Christianity Today Goes After John MacArthur

Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, hunkered down in my bunker, preparing for the impending invasion from outer space.

That's right. If you've been watching news or paying attention to what's happening on social media over the last few days, you'll know that even during the

Super Bowl last night, aliens or UFOs, I should say, was trending. And the military apparently is not ruling out that these unidentified flying objects that they've shot down with F -22s are potentially aliens from outer space.

Now, some are saying this is a distraction. What's happening in Ohio right now with the train derailment and authorities going in and burning in a controlled way, supposedly, these harmful chemicals that the train was carrying, and then that leading to deaths of animals, foxes, fish,

I'm assuming cats and dogs, within about a hundred -mile radius, and the authorities still saying the air quality is fine.

No, and I'm going to see here that stuff like that, corruption in the Biden administration, that kind of thing is why we're talking about aliens.

And it's a distraction. It's just a cover up for those things, because if we weren't talking about aliens, we would be talking about corruption in the

Biden administration, and we would be talking about this situation in Ohio.

Now, that's possible. I am not smart enough to analyze all that. I don't have all the information.

I will say this, though. My memory might be short, but it's not this short. I do remember in the vague recesses of my mind, about a week ago or so, there was an alien.

No, wait, it wasn't an alien. It was a Chinese spy balloon. And it traversed our whole entire country, just about, and was shot down over South Carolina.

And it just so happens that, roughly speaking, these incidences of UFOs being shot down just so happen to parallel the same trajectory, a flight path, that that Chinese spy balloon took.

Isn't that interesting? You could say it's just following the jet stream, but I still find it interesting.

I mean, the source seems to be somewhere to the west of us, somewhere in the

Far East, perhaps. Russia, China, where are these objects coming from that seem to parallel the jet stream?

Well, I, of course, am skeptical, more than skeptical, I'm ruling it out.

It's not aliens from outer space. And I have reasons that I don't have time to get into here for why I think that, and my fuller thoughts on aliens.

I know there's conservative pundits who disagree with me, like Matt Walsh, who thinks, yeah, there's aliens, or at least is very open to it.

And I don't think so. I have theological reasons for that too, and just some scientific reasons.

But that being said, I do think that the Chinese, being a much more likely explanation for what's happening, potentially, should be focused on a lot more in our news cycle.

And I realize, it might just be now, every day, another UFO is shot down, so it doesn't even make the news.

But I hope that doesn't happen. I do think that China is licking their chops for the moment they can bring about our downfall.

They want to invade Taiwan so bad, they have become the number one colonizer all over the earth.

It's economic colonization. My friend Judd Saul, who works with Equipping the Persecuted, we've talked about that on this podcast, he just got back from Nigeria, and they're building a port there, about a billion -dollar port.

And they're not just giving these things to the Nigerians. They're not doing the same thing in South America, because they're just, of their own good heart, they want to help countries that are less fortunate.

No, they're strings attached. And they are seeking domination. And so I want to share with you, before we get into the main subject, which is going to be

Christianity Today and John MacArthur and this whole ordeal, I want to talk about the situation with China briefly, because I want to introduce you to a project that I am proud to be part of.

I am a producer on this for Last Stand Studios, and it has the potential to be one of the biggest projects we've ever done.

And we want to do this before the next presidential election. We think it's an important enough topic to talk about, and it's being ignored.

And so I want to present to you a concept trailer. Now, of course, we are only funded by donations.

And that's a conscious decision on our part at this point. We have many reasons for it, but some of them are ethical.

Some of them are bad experience with working with other groups that don't seem to have the guts to really fight as hard as they ought to, or fight at want to.

We don't care as much about reputation as far as we know that we'll be called names.

We know that there will be those who oppose us for some of the things that we produce.

But we're after the truth. That's our priority. And the best way that we can have the freedom to tell the truth is by crowdfunding it through personal donations, and not being tied to some larger entity, corporation, company, organization, ministry.

So that's how we're doing it right now. And so we could use your help. If this is something that resonates with you.

And so I'll show it to you, and we'll talk a little bit more. Here's the concept trailer. Unrestricted warfare.

That's the M .O. of the world's largest criminal organization – the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP holds 1 .4 billion of its own people hostage in a living nightmare.

Surveillance is constant. Human rights? Non -existent.

No atrocity is off limits in its quest to conquer the globe. In the

USA, surely we don't have to be concerned about the police state across the Pacific, do we?

It might be time to ask why our elites have intertwined the

CCP with the western world. Instead of defending us from the party, they collaborate with it.

They appease it. They see it as a lucrative new model for the world.

And it sees us as sitting ducks. My wife thought it was a little intense.

That's intended though. It's supposed to be. I mean, this is a big deal, what's happening. And I've seen the research that has gone into this, much of it.

And we still have a number of interviews we need to do. This is going to be as big or as little as the funding we get, really.

It's that way with all of our projects. And so we tried to pick projects that I know that we're going to do whether or not we get the funding.

Even if you're a patron and give, some of that goes to this. And so I'm down for doing this, but we can make it so much better the more funding we get.

And so if this is something you're interested in helping with, it's one of many projects I know that we're working on and I've told you about.

I know I mentioned the 1607 project, and I'll talk about that some more as time goes on.

But any help that you can give us, it helps us with travel, with equipment, with the cost of producing, and unforeseen expenses.

And we do operate on a shoestring. We're lean, mean, and we travel light.

And we do the best job that we can with what we're given. And so anyway,

I appreciate all those who would consider giving. I'm going to put a link in the info section if this is something you're interested in doing.

And we're going to go to various media outlets with it as well and see how big we can get this thing to go.

But I'm hoping that by the fall of this year, we'll have something along these lines, in addition to some of the other projects

The Last Stand Studio is working on. And frankly, even giving to this project will help with any of those projects.

So a link is in the info section, and that will contain a link embedded in it for the video you just watched as well.

All right, let's get to the main subject today. And I'm only going to focus on this. We're not going to do a roundup.

It's just going to be this one subject because it's just I think too big to do a roundup here.

And I want to, I'm going to broaden it a little bit because I want to talk a little bit about what

I see, what I see happening on a larger scale, not just with this attack on Grace Community Church, but just what's the significance of this?

How does this fit into what's happening more broadly speaking? Not just at Grace Community Church, but in the

Southern Baptist Convention, in evangelicalism in general, and especially as it relates to the

Me Too movement or the version of it promoted by people like Rachel Denhollander. So we're going to talk about that, but I'm going to use this situation to some extent as, because it is the situation trending, as an example of what

I see and what I think is happening. So let's, I'll refresh some of your memories if that's okay, because I know not all of you remember this situation, but this is a slide from a slide show that I put together about a year ago, and I did a long podcast.

It was maybe two hours long on this whole incident with David Gray, and this is from over two decades ago, so it's very hard to piece together something from 2001 to 2005, but I put together a timeline, and so this is just, it gives you a little bit of an idea about what happened.

You had Eileen Gray, who was concerned over an abuse incident on May 10th of 2001, file a legal separation, and she obtained a restraining order.

The next day, she goes to Gray's Community Church, where she worshipped, and she goes to the elders there, and she hopes that they were going to protect her and her children, apparently, and get

David some professional help. Now, if you go to Gray's Community Church, I've said this before, you know that they're into biblical counseling there, and they're not going to refer you ever to a psychologist, or a therapist, or any secular person.

