Prologue Common to the Five Posts of Letters Written to My Church 2012-2019:
I trust and hope that these five postings of the letters I have written to my church answer to a sufficient degree the concerns and view that my letter of September 2020, withdrawing my membership from the Evangelical church I attended for more than forty years, was a response on my part without understanding or thought based on scripture, without prayer, and without the leading of the Holy Spirit. However, I think, all these letters as a whole, from 2012-2019, demonstrate a consistent loyalty to my church and pastor amid my growing concern for the spiritual misdirection and confusion, and the diminished focus upon Christ, His gospel, and prayer, that the multiple and cascading political pronouncements and preaching were engendering within the congregation and the church organization as a whole. I further hope that apparent within the letters on my part, is also a consistent witness of Christ and of the centrality of His gospel and Kingdom, a display of the leading of the Holy Spirit, and a deepening commitment to the two great commandments of love of God and of neighbor, so essential and central to our Christian faith.
Introduction to Letter, Phone Call & Handwritten Notes
As the opening of the letter below states, the church had just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Pastor MacArthur’s teaching and ministry at Grace Church, and the Shepherds’ Conference was coming up in early March, which would also commemorate Pastor MacArthur’s fifty years of teaching. And yet, the political intrusion and influence within the church was ever increasing, and the letter I now wrote was by far the most personally felt letter I sent to our pastor.
As I stated near the end of this letter, I realized through the Holy Spirit, that this was also the last letter that I would write to Pastor MacArthur. I began to ponder whether he would even receive this letter with all of the other congratulatory letters and notes that he would still be receiving. An individual, with knowledge of the workings of the church, suggested that I mail this letter directly to Pastor MacArthur’s home so that I would be sure he would at least receive it, and he provided me with the home address. I was initially very hesitant in following this suggestion, as I didn’t want to invade or violate the sanctity and quietness of his home. Over my years at Grace, I was a guest in Pastor MacArthur’s home as part of a group on two separate occasions and I had been impressed with how homey, comfortable, unpretentious, and inviting his home was, one that seemed so appropriate for the pastor of Grace Church, and I really did not want to intrude into it.
However, at times, when I sent my letters to the church, I had wondered whether he actually was given the letters I had written, and that is why when I wrote a letter, I always referred to the letters I had written before so that he would know I had sent other letters previously even if he had not received them. As I contemplated the suggestion to use his home address, I finally concluded that I truly wanted him to receive this letter, and so I printed it on stationary of a very nice antique ivory hue, and mailed it to his home.
I also mailed to the church, via the church administrator, another hard copy of the letter to our pastor on ordinary white paper and emailed copies of the letter to the two pastors of the fellowship group. Directly below is the email message to one of the pastors to who I sent the copy of the letter.
Pastor,
Attached is the last letter that I wrote and sent to our pastor, John MacArthur. I am also sending a copy to other pastor, as you both are pastors of fellowship group, but since this is probably the most personal letter I have sent to John in a long time, I’m not sending a copy to the elders of fellowship group, but just you and other pastor so that you know how I am communicating within the church.
I read with interest your email to the members of fellowship group that you sent out the day after the 50th celebration, and I understood how your “favorite” parts were John’s clear teaching and the love that you saw poured out upon him by the gathered congregation. I also share your appreciation for these aspects of the celebration on Sunday, and I believe my letter reflects both of these aspects, though, of course, the Holy Spirit produces different overall perspectives and a variable of ways in which individuals express their appreciation for the many faithful years of teaching, and also how the love for our pastor’s faithfulness is expressed. We have not had the opportunity to sit down and discuss in any depth the things that I have written, and perhaps that opportunity will never arise, but please know that what I write is formed from the blessings of my forty-four years here at Grace and the faithfulness of our great Savior and the work of the Holy Spirit within my life.
Chris Orozco
In my letter to our pastor, I did not ask for or expect a response and I was surprised by the how, the why, and by whom I eventually received not one, but two replies.
