm telling you right now, you can go learn to do that. It's a trick. It's been a trick for a long, long time.

People learn how to do it and they do it and it's something charlatans do. And so there's a lot troubling about Todd White.

However, Todd White preached a message or gave a lecture, whatever. A sermon.

A sermon. Two weeks ago, two Sundays ago. And of course, it was all the rage and everybody's gone, you know, essentially two different directions with it.

One is, well, praise God, this is good news. You know, let's be hopeful. And then of course, there were others like they were just full on like he repented.

It's all good now. And then there was, of course, the other side saying, no, he didn't and I'm not confident of this.

So I'm going to play you just a part of, I guess, the encouraging aspect of this message.

He talked about like, have you guys ever read Spurgeon and Whitfield? And it's like every reformed person goes, what's that?

Good. That's wonderful. Whitfield and Spurgeon. Those are some of our heroes. And if you haven't read them, you should read them.

And I was. Spurgeon, he's solid. Yeah. I was like, oh, I know your people. So like, reformed people sort of had that code.

Like early Christians were like drawing the, they were drawing the fish in the sand to like identify, I'm a Christian.

Look what I'm drawing in the sand. Reformed folks have our own. We're like, what's on your shelf right there? We go like Spurgeon, Whitfield, Edwards.

We go, okay, right on. Like we're good. Their children named Calvin. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, kids named Spurgeon.

Oh, that's good. Right on. All right, good. I know how you be. I got, I got a daughter named the five points.

Tulip. Tulip. So anyway, so it was encouraging stuff at the beginning that every, every person reformed was like, oh, that's encouraging.

I know why he's talking like this now. But here's a section that I think, one of the sections that got everyone excited. All people are, it says by the law.

It says in, in, in the, in the Psalms, in Proverbs, it says the law converts the soul.

The soul is converted from the law. That doesn't mean that we preach it as legalists. That just means that if people don't know that they're sinners, they won't see their need for a savior.

This is hard for people, huh? It's hard for me. It's hard for me.

Because I feel like I haven't preached the whole gospel. And I repent.

I repent. You have no idea. I will not be responsible.

I believe that when I preach that the blood of people is on my hands. I believe that when I walk by a person and don't share a witness,

I believe that their soul is at my, at my, in my, in my power. Not my power,

I can't save them. But it's my power with my words that I can say something that can. I'm convicted.

I'm convicted. It says to he who knows to do good and doesn't, it is. So what's your definition of doing good?

I'm allowing my definition of doing good to extend the fact of me reaching more people with the truth.

I need to. And it's so important for me. All right. So let me just play a little bit.

Okay, there you go, right there. Okay. Is that the extent of what you're playing? Well, yeah, just for today, I just wanted to sort of address that now.

Notwithstanding those shoes, I've had such a hard time paying any,

I have such a hard, I keep getting distracted. Okay, those jeans you wouldn't wear. No, those jeans, but okay. By the way, guys, forgive me.

I'm not trying to diss the man. I'm saying I keep getting distracted by the shoes. If you guys, if you wear these shoes, guys, don't.

The shoes where they're like, it's the toes. It's like a shoe with the toes. Oh, yeah.

He's got those on right there. I keep getting distracted. I'm like, this is, I'm glad to hear what I'm hearing, but I'm like, those shoes though.

I have to admit, I've wanted to try them Of course you would. Of course you would. No, I wouldn't wear them.

Would you wear them if they had Dallas Cowboy symbols on them? On each toe? You totally would. On each toe.

All right. So I want to say that's encouraging. Pastor James on the dividing line said, look, you know,

I think he said like, we don't know what's going on with this guy, but let's be hopeful. And he said, when's the last time you cried about the gospel?

So that's encouraging. And I want to just address this. You know, I know that he gave another message.

We don't have time to play through that now. Another message this past Sunday. I listened to that one. It was very troubling in some aspects.

And a lot of people said, see, see, I told you, you didn't repent. Can I just say something? I want to just say in terms of like balance as Christians, you know, look, we have a show called

Cultish. You know that we stand outside of Mormon temples. You know that we go on the street with Jehovah's Witnesses.

We're not afraid to go into hard contexts and say, that's a false gospel. That'll send you to hell. That's an abomination.

We'll confront things like that all the time. But there's balance in the Christian life. And I'll do it by way of two examples.

One is Kanye and one is Todd White. Okay? Here's the deal. I don't know the state of these men's souls. I don't know their hearts.

And so, when we heard about Kanye, we had the pastor on who was actually speaking to Kanye to say, like, what have you been saying to him?

What's it been like? You know, this whole situation. What have you been saying? How have you been preaching to him? And the situation with Todd White, hearing what he says here,

I think balance in the Christian life and consistency is to say, well, praise God for that.

