[oldendays]

(12-12-2011, 11:34 AM)Josh Wrote: that David Cloud cares enough to rant against MacArthur, versus someone like Bishop Spong, seems to indicate that he views MacArthur as a threat.

++ Yep! I always thought it telling that fundies spend more time criticising the neighbors to their left than the true liberals.
It makes no sense why they seem to continually take for granted the repudiation of true liberalism. They seem to think that their structures of seperation will automatically bulwark against it? Which means the only worthwhile sniping is at the neo-evangelicals right outside the fence, like a dog mindlessly barking at passers-by...

[TruthSeeker]

A WARNING ABOUT JOHN MACARTHUR BY DAVID CLOUD


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,”

How accurate are these warnings against John MacArthur?

[Away-From-The-Umbrella]

(07-21-2012, 02:36 PM)TruthSeeker Wrote: A WARNING ABOUT JOHN MACARTHUR BY DAVID CLOUD


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,”

How accurate are these warnings against John MacArthur?

I will discuss the false allegation that John MacArthur (JM) denies the blood atonement:

JM has stated that not only did Jesus have to die for our sins, but his death had to be bloody for OT prophecies to be fulfilled. He did clarify that it would not have been enough for Jesus to prick his finger and use some blood to atone for our sins - He literally had to die.

This is completely orthodox Christianity.



The Fundies are the ones in error here, not JM.

Phil Johnson addresses this controversy:
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/articles/blood.htm

"His only point was that the efficacy of Christ's blood lies not in some property of the blood itself, but rather in the fact that Christ shed it in death, and such a death was the price of atonement for our sin.
Moreover, if the blood of Christ is in any sense "eternally preserved" in heaven, it would be in the glorified body of the risen Lord, not in a bowl or a vial where it is perpetually offered or literally applied to sinners in some way."

"Ransom" on the FFF explained the controversy well:

http://www.fundamentalforums.com/fightin...ost1095099


"While that is true, the beef with MacArthur is that the fundies went ballistic when he once (rightly) said that it was the fact of Christ's bloodshed and death, not any physical properties in the blood itself, that saves.

There is a whole bunch of Fundamentalists who believe blood comes from the father and therefore Jesus, not having a human father, had purely divine blood - because if it was human blood, it was corrupted by original sin and possesses no salvific properties.

This view was popularized by M. R. de Haan and is based on a faulty understanding of biology (blood, like very other part of the body, comes from a blend of genes from both parents). It is also based on faulty theology - sin is not genetic and therefore is not passed down through blood, and it is not Christ's blood that makes his sacrifice effectual, it is his active obedience in living a sinless life and his passive obedience in willingly shedding his blood on the cross.

In fact, the claim that Christ's blood was not fully human is heretical, because it denies that Christ himself was fully human.

Phil Johnson has an excellent article on that sets the record straight. (In short it is a baseless slander that was originally promulgated by the wonderful folks at Bawb Jones Unuhversity.)"



http://www.fundamentalforums.com/fightin...ost1506505

"OK, so some of the forum's Gnostics and Docetists take objection to a term I coined for the ubiquitous blood debate: "magic blood." Here is the rationale behind that term.

Jesus was a bona fide member of the human race, literally descended from Adam, through the line of David, and ultimately born to the Virgin Mary. Mary was not, as some have tried to argue, merely a surrogate or an "incubator" for his flesh. Apart from the supernatural circumstances of his conception, having no earthly father, Jesus of Nazareth was the son of Mary in exactly the same sense that I am the son of my mother.

But because Jesus was not only a bona fide man, but genuinely God, he also lived a sinless life. We speak of both his active obedience (he perfectly obeyed the laws of God in his everyday life) and his passive obedience (he accepted the will of his Father that he was to suffer and die on the cross for the sins of his people). It was his perfect obedience that made Christ the perfect once-for-all sacrifice for sins.