Last Letter to Pastor MacArthur
February 16, 2019
Dear Pastor MacArthur,
The 50th anniversary of your teaching at Grace Church has just been celebrated, and the Shepherd’s Conference coming-up soon in March will also commemorate the fifty years of God’s faithfulness in your life and ministry, all of which rightly should be celebrated as an immeasurable gift from the Lord to His people. The fifty years of your teaching has made a great impact upon the lives of many believers here at Grace and within the wider reach of your radio and speaking ministry, and I have also been immeasurably blessed throughout the forty-four years that I have personally sat under your teaching. This began around November 1974 when I attended an evening service and was literally thrilled and completely overjoyed when I heard for the first time the truth of the gospel and the completeness of salvation when, in your sermon, you declared that Christ suffered for all of my sins, past, present, and to come. I have continued to be thrilled with your teaching of the gospel of Christ and the truth within scripture ever since.
When I first arrived as a young man in my early 20s, you were still teaching Wednesday evenings – which I loved and appreciated as midweek fuel – and I regretted and was saddened when you stopped the mid-week service. When I was out of work for a while and no longer able to pay insurance on my car or gas, I gladly either rode my old bike or walked the two and a half miles from my apartment to the church because I was so desirous of being fed on just what the bible really meant. I met and eventually married my wife at Grace during the time of the building of the Worship Center, and I continually grew spiritually and in appreciation of your preaching. We raised our three daughters at Grace church and my oldest married the Junior High School pastor who had just graduated from the seminary. You comforted my wife with a note when she told you of the death of our infant son.
But, at the same time over the years that I so appreciated your personal touches upon my family and was fed and deeply satisfied with your teaching of Scripture, I was also in the same measure troubled and saddened by the emergence and preaching of what seemed to me as a seemingly separate political theology and gospel, which in your own words was built upon your own personal political ideologies and conservative American worldview. Additionally, your teachings and the ensuing actions in support of your political ideology have all seemed essentially designed to lead and shepherd and even deliver, God’s people into a conservative mindset and voting pattern. These in turn, I believe, created a gospel-diminishing stumbling block for believers in sharing the gospel; and for non-believers, a stumbling block of an obscured and confused gospel and one effaced of its true light, grace, and hope by many conservative political and social overlays. Of these, I have previously written, but to list just a few, they included:
- Preaching that the local police force carries the right of capital punishment,
- Asserting a scripturally sanctioned right of Israel’s “hegemony” over the Palestinians in the occupied territories and the continuing political, social, and economic subjugation of millions,
- Your use of all the communication means of the church, seminary, university, and “Grace to You” to help deliver the evangelical vote to the Republican party and candidates,
- Your preaching of a planned but truncated sermon series attempting to put aside the legitimate issues of the “Black Lives Matter” and “Me Too” movements, and issues critically impacting the lives of millions of immigrant men, women, and children – including thousands of children still separated from their families – in our country,
- And, additionally, repeatedly and currently still stating and teaching that to fight evil, especially the evil of abortion, believers can and should politically support men who are even clearly biblically immoral and wicked and even abominable before the Lord.
It is these and other related overlays, also supported and taught by others at Grace and the various affiliated organizations, that I believe hinder the hearing and understanding of the saving, life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ. I sometimes now wonder when I had first come to Grace in November 1974, if all I had heard preached was political teachings and proclamations, would I have been fed or heard the gospel or the voice of Christ, and would I have just gone away still hungry and lost? Would I have come back? I think of these things and I fear that this may now be happening to other young men as lost and as confused as I was back then. This…is a tremendous heart burden to me.
These political and social additions to the gospel and the ensuing political actions of Grace church, I believe, have also had a continuing dampening effect upon the work of the Holy Spirit within many of the brethren at Grace and God’s people in the wider radio reach of your ministry. For due to the honor given you and your pulpit ministry, and the teaching from Grace church as a whole, many have accepted these political precepts taught as scriptural and even binding, and the ensuing actions in support of them as godly and somehow proper before the Lord. Additionally, these teachings and actions provided an unbiblical rationale of supporting evil to fight evil, and an example to, conscious or unconscious, of essentially placing one’s trust and hope in the political process, and factually in godless men, with the stated aim of eliminating abortion, but all seemingly with the added aim of accomplishing the political agenda of the Evangelical church in gathering and providing wider support for the basic American conservative ideology and all favorite policies and goals stemming from it. And all this was in place of teachings that would have led and shepherded God’s people more towards a deeper and more pervasive and informed trust in the work of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin and affect change through hearts and lives renewed in righteousness, and bent towards justice, love, and kindness.
