Special to the Capstone Report by John Daily

On Platt’s message about so called opposition to his “mission”

David Platt’s Jan. 8, 2022, sermon at McLean Bible Church attempted to invoke Nehemiah in his latest bashing of those who have the temerity to oppose his eminence (the sermon quote below is taken from the Capstone Report article, 1/13/2022):

“That leads to number 7, pray and fast for strength amidst opposition. All over Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, all of them faced opposition to what God was leading them to do from two directions—from inside of God’s people and outside of God’s people. I’ll show you just one passage from Nehemiah chapter four starting in verse seven…: “But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.” (Neh. 4:7-9).

He [Platt] went on to say “Mark it down, guaranteed, you live your life on mission. You live to obey and proclaim this Word, you will experience opposition from inside and from outside. We have seen this in our church family over the last year. And we should never be surprised by it. The more we press in to reaching this city with the Gospel and reaching the nations, the 3.2 billion people who have never even heard the Gospel, the more people will rise inside and outside this church to oppose this church, to cause confusion in this church…”

My response: It’s true that Nehemiah faced opposition, but he was in a far different situation than Platt is.

Nehemiah was carrying out what God laid on his heart, but also that which God had prophesied long before, when Daniel was told that Jerusalem’s wall would be rebuilt “in troublous times” (Dan. 9:25). Platt can lay no claim to Divine inspiration nor to any prior prophecy to justify his pushing of his woke, unscriptural “good-news.” More on that later.

All of Nehemiah’s enemies were non-believers and were complete outsiders unassociated with his group of returning Jewish pilgrims. Sanballat (Governor of Samaria), Tobiah, reputedly an Ammonite, along with local Arabs, Ammonites and Ashdodites. All foreigners, not a part of Nehemiah’s pilgrimage back to Jerusalem, never affiliated with Nehemiah at all, nor part of the plans and purposes of God. By contrast, those who have been pointing out Platt’s errors are believers, most (if not all) members or former members; and the only real reason they are “outside” of McLean is that he in many cases personally has driven them off.

Rather than to Nehemiah, I compare Platt more closely with the pastors spoken of by Jeremiah, see Jer. 23:1-2: “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. 2 Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.”

Platt speaks of being on [a] mission, and to that we can agree, it is just that his “mission” has nothing to do with the Good News, the Gospel, as proclaimed by the Bible. I hear him pushinga woke-ness, a worldly-popular “gospel” instead of preaching that “Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.” Paul summarizes it here:

1 Cor. 15:3-8: “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me [Paul] also, as by one born out of due time.”

By embarking on Platt’s “mission”, in my opinion, to make his church the Ruling Class over Northern Virginia citizens, with himself as the chief, and promoting heresies like CRT (which is nothing more than Communism’s Racist Theories), he is indeed spreading “A” gospel, but it is “Another” gospel, a perverted one, that fits to that spoken of in Galatians 1:6b-8, “…[turned aside] unto another gospel, 7 which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. “

A “Gospel” mission? Perhaps, but certainly different from the true biblical gospel and thus worthy of being directly cursed by the Lord Himself. Platt should “wake up and smell the coffee” before it’s too late. Test the prophets that come preaching (1 John 4:1). How do we test? “To the Law and to the Testimony [the written Word of God], if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Is. 8:20.

Platt is deconstructing McLean Bible Church (witness the extreme membership drop) where Nehemiah spent his time rebuilding the Wall of Jerusalem. Nehemiah was doing the work OF God, Platt is doing the work of, well, “NOT-God” as far as I can tell, since Christ came to build His church (not tear it down). Whether Platt’s motivation comes from self or somewhere else, I will leave that up to the reader.

Nehemiah, as a true type of Shepherd, cared for his sheep, his band of Jewish returnees; Nehemiah built up Jerusalem’s wall as protection. Platt has been tearing into the Church, more like that wolf in sheep’s clothing (I wonder at someone who seems so angry so much of the time), spoken of by the Lord in John 10:10, coming only to steal, to kill, and to destroy.

I was, once upon a time, a member of McLean Bible Church and left because of the unconstitutional voting in of David Platt and trampling on of McLean’s Constitution by him and by the Elders, saying at that time that he would do nothing of good nor conduct himself as a true Pastor/Shepherd. His behavior and his preaching from then until now have sadly borne me out, and this latest only once again demonstrates his lack of anything decent or biblical. So please, David, please leave Nehemiah out of this, don’t tarnish his good name – you don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same context.

—John Daily and his wife attended the MBC main campus and later transitioned to the Prince William campus. Daily and his wife left after raising issues with MBC leadership first about the process for installing David Platt as pastor and finally about actions taken by Platt.