Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church, a California-based megachurch that has been defying state and local laws and ordinances by having indoor, fully packed, non-socially distanced, non-masked services, announced that he received an internal memo from the Los Angeles Police Department reassuring his congregation that officers would not be showing up to enforce any health department or court ordered mandates that threatened to shut them down.
The good news comes in the midst of a week of high drama for GCC. They initially received threats of fines of $1000 if they did not shut down, then retained high profile legal counsel, then received a court injunction allowing them to remain open, which was then overturned in an appeals court late Saturday night just hours before their services were to commence.
In an interview with conservative commentator Todd Starnes, posted below, John MacArthur begins by explaining part of their rationale for re-opening their Sunday morning services and deciding to join with hundreds of other California Churches that either never shut down or had been reopened for months:
If the constitution didn’t allow us to meet, the bible would still command us to meet. But we have that support for the biblical right in our constitution, which really doubles down on the legitimacy of doing exactly what we did. We’re not violating the law – the people who are trying to keep us out of Church, they’re violating it [the law] by violating the constitution.
After commenting on how wonderful it was to have the children back in services, along with explaining their reaction to the various court hearings and appeals and why they have chosen to respond as they did, Pastor MacArthur divulged this information:
One footnote, Todd. I got an internal memo from the Police Department, and what it said was it went through the police department, the LAPD, and it said, ‘for the health department and the county, any decisions that you make with regard to sanctions on any church, don’t call us. We will not be involved.’ The chief of police told me there’s no scenario the police will ever come and close down Grace Church.
Macarthur later released another short video where he reiterated the same thing, emphasizing the church’s close ties to the police and that they will never be shut down:
“The police love Grace church. I’ll tell you that. All last week we had them here for training. I talked to the Chief of the police in LA, he said this to me: ‘There’s no scenario that I can imagine, in which the police would ever come against Grace Community Church. We are concerned with the law, not health ordinances.’ They’re our friends, we’ve been their friends for years. I just received another plaque from the LAPD for the service we rendered to them and have for many years.
So they feel like they’re under attack by the politicians who are supposed to be the fathers of the society, but they’re murderous. They’re killing babies at 364 a day in California, in the womb, which is the most obvious case of premeditated murder there is, and they’re turning over every righteous standard in this society they can.
So they have forfeited the right to call themselves a government that protects the good and is a terror to the evil. They flipped that. The police for us are the last agency of that. We’re standing with them as they’re being attacked and with the churches right to continue to meet to be salt and light in the word.
