3. 'Outrageous conduct' in that Grace Church taught that
50 JOHN MacArTHuR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
When this hostile publicity was dying down, on March
30, 1980, Mr Nally filed a suit of 'clergy malpractice' against
MacArthur, and sought one million dollars in damages. There
were three counts:
1. The church, John and others, counselled Ken Nally to read
the Bible, pray, and listen to church tapes and counsellors, but
'prevented' him from seeking professional psychiatric help.
2. Negligence in the training of the church counsellors.
3. 'Outrageous conduct' in that Grace Church taught that
Catholics were not Christians, exacerbating Ken's pre-existing
depression and eventually driving him to suicide.
When this went to court the only count taken seriously was
the allegation that Ken had been prevented from seeking profes-
sional help. A year and a half later, when the church supplied
thirty-two depositions showing that the statement was untrue,*
the court threw out all three counts and ordered the plaintiffs to
pay court costs. But this ruling was not accepted and the case
went to an appellate court, to be reviewed by three judges. By a
two to one decision, they overturned the first court's decision,
on the grounds of a new charge introduced under the count
of 'outrageous conduct'. It was argued by the plaintiffs that
MacArthur's church condoned suicide on the part of Christians,
and thus encouraged Ken Nally to regard suicide as an accept-
able way out of his depression.
Although the claim on the teaching at Grace Church was
false,* it meant a re-trial in the original court, which took place
* Eight medical professionals had, in fact, treated Ken Nally, and there had been numerous referrals made by the pastors at Grace.
* The claim was based on a sentence spoken by an associate pastor at Grace, eighteen months after the suicide. Lawyer Sam Ericsson responded: 'The record shows that everybody—John, his wife, and all the defendants—told Ken time and again that only God determines your life span and that suicide is wrong.'
Threatening Reversals 51
over four weeks in 1985. At its conclusion the judge dismissed
the case, holding that the First Amendment to the US Constitu-
tion forbids imposing duties on clergy for church counselling.
The court also found that the pastors of Grace Church had acted
properly in the way they sought to help Ken. Yet this second
acquittal was again overturned at a further appellate court hear-
ing in 1987. The finale was not reached until November 1988
when the Supreme Court of California, at San Francisco, finally
dismissed the case. By this time it had been widely reported in
the national press. The New York Times gave a lengthy summary
in its issue of November 24, 1988. The Washington Post (Nov.
26) wrote of the widespread relief in churches, and asked the
question:
What would the world be like if individuals who seek to
help others by providing sympathy, advice, and encourage-
ment—all without charge—had to start buying malpractice
insurance . . . There is more than good sense involved in
protecting churches from this kind of litigation. How can
a court, consistent with the First Amendment, decide that
it is wrong for a minister to suggest certain prayers? It is
the essence of religious freedom for individuals to make
religious choices without regard to the standards of the
state, and for clergymen to offer such advice without fear
of being hauled into court.
Through the eight years in which this contest continued
it might have seemed as if Grace Church had the sword of Damocles hanging over it. Certainly the issue was critical, yet
newspaper reporters who visited the church during the period
were surprised to find services continuing without so much as
a mention of the law suit. MacArthur could say:
52 JOHN MacArTHuR: SERVANT OF THE WorRD AND FLOCK
We're just carrying on our normal church worship and teaching the Bible. Our people are also praying for the Nally family. We have a great concern for them spiritually
and never want to do anything that might put up more barriers than are already there.
What was of first importance in his mind was how the church
re-acted to the trial:
It goes back to James 1. We are church people. For some
reason God has chosen to put us in this situation. We count
it a joy. If we were suffering because of evil doing, it would be a reproach to us, but if we suffer for righteousness' sake, we count ourselves worthy to be identified with Christ.
John also saw several signs of the providence of God in what
happened. The final verdict had vital consequences for the
churches in securing them against unjust litigation; but had
another church been the target for what was a first law case of
its kind, the outcome could have been different. It so 'happened'
that out of 350,000 churches in 1980 only one had a lawyer
with professional malpractice defence experience on its staff,
and that was Grace Community Church. The lawyer was Sam
Ericsson. Before the case concluded, Ericsson became director
of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious
Freedom in Washington, and along with other legal helpers,
continued to provide as able counsel as could be found in the
land. At the Supreme Court the oral argument for the defence
was led by Rex Lee, a respected orator and senior partner in a Washington, DC, legal firm. The church saw the hand of God
in the readiness of these able men to help.
Threatening Reversals a
wie
MacArthur was once asked, 'Are there special difficulties you
have had to surmount and overcome?' He responded, 'There's
a lot of pain in the ministry', and then spoke of the legal battle
they had passed through. He also referred to 'two or three other
times' when he was tempted to leave the church, 'when even the
prospect of digging ditches for a living had a certain appeal'.
Perhaps he was momentarily forgetting the words of Campbell
Morgan he liked to quote, 'If you have no opposition in the place
you are serving, then yourre serving in the wrong place.'
The trials I have sought to describe undoubtedly strengthened
his understanding of the nature of the Christian warfare and of
the only effective response. Of course, critical men and women
do not know that they are being used by the powers of evil.