They think the Word of God is sufficient to handle issues, especially issues like this that pertain to sin, that pertain to the soul, and they're going to provide a

Christian counselor. They would call it probably a biblical counselor, or the older term is a euthetic counselor.

They probably wouldn't, for those who are uninitiated into this, I sometimes loosely use the term

Christian counselor, but there is a difference between Christian counseling, which is more integrated with psychology, and then biblical counseling, which sees the

Word of God as sufficient for these issues. So it would be more like a biblical counseling situation, and so I'm assuming that's what she was seeking.

And then Gray's Community Church sent her multiple letters months into this process, according to a blog from a year ago, to threaten

Eileen with church discipline if she failed to comply with the elders' request to drop the protective order against her husband

David and take him back. And this led to her becoming church -disciplined.

John MacArthur announced on August 18th of 2002 that Eileen had not yet...or that Eileen was being disciplined from the church for this failure to get things right with her husband, and at this point

Eileen had not yet reported her husband's physical and mental abuse to police, apparently. And some of these later accusations that David, the husband, gets convicted of, have not even seen the light of day yet.

And we can infer that likely the elders at the church would not have known about this, but we don't know because we don't have all the counseling details.

And it would seem unlikely for them not to if it was as bad as it was later found out to be, or at least purported to be, that the elders would not have called or gotten involved in some way to call the police or get legal help or law enforcement involved, which they do in other cases.

And for those also who haven't seen the other videos, I should mention I do have a connection to some extent to Grace Community Church.

I did do a semester there at master's. My uncle's a member there. My parents met there. My dad's a master's seminary graduate.

So I am somewhat familiar with how the church operates in general.

I'm not intimate with all the details, but I just know that when it comes to counseling, because I've had biblical counseling there,

I've had a conflict resolution class there, I've also had integrated classes at Liberty University on counseling.

I've also taken some courses on my own. So I know a little bit. I'm not saying that I'm an expert, but I do know a little bit about the kind of thinking that those at Grace Community Church have towards something like this.

And that would have been, if the things that David Gray was convicted of, those would have been the kinds of things that I know in other situations would definitely be reported.

So anyway, I do pepper my own understanding into this of what

I know in general. I'm not making a claim as to whether they did something wrong or didn't do something wrong in this particular case.

I'm just saying it would be very odd for it to get to this point, them to know that this man,

David Gray, is a sexual abuser of his children, and was very recently involved with it, and them not to get the police involved.

But anyway, this keeps going, and legal charges are filed.

Carrie Hardy and Bill Shannon, who are the counselors from Grace Community Church, were written up by the LAPD. Hardy was charged with two misdemeanors, failing to report child abuse and intimidating a witness.

Shannon was ordered to appear at a city attorney hearing, but Hardy's case was dismissed. Which, if you're gonna trust the legal system, you also have to trust that.

If you're gonna say, I trust all of it, and I trust the conviction of David Gray, you also need to probably be consistent and say, okay,

I trust the wisdom of dismissing Hardy's case here. Al Mohler, so typical

Al Mohler, he defended Grace Community Church, and then later on when this became an issue last year, he's saying, well

I wouldn't have done that now. So that's a basic timeline of what happened.

Much more could be said, but you can go back to the video I did a year ago on this, or you can, there's been so many people that have written on this.

Where we are now is, an elder from the church, Han Cho, came out, and there was speculation a year ago that he was, because he had resigned after this incident, that he had done so because of this particular situation that I just referenced from over two decades ago.

And I mentioned on the podcast last time that there were people at the church who told me that, no, that had nothing to do with it, it was a, it was family issues, it was other things, and you know, and I'm not close enough to this situation, but I just want to let everyone know now,

I have been told by others that reached out to me, I didn't seek this information, but people reached out to me and said, no, it was definitely that situation.

So I'll just give the benefit of the doubt on that, that was the, from the beginning, stated intention here of why

Han Cho, this former elder resigned, and he's also a lawyer, and so that's also factored into this, that well, you have to trust a lawyer, he's a trained lawyer, and I'm not as impressed with that, but some people are, and so he looked at these documents, he wasn't there at the church during the time this took place, but apparently he looked at court documents, and there's a file that he has, now he has not released that, and there weren't any links in the

Christianity Today article that focuses on his testimony here that shared any new information, and so that's one of the things that I think needs to, one point that needs to be made is that this situation is, the only new information so far is that you have an elder who has taken a side against the other elders at the church, that's about it.

There isn't actually new evidence or information that's come forward about what happened two decades ago, and what the pastors knew at what time, and whether they were culpable.

None of that has taken place as far as I know, and at least it's not in the Christianity Today article. So the new news cycle that's developed over this seems very focused on the testimony of this one elder,

Han Cho, and I'll get into that as the podcast unfolds, and kind of what I think of that, and how much weight to give that, but I did write a whole entire, you probably can't read the font here, but if you're a patron you're gonna get a copy of this

PowerPoint, I'll put a link in the info section. I did write a whole thing just stating my thoughts on this situation, and I realized

I probably won't please either side completely on this, because you have a side that's ravaging...

I'm talking about the extreme elements of both sides. You have ravaging, me too, just let's tear it down and burn it, and then you have the other side that is the extreme elements, at least, that are

John MacArthur can do no wrong, Grace Community Church can do no wrong, and whatever decision they've made must be right because they're elders, and you have these two sides, and I don't know that I would fit into either one.

I certainly don't fit into the let's burn it all down, obviously, but I really don't fit into the let's just...

whatever is told to us from elders, we have to necessarily accept that, and one of the reasons

I have to say this, and I know this offends some people, is because I would be a hypocrite. Many of you listen to this podcast, and you've heard me talk about incidences with J .D.

Greer and Matt Chandler, David Platt, you've heard me talk about these other pastors with prominent churches where there's been situations related to sexual abuse, and I wasn't there for it, but I've weighed in on it to some extent, at least with the publicly available information, and there have been causes for concern with the way some of these cases have been handled, and so in those cases,

I think even some of the people who are diehard supporters of Grace Community Church would admit that it's not wrong to question the wisdom of even someone who is an elder.

Now you do that with much care, much forethought. In fact, you don't make charges against an elder without two or three witnesses or lines of authentication.

You need to be very careful in this. But I don't think that it's...there's a whole reason there's qualifications for elders, right?

There's a process of questioning here. The church I attend, and again, my dad's a graduate of the

Master's Seminary, so we're very in line with most of the theology coming out of that church,

I would say, and we have a process every year to just make sure that the elders meet the qualifications still.

That's something that, you know, even in a situation where elders rule or elders lead, the congregation still has a responsibility to ensure that there are,

I believe at least, and I don't want to get into polity right now, I probably shouldn't have gone down this road, but it is related.

So I do think that the congregation has a responsibility to at least recognize, and that means evaluate the lives of their elders, their leaders, and their leaders have to be intimate with them.

They have to be known in their personal lives. If you don't know your pastor, if you don't know the elders that you serve under, that are supposed to help you in your own spiritual walk, guard your soul, then that's a problem, right?