Now, of course, in the turbulence of our political environment, for years the initial primary motivation for the vast majority of Christians, I believe, in moving towards strong political positions was the issue of abortion and the almost one million lives cut short and apart each year. However, this initial godly impetus was transformed eventually into basically just a cover story by many within the religious realm, especially the Evangelical and conservative Baptist churches, and used as a brokered political influence in joining with many within the conservative segment of our political spectrum, including godless men, to promote a host of other political goals. All this mutually “profitable” religious and political intermeshing was then used to concoct the bait to lure and entrap many Christians, especially evangelicals, deeper into a political web – a process eventually successful in garnering and marshalling a majority of their votes to support a church-anointed yet godless candidate and an expanded agenda of American conservative goals and initiatives that had little or nothing to do with the Lord or the spread of His gospel. The current question now here is do you wish this deliverance of the evangelical vote to promote the now ever-devolving American conservative political agenda, and the successful marshalling of the church to help elect an immoral and godless man, to be the crowning jewel in your political crown? Is this really a godly legacy to leave to this generation of believers and the next? Is this part of the “truth” you wish Grace Church to stand with you upon and inculcate faithfulness to within the pastors attending the upcoming Shepherds’ Conference? Rather, I believe, in all sincerity, that these are questions that should be brought to and dealt with before the Lord for the good of the church and the well-being of the nation.
Now, additionally here at Grace, also troubling and mortared into the stumbling blocks, are the discovered accreditation, administrative, and financial issues at the university and seminary, which, I think, in a sense, further exposit some of the practical effects of the worldly attitudes and methods underlying this other gospel encased in the political teachings and proclamations. However here, even worse, these issues, also in imitation of the world, are essentially treated mostly as PR issues in a damage control mode, complete with attempts to sweep them under the pulpit with a declaration that they are no one’s business. Really. What does a believer, seeking a pure and deeper devotion to Christ and a clear mind and heart in proclaiming the gospel, do with this? These actions are not worthy of you, nor indicative of the totality of your life and ministry, but they are out there, loud and clear, proclaiming something other than the gospel.
And finally, working to hide these stumbling blocks from critical evaluation and the ability to escape their mind and heart entrapments, is a poisoning air of silence on the ongoing faith-numbing effects of this preached political ideology and the overlaid gospel stemming from it. Additionally, there is even a louder silence on the shared ownership of the carefully induced and now deepening political mindlessness espoused by the Evangelical church as a whole, and the gospel-diminishing social heartlessness, and even meanness, preached and maintained in support of it. A mindlessness and heartlessness that has seemingly by design spread and seeped into the minds and hearts of believers at Grace and the larger church and even into the political and social bloodstream of our nation as a whole. By your and the church’s continued silence, without truly acknowledging the part everyone sang in national support of these things, you are in effect saying that this further entrenching political and social mindlessness and heartlessness burdening the church and our nation as a whole, were and are not now significant to or indicative of your ministry, or in need of consideration, or are in any way important to acknowledge – but thus, in effect, you are factually proclaiming these things are not important or significant to the Lord, or worthy of His consideration – therefore none of His business.
For my part, these political ideologies, the politicized gospel and unbiblical rationales, and the ensuing crooked paths of faith of the Evangelical church as a whole, are the exact opposite of what I pray for and strive to teach my grandchildren by my words and example. For part of the godly legacy I wish and work to leave within them are a deep devotion to Christ, thinking minds, hearts open with compassion and understanding to all those around them, a close walk and dependence upon the Holy Spirit, that the compassion and love of Christ and the hope of the gospel dwell in their attitudes and breathed-out in everything they say and do, and that they live their faith upon the streets and in the marketplace with righteousness and a drive for justice for all as constant companions. Perhaps my love and prayers for them is one of the reasons why all of this political agitation and corruption within the church is so burdensome and toxic to me, as I am always fighting and struggling against it for those I love and for those I strive to witness to with my life and words. If there is a blessing for me within all of this church-disabling, sinful, political intrusion, it is the opportunities the Lord has given me to reach out and witness to friends and others, who though not identifying themselves as Christians or as believers as defined by Grace, are so appalled and stupefied by the church’s support and promotion of clearly wicked and godless men, that, at times, the Lord has used this to quiet their minds and still their hearts to an openness and receptivity to at least a hearing of the true gospel of Christ. By God’s grace and mercy, within all this gathered ideological and political darkness within the church, the true gospel does, at times, more brightly shine.
