How Julie Roys’ Attempted Takedown of John MacArthur is a Battle in a Larger War – Part 2

How Julie Roy's attempted takedown of John MacArthur is a battle in a larger war. Today is part two of that topic, right here on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Worldview is a non-profit, listener-supported radio ministry. We are able to broadcast on the radio station, website, or app on which you are listening today because of the support of listeners like you.

So thank you for your prayer, encouragement, and support. You can connect with us by visiting our website, thechristianworldview.org, calling our toll-free number, 1-888-646-2233, or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 541. Julie Roy's calls herself a Christian investigative reporter, focusing on abuse and corruption within the Evangelical Church. Hailing from Chicago, her reporting has led to prominent pastors and Christian leaders like James McDonald, Bill Hybels, Ravi Zacharias, and Mark Driscoll being discredited and removed. For the past several years, she has set her sights on John MacArthur, one of the most respected pastors of the last half century. MacArthur has pastored Grace Community Church because sheclaims Carthage Clowns and bizarre jugular, which has providedbergers with highercreams, due to lack of family, through fees oversold, but no contact with the great over collateral, and by preparing forala. Still, this is a ridiculous andokwatch trend that we cannot win unless we look beyond our rules to stop everyone from suing us across the country. What do you think ofexe breath and mismatch, John?

hold headship in the home. Roy's implication is, that doctrine that MacArthur teaches has led to abuse of women and excessive discipline of children. Last week in part one, we looked into who Julie Royce is and what her beliefs are. We also examined two of the prominent counseling cases at Grace Community Church she has highlighted as proving a pattern of abuse within the church. This week in part two, Pastor Travis Allen joins us.

He currently pastors Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado, but Travis was formerly an elder at Grace Community Church and the managing director of Grace to You. He was at the church when the David and Eileen Gray counseling case took place that Julie Royce has been reporting on. Travis will discuss a recent Christianity Today article that featured an interview with the one elder out of 37 at Grace Community Church who sided with Julie Royce.

He will also explain how these attacks on MacArthur are a battle in a larger war. Now if you missed part one with all the details on these cases, I would encourage you to go to our website thechristianworldview.org to catch up on that because we don't have time to repeat all the details today. But just as a short summary, the leap that Julie Royce and Christianity Today want you to believe about these cases at Grace Community Church is that the church and MacArthur intentionally cover up and they protect abusive men and they shame women because of their patriarchal beliefs. When the reality is, there are many other plausible explanations that occur in these counseling situations. For instance, a man expresses repentance or just deceives the elders who are counseling him and the elders believe the man, but then the man later on goes on to abuse again later, as if Grace Community Church and these elders should be omniscient and they should be able to see what's going to happen in the future. Or another possibility is that women exaggerate or lie about their husband for whatever reason they may have. Maybe it's to get out of a marriage. And of course, there's also the possibility that these qualified elders go through the biblical process and their priority is reconciling marriages and families and just some misjudgments are made along the way.

That's not beyond the realm. It happens all the time in secular counseling. It happens in the courts.

It happens with medical care. We live in a fallen world. Biblically qualified church elders may be godly men, but they're certainly not infallible. But any of these reasons are very different than saying that Grace Community Church and John MacArthur intentionally have a pattern of covering up and protecting abusive men and shaming women, as if a church with this kind of long-standing godly reputation would have that as their objective.

And again, Travis Allen, pastor of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado, joins us today. He was formerly an elder at Grace Community Church, John MacArthur's church in Los Angeles. Travis, is there more context that you would like to offer on who Julie Royce is, and why do you believe she is so determined to take down John MacArthur? I think only God knows truly what's going on in Julie Royce's heart, that she has become so embittered against John MacArthur. But I've been following her for a few years, and I've seen her become increasingly, I would use the word, maybe cynical, maybe jaded, I think in her perspective about men in leadership, and especially if they're men with a big ministry.

Big ministry reach, big ministry influence. And I gotta think, obviously I don't know her heart, I don't know her personally, but just from an observer's point of view and a reader's point of view, I think that she has had so many bad examples of male leadership, starting with her own pastor, James MacDonald, way back when. James MacDonald has proven himself to be disqualified to the max. And I think many of us, many, many years ago could see that James MacDonald should not be in pastoral ministry, should not be so prominent, shouldn't be platformed, shouldn't be headlining conferences. So much was aberrant and even heretical, bringing TD Jakes and calling him a brother.

