A Complete Destruction of Jonathan Leeman's Response to MacArthur

AD Robles

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All right, well, welcome to Monday. It was an eventful weekend, no question about it. On the 24th,

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I emailed myself, which I often do when I'm trying to remember something. Sometimes I'll have my wife email me just an idea

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I have for a video or whatever. I don't have a smartphone, so I don't typically email myself, but I did send myself an email on the 24th, and the email, all it said was the subject line, destroy

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John Lehman's article. That's all it said. I was planning on completely annihilating his article in response to John MacArthur's statement on the fact that Christ, not

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Caesar, is the head of the church. But since then,

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I've had a change of heart. I'm not going to destroy this article. Well, yeah, I mean, it depends on what you mean by destroy. I'm not gonna blast it, but what

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I am gonna do is just provide a very reasonable response to it, because I think it's very hard to understand why the article was even written, to be perfectly honest with you.

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I tweeted out the other day, I think it was yesterday, I tweeted out that one thing we need to understand is that articles like this are not written out of love.

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I don't know why they're written, but they're definitely not written out of love, and people had a hard time with that. They were saying, well,

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AD, hold on, are you trying to pretend that you know his heart? And the reality is, yes,

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I am saying that. I know Jonathan Lehman's heart in writing the article. We don't have to guess these things. We don't have to guess these things, because the

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Bible says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And of course, we can apply that to tweets, we can apply that to emails, we can apply that to articles as well.

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And so I know exactly what Jonathan Lehman's heart was in writing this article. He was attempting to get you to hold on a second, pump the brakes, before you decide to follow

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John MacArthur and meet for church on Sunday, he wants you to hold on and make sure, do you really wanna do that?

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He's attempting to stop you, or at least slow you down from attending church on Sunday and for the foreseeable future due to the government restrictions due to COVID -19.

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And that is an unloving thing to do, a decidedly unloving thing to do, to try to discourage people from attending worship is a very unloving thing to do.

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So I don't have to know his heart like perfectly. All I have to do is look at his words, apply them to how

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I understand the scripture, and I can make a decision on whether or not it was a loving thing to do to take all of the people who were so encouraged, that was one of the things that I thought was so unbelievable about the

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John MacArthur statement. Because I know John MacArthur has tremendous influence, and I respect

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John MacArthur greatly, he wields a lot of influence, there's no question about that. I knew he did, but I don't think

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I had an idea of how much he still did yield, or wield rather. Because when this statement came out,

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I saw so many people talk about how encouraged they were, how emboldened they were, how they were thinking, you know what, now is the time, now is the time to do what we have to do, regardless of what the government says.

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So much encouragement. And I even, on my Facebook page, I don't normally talk about social justice -y stuff too much on my

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Facebook page, every now and then I will. But I did mention this, and I said how encouraged

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I was by the leadership demonstrated by John MacArthur. Now I recognize, a few people reached out to me and kind of called me on that, and I understand why.

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I recognize that there have been lots of Christian pastors who have held the line on this from the beginning.

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And what I find also amazing about John MacArthur and Phil Johnson and the elders at Grace Community Church is that they make no bones about it.

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They're basically saying in this article, we should have done this from the beginning. And so we were wrong, some of you guys were right, and we have no problem admitting that.

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That takes a lot of integrity, I think, to admit that. And I think that, so when

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I say it's leadership, please don't hear me saying that there weren't pastors doing this from the get -go. In fact, my brother, his church in Pennsylvania has been doing this from the beginning.

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They have not complied with any of these illegal orders, any of these ungodly orders.

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They have not complied with a single one because they have a God to serve, that's the thing. We're not playing games here.

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We're not trying to play chess with the secular state. No, we actually have a duty to obey

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God and we don't have to play games with you. You know what I mean? We obey God, not you, and that's that.

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You understand what I'm saying? And I think when we get to this article, we'll see that I think Jonathan Lehman thinks we're playing the same game he is.

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We're not playing your game, Jonathan Lehman, we're not. We'll talk about that in a minute. But yeah, please, no disrespect to all the pastors out there that are small congregations, they don't have a platform like John MacArthur, have been doing the right thing for months and months and months and months.

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God bless you guys. I know you're out there. Like I said, my brother's done it. I know there's tons of churches out there that have done it.

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And so you might think that leadership is kind of a weird word to use because a leader should be out in front of all this stuff.

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And I understand why you'd say that. I agree to a degree. But still, I would say that the fact that John MacArthur wields so much influence, this is still a demonstration of leadership because he knows that when he does this kind of thing, there will be massive consequences.

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And he's willing to sort of take those consequences and go with them. And I still think that that's commendable.

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I think I still think that demonstrates leadership. Yeah, he should have been doing this from day one.

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I agree. I've been talking about it on my channel from day one. People have been talking about it from the beginning.

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Yeah, he should have been. But I still think it's commendable. And I still think it demonstrates a degree of leadership.

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But I don't wanna disparage any of you pastors who've been doing this for a long time. I know you're out there. God bless you.

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I pray for you guys. If not by name, just by category. God bless you. But let's get to this Jonathan Lehman article because that's really the point of this video.

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All right, so here it is. This article was put out on the 25th, it looks like. So I might be having my dates wrong.

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By Jonathan Lehman. And it's called A Time for Civil Disobedience, A Response to Grace Community Church's Elders.

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And so there's two things I wanna note about this. One of the things that I've griped very often about Big Eva is two issues.