The weapons those powers employ
consist of lies of all kinds—elaborate lies, massive philosophical lies, evil lies that appeal to humanity's fallen sin-
fulness, lies that inflate human pride, and lies that closely resemble the truth. Our weapon is the simple truth of
Christ as revealed in His Word.°*
The threatening days of the 1979 period drove the preacher
at Sun Valley closer to Scripture. The work of God always
brings fruitfulness in the life of the messenger as well as with
the message. While MacArthur was prepared for his ministry
by the years of study, what God did afterwards, in humbling,
5 The Truth War: Fighting for Christianity in an Age of Deception (Nashville: Nelson, 2007), p. 49.
54 JOHN MacArTHuR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
refining and sanctifying him, was essential to his usefulness.
It is quality of life that makes a preacher persuasive, and that
is something which is never self-produced.® While the public
record of MacArthur's ministry might look like a success story,
as in the case of Spurgeon, there were many trials and disap-
pointments behind the scenes; these were all necessary to make
him what he became. In those trials he had the unfailing support
of Patricia, his parents, and faithful elders of whom he would
later say, "Those elders exhibited a love and commitment to
God's Word that helped stoke a fire that has burned brightly
for forty years.'
Before we leave the 1970s reference must be made to the series
of sermons, on the Sermon on the Mount, in which MacArthur
was engaged in 1979. It was probably the most greatly used
series of the first eleven years of his ministry, in his own judg-
ment, 'a major turning point in the life of our church'. When
they were later published, he wrote in the Preface that of all the
series he had delivered 'this one has brought a seemingly greater
sense of conviction, more self-examination, commitment, and conversion of the lost than any other'."
One of the crucial sermons in that series was entitled 'Which Way to Heaven?' When it was recently reprinted, Phil Johnson,
the editor, commented:
Just a few weeks after preaching this message, John MacArthur took his first extended vacation since his arrival
at Grace Ghurch—a summer-long sabbatical with his
* 'Paul's preaching was persuasive; but it was his life that won the hearts of people.' Expository Preaching, p. 345. 'A sanctified preacher, known as such to
his people, is a powerful instrument when he opens the Word.'
' Kingdom Living, Here and Now (Chicago: Moody, 1980). This title was in a sixth printing by 1988, and was reprinted in 1998 as Only Way to Happiness.
Threatening Reversals Bis
family. This sermon was still ringing in the hearts of people
in the church when John returned in mid-September. The message was instrumental in motivating several long-time
casual attenders of the church to examine themselves, and respond to Christ with real rather than superficial faith for
the first time. It has likewise been instrumental over the
years in bringing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people to Christ"
That 'first extended vacation in 1979, mentioned above, was
to stand out in John's memory, as he wrote twenty years later:
I took a three-month sabbatical from the church I pastor
in southern California, and we loaded our four children
into a van and toured the country for the summer. As you might imagine, spending ninety sweltering days in a van with five other people was quite an adventure. Between bathroom stops, meal stops, and stops just to keep the
peace, I wonder how we managed to travel beyond the boundaries of our neighbourhood.
But God was gracious, and we had a wonderful time. We covered a lot of ground that summer. We saw majestic
sights like the Grand Canyon and Lake Geneva. We visited
historic landmarks like Gettysburg, Ford's Theater, and Plymouth Rock.
As T look back on those three months on the road with my family, ''m amazed at what I remember most. While
I certainly enjoyed the places we visited and the things
we saw there, the historic structures and beautiful scenery
don't represent the highlights. What clings tightest to
my memory are moments I spent with my family—the
conversations I enjoyed with Patricia, the opportunities I
had to play with my children, or a meal we ate along the
side of the road.
8 Truth Endures, p. 104.
56 JOHN MacARTHUR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
But there was also an important long-term lesson about which
Dr MacArthur wrote on another occasion:
That vacation of twenty-five years ago ended up being important in shaping my ministry at Grace Community Church and at Grace to You. Back then, Grace to You was young and just starting to get its legs. I had written a few small books. We had been on radio for only two years and were heard on just a handful of stations. While the ministry was growing, it was still small. Yet I had no idea how farreaching and in demand it had already become. The trip my family took helped show me.
Along the way I met people whose lives had been changed by the verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word they had received from messages on tape and radio. People were expressing how they were sustained in their spiritual walk by our ministry. One family drove from Florida to
a conference I was speaking at in New York just so they could meet Patricia and me, and tell us how much the
ministry meant to them.' One young pastor came up to me, his eyes a bit watery, and said, 'John, don't do anything different and don't let anything change, because so many of us are depending on this kind of teaching.' It wasn't culturally relevant sermons drawing people to our ministry—it was divine truth, honoured, studied, taught, and re-taught. The Lord has used those encounters to con-
firm that novelty was not necessary. I needed to continue teaching the powerful Word, reiterating sound doctrines from all the rich texts of Scripture. Because God's Word is timeless, dynamic, and fundamental to godly living. No
one ever outgrows it or exhausts its immeasurable depth.
* The New York Conference was only one of a number interspersed among the travels.
Scripture and Preaching
W hen Christian leaders appear in history the tendency
is to interpret their influence too exclusively in terms
of their background. Certainly John MacArthur's upbringing
was in churches of Fundamentalist outlook, and the two men
who most influenced his youth, Charles Feinberg and his own
father, were in sympathy with much that the term represented.
The spiritual standard that his father had set him was to be
before him for much longer than his youth and was to continue
into the following century. Dr Jack MacArthur would preach
at Grace Church from time to time, and a note to him from
John, dated December 28, 1981, tells us what that friendship
meant:
Dad,
Thanks for a great message. I believe we will really see some fruit from the power of that presentation. One man had brought a friend, who said he was convinced, for the
first time, that Jesus was the Christ. The tape will also have
specially good use with Jewish people.
aif,
58 JoHN MacArTHUR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
I praise the Lord for you and Mom-—and the special way God has used you to prepare and bless me.