John, the church cannot celebrate these political ideological teachings and their effects within Grace, the larger church, and within our suffering, struggling nation. I believe it is dangerous to the faith and spiritual health of many at Grace Church and in the wider-reach of the church’s ministries, to celebrate theological precision in teaching, without first examining where the paths of this infused political ideology and politicized gospel have led you and many within the church and our nation. In a previous letter, I suggested that you and Grace Church could lead a national call for repentance over the American Evangelical church’s rush towards conservative political influence and dominance – a rush, a whoring, without regard to the damage or cost to the cause of Christ and the gospel. I now believe the time for a call for national repentance has passed, but, however, I do believe even more strongly, that what is now needed within the ministry of Grace, and called for by the Lord, is a deep, true, and honest recognition, repentance, and mourning over the sin and transgressions involved in placing political ideologies above Christ and the imperatives of the gospel and preaching these abominations into the hearts of God’s people.
A mourning over sin will cleanse and create the hearts the Lord can use to bring His people back from the mindless and heartless abyss of a politicized gospel, which will also again energize the church’s witness to the love and compassion of Christ and the glorious saving and life-giving nature of the gospel – a source of true blessing for the church and our nation at large. Without an acknowledgment of these issues and a mourning over all aspects of sin associated with them, the celebration of your ministry is incomplete and misleading without you first excelling in providing a much needed example of a great pastor and preacher of God’s word humbling himself in publicly acknowledging this occasion of sin before God’s people and working to restore their hearts and minds wholly unto the Lord. This would be a glorious jewel in the crown of your ministry. God’s people would be blessed beyond measure by this display of humility, and in this, yes, Christ and the gospel would be glorified, and in a way and manner even understandable to the world.
John, your teaching has always been full and with depth and never deficient or shallow, and because of your example, I also do not want my love and honoring of your ministry to be either deficient or shallow. That is why I have written this letter. These qualities of your character and teaching, apart from the actual scriptural content, have also made a lasting impression upon my mind, and I’m sure within the hearts and minds of many others, even if they are not consciously aware of them or able to articulate this aspect within their lives. Perhaps the impact of this constant fullness and depth upon my life, and the absence of them in your political teachings and proclamations, have as an addition to their actual content and intent, also added to the painful penetration of grief within my heart, a pain and grief that has spread as a pervading sadness within me over these many years of your political bewitchments and their intrusions into your teaching ministry and life. But I thank the Lord deeply for this grief and pain – for the depths to which I plunged, and for the experience and growing depth of the knowledge of His infinite love and grace, intimate lovingkindness, overwhelming strength, comfort, and wisdom – for the absolute allness of all of Him – and for the deep peace of the trust and confidence I have in Him as He continues to direct my path.
I am now praying that the Lord will move with the power of His holiness, grace, and righteousness within the hearts and minds of God’ people within the local churches:
- To raise up many godly and convicted voices, big and small, articulate and hesitant, calling not only for repentance and mourning, but also crying out for a renewed faith and heart in returning to the simplicity of a devotion to Christ and His word,
- For hearts filled with compassion, love, and a deep commitment and godly longing to reach the lost with the truth and light of the gospel of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
- For a renewed and deepening trust in the Lord and a returning reliance upon the Holy Spirit exhibited in an obedient walk and fervent and constant prayer,
- To fill their hearts and minds with prayers that the Lord will cleanse His church of worldly political ideologies and ensuing corrupting alliances and practices,
- And that the Lord will move in our nation and among the peoples of this land in His way and through His means to spread righteousness and secure justice for all.