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One, they move very slowly. Big Eva tends to move very slowly when there's something to respond to, when there's

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LGBT conferences and stuff like that. People say, well, we don't wanna, we wanna wait and see what happens first.

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They wanna slow roll everything. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, I know that there's social justice. Yeah, but we'll wait.

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We'll just wait to see. That's one thing that's a problem. Number two, they typically don't name names.

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They typically don't respond to people directly. They usually kind of are very vague about, you know, who's saying what.

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And it kind of leaves you in a place of suspicion for everybody. I've lamented this about Big Eva many times.

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The slowness to respond to serious issues. And then of course, the lack of naming names.

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But if you notice, this article does both, right? And so don't tell me that Big Eva is not capable of doing this, or not willing to do this.

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When they think that there's something that needs to get done, and something that needs to be said, they have no problem responding with the quickness.

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They have no problem naming names. It's just about the issue. See, they don't really care so much if LGBT is taking over the church in the

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Presbyterian Church in America. They don't really care so much about revoice conference. Yeah, they'll express some concerns and some sadness and some grieving and stuff like that.

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Yeah, maybe a few days later and stuff like that. But when there's a serious issue, people wanna go to church on Sunday, they can respond with the quickness.

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They have no qualms doing it. They have no qualms naming names. They have no qualms responding within a day.

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And I find that to be extremely disturbing. Because I could just think of it. Can you imagine in your mind saying, oh no, oh no,

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John MacArthur, he said that people should go to church. We need to do something. And they respond instantly, instantly, very, very quickly, all with the intention to prevent you from going to church on Sunday.

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Now, somebody told me I was slandering Jonathan Lehman by saying that, that the whole point of this article was to discourage you from going to church on Sunday.

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Well, let's just read the article and see if that really is a slander. Here's how it starts.

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It says, before your church follows John MacArthur's Grace Community Church and begins to gather in defiance of governmental orders this

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Sunday, hold on, stop, and think with me for a moment. That's the end of that.

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I mean, if you told me that I was slandering Jonathan Lehman because I said that this article was intended to discourage you from attending church on Sunday, I mean,

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I'll accept your apology, but you should apologize right away. The first sentence tells you to stop, hold on, with an exclamation point.

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You see, I'm not yelling. I'm reading the article the way it's supposed to be written. Stop! Hold on!

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He wants you to wait. I know you're thinking about attending church Sunday, because Jonathan Lehman saw the same thing

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I did, probably. That's why he got out of bed to write this article with the quickness, right? He saw how many people were so encouraged by what

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John MacArthur had to say that were emboldened. They were like, yes, this is the time. This is where we take our stand.

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Everyone's been waiting, I think, for a leader. Everyone's been waiting for a leader to tell him when it's time, and John MacArthur took his cojones.

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I guess it's cojones, not cajones. He took his cojones, and he said, this is where we fight, and people were encouraged, but Jonathan Lehman, no, no, no, hold on, stop!

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Hold on! And think with me for a moment. I can't imagine this is where you find your balls,

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Jonathan Lehman. This is where you find your balls when people are about to go to church, but no, no, we can't have that.

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We gotta stop and think about that for a moment, and you can see I'm getting a little bit emotional here, because I just can't even fathom being in this place where you're such a sissy on every single issue, and I mean that word sissy as much as I can mean it.

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You're such a sissy when it comes to LGBT stuff. You're such a sissy when it comes to all this other insanity, social justice,

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Black Lives Matter, all this stuff, and then the minute someone says, yeah, but let's go to church even though the government says so, you get out the big guns.

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You get out the article. You get out the exclamation points, right? It's just really a weird, it's a weird thing to think about.

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It's a weird thing to think about. Anyway, let's continue. In case you missed it, MacArthur provided a wonderful statement affirming

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Christ's lordship over governments, our duty to disobey governments when governments forbid worship, and the government's lack of jurisdiction over a church's doctrine, practice, and polity.

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Plus, pastors do well to learn from MacArthur's example of courage. In years and decades to come, we may have many opportunities to defy governmental incursions.

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Let me stop you right there again. Jonathan Lehman will always be in this place. He will always be here.

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If you're looking to Jonathan Lehman for leadership on when it's okay to disobey, I would suggest that you do not hold your breath.

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It will never happen. It's never going to be now. We may one day in the future, he'll nod his head and he'll tip his hat to that.

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Maybe one day, but not today. It's someday, but not today. Eventually, yes, but not now.

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That's where Jonathan Lehman will be until the day he passes away. He will always be there.

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It's in the decades to come possibly, but not right now. Don't listen to people like that where there's just never, ever a time.

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There's never, ever a time to do something bold for the Lord. The time is now. This is a good day to do it.

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This is a good day to follow Christ, right? That's what I say. And so, whatever that means for you, according to, as long as it's according to scripture, then you do it.

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You follow Christ according to scripture. But if you listen to Jonathan Lehman, it'll never be time. All right, well, let me calm down because I'm getting a little bit more heated than I wanted to.

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But it's almost like every sentence of this article is just, it's a trigger fest is what it is.

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But let's respond in a more rational way. I also respect the decision of Grace Community Elders to quote, respectfully inform their civic leaders that they have exceeded their legitimate jurisdiction.

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And that quote, faithfulness to Christ prohibits them from observing the restrictions they want to impose on their corporate worship services.