TD Jakes, who is an anti-Trinitarian United Pentecostal pastor and doesn't believe in the Trinity. I think when seeing James MacDonald and seeing that thing melt down from the inside for her, when your pastor lets you down, when your pastor blows it, it really does leave a deep, deep mark in your ability to trust people. Think about what happens in a marriage when there's an adulterous situation going on between a married couple, how deep of a mark that leaves and the scar that that leaves. And I think it's hurt her deeply. I think also, you know, she had a radio program on Moody Radio and I think she started to get too close to exposing some things going on in Moody and they shut her down. And so I think she, again, had a bad experience with leadership in her life, which has made her, number one, have a lot of question marks about men, and number two, a lot of question marks about men in leadership and leadership people in power. And so when she put her crosshairs on James MacDonald, then on Bill Hybels, then on Ravi Zacharias, she was three for three and batting a thousand with those three. But when she started to turn those same guns and try to make a case that John MacArthur is like Ravi Zacharias, he was committing adultery with women in other parts of the world as he traveled. To think that John MacArthur and Ravi Zacharias are of the same character is such a deep slander. And anybody who knows John MacArthur knows how he walks in integrity and impersonal holiness, his reputation is impeccable with regard to those things, with regard to qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. And he has been surrounded for, what, 54 years now in his pulpit at Grace Community Church, people seeing him day in, day out, week in, week out, preaching the word, watching his family grow up among them, and not only his children, but his grandchildren, all of them exposed before the church, his life exposed. It is reprehensible to see the kind of linkage she's trying to make between the likes of John MacArthur and then Ravi Zacharias, Bill Hybels, and James MacDonald.

They just aren't even in the same galaxies. For an investigative journalist, she's got a huge blind spot in being able to see clearly when it comes to John MacArthur. Travis Allen with us today on the Christian Real View. He is the pastor of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado.

You were at Grace Community Church at this particular time in the early 2000s, Travis. What are some things you want listeners to keep in mind as they read these articles, if they choose to do so by Julie Royes, and then more recently, Christianity Today? Well, I think some things I would like people to take into account, and I'm talking to Christians who see the Bibles, the Word of God, they see the local churches, the institution of Jesus Christ that he created, that he died for. The people who love the Lord, love his word, and are hearing these things, I want them to be cautious. I want them to be cautious about the judgments that they come to when reading a very one-sided, and kind of as you portrayed in your setup there, David, at the very beginning, not just one-sided, but decidedly biased against John MacArthur and against Grace Community Church from the very beginning.

But even if we're just to say, let's just consider what the Bible says in Proverbs 18, 17, the one who states this case first seems right until the other comes and examines him or challenges him. I was there, as you said, starting in fall of 2000. I do remember that this case was going on. I was there, you know, during the discipline announcement, though I don't have clear recollection of that discipline announcement that she quotes from.

Being there in the early 2000s, knowing this was going on, I have great caution myself in coming to a judgment about a counseling case that I was not involved in. How much more so, I mean, I didn't see Julia Royce as a member of Grace Community Church either. I didn't see Rachel Dinn-Hollander, I didn't see, well even for that matter, Han Cho, who is a former elder from Grace Community Church, he wasn't there either at the time.

I think that if memory serves me correctly, he wasn't even a Christian, he wasn't converted at that time. All these people that are talking online and calling for Grace Community Church to talk about this counseling case, they weren't there. They weren't close to the action. They weren't involved in the case. They don't really have a business in the case. In fact, it's interesting to me that Eileen Gray has not really come forward to make her own protest heard online.

People have been referring to her, calling her a hero, but she hasn't taken to the airwaves either to say anything in my case was done unjustly. In fact, I think she would say they were just and they followed the process. The process of church discipline in Matthew 18, 15 through 20, the very first step in church discipline is just one-on-one. If somebody commits sin, you're to go to them and rebuke them privately and that way it can be repented of in private and it never needs to come to the forefront. If that person refuses to repent, next step, step two of church discipline is take one or two others with you that that matter may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. The reason for that is to bring objective people into the situation that they can help to adjudicate this in a private setting, but in order that there can be others looking into the case who are objective.