So anyway, I wrote this whole thing. I'll just briefly summarize a few of the points, and then

I'll get into my major concerns, and this will explain why I'm even talking about this. Why, you know, what's it of your business,

John? I'll explain. So I first read the statement Grace Community Church made, and this is where I think it's been obvious I've departed to some extent, and it's with much respect, but I've said,

I think that someone needs to come out and say something about this. Only one side is being presented, and these kinds of statements,

I don't think, help. And I'm saying this as humbly as I can, I don't know how else to say it. In the position that I'm in, it's not meant to be disrespectful, but it is what

I believe, and I think I have some substantiation for it. But here's what Grace Community Church said. They said, Grace Church's elders do not discuss details publicly arising from counseling and discipline cases on social media, nor do we litigate disputes about such matters in online forums.

Grace Church deals with accusations personally and privately in accordance with biblical principles. We do not respond to attacks, lies, misrepresentations, and anonymous accusations.

Our church's history and congregation are the testimony. Myriads of Grace Church members who have sought counsel at our church will testify that the counsel they receive is biblical, charitable, supportive, and liberating.

Now, there's some really good stuff in this, as far as I'm thinking of specifically Proverbs chapter 27, verse 2, which says, "...let

another praise you, and not your own mouth, a stranger, and not your own lips." And in this statement, I think what they're doing is they are saying, we have the testimony of other people at our church who have—many of them,

I mean, you're talking thousands of people who have been through our counseling—who have contradicted the claims that are being made about us.

And some of the claims being made are extreme, guys. They're not just saying they got this incident wrong and they should apologize, they're saying, and Grace Community Church is this horrible, toxic, racist, sexist place.

I mean, that's what's going on online right now. And so this is their response to,

I think, all of it. And so some of this, I think, is good. The thing, though, that I would love to see—and it may not come from Grace Community Church, it looks like it won't, but maybe from people who have left the church since then, who were part of this situation from two decades ago—is, if there is more information, if there is exonerating information, or if there is information that at least demonstrates that the counselors at Grace Community Church were unaware of the extent to which, if it's true that David Gray did this, what he was convicted of, that they were unaware of it, if there's information that leads to that, or if there's information that seems to justify the idea that the jury got it wrong, it would be nice if some of that would come forward.

And I'll put that on the shelf for a minute, because I'll make the case for that more at the end of this podcast, but I want everyone to know kind of where I'm going to land the plane at the end of this, and that's one of the places

I'm going to land it. The reason I'm concerned, the reason I'm even talking about this, is because this goes so far beyond Grace Community Church and John MacArthur.

You have insinuations all over the place that church discipline is cult -like behavior, that calling for repentance is harassment, that biblical counseling is unlicensed and therefore it's not authoritative.

You have changing pastoral qualifications, because now you're not above reproach, because the world thinks of you in a certain way.

There's all kinds of things happening here that I see as affecting much more than John MacArthur's ministry.

So anyway, this is, I'll read you some of what I wrote on this.

I said, my position on this has not changed since last year. If you read all the available information, it becomes clear that certain details are left out.

The Grace Community Church security observations of child interactions with her father,

David, the church providing the wife, Eileen, with security escort and a place to stay, just shows that they have a priority of protecting the children and the wife.

That's what I'm saying. If those things are left out, they're not part of the story, then you're leaving out something significant.

That the wife, Eileen, had also treated the children harshly according to testimony, that detective testimony could not corroborate the children's accusations against their father, the father,

David, and that expert testimony suspected confabulation with the children.

These are all things that I think are significant enough, if you're trying to go back two decades to figure out why elders would make the decision they did and think that Eileen needed to take her husband back after going through a process of counseling, these would be significant things, wouldn't you think?

Because it shows you at least that there was some doubt, and maybe those elders didn't agree with the decision of the jury.

Maybe they didn't have the information that they needed. That's why I say it would be nice if those things were clarified. So I think biblical counselors can get things wrong, but secular counseling is a mess.

That's not the alternative. That's one of the problems. And even if the statements about Grace Community Church supporting a convicted child abuser are true, drawing from this the notion that dumping biblical counseling in church discipline for psychology and little accountability is foolhardy, and that's why

I'm weighing in. That's it. That's why I think this is important. I'm looking at where this is going, the telos of these accusations, the narrative that's being constructed here.

And to create a parallel here, if you remember No Fault Divorce, or if you've read about it, it was justified because while there's some wives who are abused and they don't have any recourse to get out of the marriage because the husband doesn't agree to divorce them.

And so we should make divorce simpler. We should have No Fault Divorce. And what has that led to?

Well, now we know that that's led to broken homes. It's led to horrible situations for children.

And it was made with good intentions. And you could have that with this. You could have some people that have some good intentions here.

Hancho may be one of them. But what they're playing into, and what inevitably is happening,

I think is going to lead to situations that are far worse. The cure is sometimes worse than the disease.

People like myself who greatly benefit from John MacArthur's ministry do not readily accept the idea that he would knowingly support marital abuse or a process that is the least bit tolerant of it.

We do not have a reason at this point to believe that this particular accusation is true, and I will hold my ground on that.

I don't think we have any evidence to say that. And that's where I think everyone wants to go.

John MacArthur knowingly supported a child abuser. I still maintain this.

The Christianity Today article cannot be ignored as easily as some defenders want because they have a former elder who has publicly come out right before Shepard's Conference, and that gives the narrative against the church much more credibility.

Now some would argue with me, Hancho, his testimony doesn't give credibility, but I would tell you I think it does.

And if we're trying to be fair and honest, if you're a journalist or if you're even a historian going back and looking at this incident, that would be one of the things that you would put in the record as a primary source.

Now not a primary source as it relates to what happened 20 years ago, but at least in the reaction over the last year because he was present for those meetings.

So there's a number of conclusions I drew in this little statement I made. I said voices lacking credibility can be ignored, but a former elder does not lack credibility.

These accusations are not simply against John MacArthur, but they are against biblical counseling, church discipline, and everyone who supports

John MacArthur or Grace Community Church. And it's possible Christianity Today is not owed an explanation, or the

New York Times or Washington Post if they pick it up, but the people who support the ministry with their dollars should be,

I should think. And I want to amend that to say, I think the members of the church, maybe if you want to make it even smaller, that's fine.

But at least the members of the church, I would think, it'd be good if they had an explanation for this. Because one of the things that I noticed happening is people, they're in the dark when there's a lack of transparency.

And when only one side's being told, and they're only getting countervailing information from a rumor mill or something like that, and everything coming from the church is just, trust us, it actually, on some people at least, has the opposite effect.

It makes them think, in our age, when there's so much cover -up, there's so many examples of ministry leaders who once were trusted that have now failed in some way, and it's been proven, that when there's a perception that transparency is lacking, mistrust increases.

So I encouraged, I said, look, I said, the principle I see is that if a particular accusation takes hold of a church that threatens the church, it should be addressed.

I believe these accusations do threaten the church. There are two possibilities that could happen more broadly.

One is admitting whatever wrongdoing took place in hindsight, and make it clear that these wrongdoings are not the result of rightly applying church discipline and biblical counseling, but instead attributed to the failures of men.

So that's one option, like, hey, we messed up on this case. But, you know, it's not because of our theology, it's because here's where we made the error.

The second possibility is just preventing, or presenting, I should say, missing information or testimony that will exonerate the show.