Love, Johnny
As late as 1996 Jack MacArthur was still to be found as a
visiting preacher in his son's pulpit. In May of that year, John
wrote in a Grace to You letter,
A few nights ago, I had the joy of yielding the pulpit at my
home church to a man who knows me better than perhaps any other, and who has been the single, most powerful influence on both my life and the course of my ministry.
The grey-haired gentleman who stood in my pulpit Sunday night is my father, and he delivered a bold, articulate message to our congregation and the graduating students of the Master's Seminary. Dad has been teaching the Bible and shepherding God's flock for more than sixty years.
Jack MacArthur's encouragement to his son took different
forms. Referring to the example of his father's study habits,
John wrote in 1997:
'He was—and still is—an insatiable reader, a non-stop
studier, and a life-long learner committed to enlarging
his mind with important, stimulating books. Even now
it's not uncommon for him to send me a package in the mail—several books along with orders to read them and give a full report on what I think.'
The debt John owed to his father in this regard is noted in
the dedication of his Commentary on Hebrews (1983),
With loving gratitude to my father, Dr Jack MacArthur, who gave me the legacy of loving books and challenged me by his example to make use of commentaries.
Scripture and Preaching 59
It has become fashionable in evangelical circles today to join
in criticism of 'Fundamentalism'. Perhaps MacArthur's early
association with that tradition is the reason why his name is
surprisingly omitted in a number of reputedly evangelical dic-
tionaries. But Fundamentalism in America cannot be so easily
ignored. As a movement it came into being early in the twentieth
century as the unbelief prevalent in mainline denominations
caused Bible-believing Christians to form new groupings. For
the most part it was a stand for essential gospel truths, such as
the infallibility of Scripture, the Person of Christ as God, and
the necessity of conversion through faith in His death as our
substitute. Fundamentalism, as Gresham Machen understood
it, included 'all those who definitely and polemically maintain a
belief in supernatural Christianity as over against the Modern-
ism of the present day'.! And because it sought to be biblical,
Fundamentalism retained gospel preaching and evangelistic
urgency when it was disappearing from many churches.
That Fundamentalism also had a downside is a subject to
which I will return later. For the present I am concerned with
the belief that stood firm in Fundamentalism when it wavered
or was lost elsewhere, namely: What Scripture says, God says.
MacArthur grew up in that assurance and it has governed his
life as a preacher. Eric Alexander has written, 'The fundamental
place of preaching 1n the church is simply a corollary of the
1 J. Gresham Machen, What 1s Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), p. 244.
60 JOHN MACARTHUR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
fundamental place of Scripture in the church." How this works
out in practice 1s to be seen in many ways.
To a marked degree Scripture has controlled MacArthur's
selection of priorities in the use of time. The responsibility
of presenting biblical truth to others overshadows everything
else.
The real goal of ministry has always been to keep my opinions out of it as much as possible. I never want to be
guilty of giving people the illusion that they have heard from God when in fact they have only heard from me.
This has meant that in his personal life he has kept to the
strict discipline of making everything subservient to the study
of Scripture. For forty or forty-five Sundays, through forty
years, two new sermons have been prepared every week; in the
early years it was three, as he also spoke at the church prayer
meeting on Wednesday nights. During the 1970s speaking at
the prayer meeting was delegated to others, but he was never to
vary from his commitment to preaching morning and evening
on Sundays.
The pattern of his week was to give the best of his time, from
Tuesday to Friday, to preparation for preaching. In early years
this meant some fifteen hours of work for each sermon; and
he still may require from eight to ten hours. He has lived out
his father's admonition, 'Don't go into the sacred desk [pulpit]
unless you are fully prepared.' A high view of Scripture will always lead a preacher to the right priority. The apostolic exam-
ple, "We will give ourselves continually to prayer and ministry
* Eric J. Alexander, Biblical Preaching: Basics of the Reformed Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2008), p. 7.
Scripture and Preaching 61
of the word' (Acts 6:4), is always followed when the churches
are in their healthiest state.
As another exponent of that fact wrote in the nineteenth cen-
tury, 'If a minister would give the pulpit its appropriate energy,
he will make all his varied experience subservient to the duties
of the sanctuary.' In MacArthur's case this has meant, 'T use
a system I call "planned neglect": I plan to neglect everything
until my study is done."
But no faithful minister 1s going to study Scripture simply in
order to speak to others:
Even if I never preached another sermon, I would thank God every day of my life for the sanctifying grace that has come to me through the daily study of His precious Word. Pastors should study to know God, not just to make sermons. For me, the greatest joy of preaching comes, not
in the final step, proclamation, but in the transformation
of my own life.
In that transformation far more is involved than personal
study. Referring to painful experiences already mentioned,
MacArthur has said:
I have learned to embrace failure and criticism as probably
the most productive work of God in my life. I can exegete
a passage, what I cannot do is to refine myself. I cannot
crush my own pride. So there is a sense in which the best
things that have happened to me have been the disappointments and the misrepresentations.
3 Gardiner Spring, The Power of the Pulpit (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1986), p. 119.
4 This should not be understood as meaning that MacArthur 1s a comparative hermit. There are numbers of other weekly duties, and his preaching and addresses are by no means confined to Sundays. The able associates and staff he has gathered round him are an indispensable part to making his routine
possible.
