In today’s broadcast, dive into the inspiring presentation by Pastor Rob McCoy, a leader who embodies courage and conviction. Learn about the significant responsibilities of Christians in the civic life, especially during politically charged times. Pastor McCoy, along with his wife Michelle, defied the odds and stood for their belief that church and faith are non-negotiable. He argues that avoiding politics is not an option for believers and highlights the critical need for Christians to take a stand for truth and justice in society.
Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. I’m Roger Marsh, and today here on the broadcast, we’re in for a special treat. Pastor Rob McCoy, Senior Pastor of God Speak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, California, recently gave a presentation to a gathering sponsored by the James Dobson Family Institute. And during this presentation, he shared a variety of different reasons for why it’s important to stand strong in the fight for life and liberty. Pastor Ron McCoy was an All-American water polo player turned pastor and civic leader. He brings a powerful message about courage, conviction, and the Christian’s role in civic life. He has served his community both as a city council member and mayor, embodying his belief that Christians must be engaged in local government. Now, when government officials declared that churches were non-essential during the pandemic lockdowns, while strip clubs and cannabis shops remained open, this father of five took a courageous stand. Despite facing legal threats and potential loss of property and tens of thousands of dollars in fines to boot, Pastor Rob McCoy and his wife, Michelle, chose to keep their church’s doors open, believing that the bride of Christ could never be non-essential. On today’s Family Talk broadcast, Pastor Rob McCoy challenges us to examine our understanding of politics, not as something to avoid, but as our biblical responsibility to care for our communities and defend truth in the public square. Let’s get into part one of this presentation right now on this special edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk.
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It’s an honor to be with you all. And I bring you greetings from the People’s Republic of California. I’m a California condor. I’m an endangered species, a conservative in California. There were more, but you all moved. We’re remaining holding the line. And yes, that’s Michelle. She’s my wife, not my daughter. She’s evil though. When I sleep at night, she connects tubes to my body, steals my youth and transfers her fat. Nobody believes me, but it’s true. Well, I understand that last night you heard from Charlie Kirk, Eric Metaxas and Kirk Cameron. And they were saying that each message built on itself and they all said the same thing in a different way. And I thought, that’s the Lord telling you something. And as I was praying about it as to what to share, those three men were telling you the problems in America are the pulpits. And they are to some extent. But you know, the pulpits are only relevant because there’s people in the pews. And I’m a pastor and those three aren’t. So it makes sense that they would attack pastors. I’m going to attack them. You know, pastors are like politicians. They’re just actors performing a script written by the audience. You call that church home and you allow them to feed you pudding all day long, no meat of the word, and you put up with that. And you raise Christians that are afraid of the consequences of standing for the truth. What do I mean by that? You know, the biggest thing Michelle and I faced were the consequences of standing for the truth. The truth is the governor said the church is non-essential. The church is the bride of Christ. I’ve been married to Michelle 35 years. You tell me my wife is non-essential, and this sounds a little brutal, but I’m kind of serious about it. You tell me my wife’s non-essential, you’ll be picking up your teeth with your broken arm. That’s how the shepherds should feel about the bride of Christ. And the governor has power, but he doesn’t have the power to say that the bride of Christ is non-essential while abortion clinics are and strip clubs and cannabis distributors and liquor stores. He’s not allowed to do that. But he is if everyone remains silent because they’re afraid of the consequences of standing for the truth. In California, if you didn’t take the shot, you’d lose your job. The lion’s share of the people who took the shot, they didn’t take it because they believed in its efficacy. And now we’re seeing that there’s problems with it. Estimated 22 million deaths worldwide. They didn’t believe in its efficacy. They just didn’t want to lose their job. So we go back, as Eric Metaxas said, it wasn’t Hitler and his victims. It was Hitler and a complicit nation. They lied to each other because they were too afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. And that’s where we are in America today. There are now consequences for telling the truth. And when I called Michelle and I went through the page and a half on legal document of all the things we would lose if I defied the restraining order, and her response to me was unbelievable. But you know who was even more thrilled? My kids. Because they knew we were defending their future. This is the first generation that the elderly generation have imposed restrictions on the young so they could live a few years longer. They shuttered their schools. They had a .0002% chance of death and they shuttered their schools. And Charlie made the worst prediction in radio history. He probably covered it last night. I came in late because I was doing a clear truth conference. But he said that the churches in California wouldn’t take this sitting down. He couldn’t have been more wrong. They folded like a cheap suit. And the congregants loved watching church online. Watching church online is like watching a fireplace. You