That was done in this case. It only came to step three and then finally step four, step three to tell it to the church and call this person to repentance and then step four to excommunicate this person. It only came to that when Eileen Gray refused to repent. The way Julie Roy's title, John MacArthur shamed and excommunicated a mother for refusing to take back a child abuser, that is a deceptive title. Are we really meant to believe that John MacArthur and the men who were involved in the counseling in this case, one of them, I know both of them and I know the one who was primary on this case is a pastor, Kerry Hardy, who was a man of, again, 1st Timothy 3, Titus 1. He was a man of impeccable integrity, character, wisdom. He is a good pastor and he's out in the North Carolina area pastoring still today. He's a fantastic pastor. Are we really to believe that John MacArthur and Kerry Hardy and anybody else involved in the case knew that David Gray was a child molester and they excommunicated the mother for trying to protect her children?

That's what Julie Roy's would have us believe. And it wasn't until 2005, three years later, that David Gray was sentenced into prison for his actions. These men are not omniscient. They deal with the facts that are presented to them, the facts that are presented to them by both David Eileen Gray and also their children. They thoroughly examined this case and what they could see at the time, you know, and the results of the excommunication.

I trust it and I trust Kerry Hardy. And I think that that's where it needs to stand. I was working in the pastoral ministries office at the time as an intern during those days. And through everything I learned, both whether it was by precept in actual formal instruction or discussed and practiced among pastors who counseled at the church, if there is ever any cause for, I mean, there are things that are sins and then there are things that are crimes or things that are misdemeanors. There are things that are pertaining to the Word of God and sins and the Word of God that we deal with in the church.

And then there are things that are pertaining to the criminal code of the state of California or the nation. Whenever we see something that's a violation of the criminal code, we get the civil authorities involved. That was practiced at Grace Community Church. And Grace Community, being a larger church, had a lot of resources, access to lawyers, access to law enforcement, access to people who did social work in the city, all types of avenues for not only reporting but getting counsel and making sure that every T was crossed, I was dotted. Very careful counseling that I saw.

This is my experience and my witness of that, that I saw them be very careful in their counseling. Travis Allen with us today here on The Christian Ruleview. He is the pastor of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. Coming up next, we'll talk about the article on Christianity Today with one of the elders at Grace Community Church siding with Julie Royce. You are listening to The Christian Ruleview radio program.

I'm David Wheaton. You pray for revival as if it must come, but you go on working as if it will not come. We must carry on witnessing for Christ, living a holy life, seeking to know Christ better, following his ways, following his path, making unity and peace among God's people wherever we can, supporting the preaching of the Word by our prayers and our encouragement and being, quite frankly, godly Christians. That was from the film Revival, The Work of God, which surveys some of the great revivals of the past 500 years. This two-hour, two-disc DVD documentary is our new featured resource.

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Plus, with the large 4 gigabyte capacity, you'll have plenty of extra space to load your own files. The flash drive is $25 and you can order by calling 1-888-646-2233, going to thechristianruleview.org, or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Welcome back to The Christian Ruleview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianruleview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is how Julie Roy's attempted takedown of John MacArthur is a battle in a larger war. Our guest is Pastor Travis Allen, who's a former elder at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, now pastors in Colorado. Travis, not surprisingly, Christianity Today wrote an article on this case at MacArthur's Church because they're definitely in the same worldview as Julie Roy's.

Kate Shellnut is the author of this article. The title is Grace Community Church Rejected Elders' Calls to Do Justice in Abuse Case. Women who sought refuge in biblical counseling at John MacArthur's Church said they feared discipline for seeking safety from their abusive marriages. So I'd like to ask you about an elder at Grace Community Church who you know named Han Cho, who was the one interviewed by Kate Shellnut for this article in Christianity Today. He was one of 37 elders at the church and the only one who publicly came out against the church in this David and Eileen Gray counseling and discipline case. He's no longer at Grace Community Church as an elder.

He resigned. He said he was asked to investigate this case, but that hasn't been corroborated by anyone within the church. So we have no idea of his motives either, but we do know that he's friendly with another woman, Rachel Denhollander, who is in the same worldview as Julie Roy's when it comes to trying to expose male abuse within Christian organizations. What has this former elder, Han Cho of Grace Community Church, added to this accusation?

And what do you think of Grace Community Church's non-response to these really, really pointed accusations? First of all, what has Han Cho added to this whole scenario? I think probably the clearest way to say it is he's added confusion to the situation. And the confusion comes because he seems to be a voice of reason, credibility. I knew Han. I think he became an elder the year that I left Grace Community Church and that environment to come out here and to Colorado and pastor. And I think he was a brand new elder at the time, newer Christian too. And he's a lawyer. He's an intelligent man, winsome. I really liked him.