No, we did the right thing with the information we had, so we have nothing to apologize for here. When neither of these courses are taken, mistrust is just gonna build.

So that was what I wrote the other day. I want to get into more details, and with examples for you, of why

I'm concerned about this, and why I think this goes way beyond John MacArthur and Grace Community Church. Here's a tweet, and it got a little bit of play on Twitter, and it says, per 1

Timothy 3, 1 through 7, John MacArthur is not qualified to be a pastor. I'm even using his translation here of the

Bible, quoting 1 Timothy 3, 7. He is not above reproach, he is not pugnacious, not peaceable, has issues with money, and last of all, this is the big one, does not have a good reputation with those outside the church.

Now, I pointed this out a few weeks ago, that I saw this coming, and now it's here, that the assumption of that verse is that having a good reputation means somehow being in the good graces of the world.

The world thinks well of you. Which, if the world thinks well of you, that's not necessarily a good thing. And I want to read for you what

John Calvin says about this, on 1 Timothy 3, 7. He says this, a good report from those who are without.

This appears to be very difficult, that a religious man should have, as witnesses of his integrity, infidels themselves, who are furiously mad to tell lies against us.

But the Apostle means that, so far as it relates to external behavior, even unbelievers themselves shall be constrained to acknowledge him to be a good man.

For although they groundlessly slander all the children of God, yet they cannot pronounce him to be a wicked man.

Who leads a good and inoffensive life amongst them? Such is the acknowledgment of uprightness, which

Paul here describes. The reason is added, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil, which

I explain in this manner. Lest, being subject to reproach, he begin to be hardened and abandon himself and more freely to all iniquity, which is to entangle himself in the snares of the devil, for what hope is left for him who sins without any shame.

This is, I think, the correct interpretation of that verse. It's not like, wow, everyone in your local community really should love you.

If we do one of those focus groups, they all say that they get good vibes.

They think of you positively, you should run for public office. No, that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about, you're gonna be a good employer.

Your family knows that you have a good character. These other characters that are qualifications for a pastor are evident in your public life, so you don't just walk into the church and act one way and then the rest of the time act a different way.

There's accountability here. When there's no incentive from a human standpoint to behave, you still behave.

I mean, I had this to some extent at secular jobs that I've worked, where it's obvious I don't use foul language.

I don't participate in some of the things some of them do after work. I'm different.

Some of them didn't like me for that, but everyone knew I was a good worker, that I would get the job done, that I wasn't going to...

I was reliable. I wasn't gonna cheat. I wasn't going to steal from others. Those are the kinds of things that this verse is talking about, and if we change the definition of this, if we start to think, well, hit peace against John MacArthur on social media, and now, man, it doesn't look good.

People outside the church are thinking bad about him, so he's not qualified. Then we will let our own enemies be the ones to define us and control us.

They become the gatekeepers, and that's already happened in not just Christianity, but in political conservatism.

We let the New York Times be the gatekeepers for who's acceptable and who's not, and it's not right.

But I knew that this would lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of this verse, and so it has.

And so I need to stick up for that. This is sticking up for Scripture, and that's one issue.

Now a bigger issue here is questioning church discipline, and this is from the Christianity Today article.

Discipline as a distinctive—you can even see in the way these headlines are presented—there's an effort to downplay church discipline.

While evangelicals are growing more sensitive to the dynamics of abuse, some conservative communities retain an underlying skepticism around victim advocacy movements and trauma -informed psychologists defending the place of the local church and addressing marital conflicts.

Former members who reported abuse said they feared church discipline for a lack of submission or abandoning their marriage.

While most evangelical churches have formed—I'll just stop there. That's so interesting to me.

Former members who reported abuse said they feared church discipline. I mean, members of Grace Community Church.

They don't have— you have to take this with a grain of salt if there's not a primary source.

But they're saying that the members exist. There's no link there, but take our word for it. They feared church discipline for lack of submission to abandoning their marriage.

Well, what does that mean, though? Does it mean if I file for divorce without the grounds for divorce that I will be disciplined?

Wouldn't that be appropriate? It would be. You didn't seek reconciliation. You didn't go to the church.

You didn't have grounds for a divorce. There wasn't sexual morality. Some would say abandonment fits into this as well.

I don't want to get into that now, but there was some abuse of some kind, and that means now—so it's vague.

It's too vague. But the way it's all framed, because I'm pretty— knowing what I know about Grace Community Church, I'm pretty sure that's what it is.

You didn't have the grounds for divorce, you got divorced, you disobeyed Scripture, and that's discipline. It's just—it's simple. It's cut and dry. It's just, what does the

Bible say? But the way this is framed is that there's this culture of fear that they can't even report abuse because they'll get church discipline, when it's really—I'm like 99 .9

% sure about this—it's really seeking divorce or seeking— well, yeah, it's divorce.

It would be divorce without the proper grounds. Anyway, let's keep going. While most evangelical churches have formalized disciplinary processes and written policies and bylaws, it's becoming less common for American churches to follow them in practice, and even rarer for a church to publicly announce discipline cases multiple times a year, according to Sandy, a

Christian mediator. I wonder if that's Ken Sandy. I think it is. MacArthur considers church discipline a distinctive at Grace Community Church, where elders follow guidelines, and distinctive is in parentheses.

Taken from Matthew 18, first confronting the accused privately and then with another witness before publicly announcing cases of discipline that have made it to the third stage of the process, when unrepentant would preclude a member from participating in the

Lord's Supper, Cho, the former elder, said that at this stage, elders must unanimously approve cases that go before the church body a few times a year during monthly communion services.

The women who spoke to Christianity Today about their counseling experiences had been members of Grace for years, some over a decade, and had sat in the services.

When MacArthur announced church discipline, they believed that if leaders didn't see their situation as grounds for divorce, their names could be read.

What's the insinuation here? Practicing church discipline has an effect.

And I explained this when we were talking about Richard Weaver's stuff. Everything has to have like a social utility, a social benefit.

You justify the existence of the church, is what Keller does, based upon the fact that it serves social needs of some kind.

And here you have a situation where they're saying that this biblical practice, church discipline, is leading to people who feel intimidated so they don't share their abuse, and that leads to more abuse, and they stay in these abusive relationships.

So the rightness or the wrongness of it, the truth or the falseness of it, isn't so much the barometer, it's the effect it has.

And if it has a negative effect, which means some people feeling like they shouldn't share their abuse, whether they incorrectly think that or not, that becomes now a way to judge whether or not it should be a distinctive.

That's how this whole thing is framed, and this is where I see this whole thing going.

It is the downplaying of church discipline, watering it down, making it less of a priority, showing how it's really negative, it leads to negative things, especially when you practice it in the way

Grace Community Church does, which, hint hint, they take it seriously there. So again,

I have to defend the Bible. The Bible, clearly, if you read Matthew 18, clearly there's a process there for church discipline.

Discrediting biblical counseling, that's the other thing that I need to stick up for here. And some of you might think, oh, John's just sticking up for Grace Community Church.

It's not so much that. Look, the fact that the elders don't want to really defend the church publicly, that's a big incentive for me not to weigh in on this.

It's just, that means I'm kind of out there, right? Or the other people who talk about this, they kind of have to charge in, but they don't have that backup.

They don't have that legitimacy that would come from the actual party being accused presenting their defense.