can see it, you can hear it, but you can’t feel the warmth. And God didn’t say don’t forsake tuning in on a television. He said don’t forsake fellowshipping with the saints. Koinonia, it’s like warmth. But we’re afraid of a virus. God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but a power of love and a sound mind. And I just kept saying I’m immortal until God’s done with me. And if he wants to take me with the coronavirus, great. But everything we knew medically, we threw out the window. And if they had told us that the virus could only affect you from five feet down, they could have had all of America crawling on their knees. And here we are at a very critical precip for the nation. And I share this because as I was burdened by it, I thought to myself, Pastors and congregants who say, I don’t do politics and politics don’t belong in the church. You know what they are? They’re heretics. It’s called Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a heresy where they say, we don’t do politics because politics is dirty. Well, so is the church. What’s your point? Well, I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. Unless Jesus is running for office, you’re always voting for the lesser of two evils. Gnosticism, having secret knowledge, it has a number of heretical teachings, but one overriding one is that the physical world is evil and the spiritual world is good. Government is considered part of the physical world, therefore it is more spiritual to not be involved in it. Gnostic thought continued to permeate the thinking of many well-meaning Christians today. For example, some Christians think that only two things will last into eternity, God’s word and the souls of men. An emphasis on the spiritual and an exclusion of the physical. But this is wrong. The Bible explicitly teaches that not only will these two last into eternity, but so will our bodies as they’re in a glorified state. We still participate, and by the way, politics… The pulpits in America and the pews don’t understand the meaning of the word politics. They think poly meaning many and tics meaning blood-sucking parasite. But politics is from the word polis, which means the affairs of the city. I love what Aristotle wrote. He said, this is understood by Aristotle to be a study of how people should best live together in communities. The polis being seen by Aristotle as the best and most natural community for humans. Jeremiah 29, seven, pray for the peace of the city for in its peace, you’ll have peace, right? So you say, I don’t do politics. What you’re saying is I don’t care about the affairs of the city. And when Jesus was confronted in Matthew 22 by the attorney who said, what’s the greatest commandment? He said, well, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. And on these two commandments, hang the law of the prophets. Love your neighbor as yourself. Neighbor, community, city, polis, politics. Love your neighbors yourself. Do you love your neighbor enough to allow their 15-year-old daughter not to receive a double mastectomy because she’s been lied to and saying that it’s healthcare, that she can become a boy? Do you love your neighbor enough to contend for that truth that there are two genders? Yes. In California, abortion was legal long before 73. We’ve aborted more babies, it’s estimated, in totality than the current population of Canada. And we don’t just rip the baby apart in the womb of its mother. We harvest the organs on the downbeat of the heart. We make Nazi Germany look like Girl Scouts. But in 1968, something happened in America. There was an infiltration of communism and socialism that had infected our universities. We’d had the My Lai Massacre and the following year would be the Tet Offensive. In hamlets and villages in a nation we didn’t know existed and the hamlets of the names we couldn’t pronounce, our young people were dying in battlefields in Far East Asia. And while they had the Kent State shooting and they had the war riots, They had put their hope in these political leaders. My friend Bobby Kennedy Jr.’ ‘s dad was assassinated in 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan in the Hilton. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was shot on a balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The nation was infiltrated in the warp and the woof of the fabric of its country being torn apart and the young people couldn’t find answers in the church because they just do the gospel. So they checked out of the church into Eastern religions and experimental drug use, and they ended up awash on the shores of California, burned out, and it was called the hippie movement. And Chuck and Kay Carl began to minister to these burned out hippies. And they brought them back to the word of God, but the one thing they did is they avoided politics because these kids were burned out on it. Well, how’d that affect it? Interestingly enough, since 1968, Calvary chapels have had a 10,000% growth. There’s over 1,800 Calvary chapels around the world, one of the fastest growing church movements in modern church history. And the mission movement, unbelievable. We’re in countries all over the world. And how has that changed? Because the lion’s share of those 1,800 churches are in California because they’re all ex-surfers. Well, they’re still surfers. Did you know south of Van Nuys, which is the northern L.A. county, all the way down to the Mexican border, there are more Calvary chapels than there are Dunkin’ Donuts? How’s that affected the state? 