I thought we had a very cordial relationship, but I think that through his relationship with Rachel Denhollander and probably some others in his life that are close to him, I think that it somehow has skewed his perspective. And I think the Christian United States article brings this out that he says that he was kind of commissioned by the elders at Grace Community Church to go investigate this. I know for certain Han Cho had no mandate from the elder board to investigate this case.

None. Whether that's a misstatement from Kate Shelnut or Julia Roy's or whoever's perpetuating that or whether Han Cho is the source of that himself. And he's misconstrued what, you know, conversations privately.

I don't know it's anyone's guess, but I think it needs to be stated very clearly in no uncertain terms. He had no mandate from the elder board to investigate this case, to go back and reopen it. But that's exactly what he wanted the elders to do. Based on outward pressure, based on pressure from a blogger, he was calling for his fellow elders, 36 other elders around the table, to listen to the bloggers and to go re-adjudicate this case, reopen it. And when the elders collectively said, we're not going to do that, we trust our teammates, we trust the men who were in charge at the time, we stand by the decision that we made to go through the formal process of church discipline with Eileen Grave on the basis of refusing the council and refusing to lift a restraining order and refusing to go back to her husband, they stood by it. And that's the decision they wanted to make. And Han didn't like it. So he made it a matter of his personal concern. And I think probably from the pressure coming from other sources.

I think that's what's going on with Han Cho because he's a former elder, obviously in the public eye, that gives him great credibility. And I'm saddened to see the confusion that that's brought. What do I think of the non-responsive Grace Community Church? I gotta say that that's exactly the right call. I think all local churches should do exactly what Grace Community Church has done here. I think that they have set a good example to stand by their qualification process for their elders, to trust the pastors that they put in areas of oversight and counseling oversight. They need to make sure that those elders are qualified biblically, men of strong competency, good character, and they do that. And then they work through every case as it comes to them.

Like you said, you would not want to bring you and your family or your wife or your marriage or different things into the counseling room of the pastor, thinking that one day he may expose everything that you said because of the pressure of a blogger or a quote unquote, self-proclaimed investigative journalist, or even a big publication like Christianity Today. I think that that non-responsive Grace Community Church is exactly the example. Grace Community, John MacArthur, set the example for churches in the nation and the world during COVID, standing up to Gavin Newsom and his evil regime in California. They were right. They've set the example when it comes to dealing with the pressure in the counseling cases. They want a case in, I think, the California Supreme Court that went all the way to the US Supreme Court on an alley case that helped to protect churches with regard to pressure on being sued in counseling cases. They set the example for churches when it comes to dealing with slanderous accusations from those who've been disciplined out, disgruntled former employees, non-submissive elders, refusing to respond to those accusations. I think they've proven to be right. And I think they're setting the example here when it comes to the pressure of Julie Roy's, Rachel Dinn-Hollander, Christianity Today.

I think they're right on. And I think that other churches should follow their example. But speaking of following their example, if you're going to follow their example in how they respond to the outward pressure, you need to follow their example with how they actually follow a biblical model of church membership, of regenerate church membership, having a membership process, biblical model of biblically qualified eldership, expository preaching, theology, all the things that they do internally that makes a church a church.

They are practicing and they've been setting a good example for decades. If you're not striving to be that and be biblically sound, doctrinally faithful, then you are opening yourselves up wide for being aggressively pursued by outward watchdog organizations that will want to take you down. And in some cases, it may be justified that people take down bad churches. Pastor Travis Allen with us today on the Christian worldview.

Travis, we have a changed cultural ethos now, where that word abuse means anything and everything. And so you have to and so you have counseling cases coming through the doors of churches that are very complex. Sometimes, as you've mentioned, they intersect with the criminal justice system. The elders dealing with them are not omniscient. They just have to go with the facts that they're presented with and try to really discern what's going on here. People have different motivations.

People will say anything. People will lie for their own reasons, their own purposes. So my question, Travis, is are pastors and elders, are they swimming in too deep of the end of the pool by taking on counseling cases like this, where no one really knows what is going on behind closed doors in a home? First of all, the question is, like you set it up, David, counseling cases truly are complex. And as a pastor myself who does counseling, marriage counseling and individual counseling, I am subject in the level of my counsel and my ability to counsel. Well, I'm subject to what the person tells me. I can't read the mind and there's only so much I can do with regard to investigation.