It's a disincentive to weigh in on things like that. But this stuff, this stuff I have to weigh in on, because it's bigger than that.

That's what I'm trying to show everyone. It's bigger than that. Like, it's not about MacArthur and what you think or don't think about MacArthur, it's about these issues.

Do you want to see biblical counseling discredited? Well, here's some from when the story broke.

Will Soto, who got over 1 ,000 likes on this, over 1 ,200 likes, from an ordained pastor and mental health crisis counselor, pastors are not trauma counselors.

Biblical counseling is not trauma counseling. It is prideful, dangerous, and ignorant to think otherwise.

Do not harm or refer to qualified, trained professionals. That's right, right. The pastors aren't equipped for this, it's the trained professionals.

Bible Queen, PhD, also got a number of likes on this. I don't know who needs to hear this right now, but biblical counseling is not therapy.

And someone asked a question and she goes on and said, I think

I would lump all biblical counseling together. The only counseling I would recommend, counseling from a licensed professional counselor.

Well, here's another one. The Grace Community Church John MacArthur story is only the tip of the iceberg.

How many churches across America and globally have Grace Community Church leaders? Well, I go to a church with one.

I went to 1 ,000 of miles from Grace Community Church and got the same counsel.

My heart is shattered. I feel this is only the beginning. Abuse, Grace Community Church, John MacArthur.

And someone responds, I'm so sorry, I believe you're right. Biblical counseling, euthetic counseling ignores the necessity, interpretive task in applying biblical principles.

It presents whatever Grace Community Church's application was as what the Bible says. So much exponential harm through their influence.

Now look, if you, let's take the straw man, I think it's a straw man at least, and there might be some cases that are actually like this at places like Grace Community Church.

It's a big place, thousands of people go through it, they've had a lot of counselors. I would expect there to be some bad cases.

They're not gonna, you know, be perfect. So set your expectations here.

So I'm not weighing in on whoever this person is, Aletheia, but I will say this. If you think of biblical counseling or euthetic counseling—euthetic means confrontative counseling—if you think of those things, and the image that pops up in your mind is not interpreting biblical principles, but just doing whatever the elders think is best, that's not biblical counseling.

By definition, it can't be. It's not euthetic counseling. That's something else. And if that is happening, it may be cult -like behavior.

If someone's calling that biblical counseling, and they're saying, just trust me, I'm the authority here, that may be a problem.

And you may be wanting to look for the back door of that church and say, you know what, no. So that's—but that's not—the problem is, that's not biblical counseling, though.

Biblical counseling is really—it's really simple, honestly. It's the idea that the

Bible is sufficient to counsel people in issues pertaining to the soul, to sin.

Pastors are competent to apply these principles to specific situations. They have the tools they need in the

Bible, and they don't need psychology. Now, there are—there's a range of people in biblical counseling and what they think of psychology.

Some who think—who are on one side of the spectrum who think all psychology is wrong and bad because it starts with fundamentally anti -biblical assumptions, which modern psychology does.

And then there are others who say, well, we can actually glean some things from psychology as far as data collection, observations, perhaps.

We can at least acknowledge certain therapies that have done certain things, but we have to recognize, in all that, that it is not sufficient, only the

Bible is. And at best, you might be able to get contributing tools of analysis or something like that, right?

The analytical tools. You could—you have people that would say they're biblical counselors who fall more in line with that.

But you won't have anyone in that who says, it's whatever the elders think or say. They're accountable to the

Word of God, and ultimately it's the Word of God where we have to get our assumptions. And that's where the solutions to these problems flow out of.

All right. Now, this—these are the problems, right? Like I said, changing pastoral qualifications, questioning church discipline, discrediting biblical counseling that I'm concerned with.

That's why I do a podcast like this. I do want to weigh in, though, on the only new piece of—if you want to call it evidence—that has, at least at this point, made its way to the surface.

And that—the only thing is that this elder, former elder Han Cho, has come out against the

Church and thinks they should retract the discipline, and they're not. And so here's what he says on his own personal

Facebook page. He says, Kate Shelnut of Christianity Today—she's the editor, or the—sorry,

Russell Moore is her boss. He's the editor, right? Editor -in -chief. She is the reporter. Kate Shelnut is a sister in the

Lord, and her competence and character have been attested to by mutual friends who I trust.

This is after this story was posted, and he goes on in a long post to just say how good of a job she did.

She didn't misquote anything. And so I thought to myself, who's Kate Shelnut?

He's praising Kate Shelnut. And some people reached out to me and said, Han Cho's a very gracious man.

I don't think I've ever met him, but I would take everyone at their word and believe that. That's true, that he's gracious, that he's kind, that he has good intentions.

I'm okay with all that. But what I want to question here is, is

Kate Shelnut someone with competence and character for this particular issue?

And then the second thing is, why go to Christianity Today? Christianity Today and Kate Shelnut?

Because, I mean, this is going to Russell Moore's organization to speak about things that happened at the local church, about Grace Community Church.

Whether that's to warn others or to try to pressure them to do the right thing in his mind, you're still going to Christianity Today.

This is one of the things that I thought was terrible about the way Russell Moore operated and Tim Keller.

It's like they go to the Washington Post or New York Times to speak down to people who are in evangelical churches.

And I see something similar here where, why go to Christianity Today? That's not a reputable publication that would,

I mean, this is a publication that has been going not just farther politically left, but softening orthodoxy for years now.

That alone is going to cause a problem. It might even be better just to release, here's a Facebook post and if someone wants to pick it up, they can pick it up, but here's my public post warning people about this.

I mean, there's other ways that he could have probably gone about this. I don't know what other avenues he had available to him to whistleblow on this.

It just, it seems odd to me to go to Christianity Today for this particular issue. Because, and this is why

I'm saying that, Kate Shelnut is basically a Me Too activist in evangelicalism. And I could have put a lot more statuses here, but I just put a few.

Speaking about reporting, these are from different years and different times, but speaking about reporting on Me Too at the

Evangelical Press Association convention this morning, sadly more relevant than ever. So she's somewhat buying the narrative that this is an increasing problem.

There's some legitimacy to the Me Too movement. She says this address, this is in, let's see, she talks about,

I think this is a J .D. Greer speech she's commenting on. The address is the first time that I think you sense a hint of the weight of the abuse crisis and the decisions that await.

Still, J .D. Greer's address was also pretty critical and compelling last year, both on sex abuse and racism.

So she's admitting, you know, J .D. Greer here, and I remember that speech, it was horrible. It's compelling, you know, compelling on his whole thing on the problem with the

Southern Baptist Convention and sex abuse, which we've shown you that it's not the problem they're making it out to be.

Of course, every instance is a problem, but as far as the systemic characterizing our denomination, level 10 threat, we need the experts know.

But she thinks, you know, J .D. Greer had a good speech on that. She says this about the

Democratic debate, comparing it to the Republicans' debates. This is when Trump was running first. Words we did not hear during the previous

GOP debates, Black Lives Matter. Now, that's a bad thing, I guess.

The GOP's not talking about Black Lives Matter. She says, let's see here, this is someone who posts,

Emma Green, a dispatch from the universe that is not being covered on Kavanaugh. I talked to roughly a dozen conservative women activists who are spitting mad about what's happening to Brent Kavanaugh.