62 JOHN MACARTHUR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
While the work of God in preparing a preacher is much
broader than his study, it is in the study, as MacArthur has said,
that he is constantly thrown on God. More is to be done than
the application of his mind to the text. Prayer is bound up with
sermon preparation: the preacher needs the conviction that he
has a message both from Scripture and from God. 'I seek His
direction, thank Him for what I discover, plead for wisdom and
insight, and desire that He enable me to live what I learn,'
The study is therefore both a sacred and an exciting place.
As MacArthur said to a friend while he was preaching through
the Gospel of Matthew:
There are many days when I can hardly stand what I am discovering. It just overwhelms me. In every paragraph there is this incomparable Jesus Christ and He is just dev-
astatingly powerful and glorious. It is a crushing experi-
ence to be exposed to Him, and yet it is the most exalting thing—to realize He has embraced me for all eternity! I would rather preach Christ than anything else. He is the most compelling subject in all the universe.
The authority of Scripture is no less evident in the way a
preacher handles the Word of God in public. The nature of
Scripture as revelation from God must control the manner in
which it is taught. There is something seriously wrong when
a preacher thinks he must not put Scripture at the forefront
of his message lest his hearers are 'put off". It is no less wrong when a man thinks the best way to gain a hearing is to sprinkle
the message with appealing stories and humour. A man who
cannot get attention without these things, MacArthur would
say, does not know what it means to handle the sword of the
Spirit.
Scripture and Preaching 63
This is not to say that stories have no place in his preach-
ing, but when they occur they should have no prominence and
occupy little time. 'He does not dilute his sermons with stories',
was the appreciative comment of one regular hearer. From his
student days at Talbot, MacArthur was convinced that the best
illustrations to use are those taken from the Bible itself. To stay
close to Scripture in everything is to rely on the highest author-
ity. 'Stories have emotional impact, but they are lightweight
compared with Scripture.* His second source for stories and
illustrations is church history and biography.
The vital thing is that nothing should be introduced into a
sermon that can lessen the recognition of hearers that the words
which the Holy Spirit teaches are in a category all of their own.
'If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God? (J Pet.
4:11). Thus when questioned on the use of drama and visual
aids in the pulpit, MacArthur replied:
You have to believe that the power of God's Word will be more effective than any human drama or communication gimmick. Nothing 1s as dramatic as the explosion of truth
on the mind of a believer through powerful preaching.°
It is also MacArthur's belief that if Scripture is to be taught
accurately, this is usually best done by the consecutive and pro-
gressive teaching of a congregation through different parts of the
Bible. As already mentioned, the 'expository' method has been
5 T tell a story when it is appropriate, but this happens only rarely.' Exposttory Preaching, pp. 342-3. Similarly, while MacArthur does not eschew all humour in the pulpit, his gift in that area is not in regular use. Preaching is not entertainment. 'There is great need in the church today to cry instead of laugh. The frivolity, silliness, and foolishness that go on in the name of Christianity should themselves make us mourn.' MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Matthew, vol. 1 (Chicago: Moody, 1985), p. 158.
6 Expository Preaching, p. 345.
64 JOHN MacARTHUR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
his practice from the beginning of his ministry, when he took
up the Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, and 1 and 2 Peter.
It is sometimes asked where the vogue for 'expository preach-
ing' resurfaced in the twentieth century. Some have traced it to
Martyn Lloyd-Jones. MacArthur, however, was listening to his
father treat Scripture in a consecutive way long before he ever
read anything by Lloyd-Jones; and he tells us that the examples
his father followed were G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945)
and W. A. Criswell (1909-2002). There was to be, however,
a growing difference between the older, Morgan-type exposi-
tion and MacArthur's. In his case, as with Lloyd-Jones, the
devotional thought is grounded on the bringing out of clear
doctrinal principles. Exposition needs to lead hearers to doctri-
nal certainties. MacArthur's definition of a strong congregation
is a congregation that has learned to 'speak with one voice on
essential doctrinal matters'. A sermon without doctrine does
not build strong Christians.'
At the same time MacArthur's ministry has shown that the
consecutive method of preaching through a passage is not the
only way to be faithful in preaching. And he notes that some-
times what is called 'exposition' is deserving of criticism: 'The
thing that kills people in what is sometimes called expository
preaching is randomly meandering through a passage.' A mere
running commentary on a passage is not preaching. If a sermon is going to be in a real sense a message it should have a
clear theme, a unity of thought. As MacArthur's books show, while all his sermons are text-based, they are by no means all
" He comments that those who only preach short sermons miss this point: 'T am convinced that biblical exposition requires at least forty minutes . . . Rarely does a man preaching twenty-five to thirty minutes do doctrinal exposition.' Expository Preaching, p. 339. He would not say this, however, without adding
the caution that length is not the main feature of good preaching.
Scripture and Preaching 65
tied in sequence to one book or passage. He has used a wise
variation.
wie
Another consequence of a preacher holding a right view of
Scripture is that it will negate all contemporary ideas of adjusting
the message to suit the 'target audience'. MacArthur sees the
modern evangelical insistence on 'relevance' as seriously mis-
guided. 'Relevance' has often come to mean that the presentation
of Christianity should be guided by what men and women per-
ceive to be their needs today. And because the modern world is
thought to be so different from everything that has gone before,
all that is 'traditional' in the churches comes to be questioned
as a hindrance to an up-to-date presentation of the message. So
a change in the presentation of the message comes to be justi-
fied in terms of an alleged greater effectiveness. Consequently,
it is believed that the recognition of 'generational differences' is
very important. Churches have even been known to advertise
themselves as 'not your grandmother's church'.* An exponent of
church-growth, quoted by MacArthur, says: "Those who want
to minister effectively in this generation must remember to keep
their tone "optimistic".' On which MacArthur comments:
The typical presentation today starts exactly opposite where Paul started. He wrote of 'the wrath of God... against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men'. But modern evangelism begins with 'God loves you and wants
to make you happy' . . . Let me say that I minister to a
8 David E Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 212. This book is a powerful indictment of how evangelicalism has been misled in this area. In my opinion it is one of the most significant books to be published in fifty years.