I can trust and verify and I certainly do that, but I can still be fooled. And I think that that can happen if we stop and ask the question. I mean, our pastors and elders, are they out of their depth by taking on counseling like this?

Well, it really doesn't matter if they're in or out of their depth. That's what the job is. That's what they're required by Christ to do. That's the gift that they are to the church is to provide teaching and counseling and rebuke and reproof and edification and training. That's what they're there for.

They're to preach the word and they're to do it publicly and privately. Who do you want to hand over the job of getting into the details of a marriage to? Do you want to get some outside social worker who doesn't know them at all?

When it comes to the kids and think about you as a parent, are parents the best ones to get into the details of the kids' lives? Or should we hand that over to the school system? Should we hand that over to social workers?

Should we hand that over to medical staff and professionals who have a better vantage point than parents do on their kids? It's the same thing in the local church. When church is done biblically, when you have a regenerate church membership and they covenant together to come underneath the authority of the local church and the pastors and elders who have been by Hebrews 13, 17, they're in a position of authority. They are to be obeyed and listened to.

When those pastors are conducting themselves biblically and walking according to scripture and they're getting into the details. Listen, the word of God, according to 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, they have the very mind of Christ in the word of God. And so they are competent to counsel.

They're competent to get into the matters of a marriage, a family, whether it intersects with the criminal justice system or whether it doesn't, whether it's a matter of biblical propriety or biblical law. Paul writes to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 6, and he rebukes the Corinthians for taking grievances outside of the local church and going to court against other believers. You know, when he's talking about one local church and they've got a court within the church. He says, do you not know the saints will judge the world? If the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know the word of judge angels?

How much more than matters pertain to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? That he's talking about civil magistrates or lawyers outside the church. Paul says, I say this to your shame.

It cannot be that there's no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between brothers. That is the rebuke against the Corinthian church. And I'll say this, that I think there are many churches today. They profess to be churches. They profess to be evangelical.

They have great doctoral statements on their websites. But the men, and these days, the women who are pastors and elders in those churches, they have no business actually getting into any details of anybody's life because they're not really qualified. They're not mature people. They're not mature Christians. They would fail the test of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. But for churches that do have qualified biblical elders, they have a plurality of eldership, they have a regenerate church membership, they have a church membership process and a covenant of membership. And there's an agreement of all these people to come together and put themselves underneath the council of the word of God and underneath the church authority. I absolutely, I think pastors and elders in that setting are qualified to counsel and they are the best ones because they love their sheep.

They love their people and they want the best for them. And they want to get down, get down to the, into the nitty gritty and the brass tacks in order to help these people grow in Christ and glorify God in their behavior. Travis Allen is our guest today. He's a pastor of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. He's also a former elder at Grace Community Church in this case we're talking about today in the program.

He also served our country in the US Navy. He was the former managing director of Grace2U as well. And this is why we had Travis on because he was there. You haven't heard any response out of Grace Community Church. Travis is not associated with them formally anymore. We are certainly not as the Christian worldview and we thought it was important to offer some balance and perspective.

And that's not just one sided. Travis, let's go outside this case that took place at Grace Community Church. And I know you're not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, but you no doubt have been following another woman named Rachel Denhollander. She was a former gymnast. She was actually sexually abused by Larry Nassar.

For listeners who remember that story about, I think he was a medical doctor within the US Gymnastics Association that was found, criminally found, to have sexually abused hundreds of gymnasts under his care. And she was one of them. And so now she has become an attorney. And she has been investigating again, what she reports as abuse of women going on within the Southern Baptist Convention.

I'm just going to read a couple of her tweets. She says, survivors of abuse have cried out for years about what they have suffered at this church. She's talking about Grace Community Church now. She's jumping into the MacArthur situation, the closely associated seminary and the undergraduate school.

This was not a one time miscalculation, she says. Ideas have consequences. And she says, I hear regularly from victims, former counselors, graduates of these programs and pastors raised in these models. The devastation is horrific and rooted in the framework and ideas of the ACBC, and that is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.

And she closes by saying this, ideas drive actions, which we would agree with. There's an abuse crisis in the church. Look at the ideas. Travis, tell us about Christian attorney Rachel Denhollander. And what does she mean that there's an abuse crisis in the church?