10,000% growth, and that’s conversion growth, not transfer growth. That’s people never having heard the gospel coming to Christ. Preaching the gospel, teaching the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, getting them saved. How has that changed the state of California? Well, we no longer have the fourth largest GDP. We now have the fifth, almost sixth. We have the highest gas tax, sales tax, income tax, corporate tax. We leave the nation in debt. You combine the next four largest states’ debt, it doesn’t equal the debt of California. We’re the authors of no-fault divorce that Reagan signed in 69, became law in 70, decimated marriage across the country. We’re the authors of transgender bathroom bills and the most secular progressive sexual education curriculum so vile you can’t read a page of it in church. And as I said earlier, we lead the nation in abortion. Vicious, vicious abortion. Where’s the power of the gospel? They’re all getting saved, but you avoid politics, the affairs of the city. You truncate the gospel, you make it myopic, and you make it real narrow. You leave nothing for generations to come. And that’s contrary to what Jesus says in Matthew 16. In Matthew 16, Jesus takes his disciples and he turns to them in the beginning of Matthew 16 and he says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Mark 7, he adds, and of Herod. And they said, what, we don’t have enough bread? It’s not about bread, fellas. You had baskets left over. Work with me here. This is Rob McCoy’s version. He said, beware of the doctrine of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, and of Herod. And they understood that. Doctrine of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herod. It’s real simple. In 6,000 years of recorded history, two classes of people have ruled the masses, the priests and the kings. Pharisees and the Sadducees are the priests and Herod is the king. He says, beware of their doctrine. What’s their doctrine? The leaven. The leaven is having civil law separated from moral law. And here’s the problem with the congregations. You don’t know what the moral law is. I’d be hard pressed to find five of you in this room that can recite the Ten Commandments. And yet God commanded we memorize them, teach our children and our grandchildren. And that is the filter for which we decide every civil law and every decision we make in life. I’m gonna teach them to you. You best remember them and teach them because from the moral law comes civil law and when you apply the two together, it becomes the wise restraints that make men free. You apply restraints towards evil in order to pursue excellence. Any athlete in the room understands this. Any parent understands this if your kids are turned out well. You apply restraints towards those things that easily beset us in order to pursue things that’ll give you more options in life. You front load your family. And if you remove the moral law, the law then just becomes a weapon to enslave. You’re non-essential. And no one challenges it. We are in a constitutional crisis because we have a Christian form of government, common law, which comes directly from the scriptures, the first 13 colonies, first 13 states. You’ve heard this. They all had a statement of faith for anyone who was to hold office. We have a Christian form of government, void of Christians who understand the moral law and the need to participate in the public square. What is the moral law? Hold up one finger, please. Say one God. One God. I can mean it.
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One God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Take two fingers and bend the second one. No idols, don’t bow down. No idols, don’t bow down. Three fingers. Is this beneath you all? Three fingers. Put it over your mouth. Don’t take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
SPEAKER 01 :
Don’t take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
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Four fingers, make a pillow. Honor the Sabbath day, rest. Five fingers, salute. Honor your mother and father. Six, don’t murder. Seven, there’s two in a marriage, not five. Don’t commit adultery. You got that? All right, when you do eight, hide your thumbs because if you steal, we cut them off. Don’t steal. This is don’t bear false witness. It’s five, not four. It’s four, not five. And then number 10 is don’t covet. Just do that. Don’t covet. So when Jesus said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and of Herod, these are folks that rule your life. And if they don’t know the moral law and you’re going to endorse them for office, there’s two things I ask. You’re going to swear to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. First of all, how many articles are in it? How many amendments are there? And please recite for me the 10 commandments, which will be the filter to make sure that you will not use the law to enslave anybody, but cause them to be the wise restraints that’ll make men free. If they can’t do it, then don’t vote for them. The Constitution doesn’t give you any rights. It’s there to protect the rights given to us by God, and it constrains these folks who have power on loan. And if you don’t know what’s in it, especially if you’re in military personnel or first responder, and you swear to defend something you know nothing about, this is critical for a republic. And so the wiser straights that make men free, as congregants, we need to hold folks accountable. You… need to apply the Ten Commandments to your family and to your life. The Ten Commandments don’t save you, but Galatians 3 says that the law is a schoolteacher, guardian, to point us to Christ until faith comes. That’s why our founder said the laws of nature and nature’s God. We’re under an ordered universe with a rational God, and these are laws that if you obey them, you flourish. And if you disobey them, you don’t. And this is why we as a people have to demand this from our leaders if they’re going to represent us. The leaders are only as strong as the people who are writing the script for them to perform. You’re the audience. It’s your responsibility. And then the other part that I would share, which is interesting to me, is when folks say I don’t do politics, that’s exactly what we should be doing. Every church in America should be involved in politics. It’s the affairs of the city. And if you say you shouldn’t be involved in