And Kate Shelton says, there are so many ways to be mad about what's happening to Brent Kavanaugh. And I'm taking that as sarcastic that, you know, she's, because it's in quotations here, so many ways to be, quote, mad about what's happening about Brent Kavanaugh, unquote.

She was not on the right side of that particular situation. Listen, someone posts, listen to Beth Moore, Rachel Denhollander, and Susan, and you will know exactly what the enemy wants to silence them.

These are advocates for the Me Too agenda in the Southern Baptist Convention. This was at SBC 2019.

Kate Shelton says, seriously, heartbreaking to think of how many other voices have been shamed, silenced, and sidelined as a result of the abuse perpetuated against them.

Have people shamed, silenced Susan Condon, Rachel Denhollander, and Beth Moore, shamed because of abuse, because as a result of abuse perpetuated against them?

No. For Beth Moore, it's usually the things she tweets about as far as preaching to mixed audiences and so forth.

But it's, the reasons are because they want to foist innovations upon the convention to change the fundamental nature of the convention.

One more SBC 21 story, she says, despite the significance of the abuse measures, the topic that came up most was critical race theory.

And listen to this, the suspicions around CRT fall at a time when black leaders are rising to new positions in the

SBC and black churches are growing. So that's significant to her. It's, so what's the insinuation there?

It's racism. Yeah, more black people are becoming leaders. We got to clamp down on that CRT.

I've been looking forward to this one. Julie Rogers, he says, talking about a redemptive imagination for LGBT Christians in the church.

Man, I'd love to see what that, I haven't, I haven't looked up what that speech is about, but I would be very curious.

At church group tonight, we ate Mexican food and prayed and talked about me too, and sang a bunch of 90s songs.

I feel known and loved, all caps. All right. Well, last but not least, she has a lot to say about Rachel Denhollander.

And this is what she says. This is just one sample. This morning, she's at a conference and they're hosting the inimitable

Rachel Denhollander to talk about the issue of sexual abuse on campus and a Christian response to abuse.

And she concludes her tweet thread with beautiful picture of the lion and lamb and revelation from Rachel Denhollander, an incredible biblical and gospel centered talk from someone who clearly knows the theology behind the issue and is reflecting the heart of God.

Now, I would like to share with you a few clips from this particular speech.

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole too deep here, but I do want to share with you, because this is, again, about what's happening more broadly, not just Grace Community Church, more broadly.

This is just one example of what's happening with John MacArthur and Grace Community Church. Here are some of the things

Rachel Denhollander said in that speech that the reporter, Kate Shelnut, really enjoyed.

And the first thing we need to really wrestle with is how broad a problem this is. Overall, approximately 25 % of women will experience sexual assault.

A significant amount of that will take place on college campuses. Experts who have researched predatory behavior and patterns of sexual predators have found that predators often intentionally target faith communities.

And they do this because of wrongly held theology that inadvertently makes our theological institutions, be they campuses or churches, a safe place for predators and a dangerous place for victims to speak up.

Our failure to properly understand the issue of sexual assault not only causes extreme damage to the victims, but it creates a culture where abuse can flourish.

And that damages the gospel of Christ. Nearly every sexual assault victim struggles at some level with some form of sexual manifestation of the trauma that they have endured.

This often stems from two lies victims believe. First, this is all I'm worth now.

This is where my value is. And far too often in Christian institutions, the way we teach about marriage and purity reinforces this.

You're damaged now. And second, it is an attempt to regain control over their sexuality.

If they can be the ones initiating the sexual encounters, it can feel to some level like they are wielding their sexuality rather than having it wielded against them.

Victims believe that you will be the best because they hear what you say about God. They hear what you preach about evil and justice and holiness.

And they think surely someone who says these things is going to understand the depth of what was done to me.

And then when you don't, they're left with a God who doesn't understand it either. Because that's how you've portrayed

Him to be. What sexual assault survivors need is not someone telling them to move on or at least it wasn't this bad or be grateful it didn't happen to you this way.

What they need to know is this was evil and wrong and I stand with you against it. The frank truth is that we rarely treat the pursuit of justice as if it were biblical and important to pursue.

Like it is actually doing God's work despite the fact that scripture is filled with commands about the pursuit of justice and speaking up for those who have been oppressed.

The most loving thing you can do for an abuser is pursue justice. And it also means corporate repentance and acceptance of the consequences.

If we truly believe these things about justice and forgiveness, if we truly believe in the power of repentance and the importance of truth, then our

Christian institutions should be the first to repent of where we have erred.

We should be the first to acknowledge and pursue the truth when it looks like something might have been handled wrong.

Well a few things from what you just heard I want to address briefly before we conclude this podcast.

First, I want to just take aim at this inaccurate statistic Rachel Denhollander brings up.

And MeToo activists bring this up all the time. One in four women in college that get sexually assaulted.

And of course there are women that have that happens to them. There's no doubt. But one in four?

One in four. Here's an article in Time Magazine, that right -wing publication, right? Time Magazine.

Proponents of the one in five statistics. So this is maybe a different one than the one Denhollander is quoting.

The one she's quoting is even more severe. But this one says, they're exaggerating the threat, too often confusing regretful sexual decisions made while under the influence of alcohol or drugs with actual rape, says

Sabrina Schaefer, executive director of IWF. If sexual intimacy under the influence of alcohol is by definition assault, then

I would say a significant percentage of sexual intercourse throughout the world and down the ages would qualify as a crime.

That's the problem with this. They're taking into account reports that don't qualify as sexual assault.

Another part of this article talks about a Bureau of Justice statistic that came out in 2005.

And it estimates that it's 2 .5 % of women who are actually sexually assaulted in college, not 20%.

So this is the first thing that Rachel Denhollander gets way wrong. And that should she's repeated this often enough to and have a lot of other activists have, if she's supposedly an expert on the topic, that should cause you to have a yellow flag in your mind at the very least.

Because if someone said this, and they weren't an expert on the subject, you could say, oh, they just heard it and they're repeating something they heard.

But Rachel Denhollander is the one that the PCA, the SBC, it seems like every Christian institution wants to go to, to seek counsel, advice, wisdom when it comes to this issue.

And if she's an expert on it, if she's a lawyer, if she's, you know, valuing biblical principles as she does this, which she claims to, then you would not expect her to be so often repeating this debunk statistic.

So the next thing I wanted to just show you, and this didn't take me very long at all to, you could probably find out a lot more information online if you wanted to, but I thought it was interesting.

Psychology Today reports that the best available data is that 4 % of, this is

Catholic, Catholic priests sexually violated a minor child during the last half of the 20th century. Peak level of abuse being in the 70s and the 80s.

Putting clergy abuse in context, research from the U .S. Department of Education found that about 5 % to 7 % of public school teachers engaged in similar sexually abusive behavior.

Now this is important, I think, to recognize here. The Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, which is, has a reputation for priests who abuse boys, is, according to Psychology Today, and the person writing this is

Thomas G. Plant, who's credentialed as a psychologist,

I believe, he is saying that actually it's more likely that a public school teacher is going to do this statistically than a

Catholic priest, which shouldn't surprise us at all, right? The limited evidence available shows also that homeschooled children are abused at a lower rate than are those in the general public, says

Brian D. Ray from the National Home Education Research Institute. So they would be a prone homeschooling group.