I'm gonna be praying for that person. I'm gonna be hopeful. But the answer is, time will tell.

Time's gonna tell whether this repentance is genuine, whether he really means what he's saying. Is it manipulative?

Like, we have an example in the past where Benny Hinn goes on TBN or wherever he was and he starts saying things that seem really, you know, solid and, you know, and everyone's like, oh, this is good news.

Is Benny Hinn repenting? And the answer is, well, I hope so, but I don't really know.

Ultimately, I don't know the man's heart or soul, but I think we should at least as Christians say with a balanced perspective, you know,

I'm doubtful, but man, I'm hoping, I'm hopeful and I'm praying for this man's soul and man, wouldn't that be a great thing to have

Todd White truly repent and really preach the full gospel and the word of God clearly and influence all the people that have been deceived through false doctrine?

Wouldn't it be a redemptive thing to see that take place? And so, what I want to say is what I said a couple times to brothers and sisters this week as this came up.

When I saw this initially, my response was, man, I hope so and that sounds good, man, praise

God for that and I hope that's true. Let's pray for him and I started seeing people just immediately before anything else was said, no, he's fake, he's wrong, blah, blah, no, he's making it up, he's just tricking people.

It's not real repentance and I thought to myself, you know, I didn't say it ultimately publicly but I thought to myself, man, it seems like Christians don't want redemption.

You know, why is that? That as Christians, we're the ones that are supposed to believe the most in redemption because we experienced it.

How come we can't extend that to others at least in a balanced perspective to be hopeful? Now, I know there have been people who have been balanced and saying, well,

I'm doubtful but hopeful. That's good but I'm talking about the people who were just lopsided the other way saying to hell with Todd White and that's not real repentance and I'm saying, well, based upon that message, you can be hopeful and pray for him but just immediately responding to vilify the guy and to have no hope for redemption,

I think that's, I think that's damaging. Oh, yeah. No, and I'll be quick but there's a few things

I wanted to say because when searching for this message that you just played, I actually came across the message he spoke, he gave this, this last

Sunday and, you know, he does some things in there that were concerning.

He mentions, of course, the, the documentary American Gospel which he says is about him.

He does say something in there that I thought was, I mean, I agreed with him but he says, you know, if you think

I'm deceived and you're not praying for me, then what you love is your opinion and not me and that's true.

There's, there's an element of truth to that kind of what you're saying as far as if, if you know that this man is deceived, um, as a

Christian for him to say what he said, there should be some element of hope and prayer for this man that he continue reading

Spurgeon or Whitefield or whatever it may be that he's moving towards the biblical gospel but the other thing

I wanted to, to also bring up because for those who maybe kind of jumped on board a little bit too soon, if you believe that this man was preaching a false gospel for who knows how many years this guy has been, um, ahead of a church or a pastor, if you believe he's been teaching a false gospel for many years,

I think repentance would require that he step down and, that, that kind of concerns me that if somebody understands the, the weight of what's going on which it sounded as though he did but if he understood the weight that I'm repenting because prior to this

I wasn't preaching a full or a true gospel, I think evidence of him recognizing that would cause him to then say

I'm gonna step away for a few years and get something straight but he didn't do that um, and so I think that's also reflective of, of maybe where he's at but in the, in the sermon he preached this last

Sunday he does kind of qualify where repentance is because I think he knows that people said he repented and he was like I don't know if I like that word that word or that they're thinking

I truly repented or I'm turning from what I taught before because I think he recognizes that if he's taking a, a, a 180 then that means anything

I've said before can be discredited whether it's books, audio, whatever he's selling this university that he has um, and so he then started to kind of qualify what repentance was and try to kind of say well we're all repenting you know we live a life of repentance kind of thing um, but he did, he did say some things in that, the sermon this, this last

Sunday that were, were true um, but there was definitely some, some concerns I had he, he emphasized of course healing and, and some of the verses he used were

I thought out of context after the service or towards the end of the service they had like a healing um, time where people came up, came up to the front and he was given like a word of knowledge as far as people that they were going through this circumstance or there's someone out there who's experiencing this so those things of course are troubling um, but there was some elements to it that I, I thought were, were good but in, but in the end like you said

I agree with you I think we continue to pray for him and hopeful for the stuff that is good. Right.

Totally agree. I, I, I want to always address situations like this with balance.

