John Macarthur has released a statement on why he cannot sign the Manhattan Declaration.
And Al Mohler has signed it, with his explanation here.
I'm seeing this story pop up on lots of FB walls tonight.
I'm divided on this one. I see both sides, and it is nearly impossible to force someone to go against their conscience on an issue of this much import. What I don't understand however is that we cannot cooperate with leaders who have a different message but want to promote the type of society that is in more conformity with God's laws... but ... we *can* somehow (via Romans 13) cooperate with and submit to unbelievers and power grabbers and oppressors who are neither trying to promote Godly laws nor God's gospel. This is what confuses me. It seems like a choking on gnats/swallowing camels thing.
Just so you know, I tend to agree with Mohler, but it's always something I am reexamining. Because like everyone else, I don't want it to ever come to the point implied in the document.
Interestingly, Mohler didn't seem to think Obama's speech to school kids was a big deal and he made a statement about that to that effect... but we will never know what Obama would have said if no one had made a stink about it, the very stink that Mohler shrugged off as a bit of oppositional hysteria. This is the same Obama that is foisting changes that now he feels a need to align with apostates to resist, with the implication of civil disobedience.
The idea of civil disobedience is certainly not something I take lightly. I love and appreciate very much Dr Macarthur's insistence on the Gospel. But I think just as in his opposition to the Revolutionary War and his insistence that it was not Biblically justified, he hasn't really quite thought this through all the way.
If we can cooperate as police officers, firemen, doctors, EMT's, soldiers, seamen, marines, airmen, with unbelievers to defend this country, to save lives, why not in this limited endeavor? If someone was attacking my neighbor, unjustly taking his belongings or killing his children, and my other neighbor called me to help stop it, would I refuse to help because my neighbors are Catholic or unbelievers? Would I even bother to ask? Wouldn't this be the point at which a pharisee might say I can't help you pull your donkey out of the well on the Sabbath, lest I violate my God's command?
I think it is an important, nay, ESSENTIAL, thing to do to make it clear that this is NOT equivalent of the Gospel. But really at what point can we NOT cooperate with unbelievers? We have to do it every day. Even marriage to an unbeliever is advised against but not soundly condemned as sinful. 1 Cor 7 says we should not seek to leave a marriage if the unbeliever is willing to stay. I would say marriage to an unbeliever has far more potential to compromise a believer than signing a political statement about laws in this country that are unjust. 2 Cor 6 says not to be bound to an unbeliever, but that is not speaking of marriage specifically. Here is a good article (though i have issues with the mentioned 'restoration movement' theology)
Unequally Yoked: Does 2 Cor 6:14 apply to marriage?
I might have to pick up this book by Robert Morey and do some more study on this particular topic.
When Is It Right To Fight
(yes, I know Morey seems to be surrounded by controversy about his 'ethics' - I honestly don't know what to make of those, but someone definitely has some kind of case they're trying to make against him)
I'm still torn. The refernces to the gospel in the declaration should be removed. While these endeavors are good things to do and definitely should be done and need to be done, none of them are the same thing as the gospel. To imply that they are makes it sound like the social gospel/social justice. The gospel is not social justice. The gospel is Christ crucified.
Still, the determining to stand against these grave injustices even with the implication of civil disobedience is something that IMO needs to be done.
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