The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Anjela Paje of Spokane, WA, from the tape, GC 1301-I, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 11."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.  ©1980. All Rights Reserved.

Question

Recently, in the news, there’s been a lot of talk about how evangelicals have started a lot of political organizations, and they’re really marching out politically. And, I would just like to know if you would give us some comments. What do you know about it, and how you feel about it?

Answer

Well, you know, I’ve been asked that all over the country, everywhere I go. You know, "Born Again Politics." You know, what fascinates me about this? Really fascinating! Twenty years ago, the Evangelicals and the Fundamentalists of America were literally blasting away at the Liberals for doing the very same thing they’re doing right now. Twenty years ago, the Liberals were up to their necks in politics and social action, right? This was the big Liberal thing, social action, social engineering. And, they were into that, and you know, we were saying: “Preach the gospel and live the word of God and uphold the banner, and build the church. And, here we are twenty years later doing exactly what we criticized the Liberals for doing twenty years ago. Which is kind of interesting.

Now let me tell you where I am on this thing. I think, in the first place, when people say, “We’ve got to save America,” I don’t know what they mean. I really don’t know what they mean. If they mean, we’ve got to save America the way it is, I don’t know if it is worth saving. If they mean we’ve got to save America from the Democrats and give it to the Republicans, that isn’t going to help. I mean, I might have a political preference, but I am under no illusion that either party’s going to bring in the kingdom. Right? I mean, I’m not post-millennial--we’re not going to go waltzing into the kingdom as soon as Reagan gets elected. So, I really feel, I’ll be very frank with you. I feel, for a preacher, called by God to teach the word of God, to get involved in politics is a prostitution of the priority of his ministry.

Now, we have political opinions. We ought to vote. We ought to do what we need to do within our society, but that is not the mandate that God has given us. If I want to do something to change this country, then what we’re going to do is change this country by changing the lives of the people in it through the transformation to the gospel of Christ--not by electing different leaders. You see it’s just another way of saying what the Democrats have been saying for years. We can change America, the Democrats said, by social engineering. And, Lyndon Johnson coined the phrase: “The Great Society.” Okay, and it’s really been ever since Franklin Roosevelt. This has been the thing. But, the idea is, if we can eliminate poverty, and we’re on the way to doing that, right? Everybody’s got minimum wage. Everybody’s got minimum housing. Everybody’s got food stamps that needs it, you know, and so forth. If we can just eliminate that and we can eliminate unwanted children, so we abort babies to the tune of seven million of them. You know, we save the bald eagle. I was talking to Dick Mayhue about this. $5,000, if you break the egg of a bald eagle. Interesting. But, you can kill seven million babies, you know. Strange!

Anyway, you know, if we can eliminate babies being born, if we can get everybody in education, equal education, busing, whatever it takes, and [then] we can just create from the outside a perfect society. Does that work? No! All you’re doing is shuffling sinners into another kind of deal. You’re going to come up with the same thing. Last night on the news on ABC, I saw that crime in America has gone up dramatically in the last year. Every kind of crime has gone up. High percentages! “The Great Society” didn’t work! And, that’s why there is a moving away in our society today from the Liberal perspective in politics. That’s why there’s even a fertile soil for Reagan. Because Reagan is coming along anti-abortion. He’s coming along saying, “anti-big government”, you know, and so, although he’s not saying people need to be transformed on the inside by Christ, now. I don’t know what he believes about that. But people know, now, that when you give it out for nothing, it’s not going to change people. You can’t change them on the outside. And, yet, what I see happening, is that here comes a new wave of people who are saying, “if we can just elect Reagan, and elect certain guys who are anti-abortion and anti-homosexual, and anti-all of these things, and who support the traditional deal, we’ll save America. No, we won’t. We won’t save America at all because America’s problem is not a political problem. America’s problem is a spiritual problem.

People say, “Well, this is a great nation." Listen! The only great thing ever about this nation has been its Christians. The rest of it hasn’t been great at all. And, so, I believe that the mandate that God has given to me is to teach the word of God so that people can be changed from the inside. And, then, they can produce that glorious society. For example, the millennial kingdom is going to be a glorious kingdom because it will be populated by people whose lives have been transformed and ruled by Jesus Christ.

Somebody asked me, “What do you think will happen if Ronald Reagan gets elected?” I said, “Absolutely nothing.” Absolutely nothing’s going to happen. What might happen, superficially, but is not going to happen in the souls of men because he is a politician and not a preacher. The churches have to do the job. And, this is where I get a little upset about this, is pastors have abandoned the primary role to rally their people into political issues when that is not the thing they ought to be concerned about. And, I’ll tell you something else that bothers me. When you line up Christianity with right-wing politics, we lose, because we are not a political organization. You see, we’re not. And, we are now utterly identified with right-wing, hard-line, traditional politics of a Republican nature, very conservative. And, you may agree with that, and I may agree with that, but that is not a definition of the Christian faith. We are not a political, sub-group. We have diverted ourselves from our main message.

I mean, how would you like it if all of the doctors in the city of Los Angeles decided to give up their medical practice for one year to campaign to get certain people elected? You would be in real trouble, wouldn’t you? I mean, we couldn’t go to a doctor. If we could just get the right people elected, we’d get a new medical plan. We don’t need a new medical plan. We need doctors. I think the same thing is true of preachers all over the country have been diverted into this political stuff. And, I don’t know, I think some of them Potomac? fever. You just start hobnobbing with politicians. And so, I believe, we ought to concentrate on preaching the word of God. I don’t have time to get involved in politics because the responsibility I have is more than I can handle right now.

Now, you vote, now! And, you do what you feel by your conscience need to do. You know, that’s the thing. But, even the name: The Moral Majority bothers me. Our morality is not determined by any majority, you know. It’s determined by the word of God.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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