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CT: I'm presuming that there were some issues that motivated you to leave the church.

EZZO: You know, we presented those issues to the leadership. I can only tell you they were serious enough that would push us out of the church. You've got to remember, and I think you're very much aware of the fact, we paid a very dear price for supporting the startup of this church with the attacks that were on our ministry. We would not be walking away from something like this with such a tremendous investment if the issue was not serious. And we did the same thing at Grace. When we left Grace church, we left because of concerns. We kept those things private, that's where they belong. That is where our ethic is. There's no need of hanging out the dirty laundry. You know what, we pray for these elders every single day.

CT: In reference to Grace Community Church, do you believe the issues between you and Grace Community Church have been satisfactorily resolved?

EZZO: We do not feel they've been satisfactorily resolved at all. As we stated in our November 11, 1997, response to the Grace statement, that's where we clearly shared that not only were we sinned against, but we believe it was just blatant deception being portrayed.

Our concerns were again repeated in our April 16, 1998, public statement and that was after Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries came in to evaluate both of us. We welcomed, again, outside evaluations, credible people to see if there's any sinful liability on our part. Unfortunately Grace, the elders, John [MacArthur] were not as eager to let someone evaluate their words or their conduct. So we will either wait for a public apology, which we don't expect to be getting soon, or we'll wait for heaven.

But the difference between Grace church [and GFI] is we don't have compulsion, and we don't have a need to attack to John [MacArthur]. John's got a great ministry; he's blessed so many people. He is a tremendous expositor. But like all of us, there are strengths, there are weaknesses. The weakness that John and his view the Christian community ... that particular weakness is something that he and the Lord will work out.

It's not for me to be pointing it out to the world. We believe the same thing. If we could just come to the place of realizing you have a wonderful ministry, you've got to get on with life. And you can't keep trying to bring up old stuff. So, is the issue settled? Actually, no, we still believe that they owe us a public apology but at the same time we're not going to be sitting around waiting, we're going to move on with ministry.

CT: In reference to [former GFI employee] Robert Garcia, how much money did Robert Garcia misappropriate from GFI and what was your response?

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October (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44