66 JoHN MacArtHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
rather large group from the baby-boom generation, and I
disagree with that writer's unwarranted generalization that
they automatically tune out negative truth. The ones truly being saved certainly must and will accept the negative as motivation to repent."
Of course, this criticism of the quest for 'relevance' does not
mean that all that is old deserves to be preserved; within the
boundaries of Scripture there is always room for changes in style
or method; but any thinking that credits man with the ability
to decide what is 'relevant' is actually supplanting the Word of
God. God has declared man's real need and it does not change
from age to age:
Church history is strewn with examples of those who thought they could mould the message for their own time—but ended by corrupting the truth . . . If church history teaches us anything, it is that different times do not require different messages. Those who preach anything
other than the unadulterated gospel forfeit the power of God in their ministries.!°
Nothing is wrong with the message . . . If they don't hear
the truth, cool music won't help. If they don't see the
light, power-point won't help. If they don't like the message, drama and video won't help. They're blind and dead. Our task is to go on preaching not ourselves, we carry a supernatural message of everlasting life."
Behind the cry for relevance, commonly, is a wrong estimate
of human nature. Man fundamentally is a product not of his
times but of the Fall. While the changes in the world are external,
" Ashamed of the Gospel, p. 132.
'° Truth Matters, p. 108.
"' Hard to Believe, p. 49.
Scripture and Preaching 67
human nature is abiding. Thus men today are dominated by
the same sins as were present in the nineteenth or any other
century. What was fundamental to the empires of Assyria and
Babylon is to be seen in the nations today. As Lloyd-Jones used
to say, men today may now travel at four hundred miles an hour
instead of four, but they do the same things when they reach
their destination.
What, in reality, is the precise difference between the pride which the modern man takes 1n his culture and sophistica-
tion and the pride of those men who, at the very dawn of history, tried to build the tower of Babel into heaven?!"
Wherever Scripture controls preaching, it means there will be
dependence on the power of God 1n addressing the conscience
of man in sin. That 1s the real point of contact (Rom. 2:14-15).
Faithful preaching means addressing 'every man's conscience in
the sight of God' (2 Cox 4:2).
12D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Truth Unchanged, Unchanging (London: Clarke, 1951) pp. Lie.
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The Rediscovery of Old Truth
if earlier mentioned a downside to Fundamentalism, and it
is with reference to this that John MacArthur's ministry
moved in a significantly different direction. Some historical
background 1s necessary to follow this development. In the early
twentieth century, when there was widespread defection from
biblical Christianity, fundamentalist churches, their organiza-
tions and publishers, drew together with something of a fortress
mentality. They stood apart from those outside.
It is true that the line of division was not as sharply drawn
in all parts of Fundamentalism. George W. Dollar, Professor of
Church History at Bob Jones University, depicted Talbot Semi-
nary, and the leaders of the denomination in which MacArthur
was ordained, as 'moderate Fundamentalists'. They were men,
he thought, who lacked 'a war psychology'. MacArthur saw something of the difference between Dollar's position and his
father's during his two years of study in South Carolina, and it
did not appeal to him. Yet at that date he was not conscious of
the mistake which had weakened the fundamentalist churches in
general. Their withdrawal from the historic Protestant denomi-
70 JoHN MacArTHuR: SERVANT OF THE WorD AND FLOCK
nations had engendered an indifference to what had once been
the heritage of those denominations. Fundamentalism gave little
place to church history before the nineteenth century. It was as though there was nothing to be learned from the confessions of faith and the literary heritage of an older evangelicalism. For the majority of fundamentalists, the best-known edition of the Bible was the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909, and few suspected
the comparative novelty of some of its notes.
Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), friend of C. I. Scofield
(1843-1921), was a standard-bearer of Fundamentalism. Distin-
guished as a preacher and an author, he founded the influential
Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924. When B. B. Warfield of
Princeton reviewed one of Chafer's books in 1919, he judged
that it contained 'two inconsistent systems of religion . . . The
one 1s the product of the Protestant Reformation and knows no
determining power in the religious life but the grace of God; the
other comes straight from the laboratory of John Wesley."!
What Warfield meant by these words, and how MacArthur
became convinced that his evaluation was true, is crucial to
understanding the major development in the latter's ministry.
The issue concerned the question whether the number who
come to eternal life is ultimately determined by the purpose of God or by the will of man. By his opposition to the doctrine of
election, Wesley tilted the understanding of numbers of evangeli-
cals away from what had been the confession of the Reformation and the Puritans. But if man possesses a fallen nature, at enmity
to God and to spiritual things, how can a 'decision' by him to turn from death to life be the cause of conversion?
' Princeton Theological Review, April 1919, p. 322.