Look at the ideas. First of all, I watched Rachel Denhollander and the Larry Nassar trial kind of unfold a bit. I don't know exactly where I was first exposed to that. But I saw her make a victim impact statement during the Larry Nassar trial. And she was articulate and clear and passionate.

And I thought very evangelical declared a very clear gospel to Larry Nassar. I could hear the undertones of the anger and the hurt that she had gone through. But there was, I mean, for anybody watching, it was understood as a righteous indignation because that man was evil in the way he abused and victimized her and many of her fellow gymnast.

It's a tragic, tragic situation. I applauded that. I remember showing that her victim impact statement to a number of people and so appreciated the clarity and the incisive and articulate calling Larry Nassar to repentance and this by one of his victims.

I thought that was very powerful. Since then, I've watched her elevate into really what has become kind of a victim advocate. And who could blame her? I understand having gone through that, it's almost like she has a charge to keep or a stewardship to manage of caring for people who have been victimized by people like Larry Nassar. But I'm concerned that she's too quick to say, listen to the victim and whatever the victim says is gospel. Because victims or alleged victims, they can make a complaint and make their voice known.

And she's saying and many others are saying too, and this is the me too moment that has come into the church from the culture into the church. They're saying, whatever the woman says, you take as gospel truth. And so if she makes an accusation or an allegation against a man, that man is guilty until proven innocent.

That is to take the biblical jurisprudence, it's to take even American jurisprudence and flip it on its head. We live in a system we're so thankful we do that a person is innocent until proven guilty. And that you should not just take a victim's word for it. But it's obviously you take a an allegation seriously, but you're going to assume innocence until there's a proof of guilt. And so the burden of proof is upon the accuser.

That's not what's happening online. It's not happening with Julie Royce, Rachel Denhollander, Karen Swallow Prior, others who are advocating for victims and all that. There's another portion of something Rachel Denhollander tweeted where she's talked about Sovereign Grace churches and the SBC and the Basic Life Principles Institute of Bill Gothard and so many more. And she says it should be little surprise that associations between these leaders ran thick. Bill Gothard had significant influence on both Sovereign Grace leaders and MacArthur. Well, that's I don't know about Sovereign Grace leaders. I've never been in that environment. But it's a great surprise to me if Bill Gothard and MacArthur were great friends.

Bill Gothard was a strange man outside of the local church and his Basic Life Principles. I'm thankful to see that whole organization come apart. When she talks about the Southern Baptist Convention, the reports of abuse as the days, weeks, months and years have gone by since reports and accusations have been made about sexual abuse rife in the Southern Baptist Convention among those churches, it's actually proven to be a pretty thin argument that actually they're very comparatively to the number of churches and the number of people, very, very few, relatively speaking. And so I think that she has started to amplify what she thinks may be abuse and then she starts to go after it with great aggressiveness.

And she's now working with Guidepost Solutions. She's advising the Southern Baptist Convention to try to bring them underneath the accountability of organization like Guidepost Solutions and others to try to hold churches accountable to give an account to a larger kind of extra ecclesial organization above churches. That is unbiblical to the extreme. I'm really concerned with what I think Julie Royce, Rachel Denhollander and people like that are advocating. Let's just take one church like Grace Community Church to try to bring that church under extra ecclesial, extra church authority to stand above the church and call the church to account. That's exactly how Julie Royce is acting as an extra ecclesial authority. She's self appointed, but she's calling John MacArthur, the elders of Grace Community Church to give an account to her and to her readers.

That's what I think Rachel Denhollander is doing. Again, Pastor Travis Allen with us today in the Christian Real View. He is the senior pastor of Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. We have links to him and his preaching at our website, thechristianrealview.org. We have more coming up on this topic.

So stay tuned. You're listening to the Christian Real View radio program. I'm David Wheaton. What is the Christian Real View radio program really about? Fundamentally, it's about impacting people, families, churches, with the life and eternity changing truth of God's Word. We know the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only message that saves us from God's wrath, by God's grace, for God's glory.

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If you just joined us, our topic today is how Julie Roy's attempted takedown of John MacArthur is a battle in a larger war. Today is part two of that topic, and Pastor Travis Allen, a former elder at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, is our guest. So Travis, is there a role for Christian investigative journalists about things going on within churches or denominations, and what about outside groups that a church might hire, like a consulting group, to have a kind of jurisdiction or be the final word when there's a dispute? With regard to jurisdiction over the church, no.

