Eugene sent me an interesting challenge in an email:
In your YouTube video on John MacArthur’s gospel, you mentioned that he made some changes in 1980. I have done some searching on the web but have not found anything very thorough. I did see an interview where he and Piper talked about what Puritan writings have meant to them. In looking on the GES website, I did not find more than a passing note or two, but maybe I missed it.
It might be a good article for the Grace in Focus magazine.
I would be interested if you knew of his history on this. I just saw that he had heart surgery and is pretty weak. He said he would do five booklets on the five points of Calvinism.
Dr. MacArthur, who is eighty-five, had aortic heart valve replacement surgery on July 15th of this year. A month later, he sent a message to the congregation at Grace Community Church saying, “The operation was successful. I feel fine and I’m gradually getting back to normal activity and ministry.” He went on to say that he hoped to get back to the pulpit in a few weeks. See here for a complete article on his surgery and recovery. See here for a short video of the announcement (at 5:33).
I first heard MacArthur in person in 1989 at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). Around 2000, I attended his annual conference, The Shepherd’s Conference. A few months later, I spent four hours talking with his right-hand man, Phil Johnson.
While I strongly disagree with MacArthur on the saving message, I strongly agree with his conservative stands on marriage, family, verse-by-verse Bible teaching, inerrancy, the charismatic movement, and so much more.
At the 1989 meetings, I met with five people who had been in his church for twenty-five or more years. They all told me that until 1980, he preached justification by simple faith alone, apart from repentance and apart from works. But in 1980, he went on a sabbatical and studied Puritan writings. The result was a four-year series on Matthew and then a book called The Gospel According to Jesus.
When I spoke with Phil Johnson, he disputed what those five people told me. He said that MacArthur had always held to Lordship Salvation.
I disagreed. I’ve heard messages that MacArthur gave after 1980 in which he said that while he was in seminary at Talbot in the early sixties (he graduated in 1963), he did not have a category for believers who did well and then fell away. Only later did he put them in the category of false professors. And, of course, I have the testimony of those five people.
If you were in his church before 1980, please let me know what you think of the comments of those five people.
I have long prayed that he would return to the Free Grace position (assuming he believed it in the past). He still could. But if he doesn’t, I expect to see him in the kingdom, and we can rejoice that there was a time when he knew he was saved once and for all by faith in Christ, apart from repentance and perseverance in good works. I think he is the tip of the iceberg. How many thousands or even millions of people who now hold to Lordship Salvation once believed the faith-alone message? We will find out at the Bema. Some people who write and speak against us now may be our neighbors during the Millennium.
Keep grace in focus.