The Rediscovery of Old Truth "ak
Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) carried the deviation much
further than Wesley by teaching that man does not have a fallen
nature at all. He taught that faith is fundamentally a human dec-
ision and that salvation is secured by the sinner's movement toward God and the gospel.* This belief was almost universally accepted
in Fundamentalism, and it was compounded by an error that
came from another quarter. The scheme of unfulfilled prophecy
that became accepted in Fundamentalism was Dispensational-
ism. This scheme believed that Scripture is to be understood
as distinguishing sharply between 'law' (Old Testament) and
'grace' (New Testament). Jesus taught 'the law' because the new
dispensation of 'the church age' had not yet begun, but for us
who now belong to a new dispensation, the law has no place.
J. N. Darby, Scofield's chief mentor, taught that Christ's preach-
ing to Jews—as in the Sermon on the Mount—was no guide for
preachers today; Darby held it was a different message because
the Jews lived in 'the kingdom age'. Christians are now in 'the
church age' which began after the Jews rejected 'the kingdom'.
Whereas in the 'kingdom age' the message was 'law', in the
church age it is 'grace', and these two things, it was claimed,
stand opposed to one another. The law requires 'works'; the
gospel is all grace. So an omission of the law of God—the Ten Commandments—became endemic in evangelism, and the
unforeseen consequences were vast. If sin is 'transgression of the
law', and if it is 'by the law' that the real nature of sin becomes
2 Ashamed of the Gospel, p. 158. See also the extended Appendix, "Charles Finney and American Evangelical Pragmatism', pp. 227-35. The pervasiveness of this teaching in Fundamentalism is scarcely open to question. George W. Dollar wrote that 'Most Fundamentalists . . . would have refused to adopt any statement of the Five Points [of Calvinism].' History of Fundamentalism,
p. 276;
72 JOHN MacArrHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
known (1 John 3:4; Rom. 7:7), then inevitably, where this is
omitted, the seriousness of what it means to be an unregener-
ate sinner is going to be lost. When that happens, instead of pressing for conviction of sin and the fear of God, evangelistic preaching gives the main attention to encouraging sinners to make 'a decision for Christ'. In other words, everything neces-
sary for conversion is reduced to the human choice, with the time of conversion determined by man. Even the work of God
in regeneration 1s made a consequence of man's decision.
Another result of the thinking that made the work of God
dependent on the human will was that a 'revival' can be planned
and announced weeks before it is supposed to take place, the
term being understood simply as a series of evangelistic meetings
where 'decisions' would be certain and counted by the response
to 'an altar call'.
This understanding of evangelism was so strongly established
in Fundamentalism that it was no easy thing for anyone to depart
from it. In John MacArthur's case the first step to a different
understanding occurred while he was in Mississippi before he
ever settled at Grace Church. We have noted him above record-
ing the conversion of over 2,300 whom he saw 'come forward
to receive Christ'. But in the course of participating in these
Mississippi Crusades he came to see that, while real conversions took place, to estimate their real number by counting those who made a public response, was no sure guide. Experience made
it evident to him that effective speaking, and urgent appeals, could account for numbers responding. From that time on he dropped the so-called 'altar call as a supposed means of giving
the number of conversions.
The Rediscovery of Old Truth 73
More slowly, however, did he come to see the effects of the
popular practice upon the churches. Under a heading 'A Personal
Lesson', he has detailed three cases of people who had gone
back on a Christian profession. They were men who were all,
at one point, close friends. The first was
a high school classmate and team-mate. He and I worked summers at his dad's car dealership. We spent a lot of other time together besides work and school, passing out
tracts and witnessing in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. He seemed for all the world to be on fire
for Christ.
The second friend was co-captain with him in the college
football team, who also taught Bible studies and was thinking
about the pastorate. The third man actually trained with John
at Talbot. Yet all three were to abandon the faith; one was to
be convicted as a criminal, and another was to erect a Buddhist
altar in his home.
At one time he might not have been dogmatic on how to
understand this abandonment of faith, but more reflection
was leading him to a strong conclusion. It was stimulated, in
part, by an experience in his early ministry which followed his
meeting with a stranger. On a cross-country flight he found
himself sitting next to a man. When this individual noticed that
MacArthur was reading a Bible, he introduced himself and put
the surprising question, "Excuse me, you wouldn't know how
I could have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, would
you?' What followed I give in MacArthur's own words:
Prospects like this do not approach me very often, so I did
not want to lose this one! I said, 'Well, yes, you simply
74 JoHN MacArrHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
"believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and accept Him as your
Saviour.' I explained that Jesus died and rose again so that we might have eternal life. I told him all he needed to do was to receive Christ as his personal Saviour.
T'd like to do that', he said. So I led him in a prayer, and
he asked the Lord to be his Saviour. Later that month I baptized him. I was very excited about what had happened and eager to follow him up in discipleship. After a short
time, however, he broke off contact with me. I recently discovered he has no continuing interest in the things of
Christ.'
While such experiences contributed to John's change of mind,
it was Scripture which finally convinced him that there was
something fundamentally wrong with the popular evangelism.
I have already noted his preaching from the Gospel of Matthew,
and its chapters on the Sermon on the Mount. It was during
his seven-and-a-half years of studying and preaching from that
Gospel (begun in January 1978) that he was finally convinced
of the difference between Christ's presentation of the gospel and
much contemporary practice. According to that practice, it is
an easy thing to become a Christian. But this was not what he
found in the Gospel narratives. Jesus, instead of telling would-be
disciples that they had 'only to believe in Him, so often took a
different course. The lesson came home to him particularly as
he worked though the Sermon on the Mount, with its insist-
ence on the place of the law. It also shook the self-confidence
of numbers of his hearers.
