Despite a court ruling yesterday saying they had to follow Los Angeles County’s COVID restrictions limiting attendance for indoor events to 100 people, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California held service this morning defying common sense, health experts, and the law.
Because you can get away with anything in this country if you’re Christian…
The service was indoors. There were few, if any, face masks. There was no social distancing. And the attendance was likely in the thousands.
And the congregation went wild at the very idea that government officials couldn’t stop them.
… We’re having church.
It’s, um, it’s actually hard to figure out exactly what the city is trying to do with us and to us, but we know they don’t want us to do exactly what we’re doing right now. And we’re not meeting because we want to be rebellious. We’re meeting because our Lord has commanded us to come together and worship Him.
There was a court order that granted this church — and this church alone — the right to meet indoors, and the powers of the city were not happy about that. They were going to be asking us to do two things — social distance and wear masks…
That was until yesterday, when the city — we agreed, look, we’ll comply for a few weeks. They asked that for three weeks. We’re not wanting to be defiant. We will do what is reasonable. That was not enough for the city, so they went to the appellate court at the last minute on Saturday, late, and had that order removed.
So the good news is you’re here, you’re not distancing, and you’re not wearing masks.
[Applause]
And it’s also good news that you’re not outside, because it’s very hot out there.
So the Lord knew you needed to be inside and unmasked. So He did us that gracious favor.
They don’t want us to meet — that’s obvious. They’re not willing to work with us. They just want to shut us down. But we’re here to bring honor to the Lord. They’re not our enemy. We understand that. The Bible tells us to pray for our leaders for their salvation. We need to be faithful to do that.
Normally, to put this many people in harm’s way, you need a physical weapon. John MacArthur is doing it by bringing together all these people in the middle of a deadly pandemic that has already taken 170,000 American lives (and counting).
And he’s celebrating their utter lack of precautions.
This man is a threat to the country. Not because he’s Christian, but because he thinks his Christianity gives him the right to make harmful decisions without accepting any of the consequences.
How many people have to die before John MacArthur admits he’s the unreasonable one in this legal battle?
To state the obvious — at least to anyone who’s not part of this Christian death cult — the county isn’t trying to shut down church. It’s trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and that requires sacrifice and common sense on the part of everyone. That means not gathering indoors in large numbers.
These Christians believe their faith gives them the right to ignore whatever laws they want.
But here’s what we know: The appeals court said they couldn’t meet unless they followed the rules. MacArthur knew all that. His church met anyway — and they ignored the rules. They have broken the law.
Who’s going to be punished for this? Because if the answer is nobody, then we deserve to know why Christians and Christians alone are allowed to ignore the rules everyone else in society is expected to play by.