Julie Roys exposes just how insecure the John MacArthur crowd is
American politics has gotten out of control. We all realize that our nation is more polarized than we've been in decades, if not the last century. The primary reason for this is the refusal to agree on even the most basic objective truths.
An example of this is extremist division is how the Democrats continually accuse Donald Trump and his supporters for doing exactly what they, themselves, are doing. We've seen them accuse Trump of colluding with Russia when it was really Hillary Clinton and the Democrats of doing so. They accused Trump of bribing Ukraine when it was really Joe Biden. They've accused Trump of inciting an insurrection, when it was really the Dems with BLM and Antifa over the summer. And then we saw the same accusation in dealing with the January 6th Capitol fiasco, claiming Trump was directly inciting a coup and overthrow of the government, when it was the Left that actually overthrew the government with their rigging of the 2020 Election. It's a pre-emptive deflection tactic to shift the attention off of themselves and onto their opponent, allowing the Democrats to get away with all sort of heinous crimes.
Another strategy is to make everything personal, which forces everyone to pick teams. If Dems and the GOP would simply debate the issues, there could be common ground made. The Democrats don't want to find common ground, so they paint Donald Trump out as an evil dictator on the level of Adolf Hitler and his supporters as violent domestic terrorists that are literal Nazis. This is a means of discrediting the opposition through slanderous tactics. This is a long-time political tactic that has run rampant in recent time. Unfortunately, it's also found its way into the Evangelical Church.
There's an interesting parallel between what is going on within politics and Christianity. Just as we are seeing there being a separation between the establishment politicians and the everyday American, we are seeing a separation between the Evangelical Elite and the everyday layperson.
We are also seeing a similar tactic being use by the elites in both camps towards anyone who might possibly critique them. We see this within politics, and now we are seeing it within Christianity. This is standard procedure for Grace To You and the rest of the John MacArthur organizations.
For example, I've experienced the personal attacks and attempts to discredit me through falsehoods, such as that I used to work for an occultic nightclub, which is patently false. This was simply a pre-emptive deflection strategy to avoid having to answer questions about John MacArthur's about-face when it comes to Interfaith Dialogue. There was a lot of intimidation tactics occurring, as well, hoping to silence me.
We saw the same thing occur with Paige Rogers with her article exposing John MacArthur's made up stories about his whereabouts the night of MLK's assassination. She got testimony from both Charles Evers and the Perkins family stating that MacArthur was lying, as well as posting photos and FBI reports contradicting the claims made by JMac. What was the response from the MacArthur camp? Personal attacks against Paige.
We've also seen this when countless women have come forward accusing Grace Church & TMU of covering up sexual abuse. Yet again, it was simply personal attacks and intimidation to deflect from the real issues.
We are now seeing this same tactic being used against Julie Roys after her explosive article exposing the massive wealth of Pastor John MacArthur and the refusal for transparency of financial records. You would assume that Pastor MacArthur and his staffers would respond with simply clarifying up any disinformation. Right? Hardly.
Phil Johnson has led the charge of personally discrediting Julie Roys, accusing her of having sinister motivations and sinful behavior for even questioning the amazing John MacArthur. He also went so far as to dox her, which is yet another intimidation tactic that I've also witnessed being done to Brannon Howse to discredit him during his critiques of JMac. I mean, no one has done more for the church than JMac, so who is anybody else to criticize the man?
John MacArthur fanboys like JD Hall, Tim Hurd and Josh Fritz have followed suit, apparently being able to read hearts and minds and know the motivation of Julie Roys. Tim Hurd went extremely personal, referring to Julie as a "wicked woman pastor," despite the fact that she is not a pastor and the photo he cited was when she spoke at a conference, not preaching in a church.
Josh Fritz did a whole podcast on the motivation of Julie Roys, despite never actually speaking to her or knowing what she's thinking.
The problem in all of these cases is that no one actually refutes anything that Julie Roys wrote about. I didn't see any clarifications of issues. I didn't see any attempt at transparency. All I saw was personal attacks against Julie Roys.