The final confirmation for him was Christ's dealing with the
rich young ruler in Matthew 19. Here was 'a young man who
asks in the clearest possible terms how he can lay hold of eternal
life'. The answer was he had to forsake all that he had:
* The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), pe7/:
The Rediscovery of Old Truth 75
Instead of taking him from where he was and getting
him to make a 'decision', Jesus laid out terms to which he
was unwilling to submit. In a sense, Jesus chased him off.
What kind of evangelism is this? Jesus would have failed
personal evangelism class in almost every Bible College or
Seminary I know!
It was now settled in MacArthur's mind that the falling-away
phenomenon related to the fact that people were treated as con-
verts who had never been converted at all. It was not because
they did not 'believe' the message they had heard; they did, but
this 'faith', instead of changing their lives, had allowed them to
settle in a delusion. The message itself had misled them:
Unbelievers are told that if they invite Jesus into their
hearts, accept Him as personal Saviour, or believe the
facts of the gospel, that's all there is to it. The aftermath
is appalling failure, as seen in the lives of multitudes who have professed faith in Christ with no consequent impact on their behaviour.*
By means of such teaching large numbers are in the churches
who are not Christians and they do not know it. They have
been given assurance that to have 'good feelings' about Jesus
is enough to show they are born again. In contrast to this,
MacArthur saw that it is not the church's role to give assurance:
'The Holy Spirit alone gives genuine assurance (Rom. 8:16).
Don't usurp His role in someone's life. Don't let false assurance
overrule His conviction work."
MacArthur was later to be accused of falling into the 'error' of
the Puritans. While Puritan authors were not the decisive cause
of the development of his thinking, some of them were certainly
elbidiy ps.
> Hard to Believe, p. 96.
76 JoHN MacArtuur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
a help to him at this time. It was the thoroughness of their com-
mitment to Scripture which especially appealed to him.
There was a day when the great students of Scripture and theology were pastors. Puritan ministers, rather than being just good communicators, were first and foremost students of God's Word. They worked at understanding, interpreting, and applying the Word of God with precision and wisdom.°
Thomas Watson was one of the first of the older authors
to gain his attention. Watson is quoted repeatedly in the first
volume of MacArthur's New Testament Commentary (on Mat-
thew, 1985), and called 'the great Puritan saint'. In another
book, published in 1983, MacArthur wrote, 'One of the great
experiences of my brief life has been to read The Existence and
Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock.' Other Puritan authors
to whom he refers include John Flavel, Richard Sibbes, and
Richard Baxter.
Connected with the above reading was his admiration for
the books by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He never met the one-time
minister of Westminster Chapel, London, who died in 1981, but
he came to quote him more than any other twentieth-century
author.' His copy of Lloyd-Jones' Sermon on the Mount was bought in 1977 and was heavily marked. Some of the Welsh
preacher's convictions, however, were his own before he ever
read them in that source. He had, for instance, declined to share
in Dr Billy Graham's crusades in Los Angeles on account of
the latter's willingness to direct enquirers to non-evangelical
© The Masters Plan, pp. 151-2.
" Another twentieth-century 'Puritan' whom he came to quote at times was A. W. Pink.
The Rediscovery of Old Truth 77
churches, including the Roman Catholic.' Also included in
MacArthur's widening reading, at this period, were the biogra-
phies of such evangelicals as William Tyndale, Jonathan Edwards
and Henry Martyn.
MacArthur has written of Fundamentalism moving apart in
two directions after World War II:
One wing, desperate for academic respectability, could
not resist the pluralism of the modern age . . . Another wing of Fundamentalism moved in the opposite direction. They were keenly aware that an obsession with academic
respectability had led their brethren to abandon the fundamentals. For that reason they distrusted scholarship or spurned it altogether. This right wing of the fundamen-
talist movement was relentlessly fragmented by militant
separatism. Petty concerns often replaced serious doctrine
as the matter for discussion and debate.'
But a still more significant development from Fundamentalism
and Dispensationalism was in the direction where MacArthur
himself was now to lead. That a breach was occurring ought
to have been clear enough in 1980 when he published a small
book on the Sermon on the Mount, significantly titled Kingdom
Living, Here and Now."°
8 Graham crusades were held on three occasion in Los Angeles and each time the use of Grace Community Church for connected purposes was requested. MacArthur valued Graham's gospel preaching, and said nothing publicly critical of the evangelist until the latter expressed his agreement with Robert Schuller in 1997.
9° Reckless Faith: When the Church Loses Its Will to Discern (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), pp. 95-6.
10 Tn his Preface to the book, reprinted in 1998, he noted: "To declare Jesus' Sermon on the Mount irrelevant to this age is to cut the heart out of our Lord's instructions to His people.'
78 JoHN MacArrHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
He would come to speak of B. B. Warfield as 'the great Reformed theologian', and take his side over against that of
Chafer in the Princeton professor's review already quoted:
If Chafer and those who were influenced by him had
interacted seriously with Warfield on these issues, perhaps
twentieth-century American evangelicalism might have
been spared a lot of confusion and false teaching."!
The development from Fundamentalism that MacArthur came
to represent, while retaining strengths that initially belonged to
that movement, reconnected with the older Christianity of the
Reformed tradition. What this would mean, the following years
were to tell.
"' The Gospel According to the Apostles (Nashville: Word, 2000), p. 125 n.