politics, again, I’m gonna repeat it, you’re a Gnostic. This is a no-brainer. How did we get to a place where we allow pastors to truncate the gospel and avoid caring for the citizens of their community? In 20 years, if we don’t make a stand with these children who are being lied to and being told that a boy can become a girl and a girl can become a boy… By the way, if you get 100 biological males and take 50 of them and put them through complete transition surgery, which I call mutilation, but take them through complete transition surgery. Give them hormones as early as you want and then put those 50 transition males who are now supposedly female on an island with the 50 biological males who didn’t transition and leave them there. Take 10 people, five biological males, five biological females, put them on an island and come back in 100 years. That island will be a pile of bones and that island will be flourished with population. A man will never become a woman. Why are we allowing them to lie? Because we’re afraid of the consequences of truth. And this is what’s so critical. And this is why I’m so moved by Dr. Dobson. You see, when I made a stand, as Congressman McEwen pointed out in California, I was scared to death. My son had an NROTC scholarship. He was gonna lose it. He said, dad, I’m good with this. Let’s make a stand. They were going to take our house. They were going to take our church. They were going to take everything I owned. And you know, I got calls from pastors saying, you’re in violation of Romans 13. God appoints all positions of authority and you’re to submit to them. And I said, that is not the way to quote that verse. It’s not unlimited submission to tyranny. The scripture goes on to say, as Jonathan Mayhew rightly pointed out, that they’re there for our good. And if that official ceases to do good, he ceases to be the authority. And he coined the phrase that started the war of independence. And John Adams attributed it to him, and he died in 1766. He never even saw the War of Independence, but he coined this phrase that inspired this nation to be birthed. This pastor said, disobedience to tyrants is obedience to God. And we’re like, oh. You know how we got in this place? All that’s necessary for evil to prosper is for good men and women to do nothing. And you lamented. Corruption has infiltrated every level of society. The election is rigged. It’s always been rigged. Evil’s been in every nook and cranny of the world since its inception. When Adam and Eve fell, it’s infiltrated. Go back in any generation, you’ll see it. How does that give us the right to be apathetic and use eschatology to check out? We have to engage in the culture. I’m not in charge of the outcome, I’m in charge of the obedience. Had folks done that in Nazi Germany, millions wouldn’t have died. That’s what we do as Christians. We get to be alive for such a time as this. And I’m moved by it because all of you were not a mistake. In the entire history of the world, at the most critical moment in coming up to the 250 year anniversary of this nation, God chose you. You to apply the moral law to the civil law that the wiser strengths would make them free. You who are not afraid of the consequences of standing for truth. You. He called you. You.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, friend, you’ve been listening to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. We’ve been featuring a powerful message about standing firm in our faith during challenging times. A presentation from Pastor Rob McCoy, who will soon be retiring from the pulpit at Godspeed Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, California, and will remain as Pastor Emeritus. Pastor McCoy’s passionate call for Christians to engage meaningfully in their communities. reminds us that our faith must extend beyond church walls into every aspect of society. Now, if you missed any portion of today’s broadcast, or if you’d like to share it with others, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. There you’ll find the complete program, along with additional resources to help you put these important principles into practice. Again, that’s drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. Here at the JDFI, we are committed to equipping families with biblical truth and practical wisdom for facing today’s challenges. When you visit our website, you’ll gain access to an extensive library of articles, videos, and broadcast archives covering everything from parenting and marriage to faith and cultural engagement. You’ll find all of that and more when you go to drjamesdobson.org. And if you want even more helpful resources, check out our reading plans in the Bible app by YouVersion. We are meeting families right where they are with bite-sized devotionals that tackle real challenges like handling conflict in marriage and intentionally appreciating our children. These three-day reading plans are perfect for busy parents and couples who want to grow together in their faith. Just open the Bible app on your phone or tablet, and you’ll find a variety of plans waiting to encourage and equip you. I hope you’ll take a moment right now to sign up for your very first free reading plan and discover biblical wisdom for your marriage and family. Again, that’s on the Bible app by YouVersion. Now, these daily broadcasts are made possible through the generous support of friends just like you who share our passion for strengthening families with biblical truth. Your gift today helps us continue broadcasting messages of biblical hope and wisdom to millions of families all across America on the air and online. Amen. Amen. Amen. I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. James Dobson and all of us here at the JDFI, be sure to join us again next time for the powerful conclusion of Pastor Rob McCoy’s outstanding message on standing strong in the fight for life and liberty. That’s coming up right here on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
