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--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: And I'm John Bickley, editor-in-chief of Daily Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's March 31st, and it's Easter Sunday. Today, we're joined by Pastor John MacArthur, whose church won a historic settlement from the state of California in Los Angeles County after it defied lockdown orders.
--:-- John Bickley: Pastor MacArthur, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: To start out, I think a lot of people are just now looking back and doing an autopsy on what happened in the church during COVID. And I think maybe the biggest question a lot of people have is how would you describe the state of the American church following COVID? And what do you think the greatest issue we face is right now?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: I think post-COVID, the biggest issue is people are reevaluating the quality and character and courage and wisdom of spiritual leaders. The people who wanted to shut down everything and create a disaster that lockdowns were needed to get a hold of the one potential adversary, which would be the church, and bring it to its knees and even make it an ally. And they succeeded in doing that.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The fallout of that is a very widespread lack of trust in church leadership, spiritual leadership, denominational leadership. I'm not the brightest light in the chandelier, but I knew one thing for sure: the church has to stay open no matter how severe the crisis is. And two, it didn't take long to figure out that the crisis was nothing like they said it was.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: So I think the opportunity not to cave to the culture, the opportunity to take a stand as Christian leaders should do, and the challenge to find out what the truth was. I mean, that's our stock and trade. The Bible says the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. And anytime the church can't be trusted for the truth, and I mean that theologically, but I also mean it in terms of the practical wisdom of understanding how you navigate culture and all its threats and challenges.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Once people lose trust in the wisdom and the understanding of their leaders and their fidelity to truth and their courage, it weakens the church tremendously. Those of us who stayed open, we had an influx of people that was absolutely remarkable. I don't know, maybe 3,000 people have come to our church since COVID, in addition to our regular congregation.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: And if you ask why was it the attraction of the church, well, they didn't come initially because the church attracted them. They came initially because we were open, and they wanted to know the truth. And that's what we tried to give them.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You kind of anticipated my next question there a little bit. And that is that I've seen a number of evangelical leaders say that it's really time to move on from anger over how they handled COVID. I'm thinking of things like equating getting vaccinated and closing churches with loving your neighbor following Jesus, that kind of thing. In fact, I saw one particular essay from Christianity Today that made this argument, but I have not seen any well pastor or leader who pushed these particular policies repent of that.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Do you think the church at large should be expecting to see any repentance over what happened during COVID? And is it important for the church to look back and take stock of what happened in those two years?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Well, it's absolutely important. I mean, it's a question of integrity. If you were wrong and the impact of your inability to assess the situation or your lack of fidelity to the truth or your lack of courage or whatever it was, maybe your desire to please the world and the culture. If you were wrong about all of that and it had an adverse effect on your ministry and on your congregation and on the church and consequently on the advance of the kingdom, yeah, repentance would be the right thing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Would that go some direction to restoring that lack of trust that you think is a major issue right now?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Yeah, for sure. It would take a step in the right direction. But again, repentance is the right thing to do. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to do the right thing the next time we face this kind of threat. But at least it gets you going in the right direction and gives your people some hope that you're applying in your own life what you would expect from them.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Do you think that the way they handled COVID disqualified some pastors?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Yeah, I guess the question is, to what extent? Is it mortal? Is it a mortal wound? Is it terminal? And my answer to that would be the effect of that bad decision could be remedied if there was repentance and the next time it comes around they did what they should.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, moving on then to a different topic, but maybe related because maybe this grew somewhat out of COVID. Christian nationalism has become this very buzzy topic. Just a few weeks ago, MSNBC commentator Heidi Prisbylla defined it as Christians who believe their rights come from God, not government.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: And then also recently, we saw a documentary from producer Rob Reiner, who claimed that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a successful Christian nationalist effort.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So one, how do you define Christian nationalism, which I do know that you have some concerns over? And what do you say to Prisbylla and Reiner's definition?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Well, Megan, just in general, I don't think there's any such thing as Christian nationalism. You can't make the word Christian or Christianity the modifier or the definer of nationalism. It has no connection to that.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. And then he went on to say, if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight. You don't have that in the New Testament. You have Christ laying down his life, the apostles laying down their lives, believers through all of the history of the church laying down their lives for the cause of Christ.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: And when the church decides to try to court the world rather than confront the world, it loses its direction, it loses its impact, and it loses the clarity of its message.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So how about then the second part of that? You know when you have Heidi Prisbilla who also works for Politico saying that it is Christians who believe their rights come from God not government or Reiner saying that you know efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, that was Christian nationalism. How should we be responding to that?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Well, first of all, I don't even know what it means when people say their rights come from God. That assumes that God wants everybody to be free because that's what they talk about everybody wants to have liberty freedom pursuit of happiness, etc.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, in the history of redemption in the history of the church, that certainly was not a universal gift from God to believers. There's no promise that we're going to know freedom. Christianity has been hated by the world because it is the truth and because it goes against the grain of the God of this world.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: So I don't even say things like we have been given by God the right to freedom. That just doesn't make sense historically because if you say America is the first nation that has expressed this freedom at the degree that we have, then what were all the rest of the people who were living for Christ through human history doing? Were they somehow second-class citizens to whom God didn't give such freedom?