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That might be the right decision. I believe it's a judgment call. But if they feel bound of conscience to gather their church, then they should gather.

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Yet, I'd also like to add, civil disobedience may not be the only legitimate or moral course of action at this moment.

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And so, here's the thing. This article is about freedom, right? Freedom of conscience, right? And if you've noticed, this whole time we've been told, it's actually a matter of loving your neighbor to do these things, to not meet, to wear the mask, to do everything that the government and the liberal media has told you to do.

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It's a matter of loving your neighbor, right? And so, I've said this many times on my channel, like when somebody says something's a matter of loving your neighbor, what they are telling you is if you don't do it, you are in sin, you are sinning.

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Because love your neighbor is a summary of the commandments of God. And so, therefore, if you're not loving your neighbor, you are sinning against God and against your neighbor.

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And so, that's where we were. And now, look at how amazing that all it takes is one man to be bold, right?

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One man with gravitas to be bold, one man. And all of a sudden, the story's changed.

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See, Jonathan Lehman, we've taken ground for men like Jonathan Lehman. And may we never give it back.

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We've taken ground, we're winning this battle. Because yesterday, Jonathan Lehman is telling us we're sinning if we're not loving our neighbor according to how the world defines loving your neighbor.

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And today, it's a matter of Christian freedom. That's a tremendous change. It seems like a little thing, right, on the spectrum, but I'm telling you, that ground that we've gained is important ground to gain.

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And we need to go further, because actually, I don't think necessarily that this is such a matter of freedom as he's saying it.

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We'll describe, we'll go further into that in a minute. But I don't think that that's actually how this works, Jonathan Lehman.

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So, we actually have more ground to take, but let me just recognize the ground that we have taken already. We are winning this battle.

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We are winning it more every single day. As guys like Jonathan Lehman's influence wane, and it will continue to wane, and people like John MacArthur and the many pastors who have stood their ground from the beginning of this continues to grow, that is gonna be a good thing.

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That is going to be a good thing. And I'm not talking about myself. I'm not a pastor, right? So, let's continue. But I just wanted to make sure to highlight that, because this is not all doom and gloom here.

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I mean, there's lots of important battles being won right now, and this is one of them. I think we should recognize that.

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He says this, four additional things are worth mentioning in case you did read his piece. First, it's true that MacArthur's church cannot meet, but Christ's church can meet.

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Right now, members of his church can meet outdoors. There is nothing sacrosanct about the particular and present forms of our congregations.

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You might say, my counsel to Pastor MacArthur is similar to my counsel to a pastor who thinks his church has to go multiple services or sites.

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Why does that new congregation have to be called your church? You can plant. No. Likewise, is there any biblical reason why your church or mine cannot split into several churches or take some other form?

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Along these lines, I appreciate J .D. Greer's and the elders of Summit Church's decision to turn the 12 ,000 -member

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Summit Church into hundreds of house churches for the remainder of the year, even if I would structure things a little differently than him.

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Also, one possibility being discussed by the Capitol Hill Baptist Church elders is whether they should turn their church into several autonomous congregations should

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DC restrictions eventually make sufficient indoor room for doing so. Sufficient indoor room for doing so.

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For now, they're meeting in a field. Grace Church, on the other hand, is insisting on maintaining its present form.

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That's a potentially legitimate decision to make, but it's not the only decision a church can make. Now, this is something people have pointed out about this article.

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A lot of people that actually don't take my perspective, and I respect your opinion as well, and I appreciate you letting me know this, is that Jonathan Lehman's not saying don't meet.

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He's just giving you alternatives to meeting, right? But Jonathan Lehman is not a stupid man. He has to know that not every church has the ability to gather in a field.

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He has to know that. In fact, we're gonna see reports this weekend of churches that have been doing this exact thing and being told to disperse by Caesar, being told to disperse by his goons, right?

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And so we're gonna see that. Not to mention the fact that not every church, it's legitimate for them to do that because there's a lot of city churches, for example, that people don't really travel outside of a few blocks radius in certain cities, right?

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And so some churches don't have the space for it. They just simply don't. And so what he's suggesting that you do here might not even be feasible for all churches.

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But the point is, like this is the whole point. That's a side issue, right? The side issue. Presumably, every church that's meeting is currently meeting in the form that they feel is the proper biblical form, right?

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Like the churches that we have, the size of the churches, the structure of the churches, you would think that elders have gathered together and been intentional, to use a big

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Eva term, intentional about how they do that, right? And so what you're suggesting is to say, okay,

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I know we've decided and we've been intentional about having the church that we've had for a long time, but the government said we can't do that anymore.

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So let's change all that up because the government said so. Well, that's a stupid reason to change. That's a very poor reason to change.

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The only reason you should change the form of your church is to make it more biblical, right? Okay, you decide, oh,

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I've made mistakes. You know, we can't really run a, we can't really run a, this is just a hypothetical. We can't really run a church according to the biblical model with 12 ,000 members.

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So let's make smaller congregations that are more manageable, that makes more sense, given what we think the

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Bible says. That would be a good reason to change. What's not a good reason to change is because the government daddy says we can't meet anymore in groups of more than 100 or 200 or 500, whatever it is, it's arbitrary, no matter what.

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So he's like, yeah, you know, just hold on, right? And see, again, all this does is to make you not meet on Sunday and for the foreseeable future until you decide some alternative method to meet to what you've already decided as a church body, as a session to do.

