The following sermon is by John MacArthur, Bible teacher with Grace to you.

If you've never contacted Grace to you, we want to send you a free booklet by John called Are the Gifts for Today.

When people say they have power from the Holy Spirit to heal sickness or to speak in tongues or to get new revelation from God, what should you make of those claims?

This booklet helps you answer that question. Request your

free copy of Are the Gifts for today by writing to Gifts at Gty.org? That's Gifts at gty.org.

This offer is good in North America and Europe through June 2026. And now unleashing God's truth,

one verse at a time. Here is Grace to you Bible teacher, John MacArthur. Well, John, I know you're

not much of a movie buff, and yet there's a film that's being released and premiered this week

that I know you're very excited about

called The Essential Church. Talk about that. How did that come about? Why is it called

the Essential Church? Tell us a little bit about the background of this. Well, this is a full

length to our documentary that are very talented people have put together to tell the story

of Grace Church in its conflict with the state of California, the health department, city of Los Angeles,

governments.

We had such an unusual situation because we did not comply with the health orders.

We didn't follow the commands of social distancing, masks, vaccinations, and only so many people.

We paid no attention to any of it, really.

And we were in contempt of court, and we were getting violations every week, and there were fines and prison sentences with the violations.

And it was just an amazing, amazing story.

We just believe that the Word of God requires us to be faithful as a church and stay open.

And when we came to the point that we knew that the statistics were not true, not honest,

and people weren't going to die in mass.

...