I don't want to give any room whatsoever to an external watchdog organization, a blogger, investigative journalist, or some extra ecclesial authority over the church, no. But is there a role for external watchdog organizations? Is there a role for bloggers? Is there a role for investigative journalism?

Absolutely. My brother used to be an investigative journalist and did quite well, and I always appreciated the perspective that he gave to me of the role of investigative journalism in the world to help give a voice to those who are underneath authority. And whether to hold government accountable or institutions accountable, sometimes institutional power can become pretty homogenous group and they have a hard time thinking outside of their organization, and so sometimes a corrective that comes from the public is a good thing.

I think there's always going to be bloggers, watchdogs, investigative journalists, media outlets that are going to draw attention to what looks bad, what looks wrong. I don't fault Julie Royce for asking questions or other people, but I think they need to be on guard, more on guard, against gossip than they have been. Proverbs 18 says the words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels.

They go down into the innermost parts of the body. Be careful about listening to slander. Proverbs 20 and 19 says whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, therefore do not associate with a simple babbler. I know that some of the sources that Julie Royce has used to try to sling mud on Grace Community Church and John MacArthur, it's come from disgruntled former employees who have an axe to grind with a disciplinary process or some kind of a hiring or firing process.

If those are going to be your sources, you're going to be getting gossip and slander and the Bible is very clear about warning us against that. Proverbs 11 13 says he who goes about as a tale bearer reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy conceals a matter. Consider how Grace Community Church is modeling that trustworthiness because they're not going to be tale bearers about the David and Eileen Gray case.

They conceal that matter and they cover it over with love. I think one of the reasons Eileen Gray has not come forward to try to call attention to herself and whether a lawsuit or try to air it out online is because she knows that those who were there will bring other evidence into the public sphere and that wouldn't be good for her. So I think it's a loving kind thing that Grace Community Church has done to cover this matter over in love. I also think that bloggers, these watchdogs, investigative journalists need to be careful, very careful about accusing duly appointed elders. You've got to be careful doing that in your own church obviously, but in another local church too.

First Timothy 5 19 says do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. You've got to be really careful in how you're dealing with Christ gifted, Christ appointed, Christ qualified and called elders. Travis, we've titled the program today in last week's How Julie Royce's Attempted Takedown of John MacArthur is a Battle in a Larger War. So what is the larger theological war taking place here beyond John MacArthur and the Southern Baptist Convention?

I think the greater theological war, the greater war is against biblical authority, against the sufficiency of scripture. It's against local church autonomy. It's against male leadership in the church. There's a constant theme of egalitarianism. Sometimes it's a more muted sense of egalitarianism, but sometimes it breaks out and you can hear the louder cry against male leadership within the church.

So I think that's definitely there. But the call for churches and elders to be subject to others outside the church, and by the way, let me put a parenthesis in here, we all understand and a good functioning elder board is going to understand that civil authority does have a voice when it comes to criminal issues that rise up within a church. There's not only mandatory reporting, but there's just wisdom and elder board of pastors are going to use when it comes to things that come up in counseling situations. They have to take it to outside authorities or get counsel from whether legal counsel or counsel from law enforcement to understand how to handle something.

That's open parenthesis and close parenthesis. Apart from that, elders stand with the authority of the local church directly accountable to Christ himself. And there is no mediating authority between Christ and a local church, such as Julie Roy's and online bloggers, or watchdog organizations, or like I think what Rachel Den Hollander and people like her would advocate for is to bring churches under when it comes to abuse cases and victims advocacy, to make them answer to an organization that has legal experts on hand, and bureaucrats and credentialed psychologists, they say pastors, elders, they're way out of their depth, they're way out of their expertise to handle such things, handle the more difficult things over to the experts.

The experts in local church matters and local church polity are the elders and the pastors. That's what the scripture teaches. And so this is ultimately fundamentally an attack against the sufficiency of Scripture against the perspicuity of Scripture. And so I think we need to help churches and pastors put some steel in their spine and strengthen, set their face firmly to the future and look at Grace Community Church's example of not answering any of this stuff, and continuing on in fruitful, thriving ministry, and just trust the Lord to fight those battles for us. But I could tell you we're facing some pretty strong headwinds because the entire culture and the evangelical culture, under the influence of people like Julia Royce and Rachel Denhollander, they are trying to push us in the other direction along with the culture. Travis, that was so well answered.

