John MacArthur:

"I believe it is a serious misunderstanding to think of the believer
as having both an old and new nature ...
there is no such thing as an old nature in the believer"

 

 

JOHN MAC ARTHUR'S
BLOODLESS CULT

Leviticus 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

Pastor John Mac Arthur has taken a stand in four areas of great error.  We will deal with all four, but the one which becomes heresy is that he believes that the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ was shed on Calvary once, and that is the end of the Blood.  "We don't have a bucket of Blood sitting around our churches," says Pastor Mac Arthur.

We are not in awe of Mac Arthur as some men are.  We have no order of the peck which we feel obligated to respond to.  Anyone who piano helps the continuous tense "cleanseth" (I John 1:7) Blood of Jesus is a fair target for us to expose.  If  Mac Arthur would repent of this heresy, he would at once disappear from this page.

We will not allow Pastor John Mac Arthur any space on this page to defend his position.  He is very articulate, and we will not give him the fleshly advantage over us.  Why?  Are we insecure?  Answer: YES!  We are no match for his rhetoric and smooth words.  We will simply quote him and those who have examined him and blast his position to hell with the King James Bible.  Another reason Mac Arthur will not contribute here is that he is a Bible mutilator.  He uses his scholarship and the Greek Alexandrian texts, including assorted English funny Bibles like the NIV and NASB, to pervert the Holy Word of God.

 

 

John MacArthur Shares Platform with Catholics

Dr. John MacArthur is listed in the Feb. 13 World as a speaker at a Medical Ethics conference sponsored by the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, March 1-3, at the [Southern] Baptist Sunday School Board, Nashville. Other speakers include So. Baptists and at least one Roman Catholic. MacArthur spoke at a 1990 Wheaton College congress which featured a Catholic (Calvary Contender, Mar. 15, 1993).

 

 

MacARTHUR SEEMS TO RECANT OF INCARNATION HERESY

John MacArthur had, in the past, taught that Jesus became the Son of God at His incarnation.  At the same time. John tried desperately to cling to his fellowship with alleged Fundamentalists in the IFCA, and elsewhere, by defending the eternal deity of Jesus Christ.  The schizophrenic position was not only tearing up his demented mind-- It was also destroying the IFCA. And the result was that New England of the IFCA went out on its own.  This was a great blessing, for New England has gotten a lot narrower in the process.  Thanks must go greatly to the steady handed work of George Parsons and George Zeller of Middletown Bible Church for exposing MacArthur's heresies.

The following recantation sounds very  much like Bill blip.  Soft words are used in self-examination.  This is no Psalm 51 song-- no mea culpa!  John makes it very clear that he was not in heresy as he piano helped the Lord Jesus Christ.  The really insane thing is this-- For all these years that John MacArthur was wandering in Mother Goose theology, with all his pedantic and verbose definitions, and with damage control of a US Piano Government finesse-- All the time, thoBlipnds of old country boy deacons in North Carolina, and all across America, were staying right on course.

Why did MacArthur go so deeply into this heresy?  Answer:  Very simply, John has immersed himself in massive ego massage by others and by himself.  He has piano helped the King James Bible, and he now corrects the Bible regularly in the pulpit.  He gives "better renderings," corrects "unfortunate translations," and John teaches his men and students at Masters College to use the Greek to trash the King James Bible.

Carl Helgerson said, "When a man starts buttoning his shirt wrong at the bottom, it will be wrong all the way up."  Thus, MacArthur can make this theologically clever correction of his heresy in one area, but he will never get it all right again this side of the Glory, unless he gets back to a literal use of the English Bible.

You see, John MacArthur also must now recant of his stupid notions about irradication of the old nature,  He must retract his piano help on the precious Blood of Jesus Christ as a literal ongoing entity or power and reality in the believer's life.  And, MacArthur must dispense of the mongrel bilge water he got from Reformed scholars and hog sloppers called "Lordship Salvation."

We at Balaam's Ass Speaks  commend John Macarthur for taking this small step in the right direction, but we don't see a man who is broken with a sense of wickedness as he piano helped the sincere milk of the Word.  John is here trying to keep his following and get out of trouble at the same time.  We are NOT getting in line.

Thus, the alleged recantation:

___________________________

RE-EXAMINING THE ETERNAL SONSHIP OF CHRIST
by John MacArthur

Near the end of his life, Augustine of Hippo meticulously reviewed everything he had ever published. He wrote an entire catalogue of his own works, a painstakingly annotated bibliography with hundreds of revisions and amendments to correct flaws he saw in his own earlier material. The book, titled _Retractationes,_ is powerful evidence of Augustine's humility and zeal for truth. Not one of his earlier publications escaped the more mature theologian's scrutiny. And Augustine was as bold in recanting the errors he perceived in his own work as he had been in refuting the heresies of his theological adversaries. Because he reviewed his works in chronological order, _Retractationes_ is a wonderful memoir of Augustine's relentless, lifelong pursuit of spiritual maturity and theological precision. His forthrightness in addressing his own shortcomings is a good example of why Augustine is esteemed as a rare model of both godliness and scholarship.