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And that's a really weird place to be as a Big Eva author. Like all he's doing is trying to put a little doubt in your mind.

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You should not meet as a church this week, potentially. He came out with the quickness. He wanted this article out before Sunday just so that he could put some doubt into your mind as to whether or not to go to church on Sunday because he saw what

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I saw. He saw a lot of people encouraged by John MacArthur's boldness. And so he wanted to put a stop to that.

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Hold on, he says. It's a weird place to be, Jonathan Lehman, a weird place to be. Anyway, he continues.

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He says, mind you, I'm not saying Christians need to embrace this as the new normal and that we should give up on having larger gathering spaces and larger churches.

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I am saying that at least in this moment, a church could decide to do something besides all gathering together without selling out to Caesar.

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Actually, no, they can't. Not in the way that you've described. Not in the way that you described. Because the way you've described it here is you're doing all this stuff not to make things more biblical, not to make things more manageable, not to make things more safe.

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You're actually describing doing all of these things because the government said so. The government will allow certain things and disallow certain things.

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So actually, you can't do that the way you've described here, Jonathan, without selling out to Caesar. Because the only reason that J .D.

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Greer is doing this hundreds of house church thing is because the government said so. The government said he can't meet, so what is he gonna do?

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Well, he's gonna do something because the government said so. Actually, that's the definition of selling out to Caesar. That's the definition of selling out to Caesar.

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He's not doing it because he thinks it's wise. He's not doing it because he thinks it's healthy. He's doing it because the government is allowing this, but not this.

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Because if the government said, no, you actually can't have house churches either, which, by the way, some governments are doing, this is not a hypothetical, if the government said you can't have house churches either, are you really gonna sit here and tell me that J .D.

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Greer would say, oh, we're gonna defy it? No, he's doing this because the government said so.

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Which, by the way, I mean, I hope he has 100 elders because otherwise, you don't have churches.

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You don't have 100 house churches if you don't have 100 elders to preside over each house church. But, you know,

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I guess these are side issues, really, because we're not really trying to please God here. We're trying to please the government. All right, second one.

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Second point he wants you to remember. Before you rush to gather to church on, I know you were excited, you're gonna go to church.

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John MacArthur is giving you the boldness that you need in order to go to church. Yeah, you should have done it anyway, but now you've got the boldness, right?

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Okay, great, fine. Slow down, guys. We don't want you to get too excited. Christians have long worked to accommodate governmental restrictions on gatherings, both when those requirements have seemed fair and when they don't.

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Churches in coastal cities during World War II accommodated evening blackout requirements in case enemy planes hit the coast.

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Those churches didn't insist the government had no right to restrict our worship. You could tell this article was rushed because he obviously didn't think that one through.

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Churches in China today sometimes do well to disobey the government and gather underground, but sometimes they're wise to comply with government restrictions or at least governmental enforced measures, such as keeping their non -state sanctioned congregations relatively small.

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As my Chinese pastor tells me, the police know about their 100 -member congregations, but they won't bother them until they reach 200.

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And so my friends keep planting new churches. My point here is not that the Chinese Communist Party has a right to limit the church to 200, they don't.

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My point is that the pastor friends are making a calculated wisdom -based judgment about what will best preserve the witness of the gospel over the long run and not just their church.

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In other words, just because you think God will ultimately vindicate your decision to disobey the government on the last day doesn't mean it's wise.

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You might have other options that avoid undue attention. So here's the wisdom -based argument, right?

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And so, and this is another interesting point here because the examples he's used here are examples of clear persecution, right?

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And so I'm not saying that the church is or is not being persecuted in the United States.

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I don't tend to think that it is necessarily. However, what I would say is that both of these examples have really nothing to do with our situation here, right?

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You know, you're talking about a wartime, right? Where you don't want the enemy to know where you are. So you black out like everybody else.

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I mean, that's a matter of safety. The government has no authority to command that you do it, but yeah, you'd have to be an idiot not to, right?

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You'd have to be an idiot not to. As far as the Communist Party, right? The government has no authority to limit your congregation to 100 people or 200 people, but there's some wisdom to not doing that, right?

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But where's the comparable thing here? Like how is any of this comparable to coronavirus restrictions?

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How is any of this comparable to you can't sing restrictions? I just, I fail to see how this makes any sense at all.

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I really, I fail to see it. Again, all this does, all this serves to do is to put a little bit of doubt in your mind about whether or not to do it, all while binding your conscience as well.

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Because the reality is that Jonathan Lehman and his cronies have been for the last few months pounding you with love your neighbor as yourself argument.

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If you don't do this, you are sinning. If you don't stop meeting, you are sinning. If you don't wear a mask, you are sinning.

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If you don't do this, you are sinning. You are sinning, you are sinning. And now all of a sudden they're like, well, hold on, wisdom, wisdom.

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So the reality is here that, you know, if you're gonna change your tone and now it's a matter of Christian freedom, then you're gonna need to do some work to undo some of that pharisaical, you know, kind of inventing of sins that you did for the past few months.

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You're gonna need to undo a lot of that stuff. And the reality is that you don't seem to do that here. You just pretend like it's like a war.

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You pretend like it's like a hardcore communist persecution and see, well, they listen to the government sometimes.

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Yeah, they do it because their freaking lives depend on it. What does that have to do with a sickness, right?

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What does that have to do with a sickness comparable to flu season? Okay, so it's not the flu, it's a little worse than the flu.