With a heart deeply thankful before the Lord for all He has given and blessed me with through my forty-four years here at Grace, including the scriptural knowledge and an ever deepening love for the Lord that has prepared me to write even letters such as this, I continue to pray for you and your ministry, for Grace and the Evangelical Church and the even larger Christian community, and for our political process and our nation and its peoples as a whole. Moreover, I pray with diligence, hope, and even joy as I have already seen the Lord answering many prayers. And, now, in my heart and mind, I believe this is the final letter that I need write to you, as I believe I have written everything that the Lord has intended for me to say. May the Lord, through His gracious and powerful work, create in you a heart magnified in profound humility and an ever-deepening love and devotion to Himself, and may He, by equally magnifying your ministry, increase the grace and blessing upon His people throughout all the remaining years of your life. For this, I will also pray.
Sincerely and with much regard,
Chris Orozco
Phone Call from an Elder within the Fellowship Group
More than a week or so after I mailed the letter to the home of our pastor, I received a phone call from one of the elders in my fellowship group. I was curious about the reason for his call, as I had not sent him a copy of the letter, and I listened carefully and with interest to what he said. He was very friendly and he mentioned that he had not seen me at the fellowship group for quite some time. I explained to him that I rarely attended the fellowship group now as during the time the group met, I was at home listening to the church service live-streamed from the church in Missouri that my daughter and son-in-law and all the grandchildren attended. I added that when the service was over, I had enough time to travel down to Grace church to attend the big worship service with my wife. I know that I had already explained this to one of the pastors in the fellowship group and I thought I had also mentioned it to this elder. He thanked me for explaining this and then he seemed to pause. Knowing him as a very friendly and even kind man, I then said, “But this isn’t really what you phoned me about”, and I laughed quietly a bit and so did he.
“No,” he said, “I’m phoning concerning the letter that you sent to Pastor MacArthur”. He then went on to explain that our pastor had given the letter that I sent to him to the church administrator to handle, and the church administrator contacted this elder and asked him to handle it, as I was in the fellowship group over which he was an elder. I asked him what type of paper was the letter printed on, and he described the antique ivory stationary so it was, indeed, the letter I had mailed to Pastor MacArthur’s home.
The conversation with the elder was short and his main question and concern was whether there were any theological questions within the letter that he should address and discuss with me or were the issues more “practical” – I believe this was the word he used. Quickly thinking over this letter, I stated the letter mostly dealt with the political statements made within the church and the actions taken to support the president and his policies and reelection and that the issues were not essentially theological. He stated that the church, including himself, did not agree with my opinions, though I was entitled to think differently and this basically ended the conversation. He said a few other things and just before we ended the call, he paused and then said, sort of out-of-the-blue, that the letter was really very well written and that I made my points clearly. I got the impression that he was reading it closely for the first time just then, and that his response was spontaneous, open, and honest. He was impressed with the writing – I assumed the style, construction of thought and clarity of expression – and I thanked him very honestly for his comments.
With all my letters, I spent a lot of time writing and rewriting and thinking and rethinking these letters – at times even sending drafts out to my small reader group for comments and advice – because I knew they had to be perfect – as perfect as I could construct them – as I was writing to men of extensive education, years of teaching, and with sustained high standards of their own in everything to do with their preaching, speaking, and writing. I knew that if I was to have any opening to their minds, my writing also had to be at the highest quality I could achieve. Since I had never received any response or feedback on anything I wrote, I was so thankful for his remarks, even as few as they were, because he verified that I had, at least in his mind, achieved a level of expression and communication that carried the content in a manner that at least would not be rejected outright for sloppy work or careless writing and thought. This had always been a primary concern with me when I wrote these letters – their quality and clarity – and his comments were something I truly needed to hear, and I was thankful to him and to the Lord in supplying this feedback and answering a primary concern I had with my writing. We ended our conversation with his comments and my thanks.
Reviewing the content of this call the next day, I realized that I had not really understood the central issue of his question on whether I was raising theological issues, because thinking the letter over, all church procedures, behaviors, and spoken and written communications, were theological issues because everything that we did, as taught and stressed by Grace Church, are theological in that they express our own practical theological understanding of scripture, of God, and of Christ and His gospel. I then realized that this was what we should have really discussed, or made a time to discuss, as this was the real central issue to what I was writing – that all the political pronouncements and activities were in fact diminishing Christ and His gospel and this, as a perversion of the gospel, was critically theological.