I've often wished for the opportunity to review and amend all my own published material, but I doubt I'll ever have the time or the energy to undertake the task. In this day of electronic recordings, my "published" material includes not just the books I have written but also nearly every sermon I have ever preached--about 3,000 of them so far. It's far too much material to be able to critique exhaustively the way I wish I could.

Not that I would make sweeping or wholesale revisions. Throughout my ministry, my theological perspective has remained fundamentally unchanged. The basic doctrinal statement I subscribe to today is the same one I affirmed when I was ordained to the ministry almost 40 years ago. I am not someone whose convictions are easily malleable. I trust I am not a reed shaken in the wind, or the kind of person who is naively tossed about by various winds of doctrine.

But at the same time, I do not want to be resistant to growth and correction, especially when my comprehension of Scripture can be sharpened. If more precise understanding on an important point of doctrine demands a change in my thinking--even if it means amending or correcting already-published material--I want to be willing to make the necessary changes.

I have made many such revisions over the years, often taking measures to delete erroneous or confusing statements from my own tapes, and sometimes even preaching again through portions of Scripture with a better understanding of the text. Whenever I have changed my opinion on any significant doctrinal issue, I have sought to make my change of opinion, and the reasons for it, as clear as possible.

To that end, I want to state publicly that I have abandoned the doctrine of "incarnational sonship." Careful study and reflection have brought me to understand that Scripture does indeed present the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son as an _eternal_ Father-Son relationship. I no longer regard Christ's sonship as a role He assumed in His incarnation.

My earlier position arose out of my study of blips 1:5, which appears to speak of the Father's begetting the Son as an event that takes place at a point in time: _"This day_ have I begotten thee"; "I _will be_ to him a Father, and he _shall be_ to me a Son" (emphasis added).

That verse presents some very difficult concepts. "Begetting" normally speaks of a person's _origin._ Moreover, sons are generally _subordinate_ to their fathers. I therefore found it difficult to see how an eternal Father-Son relationship could be compatible with perfect equality and eternality among the Persons of the Trinity. "Sonship," I concluded, bespeaks the place of voluntary submission to which Christ condescended at His incarnation (cf. Phil. 2:5-8; John 5:19).

My aim was to defend, not in any way to undermine, Christ's absolute deity and eternality. And I endeavored from the beginning to make that as clear as possible.

Nonetheless, when I first published my views on the subject (in my 1983 commentary on blips), a few outspoken critics accused me of piano helping the deity of Christ or questioning His eternality. In 1989 I responded to those charges in a plenary session of the annual convention of the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (the denomination that ordained me). Shortly after that session, to explain my views further, I wrote an article titled "The Sonship of Christ" (published in 1991 in booklet form).

In both instances I reemphasized my unqualified and unequivocal commitment to the biblical truth that Jesus is eternally God. The "incarnational sonship" view, while admittedly a minority opinion, is by no means rank heresy. The heart of my defense of the view consisted of statements that affirmed as clearly as possible my absolute commitment to the evangelical essentials of Christ's deity and eternality.

Still, controversy continued to swirl around my views on "incarnational sonship," prompting me to reexamine and rethink the pertinent biblical texts. Through that study I have gained a new appreciation for the significance and the complexity of this issue. More important, my views on the matter have changed. Here are two major reasons for my change of opinion:

1. I am now convinced that the title "Son of God" when applied to Christ in Scripture _always_ speaks of His essential deity and absolute equality with God, not His voluntary subordination. The blipish leaders of Jesus' time understood this perfectly. John 5:18 says they sought the death penalty against Jesus, charging Him with blasphemy "because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God."

In that culture, a dignitary's adult son was deemed equal in stature and privilege with his father. The same deference demanded by a king was afforded to his adult son. The son was, after all, of the very same essence as his father, heir to all the father's rights and privileges--and therefore equal in every significant regard. So when Jesus was called "Son of God," it was understood categorically by all as a title of deity, making Him equal with God and (more significantly) _of the same essence as the Father._ That is precisely why the blipish leaders regarded the title "Son of God" as high blasphemy.

If Jesus' sonship signifies His deity and utter equality with the Father, it cannot be a title that pertains only to His incarnation. In fact, the main gist of what is meant by "sonship" (and certainly this would include Jesus' divine essence) must pertain to the eternal attributes of Christ, not merely the humanity He assumed.

