“[W]e cannot and will not acquiesce to a government-imposed moratorium on our weekly congregational worship… Compliance would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear commands.” said John MacArthur, one of the best-known pastors in America.
This weekend MacArthur wrote a declaration titled: “Christ, not Caesar, Is Head of the Church” saying: “History is full of painful reminders that government power is easily and frequently abused for evil purposes. Politicians may manipulate statistics and the media can cover up or camouflage inconvenient truths. So a discerning church cannot passively or automatically comply if the government orders a shutdown of congregational meetings—even if the reason given is a concern for public health and safety.”
At the beginning of the lockdown, MacArthur said they were told by the health officials that there was a serious ‘concern for public health and safety’, so in the spirit of cooperation they shut down.
But his church said two months ago said they knew it not dangerous, the rules were not being equally enforced, and churches were targeted specifically. Yet at that time they still submitted. That letter was taken down after much criticism
But now the church has come around.
MacArthur: “[W]hile civil government is invested with divine authority to rule the state, neither of those texts (nor any other) grants civic rulers jurisdiction over the church. God has established three institutions within human society: the family, the state, and the church. Each institution has a sphere of authority with jurisdictional limits that must be respected.”
Knight: “But when should the government interfere with the family? Let’s take a situation when you have a father who is physically or sexually abusive. At that point, the government breaks that jurisdictional line and intercedes. Why? Because the person in authority is now acting in an evil manner. It matters if those in power are acting evilly. That’s the fundamental problem I have with the interpretation of Romans 13 that ignores whether or not a government is evil. If you ignore evil actions of a government you become complicit in them, and as we’ve seen in Nazi Germany, you facilitate them.”
MacArthur: “When any one of the three institutions exceeds the bounds of its jurisdiction it is the duty of the other institutions to curtail that overreach.”
In the video Knight says, “That’s true but he’s missing the point of evil. It’s also necessary when they do evil. Are we as Christians not capable of discerning good from evil?”
MacArthur goes on to say: “Major public events that were planned for 2021 are already being canceled, signaling that officials are preparing to keep restrictions in place into next year and beyond.”
Knight commented, “He understands that this isn’t going to go away. He understands that, as Gates and Fauci have been saying, this is the ‘new normal’. Stolen liberties are never returned. Power taken by government is never given up voluntarily. YOU have to take it back. Hopefully, it can be taken back peacefully.”
I’m glad to see people are standing up to this with peaceful civil disobedience, and they’re laying out the reasons for it, which is very important. We have to have pastors make the constitutional point for this as well as the moral point. Understand that our rights come from God, churches need to take the lead in reestablishing America just like they did in establishing America. America will be great again when we focus once again on the freedoms that God gave us, which means focusing back on God.
As Al Waddell said, “If the 350,000 preachers in this country openly took the same stand this farce would be over. But there’s more to this than signing something, this is different, you will be brought before the rulers and councils, for jail, loss of property, loss of liberty, this is what we’re dealing with. The longer this goes without you standing up to this the greater the cost to take back what you lost. Churches must stand to oppose this, if they don’t we’re lost.”