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Okay, great. So tell me what this has to do with anything in our universe here, because we are not at war and we are not being persecuted by the communist party.

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Okay, so tell me how this makes sense. You can't just throw stuff out there like that and expect me to understand.

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I don't understand. Maybe I'm not that intelligent, I don't know, but you're gonna need to do a little bit more work here.

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Let's continue, because he goes on with this wisdom thing. And I think this kind of tells you a little bit more about where he's coming from.

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Jonathan Lehman says this, third, addressing this matter of what's wise or quote beneficial.

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I personally wonder if defying government orders for the sake of the pandemic is the most judicious, it is the most judicious opportunity to exercise those muscles.

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Let me stop at the article right there. Do not listen to Jonathan Lehman about when it's okay to exercise muscles.

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He will never do it. He will never do it, okay? These muscles will never be exercised by Jonathan Lehman.

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I would suggest not looking to him for when it's time to flex, okay?

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That's what I would say, because he's decided it's time to flex when too many people might go to church on Sunday.

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Why he's doing that, I have no idea. But the thing that got him out of bed, the thing that got him to move with the quickness, the thing that got him to name names is people were gonna go to church on Sunday, I've gotta put a stop to this somehow.

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So don't listen to Jonathan Lehman about when it's time to flex those muscles. The politics of LGBT tells me our churches may have more occasions to defy the government requirements in years to come.

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Yeah, right. Don't make me laugh, Jonathan Lehman. Let's get real here. You will not be flexing those muscles about the

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LGBT thing. You will make a theology that says this is okay, loving your neighbor, treat everybody the same, all that kind of stuff, just like it's currently happening right now.

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This stuff is currently happening. So don't, I mean, don't lie to me. I am not too, listen,

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I'm not stupid enough to fall for that. But even if it was true, it doesn't make a difference, right?

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Because we're not playing pragmatic games like you. Let me finish this paragraph and I'll explain what

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I mean, Jonathan Lehman. He says this, the politics of LGBT tells me our churches may have more occasions to defy government requirements in years to come.

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Do we want to spend down our capital on pandemics? That's a very important sentence.

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Do we want to spend down our capital on pandemics? Right now, the guidelines restricting churches also restricts restaurants, movie theaters, museums, gyms, funeral homes, and non -essential offices, shopping malls, barbershops, and more.

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As those restaurant and gym owners cast a glance over at our churches, will our refusal to abide by the same restrictions, which are causing them financial distress, help the witness of the gospel, especially if we could find other ways to comply, such as meeting outdoors?

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Again, all these are judgment calls. My point is merely, let's leave room for churches to make different decisions a la

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Romans 14. There's so much packed into this. There's so much packed into this. And I think that's kind of the approach of this article.

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It's just like a scatter gun. He's trying to dazzle you with targets so you don't really know which one to pick. Well, let's pick them all apart, baby, because that's what we do on the channel.

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That's what we do on the channel. So the first thing, Jonathan Lehman, we're not playing some kind of weird, pragmatic game like you are, okay?

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We're not playing a weird, pragmatic game where we've got a certain amount of capital, right? Let's call it obedience capital.

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We've got a certain amount of obedience capital and we got to protect it, right? And so we got to decide when we're gonna obey

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Christ, because, you know, and when we're not, because we only have so much obedience capital. We're not playing that game,

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Jonathan. That's a weird game. I don't care what the world thinks about my capital, right?

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I'm going, my requirements are to obey Christ, right? I'm supposed to be teaching others to obey

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Christ and obeying Christ myself. And so if my opinion is that, if my opinion is that I have to have church,

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I have to gather with the saints, regardless of whether or not it's a pandemic, regardless of whether or not

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Caesar tells me not to, then I'm gonna do that, okay? I've got enough obedience capital to do that.

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And then if in a few months, the LGBT mob comes for me, I'm gonna obey Christ in that as well.

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It's not that I don't have like a finite amount of capital. No, Christ demands everything, everything.

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He is Christ and Lord over everything. There is not a finite, we've got to play this game. Well, capital goes over here and we'll obey this time, and now we'll comply, and this time we'll obey.

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Like that's a weird game. You think we're playing this weird game like you are. We're not playing that game. We're not playing that game.

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We have a one -track mind, Jonathan Lehman. I'm not sure why you don't. We have a one -track mind.

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What will please Christ? What will please Christ today? And that's how we live.

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And that's what we do. We try to please Christ in every area, whether the LGBTs are attacking, whether the government is attacking, whether the whatever, it doesn't matter.

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We try to please Christ in everything. We don't have this weird pragmatic, well, if I blow my wad on pandemic, well, then

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I'm not gonna have enough capital for the LGBT attack. It's like, what is that?

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Where does that come from? Just obey Christ. I mean, it's a simple, it's a one -track mind,

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I get it. Just do what Christ says. And this argument here, this is a very popular argument, but it's also very naive, right?

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It's also very naive. Well, the church is not being treated differently. Russell Moore made this argument. The church should be treated the same as casinos, because in Nevada, they're allowing casinos to gather, but not churches, right?

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But in this case, the argument's kind of slightly different. Like most guidelines are affecting everyone the same, the restaurants, gyms, churches, all that stuff.

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And so Jonathan Lehman thinks that that's a good thing. But the reality is though that that's terrible.

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That's a terrible way to look at it. Churches should not be treated the same as restaurants and shopping malls and museums and movie theaters and gyms and all that stuff.

