 |
| John MacArthur in 2013 born in Los Angeles in 1939 |
John MacArthur is a sad case.
I used to see him as an opponent. But now I realize he's 82 years old, a year older than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, three years older than Mitch McConnell, and four years older than President Joe Biden, the seniors who govern our nation. He's nine years older than I am, bless him.
Oh, I forgot Senator Joe Manchin, who is 74, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who is 45, a junior to them all. She won her seat in 2018 when Senator Jeff Flake stepped out of Arizona politics after criticizing Trump. Manchin and Sinema actually govern the US as much as Pelosi, McConnell, and Biden do. Being passive-aggressive gets them attention.
Anyway, Johnny has been serving at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, since 1969, when he began as the junior pastor there. His father was a Baptist radio preacher in Los Angeles, educated at Bob Jones College in South Carolina. Johnny began college at Bob Jones but returned to Los Angeles to attend a now-defunct church college.
The point is that he is who he is, and he's not going to change. Misogynists, like racists, only vanish by dying off. They don't change their minds.
If you check out Wikipedia's page on MacArthur, you see who he is:
MacArthur has been involved with multiple controversies regarding his outspokenness on certain topics. MacArthur is very open about opposing same-sex marriage, against female pastors, and the social justice movement.[37] He has delivered multiple sermons where he discusses these issues.[38]
In 2012, at The Shepherd's Conference, MacArthur was participating in a word association questionnaire where the moderator gave him the name "Steven Furtick." MacArthur proceeded to argue that Furtick, pastor of Elevation Church, was "unqualified".[39] Furtick responded to this comment in his 2016 book Unqualified: How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things.
In 2019, at the Truth Matters Conference, where, during a word association questionnaire, the name "Beth Moore" was given. Reiterating his stance on 1 Timothy 2:12, MacArthur responded by stating that Beth Moore should "Go home" and that "There is no case that can be made Biblically for a woman preacher. Period. Paragraph. End of Discussion."[40] Moore responded to this stance by stating on her Twitter account, "I did not surrender to a calling of man when I was 18 years old. I surrendered to a calling of God. It never occurs to me for a second to not fulfill it. I will follow Jesus - and Jesus alone - all the way home. And I will see His beautiful face and proclaim, Worthy is the Lamb!"[41]
In 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 global crisis, MacArthur denied the existence of a pandemic, ignored orders from Los Angeles County public health officials regarding services at Grace Community Church, and insisted that no one from the church had become seriously ill.[42] Los Angeles County sued the church over its refusal to close down, and the church counter-sued, claiming religious freedom discrimination. Eventually the lawsuits were settled out of court with the county and state paying $400,000 each to Grace Community Church. In August 2021, MacArthur admitted to congregants that "many people" contracted COVID-19 while it "went through" the church in December 2020 and January 2021, including both he and his wife.[43][44]
I thought of picketing his church to protest his recent statements against women pastors, but then I reconsidered.
Why bother? He's not going to change. His church may change out from under him while he still lives.
In an article for Sojourners magazine, I interviewed women there who had no idea that he believes women should submit to their husbands. Grace Community Church downplays that theology when recruiting young members. Apparently it doesn't sell well. After a few years when a woman is deeply involved in the church, she learns these doctrines. Or dicktrines.
Grace Church doesn't teach Galatians 3:28. Or Acts 2:16-21. In its Bible studies, you'll learn about Ephesians 5:22, but nothing about Ephesians 5:21.
Johnny and his buddies at The Master's Seminary like to ignore the women who worked with Peter and Paul preaching the gospel in the earliest years of Christianity: Prisca, Lydia, Junia, Phoebe, Mary of Magdala, and others.
Note: The seminary began as Los Angeles Baptist Theological Seminary in 1927. The new name hides its Baptist roots and plays up its masculine identity. No women are allowed to enroll.
The website says: "One word sums up the legacy that is entrusted to the men who come to TMS: faithfulness."
I could think of other words: Sexist. Patriarchal. Misguided. Non-biblical. Would Jesus exclude half the human race from a college to train preachers?
I mean the guy denied the existence of the pandemic during 2020 and lied about whether his congregants had become seriously ill with the coronavirus of 2019.
He was lying like Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was recently exposed by Rep. Adam Schiff in a blatant lie. Read about it in Schiff's new book, Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.
“One of the stories I tell about Kevin McCarthy is, I was sitting next to him on a plane having a private conversation and then him going to the press and telling the press the exact opposite of our conversation, and when I confronted him on the House floor about this and said, ‘Kevin, you know I said the exact opposite of what you told the press,’ his answer was to me, ‘Yeah, I know, Adam, but you know how it goes.'”
Pastor MacArthur, you lied to us about whether your members at Grace Community Church were getting seriously ill with Covid-19 because you encouraged them to keep attending indoors during the worst of the pandemic. "Yeah, I know, folks, but you know how it goes."
McCarthy, MacArthur. Both big-time liars, both deeply into preserving and gaining power for their side. One claims to follow Jesus; one doesn't even pretend to be a man of values.
Like Trump, John MacArthur deserves our pity, not our attention as a worthy opponent.
I won't bother to picket Grace Community Church to counter the wacky views of this guy.
Instead, I will pick up the pen and use my social platform.
I will also pray for him. He followed his father's footsteps obediently, but millennials and their grandchildren won't buy his opposition to women's equality, to marriage equality, and to the rights of women and gays to serve the church.
As Jesus prayed, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
No comments:
Post a Comment