But the data they've looked at, they've said, yeah, homeschooled children, and that would make sense. I'm sure there's abused homeschooled children, but most parents who choose to homeschool their kids are going to be more involved in their lives and care about their well -being.

It makes sense, right? It's these family -integrated churches generally too, where, more conservative,

I should say, churches that are usually the ones targeted that are pro -homeschool for being these places with so much abuse.

And there are, my wife and I have called them the homeschool cult churches. There are churches like that, where if your kid doesn't go to, isn't homeschooled, it's like,

I have heard horror stories that I don't want to share right now. So I know that exists.

And I know there's potential for abuse in these situations where there's not much transparency, accountability, contact with the outside world.

But in general, which is what Rachel Denhollander is talking about in this particular speech, it's going to be homeschoolers.

It's going to be pastors. They're going to be less likely than in a public school setting to enact some kind of abuse.

If you wanted to argue that based on this report, executives of the SBC mismanaged the cases that were brought to them, then fine,

Stone said. But if you want to say this shows that the SBC is corrupt, hypocritical, and rife with sexual abuse, the report doesn't demonstrate that.

This is from the Daily Wire's article, The Southern Baptist Me Too Moment.

Stone added that he was shocked that Guidepost investigators only found two current cases, given how many exist in the general population.

I mean, if I had been betting beforehand, I would have bet for a couple hundred, he said. Because if you're talking about 100 ,000 to 150 ,000 people who are disproportionately men, just your baseline rate of sex offenders tells you you should have gotten a couple thousand sex offenders in there just by random chance.

So this idea that there's this stage four cancer in the

SBC when it comes to sexual abuse in SBC churches is just not true. It's a myth. It needs to be called out for that, in no uncertain terms.

But that's Rachel Denhollander. That's the person that is very respected by Kate Shelnutt.

And this is the speech I played for you is the one that she really liked. And this is the reporter who did this article in Christianity Today.

And I don't use this as like a third degree separation, like, well, she likes her and he likes her.

And what I'm saying is Kate Shelnutt has a pattern here. And this is where I have a problem with Han Cho's judgment,

I suppose. Because if Kate Shelnutt is the person you want to go to because of competence, I'm not seeing it on this issue.

And this is the issue that she's writing about and connecting it to bigger things. So that's one of the issues that I wanted to bring up to you.

Other things in that Denhollander talk, since we're, we already listened to it, there's a blame shifting going on in that talk.

If you listen to it, she says that, she talks about the victims of sexual abuse going and committing sexual sin themselves.

She doesn't say it that way. It's funny how she softens the language. And the reason for it, though, is because the church upholds a purity standard.

It's this purity culture thing. The church sees you as spoiled if you were not a virgin anymore, and therefore you might as well just do whatever, right?

It's the church's fault. And that is just so counter to, I mean, you might say that churches with that mentality might exacerbate an issue, but the issue isn't with the church.

The issue is with an individual soul whenever they sin. It's the evil comes from inside of a man. It's not this, there might be conditions that could encourage it or something like that, but to make this, to broad -brush the church like this is the church, are churches that just uphold a biblical standard on sexuality then part of purity culture?

These lines have to be more defined because if you are someone who, let's say, was forced into an encounter, not of your choosing at all, you fought the principle in the

Old Testament of the assault in the city versus the country, you tried everything to fight this off, whatever, and this is what happened to you, then of course you're not culpable for that.

That was sin done to you. It's obvious. And I'm wondering, okay, how many churches out there are communicating that you're culpable if someone abuses you?

And I'm sure someone's going to bring up there, there might be a few, but this is not a broad thing. How many churches are communicating the idea that one should remain a virgin until married?

Hopefully every church. Hopefully every church. If that decision, which for 99 .9

% of people, well, maybe 99 .5%, whatever, if the statistics we just read are correct for girls, it's, you know, 90, what, 7 .5

% if that's what it is. For most people, it's in their control, and that is something that they should preserve.

Not because it makes you pure, but it is a sign. I mean, this is even significant in the Old Testament, even proving that someone was a virgin.

By bringing the signs after the wedding night is, that kind of stuff is in Scripture.

We might not be comfortable with it, but there is something to that. Is that purity culture? That's crazy to me, to just give the impression that people are responsible for their sexual sin because, well, purity culture makes this unattainable standard or something, and since we can't meet it, we might as well do whatever.

She insinuates the church basically as a whole doesn't pursue justice. It's kind of,

I would say they don't, there's a lot of churches out there pursuing false justice, social justice, but the role of the church, within the boundaries of the church, yes, you pursue biblical justice, but the church is not a minister of justice, not like the government is.

And that's one of the issues with this whole Guideposts, Southern Baptists, task force issue, because there used to be a way of handling these things.

You had the civil magistrate that punished crimes, sexual assaults of crime, and churches hopefully could work with their local law enforcement.

Now there needs to be a third group in here. There needs to be these experts who come in and create, in the

SBC at least, a panel, a board, a system that oversees all the churches, takes responsibility for the churches, and if you're at a church that doesn't have that problem, you're still on the hook for the church that does have that problem.

And it centralizes things and gives it into the hands of bureaucrats, basically. That's where it's going to all go.

And it's in the name of pursuing justice that whole time. But where would our efforts be better spent?

If justice isn't happening, where is it not happening? Is it on a local level? Is it law enforcement?

They're just failing to do their job? Is it churches that are failing to report things on a local level?

And they don't know. I don't know. Where is it? Maybe attacking it in those places instead of coming up with yet a third responsible party.

And once that happens, other parties become less responsible. That's the

SBC's job to monitor those issues. We don't really monitor them as much.

That's the SBC's job. That's what happens inevitably once you insert a third bureaucracy into something to solve the problem.

And then when things go south, they cry for more money generally. But that's not a pursuit of justice.

It's marketed that way. But actual justice would be the police doing their job, churches reporting, or individuals in churches reporting when something happens.

She talks about corporate repentance too. And as if there needs to be institutions need to all apologize, repent publicly for situations that took place in the past.

I would say there are situations in which that should be done.

But it is not the job of every Christian institution, whether it be a church, ministry, missions organization, to take upon themselves responsibility that does not belong to them for things they were not there for.

Decisions they did not make in other sectors of evangelicalism. It's not as if this is a one -size -fits -all, it's an evangelical problem, and everyone's just got to take some culpability and complicity, because not everyone's complicit in this.

It's an attitude though I see rising more and more. Churches need to apologize. I still remember,

I've shared this story before. I wrote it in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, sitting in class and hearing the professor ask students, basically, what do you think we should, it was a video we were watching, and what do you think we should do about people who accuse

Christians of supporting the Crusades and the Holocaust? And one of the students said, the church should just apologize.

And the professor thought that seemed to nod along with, yeah, that's a good idea. That's where we're at.

The church should just apologize. I say, no. The church doesn't apologize. Christians apologize for their sin.

If a church as a corporate body all participated in a sin, then they can repent for that sin, but it's the sin that they participated in.

It's not just a general, we've gotten this wrong over time as a whole in evangelicalism, and so we're all culpable.

That's not how it works. Okay, well enough about that. I wanted to bring that to your attention, though, because this is bigger than Grace Community Church, and you're going to be hearing these arguments a lot, and I think you need to get familiar with them.

