Pastor and author John MacArthur told a radio audience last week that America may be under “divine judgment,” adding that the only way back is through the power of the gospel, not politics. The pastor of Grace Community Church and the host of the popular radio ministry Grace to You made the remarks during an interview with Breitbart News Daily, saying America’s moral decay is a result of the church failing in its mission and the nation abandoning Scripture.
“I think about everything biblically. And God is sovereign,” he said. “And He is in charge. And He controls everything. And that means that what’s going on in our country, as bad as it is and as satanic as it is, we have to remember that the devil is God’s devil. And he’s got limits, and he’s got boundaries.
“So why is what’s happening happening?” MacArthur asked. “Because when a society, again, turns to sexual immorality, homosexual immorality, and a reprobate mind, God gives them up. There’s a sense in which God takes His hand of blessing off that society. And when He gives them up, it means He gives them up to the consequences of their choices.
“If you follow that pattern, what you get is Joe Biden,” he added, referencing Biden’s positions on abortion and LGBT issues.
Biden “is what you get when you go down the Romans 1 path,” MacArthur said.
“Because this is, in itself, a kind of divine judgment.”
The good news, MacArthur said, is “there is a way back” if “we return to the Word of God if we proclaim the gospel if people turn to Christ.”
“You can’t change a culture any other way than to change hearts -- change hearts from the inside out. And that’s where the church has to step in,” he said. “And as a man who’s been in the pastorate virtually my whole adult life, I have to say, the church has miserably failed. The church has worked so hard to look and sound like what people outside the church want that it’s lost its impact.”
Politics is not the solution to America’s moral decay, MacArthur said.
“The solution is not going to be Donald Trump. That’s a huge move in the right direction. And I think if God allows that to happen if Trump becomes president, you could say that the Lord has kindly put the brakes on a little bit,” he said. “But the train is moving so fast down the direction of having been abandoned by God that unless there’s a huge spiritual turnaround, there’s no way to stop this. And that falls to the church and Christian people.
“... Obviously, we care about policies because you care about sin and righteousness. And we want to uphold righteousness. But Christian people also have to care a whole lot more about the gospel; that alone can transform people’s hearts. We can be concerned about temporal things like politics. But the reason we’re in this world is to proclaim the saving Gospel of Christ.
“The transformation that He brings can change a family, and change community, and change the nation.”
Photo Credit: ©Facebook/John MacArthur
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.