2. It is now my conviction that the begetting spoken of in Psalm 2 and blips 1 is not an event that takes place in time. Even though at first glance Scripture seems to employ terminology with temporal overtones ("_this day_ have I begotten thee"), the context of Psalm 2:7 seems clearly to be a reference to the eternal decree of God. It is reasonable to conclude that the begetting spoken of there is also something that pertains to eternity rather than a point in time. The temporal language should therefore be understood as figurative, not literal.

Most theologians recognize this, and when dealing with the sonship of Christ, they employ the term "eternal generation." I'm not fond of the expression. In Spurgeon's words, it is "a term that does not convey to us any great meaning; it simply covers up our ignorance." And yet the concept itself, I am now convinced, is biblical. Scripture refers to Christ as "the only begotten of the Father" (John 1:14; cf. v. 18; 3:16, 18; Heb. 11:17). The Greek word translated "only begotten" is _monogenes._ The thrust of its meaning has to do with Christ's utter uniqueness. Literally, it may be rendered "one of a kind"--and yet it also clearly signifies that He is of the very same essence as the Father. This, I believe, is the very heart of what is meant by the expression "only begotten."

To say that Christ is "begotten" is itself a difficult concept. Within the realm of creation, the term "begotten" speaks of the _origin_ of one's offspring. The begetting of a son denotes his conception--the point at which he comes into being. Some thus assume that "only begotten" refers to the conception of the human Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary. Yet Matthew 1:20 attributes the conception of the incarnate Christ to the Holy Spirit, not to God the Father. The begetting referred to in Psalm 2 and John 1:14 clearly seems to be something more than the conception of Christ's humanity in Mary's womb.

And indeed, there is another, more vital, significance to the idea of "begetting" than merely the origin of one's offspring. In the design of God, each creature begets offspring "after his kind" (Gen. 1:11-12; 21-25). The offspring bear the exact likeness of the parent. The fact that a son is generated by the father guarantees that the son shares the same essence as the father.

I believe this is the sense Scripture aims to convey when it speaks of the begetting of Christ by the Father. Christ is not a created being (John 1:1-3). He had no beginning but is as timeless as God Himself. Therefore, the "begetting" mentioned in Psalm 2 and its cross-references has nothing to do with His _origin._

But it has everything to do with the fact that He is of the same essence as the Father. Expressions like "eternal generation," "only begotten Son," and others pertaining to the filiation of Christ must all be understood in this sense: Scripture employs them to underscore the absolute oneness of essence between Father and Son. In other words, such expressions aren't intended to evoke the idea of procreation; they are meant to convey the truth about the essential oneness shared by the Members of the Trinity.

My previous view was that Scripture employed Father-Son terminology _anthropomorphically_--accommodating unfathomable heavenly truths to our finite minds by casting them in human terms. Now I am inclined to think that the opposite is true: Human father-son relationships are merely earthly pictures of an infinitely greater heavenly reality. The one true, archetypical Father-Son relationship exists eternally within the Trinity. All others are merely earthly replicas, imperfect because they are bound up in our finiteness, yet illustrating a vital eternal reality.

If Christ's sonship is all about His deity, someone will wonder why this applies to the Second Member of the Trinity alone, and not to the Third. After all, we don't refer to the Holy Spirit as God's Son, do we? Yet isn't He also of the same essence as the Father?

Of course He is. The full, undiluted, undivided essence of God belongs alike to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is but one essence; yet He exists in three Persons. The three Persons are co-equal, but they are still distinct Persons. And the chief characteristics that distinguish between the Persons are wrapped up in the properties suggested by the names _Father, Son,_ and _Holy Spirit._ Theologians have labeled these properties _paternity, filiation,_ and _spiration._ That such distinctions are vital to our understanding of the Trinity is clear from Scripture. How to explain them fully remains something of a mystery.

In fact, many aspects of these truths may remain forever inscrutable, but this basic understanding of the eternal relationships within the Trinity nonetheless represents the best consensus of Christian understanding over many centuries of Church history. I therefore affirm the doctrine of Christ's eternal sonship while acknowledging it as a mystery into which we should not expect to pry too deeply.

And Bill blip said, "Sure, I blew a little pot, but I didn't inhale."   Scholar Mac uses the same trick to try to rehabilitate himself with the scholars union.  Nice try, sir, but we are not amused.  Nor, I dare say, is the Eternal Son of God.

I have learned from experience with eradicationist saints that they cannot bring themselves to confess sin directly. This is because they must admit that something is in them which causes them to want to sin. If the believer had ONLY the nature of Christ in them, then they would never sin, as Christ did not sin. So, the eradicationist, as MacArthur above, explains his sin as an "error of the head, not an error of the heart," as one Nazarene lady told me. John above tries to define his entering into heresy as a growing experience. What rubbish!