Thank you for explaining that. Travis, as we've discussed this today, and those churches who hold to the biblical complementarian model, which is men and women are equal but have different roles designed by God, and that women shouldn't be preaching to men, men should be the leaders in the home. Again, equal value, different roles. How do you advise pastors and elders who are men, and just men in general, fathers let's say, but husbands, to not give in or not cross the sinful line into an authoritarianism, a sinful authoritarianism, you know, in the church or the home, rather than just maintaining and holding to what the Bible describes as having biblical authority for men in the home and the church? Because there can be sort of a good old boys club that that dynamic can develop.

Let's be honest about that. And it has taken place in certain cases. So how do you advise for men and for elders or pastors not to trip into that? The way I'd answer that, David, is that if a local church is functioning like a local church, and by that I mean just go to the scripture and see from the institution of our Lord in Matthew 16 of the church, Matthew 18, how they're to conduct themselves in a disciplined process, how church members are to come under the discipline and oversight of the church, go to biblical qualifications, 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, 1 Peter 5. Look at everything that the scripture teaches in the New Testament about elders and pastors and their role. Go to Ezekiel 34. See how bad pastors function, and bad shepherds in Israel function, and how God condemned them, and talked about what true shepherding looks like.

Take everything the Bible has to say about shepherding, pastoring, caring for souls, and make sure that your church is ordaining men like that into the eldership. Because those are men who fear God. They don't fear man, they don't fear the outside authorities, they don't fear public pressure, they don't fear bloggers, watchdog organizations, they don't fear even the criminal code. They fear God. They fear a high authority, and they count themselves as Hebrews 13-17 says.

They're going to give an account for every soul that's underneath their care. So you want to find people like that, men like that, and ordain them into roles of the pastorate and the eldership. Because men like that, they are concerned that they not only adjudicate a situation correctly, but then the way they handle it as a shepherd, that they shepherd it correctly. They can come to a clear decision on what the problem is and where the sin is and what needs to be done about it, but then they take a shepherding route in order to carefully handle the soul. Because what they're after in the discipline process is the restoration of that sinful person to help them to repent and restore them back into fellowship and back into healthy relationship with their brothers and sisters in the church. Pastors who fear the Lord, they want to see the Holy Spirit's fruit growing within their own lives, they want to see the Holy Spirit's fruit governing their whole elder board and their approach. A church has a responsibility in a biblically healthy church. They have a responsibility to be, you know, their own watchdog organization, you might say, within the church. If they see pastors that are drifting into authoritarianism or being stepping outside of the fruit of the Spirit and the way they deal with people, they need to step up and say something.

They should not be passive in their membership, but active members who are discipling one another, loving and caring for each other, doing the one anothers of the church together. When they do that, they're going to be concerned about how their authorities, their elders, and their deacons are handling themselves. And if they see things that are crossing out of line, well, Matthew 18 applies to them too. They can go to that elder and speak to him and confront him in his sin. And if they see him acting in a, you know, refusing to repent or refusing to acknowledge sin, well, there's a process for that. Matthew 18, 15 to 20, and they can take one or two others with them that have seen the same thing. First Timothy 5 also describes not receiving an accusation against an elder, except on the basis of two or three witnesses. That describes, again, the church discipline process. So I'd advise pastors and elders to be men who are humble before God, fearing God, men who are humble and meek in their dealing with people.

And to make sure that within a church, you have a plurality of elders, a plurality of men like that, so that those men will watch one another's weak spots and see where a man may be drifting out of line. I think that's a very important question you've asked, David, and I hope that that helps to get some clarity about an answer. So well said, Travis. We so appreciate your taking the time with us to come on the Christian Real View Radio program and give a perspective on this whole case that has set much of the blogosphere on fire and accusations being thrown against Grace Community Church and John MacArthur. And we know you were there.

Your perspective is important. We appreciate how you always go back to the authority and the sufficiency of the Word of God. And we just pray all of God's best to you and your family in Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado. Well, thanks so much, David. It's just, as always, a pleasure to talk to you. And I appreciate you taking on some pretty challenging subjects.

This is certainly one of those. We so appreciate Pastor Travis Allen and the wisdom from Scripture he shared with us today. Thank you for joining us today on the Christian Real View. In just a moment, there will be information on this nonprofit radio ministry. Let's remember, Jesus Christ and His Word are the same yesterday and today and forever.

So until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian Real View is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out What Must I Do to Be Saved, go to thechristianrealview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Real View is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Real View partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianrealview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to the Christian Real View.