Repeated sacrifices of animals, over and over again, could never atone for sins. It was Christ's true and full humanity that made his death a perfect substitute for the death deserved by sinful men. It was his humanity that qualified him to be the high priest to intercede before the Father on men's behalf. His bloody death on a Roman cross satisfied the divine requirement that atonement for sin necessitated bloodshed. And it was his sinlessness that satisfied the Father's justice on behalf of all those for whom Christ died (had Christ been sinful he could only have atoned for his own sins) and provides the objective basis upon which the Father could justify sinners.

Note that justification is a legal declaration. It does not effect a change in the nature of any of the parties involved. Christ had the guilt of sinners imputed upon him; he did not literally become sinful. Conversely, sinners were not literally made sinless; the merits of Christ are reckoned to them. And the Father's mind has not been changed about sin; his demands upon the lives of sinners have been met.

But if you believe in this theory that Christ's blood was not actually human blood but divine blood, you can throw all that away. Even if Christ lived sinlessly and died in full obedience to his Father's will, but had the wrong kind of blood, it was all in vain. It's not Christ's obedient life that made him the suitable sacrifice, nor his obedient death that met God's righteous demands for justice, it was the composition of his blood.


In other words, something about the material blood itself was intrinsically capable of changing God's mind.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the very definition of "magic blood.'"

[SomethingFundy]

without the shedding of blood.. I could go on and on but Macarthur is just another legalist

[That'sWhatItSays]

MacArthur is a good, if not great, Bible teacher. Cloud is just another IFB blowhard trying to make a name for himself by painting MacArthur out as a "danger". Honestly, the way I view theology, I ask whether if every Christian in the world took some of this ministry to heart, would that be a "bad" thing. MacArthur most certainly is not bad in that sense, he helped me out a lot when I first became a Christian with his free in the mail cassette (yes!) ministry. You paid postage and MacArthur's ministry sent as many tapes to you as you wanted. This was a huge help to me as a new Christian. I don't agree with everything he says, big whoop. I don't agree with a lot that Cloud says, too.

I actually paid Cloud money to receive O Timothy for a year in the mail. What a scam that was. He actually did warn against the likes of Spong, despite what someone wrote earlier in this thread. Cloud warns against the Jesus Seminar, CCM, Paul Chappell, MacArthur, Ruckman, Tennessee Temple, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, The Message by Eugene Peterson, charismatic worship leaders, ecumenicism with the Catholic Church, professional sports...you get the picture.

Should someone start a ministry warning of the "dangers" of Cloud's knee-jerk and "flat" exposition of the scriptures which so clearly degenerates into a theology of extreme ecclesiastical separation and legalism? I'm not going to deny that he was right on quite a few things, but he has so clearly lost his way, I don't know why anyone would listen to him anymore.

[lucrezaborgia]

This is the kind of stuff Christians argue about? Seriously?

[NotUnderLaw]

(07-23-2012, 06:14 PM)lucrezaborgia Wrote: This is the kind of stuff Christians argue about? Seriously?

You're telling me. I am one. Wait until you see a debate about geocentricity, or the nephilim. The ones that don't even matter (or simply go against science for the sake of it) are the most brutal.

Having said that, I think MacArthur is as much of a fundamentalist as David Cloud is.

[SomethingFundy]

(07-23-2012, 06:26 PM)NotUnderLaw Wrote:

(07-23-2012, 06:14 PM)lucrezaborgia Wrote: This is the kind of stuff Christians argue about? Seriously?

You're telling me. I am one. Wait until you see a debate about geocentricity, or the nephilim. The ones that don't even matter (or simply go against science for the sake of it) are the most brutal.

Having said that, I think MacArthur is as much of a fundamentalist as David Cloud is.

i wont even touch some of that stuff

[TruthSeeker]

There are historic fundamentalists, hyper-fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals, new evangelicals and liberals. I would say John MacArthur is historic fundamentalist and conservative evangelical.

[Away-From-The-Umbrella]

John MacArthur is too conservative for me and I would never join his church, but he is worlds away from the control fiend fundies I was involved with.

MacArthur's doctrine is historically Christian, not this make-it-up-as-you-go crapola my fundy pastor often used.