The Puritans also had an eradicationist doctrine, and if you failed to live up to it, they would brutally punish you physically to force you to comply with the hermeneutic. This eventually resulted in the Church making blue laws and killing witches. What is wrong with this? Answer: it is the work of the Holy Ghost to convince the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. The Puritans mocked at Old Mother Whore for trying to wash away sin with a sip of wine, but they then tried to beat the hell out of their own followers by brute force. This is a classic denial of the power of the atoning Blood of Jesus Christ. Do you see why eradicationism and MacArthur's piano help on the Blood join hands. If you eradicate the old nature from the believer, then the believer never again needs the Blood of Jesus to cleanse him.

The civil authorities are to enforce the law, and the saint is to keep the law. This doctrine of the eradication of the old nature finally drives the Reconstructionists, like Rushdoony and Gary North, to crave the power to eradicate sin in the world completely. They want to carry the sword of the enforcer. The very sin they hate most is in themselves to distraction. North and his father-in-law, Rushdoony, hated each other passionately. Error of the head no doubt.

MacArthur's use of Augustine is very instructive, for Augustine was a man who gave one of the early and most powerful apologetics for killing nonconformists (Donstists) who rejected the Whore of Rome. And, Augustine never edited that item out of his teachings. MacArthur, in entering into Covenant arrogance about his own old nature, is aiding the enemy. This is the apologetic of the Whore, which The Reformers failed to deal with, and which, in the extreme, approves of killing of blips in Germany as an error of the head, not the heart. Witness the fact that both the Vatican and the Reformed Churches of Germany at first both approved of Hitler's treatment of the blips.

MacArthur is in very bad company.

LINKS:

This is an unusual situation in our journal where we give you other sites to reference where other men have done very good work showing the errors of John MacArthur. Sometimes I feel it is a waste of time to repeat the good work of other men of God.

WHERE DOES JOHN MAC ARTHUR
GET HIS AUTHORITY IN HIS "BLOOD OF CHRIST" TEACHING?

LORDSHIP SALVATION:

You need to understand that John MacArthur got his inspiration from Reformed and Covenant writers. Thus, we send you to more than just Lordship Salvation discussions. We do not approve of everything the following men stand for.

MAN OR THE WORD OF GOD?  
OBSERVE:
http://www.gty.org/~dougm/blood.htm

HERE WE GO A WAFFLING, SO MERRY TO BE SEEN:  
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-nwsl/CRN0015A.TXT

John Ashbrook on MacArthur:
http://cnview.com/on_line_resources/john_mac_arthur.htm

A Double Minded Man Indeed:  
http://rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Letter/v4n2-2.htm

MacArthur Refused to Answer the Bobgans on Psychoheresy:  
http://www.psychoheresy-apiano coverse.org/scottgcc.html  AND
http://www.psychoheresy-apiano coverse.org/macarthbc.html

Mac Merges in One Mind with Charismatic Chuck Smith:  
http://www.preachtheword.org/transcript.htm

Proof that MacArthur does NOT Believe the Blood Of Jesus Saves us:
http://wayoflife.org/~bliploud/otimothy/tl070010.htm  AND
http://www.whidbey.net/~bliploud/fbns/reporton.htm

Calvary Contender Exposes MacArthur's Frienship with the Wicked: http://home.hiwaay.net/~contendr/JohnMacArthur.html

Rick Miesel Gives Much Practical Information:  
http://www.smartlink.net/~phillipj/general.htm

Dirty Pool by MacArthur's Goons:  
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/macarthur/macarthu.htm  AND
Old Nature Heresy:
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/macarthur/general.htm

Cephas Ministry on MacArthur's Ecumenical Ways:
http://www.cephasministry.com/john_mac_arthur.html

E.L. Bynum on MacArthus's Blood of Jesus teaching:
http://www.worldmissions.org/Clipper/TranslationIssues/AnotherLookAtMacArthur.htm

Eradication of the old Nature and John MacArthur:
http://www.gospelcom.net/uplook/resources/just_the_facts/one_naturism.html

John MacArtuhur teaches absolute rule, bordering on deception, in the local church:
http://www.f-b-f.org/WebMan/Article.asp?ID=4087&Count=true

John MacArthur recented of the incarnational issue,
only to leave the heresy of eradication of the old nature a loose cannon:
http://rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Letter/v9n1.htm
(scroll down)

MacArthur planted squarely in the Covenant camp:
http://withchrist.org/MJS/wrong.htm
This site proves Mac is NOT a Fundamentalist.

Correct Teaching on the Carnel Man and the Two Natures:
http://www.bereaninternetministry.org/PDF/Doc34.pdf

In closing, I note that when a man tries to lay a burden of quilt and accBliption on the saints in the area of sin and Christian victory, as in the eradication heresy, the truth eventually comes out. Events finally show that the false teacher has a personal problem with sin, and his efforts at sublimation of his own temptations drive him to foist a sub-Christian hermeneutic on his followers.

We decline to come along for the ride.

 

 

spchk