You need to remember that this is standard procedure. Apparently, to the Evangelical Elite, the 11th Commandment is to not criticize the anointed ones. While this is completely unscriptural, if you do publicly critique someone like a Pastor MacArthur, you can expect to be attacked on a personal level, just like the Democrats are doing to Conservatives by promoting Cancel Culture. This is something that should not be occurring within the Church.
So what's the answer? According to the MacArthur crowd it would be to stop critiquing their pastor-idol. Biblically, that is not the proper answer. Remember, what did Jesus do during His earthly ministry? He exposed the Religious Elite of hypocrisy and corruption. If we want to emulate Christ, we'll do the same thing.
The answer is to not use these ad hominem attacks and deflective strategies that the Grace To You crowd is employing. Instead, discuss and debate the actual issues. Focus on the fact. Expose the truth. Confront the error.
I don't agree with Julie Roys on everything. I actually agree with John MacArthur theologically on the majority of the issues. But that doesn't mean that I have to always align myself with JMac no matter what. This isn't a team sport. We should take each issue on a case by case basis.
If your worldview falls apart of your idol pastor is caught sinning or even losing his ministry, you need to check yourself. God doesn't need anyone of us. He doesn't need John MacArthur. The Gospel is the same today as it was yesterday. The power of the Gospel doesn't change of Mac gets exposed for some issue that he needs to repent for. For some reason, his followers have such little faith in God that their faith will apparently fall apart if Mac is "taken down." (I'm not saying I want to take down John MacArthur, BTW)
Put your faith in Christ and Christ alone. Do not follow a fallible man. John MacArthur may have blessed your life, just as he has mine. But he's not the one that I follow. You shouldn't feel threatened if an impropriety gets exposed. Our faith is to be in God, not in John MacArthur.
Big Tech censorship has been expanding beyond just Conservatives… Christians are next!
While many of us have been warning about the coming persecution of Christians, I don’t think any of us thought that it would be ramping up so quickly. While we are luckily not facing physical persecution yet, such as beatings or death, we are facing censorship, deplatforming and even jail time in some instances. These are just the birth pangs of what is coming next.
While we still have a voice here at The GateKeepers, we are doing everything that we can to bypass the algorithmic walls put up by Big Tech and the Social Media companies like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Our videos used to get thousands of views across all of our platforms, while now they are being throttled and hardly getting distributed at all. An added wrinkle is that, while our video content is seeing lower views, traffic to our website has never been higher. Over the past year we’ve seen a 700% increase in traffic, and it’s been amazing to experience this kind of growth. Because of this, we’ll be launching GKTV very soon, hosting all of our shows exclusively on our platform.
While The GateKeepers started out as nothing more than a blog for me to post my articles relating to concerns within Christianity, it has now expanded into a full-fledged Christian podcast network featuring fifteen shows, a publishing company that has published three books over the past year and we are now hosting conferences on a regular basis. We’ve seen the addition of contributors to The GateKeepers such as Denise McAllister, Pastor Cary Gordon, Pastor Ken Peters, Dr Mike Spaulding, Dr Bobby Lopez and many other amazing Christian leaders. Our lineup of shows has expanded, as well, featuring shows such as The Shining Light Podcast, Conversations with Jeff, The Big Brown Gadfly, Battlefront: SouthGate and The Verum Monitae Report with Dr Mike Spaulding, in addition the the several other shows we also carry on The GateKeepers.
Everything that we do is for the purpose of expanding Biblical Christianity through the preaching of the Gospel, the exposition of God's Word and confronting error where it pops its ugly head within the Church. We are mission-focused first, and then we use technology, books, resources and events to accomplish and further the Gospel and Biblical theology.
While we’ve seen some amazing growth and expansion, we are also working hard to make this be a long-term play, and with that comes with how to fund our work here. I’ve intentionally not turned The GateKeepers into a non-profit organization because I don’t want to become beholden to the government, and I also don’t want to be focused on sending out fundraising letters constantly begging for money like most non-profit ministries do.
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