MacArthur Compares Anti-Christian COVID Tyranny To The Beginning Phases Of Hitler, Stalin

Pastor of Church Targeted by California Has a Powerful Message for Believers

Andrew J. Sciascia 

A prominent American evangelist is back in the news this week with another inspiring message from the front lines of the months-long fight to protect in-person worship.

In a short video released Wednesday on social media, Grace Community Church pastor John MacArthur of Los Angeles called on churches and believers across the country to “be the church” and continue gathering, despite government efforts to prohibit such activity through the strict legal enforcement of coronavirus-related public health restrictions.

“This is a church committed to the bedrock conviction that the Bible is the word of God,” MacArthur said. “And we, in obedience to that word, have met together every Sunday for all these years.

“We have been protected by our government. We’ve been given freedom to do that,” MacArthur added.

“Today’s current crop of politicians are trampling on the Constitution and on the resolve of citizens to demand their rights under the pressure of a manufactured fear.”

The video was initially posted by presidential lawyer Jenna Ellis, a member of the Thomas More Society legal team defending the pastor in his courthouse battle with the state.

It’s not the first time that MacArthur has spoken out regarding dangerous governmental attempts to shut down the American church in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

In a July 29 radio appearance, the evangelist slammed not only these policies, but the policy of uncritical Christian submission to authority as well, comparing it to the 20th-century societal complacence that allowed Adolf Hitler to institute a dictatorship abroad

“It doesn’t start with massacring 6 million Jews. It doesn’t start with massacring 13 million people between Russia and Germany in the killing fields in those years, the late ’30s and early ’40s. It starts this way. It starts with intrusion into the life of the church, and the violation of law is by the governor because that’s against the First Amendment,” he said.

MacArthur has garnered no shortage of media attention for his leadership in the battle against what he refers to as the soft “tyranny” of government-ordered church closures — a battle the pastor himself took to fighting after California made an about-face on the modest social and economic reopening efforts begun in May.

The lifting of restrictions had come amid shrinking societal adherence to months-long initial efforts to lock down the state.

Laying out his own rationale for the church’s defiance in a July 24 open letter to the Christian community, MacArthur reminded believers: “Christ, Not Caesar, Is Head of the Church.”

n Mark 12:17, Jesus calls on his followers to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” but to deny God out of respect for earthly authority, the pastor said, would be to “render to Caesar” what belongs to God: the believer himself.

It was never the intent of Grace Community Church to act in arrogant rebellion, however, as has often been pointed out by MacArthur and his legal team.

In fact, MacArthur said in his Wednesday video, the church attempted to remain obedient to both their faith and government, closing its doors for nearly five months when data on COVID-19 was scarce at the start of the outbreak.

It was apparently not until inconsistencies emerged in public health enforcement and details surfaced on the real gravity of the virus that MacArthur first began to consider going against the grain.

“This is obviously targeted discrimination,” MacArthur said. “Leftists and secular government officials have no tolerance for biblical Christianity, so they’re using COVID as an excuse to shut us down.”

The pastor’s final calculation, it would seem, was that the only Christian thing to do in response is oppose government restrictions on the worship of Jesus Christ — as the church has always done.

“The church is the original protester,” the pastor said. “We go back to the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, when the government was trying to dictate to the church how it should worship.

“This is a watershed moment in America. We have been granted by God the freedom to meet as a church and that is protected by the Constitution. We need to be the church — not only because we’re free to be the church, but because we’re commanded to be the church by the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church,” he added.

“This is a time of all times to meet as the church. Open your church. The church is essential.”

Pastor John MacArthur compares anti-Christian COVID tyranny to Hitler, Stalin beginnings

Andrew J. Sciascia, The Western Journal

Faced with opposition from pandemic fearmongers, and even some church-going traditional believers, nationally known author and evangelist Pastor John MacArthur is making the case for his decision to keep Grace Community Church open for worship in California.

In a July 29 appearance on "The Eric Metaxas Radio Show!" with best-selling Christian author Eric Metaxas, MacArthur blistered misguided Christian adherence to church closures on the basis of biblical orders to submit to earthly authority.

According to MacArthur, actions taken by figures like Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic all but explicitly required that people of faith put government before God -- a tyrannical precedent often set in the early days of an authoritarian dictatorship

The only righteous response painted by the pastor was disobedience.

"Look, we obey the law when the law is righteous, when the people in authority are righteous, when they are protecting those who do good and punishing those who do evil," MacArthur said. "In the case of Hitler, if you had an opportunity to eliminate Hitler and didn't do it, you would have failed to fulfill a righteous opportunity."

"It doesn’t start with massacring 6 million Jews. It doesn’t start with massacring 13 million people between Russia and Germany in the killing fields in those years, the late ’30s and early ’40s. It starts this way. It starts with intrusion into the life of the church, and the violation of law is by the governor because that's against the First Amendment."

In a lengthy open letter to the governor and the Christian community on July 24, MacArthur reminded readers that "Christ, Not Caesar, Is Head of the Church," laying out a compelling, rational and biblical case for denying the government in times such as such as these.

“God has established three institutions within human society: the family, the state, and the church,” he wrote. “Each institution has a sphere of authority with jurisdictional limits that must be respected...

But God comes first.

And when we deny God out of respect for earthly authority, we are “rendering to Caesar” what is belongs to God: Ourselves.

“The church is Christ’s precious bride,” MacArthur wrote. “She belongs to Him alone. She exists by His will and serves under His authority. He will tolerate no assault on her purity and no infringement of His headship over her...

“The biblical order is clear: Christ is Lord over Caesar, not vice versa. Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church. Conversely, the church does not in any sense rule the state,” MacArthur wrote.

“As government policy moves further away from biblical principles, and as legal and political pressures against the church intensify, we must recognize that the Lord may be using these pressures as means of purging to reveal the true church. Succumbing to governmental overreach may cause churches to remain closed indefinitely."