I also realized that the suggestion to send the letter to Pastor MacArthur’s home was sound because he did receive and, I assume, at least at a minimum glanced over it, and then took it to church to give to the church administrator. He seemed concerned that there would be some response to me, and this may have been the usual manner in which correspondence such as mine was handled. But again, it put back into my mind the question of whether he had even received the other letters. As I discussed with a friend a few days after this conversation on the phone with the elder, I always referred to other letters I sent, because if he had not received them but was interested in looking at them, they still may be on file at church. Though, I also wondered, realistically, if my writings were even considered worthy of a file.
Incident with My Wife Serving at the Shepherd’s Conference
In early March, during the Shepherds’ Conference, my wife volunteered to help, as she had done for many years, and she was assigned to help serve at the dinner hosted by John Macarthur for visiting donors of the church’s ministries. Dinner had been served, there were extra filet mignons, and the few volunteers serving in the room were to receive the extra dinners. Vonnie was then waiting for her dinner, sitting on a stool in the back of the room facing Pastor MacArthur who was speaking up front. She felt faint, stretched out her hand, passed out, and fell head first from her stool and, as the security personnel who witnessed everything on camera put it, “she really whacked her head on the floor”. When I eventually saw my wife in the hospital, she informed me about the event. Based on what she told me, two days later, I wrote a short note to our pastor and mailed it to his home address.
Handwritten Thank You Note to Pastor MacArthur
March 7, 2019
Dear Pastor MacArthur,
Thank you very much for your concern, kindness, and prayers when my wife, Name, fainted after serving dinner Tuesday at the Shepherd’s Conference. When she fainted, she fell to the floor, and later, when I came to her at Kaiser, she told me that when she regained consciousness, your face looking upon her with concern was the first face she recognized. She also remembers you calling after her saying you were praying for her as ER wheeled her to the ambulance to take her to the hospital. Name was very appreciative of your kindness and prayers.
And here I want to again thank you for your kindness and concern towards my wife. Many attending Grace, and especially now those attending the conference, have not directly seen the kindness and concern of your pastoral heart, but we have in the past and we have now been blessed again by your touch. Of course, I have written several long letters to you concerning the political involvement of the church, but I have always affirmed my appreciation for your teaching ministry and your touches in the past upon my family. And here with this event, I praise the Lord for the Holy Spirit’s apparent work within our lives for us to continually embrace and preserve the unity of the body expressed in the bond of love. I thank the Lord again for your kindness to us, and for the opportunity He has afforded me to again affirm my thankfulness for your kindness and teaching ministry. Our God is an amazing God, orchestrating every event for the good of those who love Him and for His church.
Sincerely, Chris Orozco
Handwritten Note from Pastor MacArthur in Response to My Thank You Note to Him
3/12/19
Dear Chris –
It was a sad experience to see your dear wife fall. She has been such a faithful and gracious servant to our church for so many years.
I was glad to have been there to offer some small encouragement to her – and to lead the people at the dinner in prayer for her. She likely overdid her kindness through a long day – not surprising! And I hope she is well now.
My prayers are for both of you – thanks for your very kind letter! I did not understand the previous one, but this one was a benediction!
Love in the truth,
John
Num. 6:24-26
Thoughts on the Note from Pastor MacArthur & Church Environment
In my postings, if I actually quote from the writings of another, I usually only take a few necessary words or sentences, but I wanted to include this entire note from Pastor MacArthur as it shows so honestly and brightly his pastoral heart in its expressed kindness and concern for others. This note also shows clearly the pastor who I was writing to, and who I usually referred to as, “our” pastor. I know a lesser man would not have inspired the loyalty I displayed in these letters, as I attempted with the best of my understanding and ability to call and pull away this man who I admired, from the influences and thought patterns in which I saw him being engulfed and following to the detriment of his ministry and legacy as a man preaching through the entire New Testament. For me, receiving this note from Pastor MacArthur was truly a benediction, but also greatly sharpened my concern for the waters he had waded into.