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Now, I don't think any of those places should be ordered closed, but the church has a special place, right?

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They're a special unit. Like the government does have authority over certain things in its jurisdiction, but the church is not one of those things, right?

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The way the church meets, the way it worships, how often it gathers, all of that stuff is not in the purview of the government, definitively, no matter how you slice it.

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Like even if you're just looking biblically, it doesn't have authority. Even if you're just looking constitutionally, it doesn't have authority.

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Even if you're just looking at natural law, it doesn't have authority. And so this whole argument about, well, you know, we're all being treated the same here.

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First of all, it's not true, as evidenced by the Russell Moore article that we mentioned on Twitter. It's not true.

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But second of all, even if it was true, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the government is pretending to close down the church.

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It doesn't matter who else they're telling to close down. They're not allowed to close down the church. Like again, this is part of this game of capital, right?

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Like what do I do if like the gym owner's mad that I'm open, but they're closed? What are they gonna think about the gospel?

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They're gonna hate the gospel because they're sinners, right? They're going to hate the gospel. But what

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I do think is that if they see that the worship of God to God's people is so important that they're willing to reject the government order to close, they're not too scared to meet for worship.

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That's how important it is. I think that the witness that they'll see there is either hatred if they're perishing or they're gonna be impressed.

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Because the Bible says that when you obey Christ and you see their laws, the outsiders, the pagans, they will be impressed.

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They will say, wow, look how close that God is to them. Look at how righteous what they do is.

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What other nation has a God that's so close? That's what the Bible says will happen to our witness.

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So I'm not so sure why you're so concerned over what pagans will say, but even if you are, according to your scriptures,

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Jonathan Lehman, the pagans are going to be impressed by how close God is to those who are in his covenant, those who are obeying him, those who are worshiping him.

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That's what the Bible says will happen when you obey Christ. So I'm not so sure why you're so worried, but if your point is merely let's leave room for churches to make different decisions on Romans 14,

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I mean, sure, go ahead, but the reality is that you guys spent months telling us that we were sinning if we didn't do what the pagans told us to do.

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So you're gonna need to unravel some of that stuff before I'll take you seriously at all here. Fourth, and this is my most wonky point.

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You got that right. MacArthur draws a strict line between the jurisdictions of the state, church, and family.

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I, too, affirm the separation of these jurisdictions and have written amply on the topic. Yet, here's what we do need to keep in mind.

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Those jurisdiction circles, to some extent, overlap whether it's the same person who are bound by those whenever it's the same person who are bound by those distinct jurisdictions.

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After all, each of those authorities can possess a claim on a person no matter what building the person is standing in.

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For instance, does God give the parents the authority to discipline their children? Yes, but that discipline can cross a line and become abusive.

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At that point, the state says to the parents, hold on, your child is also our citizen and you're abusing her. We will now intervene.

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To be sure, states can call something abuse that isn't and go too far, but most of us agree on the occasional need to intervene.

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So, let's just come on. Likewise, churches should observe state -established fire codes, building codes, zoning restrictions, historical preservation society codes if you're on Capitol Hill, and more, all of which impinge and limit our gatherings.

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Yet, most of us have not stopped and said, this is hindering our worship and this is the state exercising authority over church practice.

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Rather, we understand the state is doing its job even there. We understand that we are not ancient Israel. We understand that we are not ancient.

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And though, in one sense, all space is sacred for a Christian because all space is under Christ's lordship, in another sense, no space is sacred, at least in a temple -like way.

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And the government's authority also extends everywhere inside its borders. So, this whole thing about fire codes, if you haven't seen my other video talking to Jonathan Lehman, we actually go into that.

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Fire codes are actually biblical and stuff like that. Building codes and zoning restrictions to a certain extent, depending on what they're for and stuff like that.

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Some of these are biblical, but the government still can't shut you down. So, if you don't meet the fire codes and the government says you can't meet, that's actually unbiblical.

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So, the codes are okay, but the enforcement isn't because the Bible says that you should have a fence around your roof, right?

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But there's no penalty if you don't have it. The only penalty comes if somebody gets hurt at your service.

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So, I would say that a church should meet these codes, right, these safety codes or whatever. Preservation society codes, historical, stuff like that, that's different.

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But fire safety codes, building codes, you should do that. But nothing should happen to you if you don't.

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The only thing that we need to be worried about is if somebody gets hurt. See, there's no such thing as a victimless crime in the Bible.

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So, someone actually has to get hurt for you to be liable, right? So, I see what he's trying to do there, but there's some more nuance that's needed.

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He's right, this is extremely wonky. I wouldn't call these jurisdictional overlaps. Like, everyone, let's just take the example that he gives as far as the child with the parent, right?

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Like, just because a child can be abused by a parent doesn't mean that the jurisdictions are overlapping because the parent still has discipline jurisdiction and the state still has jurisdiction over abuse.

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They're not overlapping, you see, because it's crossing the line from discipline to abuse, right? It's crossing that line.

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So, the actual, the jurisdictions aren't overlapping. They're meeting, and when the line is crossed, the state steps in.

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You see what I'm saying? So, it's not an overlap. Everyone is under different authorities. We all understand that, but that's not an overlap, right?

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That's not saying the same thing as the jurisdictions overlap. Yes, every person who's a member of a church is under their own authority, is under their father's authority, and is under the state's authority, but the jurisdictions don't overlap.

