For months now, we’ve been talking about the COVID denial of Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California. This is the person who openly celebrated the lack of social distancing and face masks in his congregation, once telling a packed house, “the good news is you’re here, you’re not distancing, and you’re not wearing masks.” In August, he falsely claimed, “There is no pandemic.” And then, of course, in October, there was an outbreak at his church. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed three cases had been traced back to the ministry. That number soon grew larger.

MacArthur denied the seriousness of this, basically writing off a small handful of positive tests in a congregation of thousands. By mid-November, whatever temporary restrictions the church had instituted were gone.

But by December, reporter Julie Roys spoke with a church leader who told her that multiple members of MacArthur’s staff had caught COVID. MacArthur, has not surprisingly denied all of this.

Now that denial is going even further. The church is currently battling the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, which has banned them from meeting indoors and demands that they respect social distancing guidelines if they meet outdoors. This, to MacArthur, amounts to Christian Persecution rather than life-saving measures… so he’s fighting it in court.

The county even submitted Roys’ recent article about COVID infesting church leaders as evidence for why their demands need to be taken seriously. So late last week, MacArthur submitted a legal rebuttal to all that. MacArthur rejects all the dots that Roys connected before going on to explain his religious arguments against wearing face masks. (As if Jesus had a specific rule against protecting yourself from an airborne virus.)