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City Threatens to use Homeless as Pawns to Shut down John MacArthur and GCC

The Los Angeles County Health Department has issued a bizarre new threat against John MacArthur and Grace Community Church in order to keep them from gathering: shut your church down or we’ll sic the homeless on you.

Pastor John MacArthur confirmed the bizarre threat while preaching at the Trinity Bible Church in Dallas, TX on March 14. He explains:

We have been threatened by the county, the city, the state of California, endlessly for about a year. They have not been able to close us down at all. We’re thankful for that. They have made all kinds of bizarre threats. They have threatened to lock down our parking lots- that didn’t work.

The latest threat was that two weeks ago, they called and said they’re going to put a homeless encampment in our parking lot. They’re going to gather homeless from everywhere- this is actually true- and fill up our parking lot with homeless people to try to shut us down. My response was ‘perfect, we’ll have our seminary students evangelize them all day long.’

Maybe someone got the word in the city because they pulled back from that.

The visit to Trinity Bible Church is the first church MacArthur has preached at other his own since the pandemic began, over a year ago. He likewise expressed his amazement that even though his church hasn’t had an offering in over a year, the giving has exceeded any giving in any period of time in the history of the church. Speaking to the future and his upcoming trial, he is hopeful the proceedings may not get that far.

None of us knows when this nonsense is going to end, but we may get to a point where this COVID lockdown begins to slow down to such a point that our case will never even be litigated, and that’s our hope.