--:-- Georgia Howe: So how about Reiner's definition then in terms of how Christians should participate in the political process? And he intimated that Roe v. Wade being overturned, that that was Christians participating in politics in a way that was out of bounds.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Yeah, again, I would say this. In America, we have been given the right to vote, and we take that right very seriously because we have to stand up for righteousness. So what I've taught my entire ministry life is when it comes to your responsibility as a citizen, you don't rebel. We don't start a revolution. We live quiet, peaceable lives. We pray for those that are leaders over us, but we uphold the standard of righteousness and we call the society to righteousness and we call them to God and to obedience to his law for their own mortal benefit as well as their eternal benefit.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So the role that Christians play would obviously show up in something like abortion because it's it's just flatly murder and we would take a position that is biblical on that and every other biblical standard of morality and say, you know, we're going to vote for the people who uphold this. And sometimes it comes down to the, I guess, maybe the best of two mediocre options when you're choosing candidates.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: But the Christian has to uphold righteousness. We have to do that. Again, it's not so much the political process, although if in fact there are enough Christians to alter the direction of a country, so be it. But that's not the goal. Our goal is to be faithful to the truth, faithful to the righteous standard that God has established for the sake of, you know, the law of God was given for three reasons.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One, to drive sinners to the recognition of their sin and drive them to Christ. Two, to set a moral standard so that well society could flourish and enjoy the temporal benefits that God has created in his world. And three, as a standard of conduct for believers.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: And so upholding righteousness is what we do. If there's a political process by which we can exercise that and manifest that, then that's what we have to do. But again, we don't overthrow the government. We don't take things into our own hands. We don't revolt. Whatever happened in Roe v. Wade happened in the normal jurisprudence procedure. It wasn't anything that Christians sort of did to overthrow the status quo.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Would it be fair then to paraphrase you as saying whatever the normal levers of involvement allow through your particular government, Christians should participate in that to the full extent that their particular form of government makes room for?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: That's exactly right. You said that better than I did, but I'm not surprised.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, so shifting gears a little bit, I see the argument a lot from pastors that we should save our credibility with the culture for the biggest fights, for some fight down the future. So I guess I would ask, what would R.C. Sproul, you having known him so many years, have said to the pastors who today make that argument on a number of issues?
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Well, I'll tell you something specific, Megan. When Grace Church took the stand it took during COVID, which was to pay no attention to anything that was commanded of us, we got affirmation from R.C.'s wife, Vesta, called and said, I just want you to know that even though R.C.'s in heaven, and if he were here, he'd be standing with you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Speaking of R.C., and this may be a good question to wrap up on. I know there are a lot of people, people like me, who think about you and the impact that you have had on American Christianity. Well, I mean, really global Christianity, but especially in this country for decades now. And they feel fearful. And I talk to these people and they tell me I am fearful that we do not have a generation of pastors like a John MacArthur, like an R.C. Sproul coming up to replace them.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: What I've always said is this, you know, when one of God's children leaves, it's like pulling your hand out of a bucket. There's no hole. If there's a bucket of water and you pull your hand out, there's not going to be a hole. God knows exactly what he's doing. He has bounded our time. It's all ordained by him, and he'll never be without a faithful witness.
--:-- Georgia Howe: My little tiny great-grandson was at the church a few months back and uh his first foray across the church patio on a Sunday. He's I think he just turned three and he's bouncing between people and he's got his hands in the fountain. He's just kind of having a great little time looking at all the the people, and his dad was trailing him just to see what he was doing.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: And somebody said to me, you know, it's really sad that he has to be born into this time. And I said, well, wait a minute. This is the time God ordained for him to be born. And I just think that, you know, God buries his servants, but his work goes on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right, well, thank you so much, Pastor John. We appreciate your time, and we wish you a happy Resurrection Sunday.
--:-- Pastor John MacArthur: Same to you and all the folks at Daily Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham interviewing Pastor John MacArthur. And this was your Easter edition of Morning Wire.
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