And one of the things that I am concerned about, which is where I want to land this plane, is the response that other churches may make to similar claims against them because they're following the template of Grace Community Church here.

Not every church is the same, and not every situation is quite the same, and I don't want some churches who really respect

John MacArthur, and I understand why I respect John MacArthur, but to follow this template to make this a standard that we just don't, when accused like this, respond.

And so I already showed you the response, which was, some call it a non -response, but it was just them saying, the elders saying, this is slander, and we don't engage, basically.

We don't disclose, we don't engage. And I said in the last podcast that I think that if it's information pertaining to a particular case that you're afraid if you share, others will not feel safe, or that their information could be disclosed.

I don't think that's much of a concern, because this is a unique situation. You have someone who underwent counseling, then releasing homework and documents from the counseling, and coming out against, making accusation against the church.

It's not like every case is going to be like that. I think people would be assured if they don't do that, then their case is secure.

They're not going to have people unnecessarily sharing and breaking that confidentiality. So I don't see that as a reason, in my mind at least, because I think the situation is different.

But the other thing that people have been bringing up is that this is in keeping with Proverbs chapter 27 verse 2, let another praise you and not your own mouth, a stranger and not your own lips.

And isn't this what Jesus did when he was a lamb led to the slaughter? He didn't say anything against his accusers.

And there's a few things I want to say to this. The first thing is that I believe

Jesus did defend himself for most of his ministry and his reputation against the Pharisees. At the end, that was to fulfill righteousness, that was part of God's plan.

Jesus could have called down angels too, but the plan was to go to the cross. And it was obvious that this was an illegal practice, that what they were doing they were guilty of.

And I would ask the question, is this obvious? I don't think it is to everyone. There's people that have been supporters of Grace Community Church and Grace To You for a long time who are starting to question things over this, because they're not getting a lot of the other side of it.

They're hearing one side. And different people who are going to come down in different places on this, but I don't think that's illegitimate for someone to question, to be concerned.

Especially in a day and age when there's so many institutions that have failed us, and people we thought were godly

Christian men who we find out later, man, I guess they weren't as much as we thought. And people are scarred from so many betrayals at this point.

It's almost more incumbent in an environment like this to defend one's own reputation, I think.

And I would say this about the Proverbs 27 .2 passage. I think this is saying don't brag.

I don't think this is saying don't defend yourself. We have an example in 2

Corinthians chapter 10 and 11 of Paul defending himself. And if we had time,

I'd love to read this. I would encourage you to go read these chapters on your own. But what you'll find is that there were these false teachers that were accusing

Paul of things like being a hypocrite, of it looks like from the looks of chapter 11 verses 7 through 11, that he was trying to maybe be in the ministry for money's sake or something like that.

They were saying things even like that his speech wasn't great, that he had one tone in his letters, but then he had a different tone, and that he wasn't very eloquent.

And they were just ripping him down. And one of the things Paul says in chapter 11, verse 11, he says,

I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness. But indeed you are bearing with me, for I am jealous for you with a jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, and so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

But I'm afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

So here's the thing. If you look at chapters 10 and 11, most of it is just Paul defending himself.

It sounds like he's tooting his own horn. But is that what he's doing? He's not doing it to brag, to build himself up.

He's doing it to protect people he loves. A church that he had a strong connection to, a church at Corinth, was in danger of false teachers coming in, and one of their first strategies, their tactics, to get the church to move from orthodoxy to a place of disobedience was, in fact, to rip

Paul down. Don't listen to that guy. He needs to be recommended to you. I mean, we need to question his authority, and that was one of the things, that was the thing that made

Paul write the letter and defend himself to the church at Corinth.

That was it. It wasn't because he's bragging about himself, and so the people who say that, well, you know, Proverbs says this.

Well, yes, it does. It does. But what you need to realize in this situation is this is bigger than John MacArthur.

This is bigger than the elders at Grace Community Church. This is an attack on the theology that I just described in this podcast, and I didn't even talk about the role of women and how some on Twitter are going after MacArthur for that.

Yeah, it just makes sense that this would happen because of their complementarian stance or whatever. Patriarchy.

That's what's going on. And so everyone who supported John MacArthur's teaching is indirectly being accused here, and the people who continue to support that teaching, that it's the theology's fault.

The theology created conditions for this, and if that's the accusation, if you truly believe that, that that's the telos of this, which is what

I believe, then you can even potentially come to a spot where you say, you know, it could be that they fumbled this counseling case and need to come out and admit it, or you might think that.

But how are you going to protect the theology that's under assault, is what I'm saying, or at least the beginnings of those rumblings are starting.

That's what I think we need to be more concerned about, and some people are missing it because they're just hooked on, they're caught up in the whole whether it's

MacArthur's right or wrong, and I'm not saying that's not important, but there's something else here. And this is my pitch, my last -ditch effort to anyone maybe inside Grace Community Church, if anyone's listening.

Maybe they're not, I don't know if there's maybe one or two people that have some influence there that might listen to this, or people who have just been involved in this situation since then, like Kerry Hardy, who's not at the

Church anymore, and I wouldn't think would be constrained by the rules that the Church he's not a part of have on their elder board.

I would hope that they, for the sake of the Church, for the sake of the theology, not for the sake necessarily of John MacArthur or defending the brand or anything, that's meaningless stuff in my mind.

I feel the same about myself, I'm not just saying that, like defending John Harris isn't okay. Why do

I defend myself sometimes? And I've done it more lately than I used to. It's because I realize it's not really about me.

It's an insult to all my supporters, all of you guys out there who listen. If I just let myself go down without a fight and say, so what?

What does that say about you, who listen to what I have to say? And then, what does it say about the people if they are attacking me for something that I'm right on, or something that I got wrong but their attack is directed at theology that I did get right?

How am I defending that theology? That's what I would hope people would be considering in this, because it's not about them, it's about the people they serve.

And that's my last -ditch effort, some will find it disrespectful perhaps, but I felt like I needed to say it.

And I noticed that trending yesterday and today, now is that Honcho's sermons have been removed from the website of Grace Community Church, I guess, and they were fine sermons from what

I understand, and this is making people even more suspicious about the church. I don't know why they did that, maybe there's information that I don't have available to me, but it seems like it's a move that arouses more suspicion, unfortunately.

And I would just encourage, if possible, a little bit of honest, not that they're being dishonest, because I don't want to suggest that, but public honesty about this.

At least to the members, we'll say. Some way of giving them tools to deal with the accusations that are being hurled their way for attending the church, that kind of thing.

That would be my encouragement. And I don't know, I don't really have much more to say than that. I feel like I'm ending the podcast on a bummer note, which

I don't mean to do. Yeah, there's lots more that I can say, but let's end it there.

The links are in the info section. If you want to check out the China doc, please share it, please do so.

Share that. By the way, I never say this, I should probably say it more. If you like the podcast, go ahead and go rate it.

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I guess those are the only two places. Where else would you rate it? I guess you could subscribe on YouTube, but it does help.

And I appreciate all the support out there. Thank you so much to all of you. I mean it. I really do. God bless.

And more coming later this week. Maybe we'll talk about AI. I've been wanting to talk about that for a while. Anyway, I got to run.