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There is actually a strict line there. There's a strict line there. So, John MacArthur's right. So, I'm not really sure what the point is here.

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I guess, I mean, I guess he thinks he's being clever, but everyone knows that everyone has different authorities that they are under.

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I think we all kind of knew that, but I guess thanks for the reminder. All that to say, it's not immediately evident to me that a government's original orders back in March, and now again in July, are, in MacArthur's words, an illegitimate intrusion of state authority into ecclesiastical matters.

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So, Jonathan Lehman's point is that if a government says you cannot meet for worship, you cannot sing, you cannot take communion, you cannot do these things, that is not clearly an illegitimate intrusion of state authority into ecclesiastical matters.

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That beggars belief. That beggars belief. Like, this is why I say, if you're waiting for him to tell you when it's time to fight, then you're crazy.

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You're absolutely insane. Don't hold your breath if you're doing that, because if it's not time to stand your ground when the government says you cannot sing unto the

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Lord, you cannot have the Lord's Supper, you cannot meet as a church, if that's not time to fight,

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I don't know what is. There is no time to fight. If that's not time to fight, then there will never, ever be a time to fight.

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Jonathan Lehman is completely, I can't say what

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I wanna say, he's wrong. He's wrong. How could he have this opinion?

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I have no idea, but he's trying to tie it to this jurisdictional overlap thing. It makes absolutely no sense.

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He says, one could argue that they are doing their job by seeking to maintain peace, order, and the preservation of life as hundreds of people gather, potentially infect one another, and then scatter into the wider community.

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So, because there's a chance you could get sick at church, then the government has the right to cancel church, because they're just trying to maintain peace and order and the preservation of life.

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Like, this is the thing, like, this is the problem with so much of what's happening right now. People aren't thinking even one step ahead.

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All they're thinking about is the now, the now, the now, the now. How can we make the argument that churches should remain open every flu season?

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How can we make the argument? Because every single flu season, you could get sick at church and potentially infect one another, and then potentially scatter into the wider community.

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Lives are at stake every flu season at church. And so, how could you argue against a government that said, you know what?

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During flu seasons, churches can't meet. Communion can't be taken. Lord's Supper can't be taken. No singing unto the

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Lord every flu season. How would you argue against it? I mean, it would just be a pragmatic argument.

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It would just be a matter of opinion. As long as you're accepting Jonathan Lehman's premises here, which I do not accept, it would just be a matter of opinion at that point.

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I mean, why wouldn't J .D. Greer say, you know, every flu season, we'll just close down church? Why not? Andy Stanley, why not?

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I'm sympathetic with Grace Community's concern about the indefinite elongation of this time. Still, if the state does have the authority to tell church leaders, if you try to bind the consciences of church members by telling them they should attend a gathering that could physically harm them, we will intervene.

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Then we should be as patient, even as that time extends for a while. Churches have endured the inconvenience of persecution and pandemics for years or even decades.

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I hope you've stuck with me these 40 minutes, because that sentence is hard to fathom how a

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Christian could write it. If the state does have the authority to tell church leaders, quote, if you try to bind the conscience of church members by telling them they should attend a gathering that could physically harm them, we will intervene.

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Does the state have that authority? Because he just got done saying that, you know, the church has its own authority, the government has its own authority, and sometimes they overlap, right?

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And then he's saying, he quotes John MacArthur, that it was an illegitimate intrusion of the state into ecclesiastical matters.

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Now John Lehman is saying that the church has no authority to bind the conscience of church members to do something that could harm them.

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Where does that end? The question is, where does that end? The government most certainly does not have that authority.

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It does not have that authority. I'm trying to think of how to put this.

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I don't know, I mean, you know,

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John, I'm kind of at a loss for words, guys. This is pretty impressive. Jonathan Lehman is pretending that when the

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LGBT mob comes, that he's gonna be bold and stand strong and stuff like that.

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Obviously he will not be doing that, but you can just see the LGBT argument here. Because if Jonathan Lehman really does believe this about the church not being allowed to bind the conscience of members in a way that'll physically harm them, how will the

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LGBT movement not use that exact argument? In fact, they are using that exact argument right now.

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They will say that the church's position on LGBT is causing harm. People are killing themselves.

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People are hurting themselves because the Bible rejects their gayness, right?

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So following Jonathan Lehman's logic, how could we not say the state doesn't have the authority to tell church leaders, quote, if you try to bind the conscience of a church member, an

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LGBT church member, by telling them they should attend a gathering that could harm them, we will intervene, physically harm them, we will intervene.

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This is what I'm saying. It doesn't seem like there's a capacity or a willingness to think ahead.

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For even one step ahead, right? Because this whole article is not about fundamentals or principles.

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It's not about any of that. All it's trying to do is to put doubt in your mind, if you were gonna attend church yesterday, put doubt in your mind from doing that.

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He wanted to stop as many people as he could from going to church on Sunday. I don't know why, but that's what he wanted to do by putting out this article on Saturday.

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And then the logic he uses, he must realize the position he's putting the church in for the future.

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Yeah, I don't know. Let's finish the article because I'm at a little bit of a loss for words. I was intending this to be calm.

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I think it was pretty calm, but man, I got triggered a few times. What's implied in MacArthur's statement is that his elders don't believe there's a real threat with COVID -19.

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Again, that is a judgment call they are allowed to make. And that judgment call presumably stands behind their subsequent judgment call to disobey the government.

