A WARNING ABOUT JOHN MACARTHUR

-- removed from web site 07/2008

Updated February 28, 2003 (first published February 27, 2003) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –

MACARTHUR DENIES THE REALITY OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST

MacArthur says the blood of Christ “could not save” and “it was not the FLUID that saved us, it was the DEATH of Christ.”

In the May 1976 issue of the Grace to You Family paper that is distributed to his church, MacArthur published an article titled “Not His Bleeding, but His Dying.” In this, MacArthur plainly stated that it is not the blood of Christ that saves.

Ten years later, in a letter to Tim Weidlich, Paul Clark, Kevin Jolliff of Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, April 4, 1986, MacArthur made the following statement of his position:

“Obviously, it was not the blood of Jesus that saves or He could have bled for us without dying. It was His death for sin that saves. When Romans 3:25 speaks of ‘faith in His blood’ everyone understands that to be a reference to His death -- not the blood running through His body. In Romans 5:9, being ‘justified by His blood’ also refers to His death, as verse 10 makes clear in saying ‘we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.’ In fact, the careful explanation of salvation in Romans 6 omits any reference to His blood at all. The point is that the shedding of blood was just the visible indication of His death, His life being poured out. ... I admit that because of some traditional hymns there is an emotional attachment to the blood -- but that should not pose a problem when one is dealing with theological or textual specificity. I can sing hymns about the blood and rejoice with them -- but I understand that reference to be a metonym for His death.”

MacArthur was still preaching this in the 1990s. When I attended one of his conferences in British Columbia in that decade, I purchased a copy of his commentary on Hebrews to check out his teaching on the blood for myself. In this commentary, MacArthur repeatedly says the blood is merely “symbolic” of death.

This is the false position taken by Robert Bratcher, editor of the Today’s English Version. In that perverted translation the word “death” is almost always substituted for the word “blood” when the Scriptures are referring to Christ’s atonement.

This is a damnable heresy, because the atonement REQUIRES BOTH the death and the blood of Christ (Heb. 9:22). The blood IS NOT merely symbolic for death. It itself is a crucial part of our salvation.

MACARTHUR TEACHES A LORDSHIP SALVATION DOCTRINE

“MacArthur’s new book, The Gospel According to Jesus, is confusing concerning salvation. Much of what he says is good. But we cannot agree with his ‘lordship salvation’ remedy to ‘easy believism’ and the loose living of some professing Christians of our day, since it requires more from the seeking sinner than the Bible does for obtaining salvation. He erects a straw man, and makes it appear that those who oppose his ‘lordship salvation’ teachings believe things they do not believe. His tone often seems reactionary. Puritan and Reformed influences are evident in this book. [MacArthur is a Calvinist.] He seems to confusingly mix justification and sanctification, salvation and discipleship, and blurs dispensational considerations. The cure for a ‘too easy’ gospel is not to complicate it. Paul warned of the danger of being ‘corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ’ (2 Cor. 11:3). Dr. J. I. Packer in the book's foreword said ‘those who reject leadership salvation choose to keep works out of justification.’ Galatians 2:16 likewise does!” (Calvary Contender, Jan. 15, 1989).

MACARTHUR IS CALVINIST

In December 1989, the Bible Broadcasting Network terminated Dr. MacArthur’s “Grace to You” program. In explaining that step, BBN president Lowell Davey referred to MacArthur's teachings on “Lordship Salvation,” “Hyper-Calvinism,” and the blood of Christ. He called these teachings “confusing.” In a letter dated Jan. 15, 1990 Davey cited a “drift by Dr. MacArthur to a theological position that we could not adhere to” and said his series on election “convinced us that the direction of ‘Grace to You’ was toward Hyper-Calvinism...”

In his popular study Bible, MacArthur denies that Jesus Christ died as a Substitute for all men.

MACARTHUR IS A NEW EVANGELICAL ECUMENIST

MacArthur frequently speaks at ecumenical forums, such as the Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week. For example, at the February 1986 Moody Bible Institute conference, MacArthur joined hands with two of the chief ecumenists of our day, Billy Graham and Luis Palau. Both Graham and Palau regularly join together in ecumenical relations with Roman Catholics. Graham has turned thousands of his converts over to the hands of the wolves in sheep’s clothing in the various Catholic parishes that have participated in his crusades. (We have documented this extensively in our 371-page book Evangelicals and Rome.)

In July 1988, MacArthur spoke at the Congress on the Church and the Disabled at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, which featured Roman Catholic and New Evangelical speakers (Moody Monthly, Oct. 1988).

MacArthur participates in the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) and speaks at their conferences. The NRB is extremely ecumenical. The 1997 conference featured Seventh-day Adventists, “laughing revival” Pentecostals, the Worldwide Church of God, and an entire slate of New Evangelicals, such as Joseph Stowell, Franklin Graham, Max Lucado, and David Jeremiah.

In 1987, MacArthur participated in Jerry Falwell’s Super Conference VIII, which featured E. V. Hill. The late Dr. Hill pastored a church affiliated with the modernistic National Council of Churches in America and he was an ecumenist of the ecumenists. I heard Hill speak at New Orleans ’87 to a mixed crowd of some 40,000 Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, and Pentecostals. Fifty percent of the attendees were Roman Catholic, and a Catholic priest brought the final message. Hill said, “And to see all of our Catholic friends here. Wow. We are almost there!” He accepted them as brethren in Christ and did not have one word of warning to them about Rome’s false gospel. This was a pattern in Hill’s ministry. He often joined hands with Roman Catholics. Other examples are the Washington for Jesus Rally in 1980, Graham’s Amsterdam conference in 1983, and the Congress on the Bible II in 1987.

In these various ecumenical forums, MacArthur also puts stamp of approval upon every sort of Contemporary Christian Music and Christian rock music by making his appearance and not speaking out against the worldliness and compromise that is present.

For more about MacArthur’s New Evangelical philosophy and practice, see our article “John MacArthur and New Evangelical Ecumenism,”

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