I think the Christian life is about balance and we can tend to fall off the edge of the cliff on almost every theological issue and in situations like this we tend to fall off the cliff as well and lose our balance and, and just we're inconsistent because you know

I'll say as a pastor when, when I have a person meet with me one week and say

Pastor Jeff this is where I was this is what I believe now I'm trusting in Christ they start bawling saying

I'm aware of my own sin right now I hate my sin I only want Jesus he died on a cross for me and rose again like I, I, I'm excited about that and I don't just challenge them

I don't really believe you oh no, you're faking like this person maybe has been involved in a new age for the last 20 years of their life

I don't start saying I, I don't believe you I'm hopeful I say well praise God this is wonderful I hope this is true you know what

I mean in my heart I'm like hopeful for this person I'm believing in redemption and what tends to happen in situations like this with social media is, is we lose that consistency we have of hope for the person that's right in front of us and I think it has a lot to do with social media you're looking at a person on a video screen right you're, you're the person is out there they're more conceptual right they're not they're not flesh and blood because when flesh and blood is in front of you you're hopeful for redemption right you're grateful to God for all of these these possibilities of redemption forgiveness hope all that and when you have a situation where you're looking at somebody through a screen it's not as real to you you don't really you don't really value the opportunity for redemption for them as much as you do for the person that's sitting in front of you at the coffee shop so I'd sort of say balance balance like when you see something like that I agree we shouldn't just fly over and go it's all good now we're fine and everybody follow

Todd White I think the response should have been like everybody that's pretty awesome praise

God he's reading the right people he said he repented he says he understands the need for repentance and trust in Christ that's good news hey everyone let's pray for Todd White this is kind of hopeful and then we see maybe two weeks down the line or three weeks down the line something that's alarming to us we can go well

I guess not yet but I'm going to pray for this guy and pray that either God saves him or he removes him right from influencing others with false teaching are we going to a commercial break?

actually we've been doing this for over an hour now have we? this is the problem when you and I when we get to see here's the problem everyone when

Isaac and I get together but you need to know like behind the scenes here we'll sit down we'll just start chatting we'll just an hour will drift away we're talking about scripture and all kinds of things and we'll lose track of time so we've been doing this for over an hour can you do next

Thursday? let's do next Thursday let's do next Thursday because what I don't want to do is just give everyone five minutes right on the book of Revelation yeah no

I want to spend a little bit we need to talk because I think you you and I talked a couple weeks ago and you had some really really good insight that I said then we need to do some videos on this and we need to talk about this because this stuff really will bless people and bless the church

I think so so how about this guys everyone who's watching right now next Thursday Apologia Radio Isaac will be on with me and we're going to actually dig specifically into the concept of end times we're going to talk about the book of Revelation we're going to talk about some overarching themes yeah and let me just say

I believe that many of you are going to truly benefit from listening to Isaac and some of the things he has to say from Scripture in terms of the overarching themes through Scripture bless me big time and I'm passionate about this stuff but the way

Isaac really put it together bless me so I want to have him on to bless you all get your Bibles ready next Thursday Apologia Radio with Isaac we're going to talk about end times book of Revelation stuff that will really encourage you

I think no matter where you're at in the discussion what we're going to talk about is going to bless you in terms of themes and those sorts of things

I think they're really encouraging so anything else? no that's I enjoyed it that's it alright everybody so this has been

Apologia Radio thank you guys for joining us pray for Pastor John pray for that church out there pray for all the churches that are taking a stand against tyranny praise

God for the brothers the leaders of churches who have stayed open continue to worship God are defying tyranny and resisting government overreach over the church praise

God for all that thank you guys all so much for your love for your encouragement your constant encouragement to us, your support go to endabortionnow .com

everybody sign up for endabortionnow .com with your church go save some lives we saved a life this past weekend at Apologia Church got more word this week of six saves in one day with Pastor John I think it was six saves in one day in Florida Orlando Women's Center that's one church and you talk about we have over 500 churches now with End Abortion Now that are out saving lives that are committed to doing so and so there's just like no way to calculate we're planning some content with him here soon yes and the only reason that's possible is because the people who are supporting us so yeah

I would encourage you guys to head to ApologiaStudios .com sign up for all access because like I said our goal is to bless our supporters we're always thinking of ways on how we can do that whether it's through Apologia Academy and the different topics we cover or just new shows new content like you've always said for at least the past year we have something in the works and if it falls through if it happens if it happens it's going to change everything it's going to change pray for that guys

I know we've been announcing it I literally was in discussions again this week yeah final discussions about it and just pray because you know

God's will be done but if we get what we're praying for I mean my heart rate's going up it's going to change everything yeah and I mean that sincerely we're not overselling it it's going to be such a blessing it'll change everything so ApologiaStudios .com

is where you guys go to get more sign up at InAbortionNow .com to partner with us we're going to give you free training free resources join with us to bring justice to the fatherless we will catch you next week with me and Isaac we're going to talk about the