The 1980s
ii ohn MacArthur's ministry entered a major new phase in
the late 1970s in a way that seemed accidental. While the
tape ministry developed during the 1970s, the preacher had no
plans to create a media organization. It was a letter that came
to Grace Church one day 1n 1977 that was to change the situa-
tion. The writer, from Maryland on the other side of the States,
expressed his thankfulness for a MacArthur sermon on Eph-
esians which had been broadcast by the radio station WRBS,
Baltimore. The letter was a puzzle to the staff at Grace Church
for they knew nothing of any such broadcast. An enquiry
revealed that a listener to that station had simply offered a
MacArthur cassette recording which had been put on air.
This unexpected indication of how the ministry could be
multiplied on air led to Grace making a tentative beginning
with one radio station for a daily thirty-minute broadcast of
MacArthur sermons. Once again, it was the work of volunteers
that made this possible. These broadcasts, under the title Grace
to You, were soon to multiply. By 1981 they were being carried
by more than one hundred stations across the United States,
80 JOHN MacArTHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
and were heard in at least eighty cities. Nor were the broadcasts
to stop at the nation's boundaries. By 1983 they were heard in
Puerto Rico, with other countries overseas soon to follow, such
as Britain in 1988. Referring to the 'turning point' that radio brought to his ministry in 1978, John was later to comment:
Preaching on Christian radio had generally been relegated
to hour-long broadcasts usually heard at weekends. In the Lord's perfect timing, Grace to You hit the air waves at
a time when believers across the country were starved of
Bible teaching, and we helped pioneer a half-hour format
for daily preaching and teaching that is now staple. Back in
1978, no one expected our radio experiment would even-
tually have eternal implications for God's people across the globe . . . Truly the opportunities we have today are greater than any era in the history of Christianity.
The radio preaching had two unforeseen repercussions. It led
to an explosion of interest in the cassette-tape ministry. From
the one hundred tapes prepared weekly in 1970, Word of Grace
produced a million in the twelve-month period a year after the
sermons went on air. Overseas centres for their duplication and
distribution came into existence in India, Singapore, Hong
Kong, and the Philippines.
Further, the hearing of the spoken word fuelled a demand for
written material by the preacher. In October 1979 MacArthur
began to write a monthly personal letter to Grace to You sup-
porters, and from the next year a four or six-page newsletter began to be sent out.! It was also in 1980 that a series of Bible Study Guides, in booklet form, was initiated. These were put together from his sermons by a new member of staff, Mike
' The personal letter has continued to the present date; the newsletter terminated in 1989.
The 1980s 81
Taylor, and were immediately in demand. The first issues in
1980-82 included such subjects as the 'Christian's Armour', the
'Holy Spirit, the 'Church', 'Heaven', and 'How to Study the
Bible'. Ultimately there were to be 187 items in this series.?
MacArthur has always seen the gift of committed men, such
as Taylor, to Grace Church as fundamental to the larger ministry.
It was at this point that another such man came to them who would exercise a still larger influence in the realm of literature.
Phil Johnson's name has already been mentioned several times
in these pages. Born in 1953, he had joined the staff of Moody
Press as a manuscript editor after graduating from Moody Bible
Institute. When MacArthur was in Chicago, speaking at Moody
Bible Institute in 1977, Johnson heard him for the first time. He
came to that meeting as a reluctant hearer and only the persist-
ence of a friend had got him there. For one thing, the visiting
preacher's name was unknown to him; and he had heard enough
speakers already on 'Guidance'-—the subject on which the man
from California was advertised to speak. It only took one hear-
ing for Johnson's indifference to turn to admiration.
When Johnson moved on to be an assistant pastor in St Peters-
burg, Florida, his appreciation of MacArthur was to deepen.
Finding himself in a situation where evangelism was identified
with 'easy-believism', with regard for a changed life as evidence
of authentic conversion ignored, what he heard from MacArthur
broadcasts from Tampa, Florida, was a lifeline.* He remembers:
2 The editing of the Study Guides was largely the work of Mike Taylor (1952-2009) who was hired for that purpose in 1982, and was to take a key role in the literature side of the work. He was still a staff member at the time of his death. A graduate of Michigan State University, he had come to California seeking work in the film industry before conversion turned his life
in a new direction.
3 The radio station in Tampa was one of only three in the nation that carried
82 JOHN MacArTHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
For almost every day I listened to Grace to You on the
radio. I was hooked from day one, and especially appreci-
ated John's stance on the Lordship controversy because
that was an issue that had immediate practical ramifications in our church's ministry to young people, which was one of my responsibilities.
Contrary to the popular teaching, Johnson heard MacArthur
insist that Christ cannot truly be received as Saviour, unless
there is also submission to Him as Lord. The two men had
not met personally in 1977, but when Johnson was invited to
meet MacArthur he relished the opportunity. The invitation
came from his former employers, Moody Press, who wanted to
commit the Californian preacher to a long-term series of com-
mentaries on the New Testament. The attention of the Press
had been drawn to the way MacArthur was preaching through
the Gospel of Matthew and the possibility of an extended series
of volumes was seen. The editing of material delivered in the
pulpit would require skilled help, and it was estimated the whole
project would take a ten-year period. Johnson was, accordingly,
one of the six potential editors whom the publisher brought
together to meet with MacArthur in Chicago in August 1981.
After the meeting, Johnson recalls,
John, who is extremely cordial in settings like that, made
it a point to speak to each editor individually. My first ever words to him were, 'I listen to Grace to You every day and
love your teaching. And I think you need to write a book
on the Lordship issue.' He instantly replied, 'I do plan to write a book on that subject! I even have a title in mind:
The Gospel According to Jesus. What do you think?
Johnson was at this point considering returning to Moody as
the Grace to You broadcast in 1979.