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Once more, my goal here is not to necessarily disagree, much less condemn either judgment. I just wish that we had people that would tell us the truth, right?

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I just wish we would have people that would tell us the truth. My goal is to open up a little space of Christian freedom for other churches to make different judgments and then to encourage all of us to exercise patience and charity with one another and our churches as we make different decisions.

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Let's make sure we don't pass judgment on one another, but instead accept one another. This attitude should characterize the conversation between Christians, between churches, and even between church leaders and members as they come to different conclusions.

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As challenging as that might become, we must make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.

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Even if that means to you to decide to leave one church for another because you become convinced your leaders are making the wrong call, go in peace, charity, and grace.

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God's kingdom is much bigger than any one of our gatherings. Now, I could accept all of that, Jonathan Lehman. I could accept it all if you and your buddies hadn't spent the last four to five months telling us that we were in sin if we didn't do what the government told us to do.

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I could accept all of that if you would reject every one of these stupid, idiotic, love your neighbor as yourself articles that all it does is replace what the progressives are telling you to do and telling you that's how you love your neighbor.

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I could accept it. So this call to freedom, this call to freedom of conscience, it rings super hollow, knowing what has gone on the last four months.

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And so while I agree with that, because that's been my whole position from the beginning, your church should remain open so that everyone can exercise their freedom, right?

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That's been my position from the beginning. That has not been your position from the beginning. And so while I am very pleased that we are gaining ground in this conversation, you need to go a step further and you need to reject all of that other stuff you told us about how we're sinning if we don't do this closure.

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We're sinning if we don't wear the mask. We're sinning if we don't do things that the government has told us to do.

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If you want to repudiate all that stuff, repudiate everything that comes out from the

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Gospel Coalition about loving your neighbor as yourself by doing whatever the government tells you to do then we can talk, we can talk.

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But until then, this all rings hollow. This looks like just a desperate attempt to stop the tsunami of people that we're going to meet on church on Sunday.

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And I think that they met anyway. I don't think they took this article very seriously. You know why I don't think so?

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Because they've seen the kind of guy you are, Jonathan Lehman. This is a little over a month ago.

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This is you promoting the Black Lives Matter protests. Nary a word about, nary a word about how dangerous it was.

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Nary a word about loving your neighbor as yourself by not gathering together in big groups. Nary a word about it.

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Here's Jonathan Lehman. A couple people have asked how Faith That Works DC March was. It was super encouraging.

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It felt like a bunch of Christians marching around the single idea that black people are worthy of honor and respect because they are made in God's image.

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Praying that God would use this and other protests to change the culture, police culture, and even the church's culture that would all affirm the

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God imaging and the God -given glory of black lives. And if you're in DC, join us. You see, it's not about doing what the government says,

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Jonathan Lehman. It's not about the danger of COVID -19. I don't know what it's about because when you're motivated, when you're religiously motivated by a gathering, by singing, by marching, by being in close quarters with your brethren, when you're motivated, you'll do it.

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And you'll talk about how encouraging it is. And you'll ask people to join you. Come on, join us.

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You'll do it for Black Lives Matter, but for Christ.

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But for Christ, where's all the encouragement? Where's all the come join us, let's do this guys.

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No, no, for Christ, it's hold on. Stop and think with me for a moment.

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Think about your witness. No, I will not spend one iota of time worried about my witness according to what the pagan culture is saying.

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I won't spend any time worried about that. I have got a one -track mind. We're not playing pragmatic games like you.

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We're not trying to manage our capital, manage our obedience capital. We're not doing what you're doing.

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And that's the thing, that's what makes this so difficult. We're in different planets, Jonathan Lehman, because we've got a one -track mind where you have a mind that is divided.

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You're doing all kinds of stuff. And I think that this stuff about the protests that you've promoted, and then you combine it with this article against Grace Community Church's elders and their decision.

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And you just compare the two. It shows that you got divided interests.

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You're not of one mind on this thing. On the one hand, you've got someone to please with the protest stuff.

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And on the other hand, when it comes to pleasing Christ, well, then all of a sudden you've got nuance. You want people to hold on, wait, wait, before you meet for church, wait.

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One was commanded, one was not. And so I'm not gonna, I have an opinion about why you wrote this article.

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It's not love, because love rejoices in the truth. And this is not the truth.

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This is not the truth. Love is patient, love is kind, love is all of these things, but without the truth, it doesn't mean much.

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Doesn't mean much. So you didn't write this out of love. I have opinion why you wrote this, but the fact is that you're double -minded here when it comes to this issue, whether to gather, whether to encourage others to gather, all that kind of stuff.

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When it's for Christ and for the Lord's day, you've got ultimate nuance. You want it to be a matter of freedom. Okay, so then explain to me how that squares with what you've done over here on this

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Black Lives Matter. Explain to me how that squares with the months and months and months of telling us we were sinning if we weren't doing things the way the government told us to do them.

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Explain how all that squares. I don't think you'll ever do that, because you know that you're not of one mind here.

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We're not playing the same game you're playing. You think we're on the same page as you are, we're not. We're not playing your games of capital and trying to manage it, and we're not playing your games of trying to please multiple people.

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We're trying to please one person, and that's the Lord. Until you can show me how neglecting the assembly in the midst of a pandemic is required, that's not a position that I'm willing to entertain.

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Anyway, I hope you found this helpful. It's a little bit scattered, a little bit long, but I hope you found it helpful. God bless you.