It was also very hard for me to reconcile Pastor MacArthur, my pastor, as the man who could think and express himself as he did in this note, with the man who now was continuously, forcefully and loudly, promoting this deceitful, deceptive, and manipulative man. I kept wondering why none of the other pastors or elders seemed to be really addressing or confronting Pastor MacArthur with what he was captivated and doing. I kept wondering, “Doesn’t anyone love him?” I never truly understood their silence, their accommodation, encouragement, and applause and agreement with him as they all together seemed to descend step-by-step into the world of political machinations and pollution created by the president’s lies, pride, and violence – into a joint church ministry now becoming more devoid of a true intimacy with Christ and a close walk with the Holy Spirit. Were none of them concerned with our pastor losing spiritual award or incurring judgement for taking the church down this dangerous and gospel denying path?
I also wondered anew if Pastor MacArthur had received and read the letters that I had previously sent. I also did not know what to think of his statement that he did not understand the long letter I had just previously sent to his home. After pondering this for a while, I just read his words as honest and not disingenuous and accepted it as true. Multiple thoughts and explanations came to me for this statement from Pastor MacArthur, but after much thought, I concluded that essentially, he was not in a place of mind or heart, or physical location, where he could or would be able to receive and understand any view or thought different from what was already present deeply within him and those around him. And for all of those in leadership at Grace, whether the pieces composing this emerged and blessed political/pseudo-Christian ideology and force within them, were the resurrected, revitalized, and unexamined social, cultural, and racial norms and values inculcated, accepted, and innately living within them now since birth, or were new attachments or bewitchments grasped and clung-to as desperate anchors within the floods of a tremendously changing and challenging time – or both combined, an enthralling, mindlessly twirling kaleidoscope of everything churned together – I did not know, and essentially could not know. However, the vision and noise now spinning inside them, had not produced a heightened compassion or a new hearing, but rather only blindness and deafness to all the dangers, deceptions, and wicked schemes and their intended consequences that were now like a malevolent tornado, howling on their horizons and storming within and around them. The staff and elders I knew were all supporting the reelection of a godless man of violence and already were engulfed to some measure within the conservative political/religious whirlpool now frenetically swirling everything, including the church, into it. And this whirlpool, and this evil man constantly spewing lies and deceit within it, seeking reelection at any cost, was indeed now their worldview and god, ideologically, politically, and religiously – a polluted and twisted view of the Christian faith – to me, a faith now essentially an already dim light fading into a darkness of a diminished Christ and gospel.
Now, however, regardless of all my prayers and concerns, and the ensuing letters over the years, or who read them and who did not, or what became of them, or the genesis or causes of individual thoughts and actions, here we all were at the beginning of 2019, the year of the 50th Anniversary. A year the church looked forward to as a year of celebration and joy. No one knew what was coming in 2020, what was to transpire within the nation or church, where all the political intrusion into the church was leading, or which paths the church would rush down with quickening steps, or what would eventually be preached and acclaimed from the pulpit in the next year – all was totally unknown and not foreseen at this time.
However, in November 2019, just before Thanksgiving as I remember, the church administrator closed a packed Sunday morning service in the large Worship Center with a lengthy, praiseful review of all the accomplishments of the year at Grace, of course citing the 50th Anniversary celebration, the very well-attended Shepherds’ Conference, and other Grace Church accomplishments. He expressed satisfaction and contentment with the Lord’s accomplishments and ended his anthem of praise by looking forward to even more great endeavors and blessings in the next year, 2020.
The congregation around me seemed to bask contentedly in peace and joy, in agreement with the administrator’s praise of all that had occurred and been accomplished. This feeling of peace and joy I did not share; I was not in communion with seeing this church-wide spirit of joyful, contented self-congratulation. Rather, I was shocked. I was stunned, and held my breath for a moment as what I felt was a fear in proportion to the seeming lack of humility and a true fear of the Lord emanating from the pulpit, and one now pervading the sanctuary. Instead of joy, what touched my soul, like a sharp, cold, boney finger, was a deepening knowledge of a sure coming judgement. His paean of praise now echoed within me as an elegy for something awaiting death, for something dying. Stunning, icy, and…fearful.
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Some of the Letters Written to My Church Subsequent to This Letter
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