Studies on Modern Issues

Why I cannot support MacArthur’s Shepherd’s Conferences:

Because he teaches Lordship Salvation and says the gospel I proclaim sends men to hell. “Several who disagree with my views have said in print that the Lordship controversy is a matter of eternal consequence. This means that whoever is wrong on this question is proclaiming a message that can send people to hell. On that we agree…. The two sides in this argument have distinctly different views of salvation.” (Gospel According to Jesus, pg. xiv)

Because he denies and ridicules the doctrine of the two natures of the believer. “The new nature is not added to the old nature but replaces it…Biblical terminology, then, does not say that a Christian has two different natures. He has but one nature, the new nature in Christ.” He also mockingly refers to the doctrine of the two natures of the believer as “spiritual schizophrenia.” (MacArthur Commentary on Ephesians, chapter 13, p. 164)

Because he promotes rock and roll music for the youth. The Resolved Conference, which MacArthur promotes and at which he speaks, incorporates worldly rock music, in direct contradiction to his earlier excellent statements against such music. Go to resolved.org and listen for yourself.

Because he is not a separatist. His speakers have included John Piper (extreme Calvinist; a believer in sign gifts), R.C. Sproul (believes in baptismal regeneration), C.J. Mahaney (charismatic); etc.

Because the speakers at the Shepherd’s Conferences have included the country’s leading critics of dispensational theology. R.C. Sproul has been one of the nation’s leading critics of dispensational theology and yet has been a featured speaker at MacArthur’s conferences. Many of his speakers are Reformed and decidedly anti-dispensational.

Because he minimizes the importance and value of dispensational theology and disparages many of its tenets. MacArthur on dispensationalism: “I will try to condense this because I don’t want to get too bogged down. Dispensationalism is a system. It is a system that got, sort of, out of control.” He calls himself a “leaky dispensationalist” and does not like to use the term because he said it carries too much “baggage.”

Because his conferences include a confusing mixture of speakers who hold conflicting theological positions (i.e. dispensational & anti-dispensational; premillennial & amillennial; charismatic & non-charismatic).

Because he and his speakers promote a wide range of extreme Calvinistic views. Many of the speakers are Reformed theologians who hold and promote their extreme Calvinistic views at the conferences.

Because he is a neo-evangelical in his approach to ministry. Most of his speakers refer to themselves as “conservative evangelicals,” which is the new name for those who seek to distance themselves from fundamentalists. They are characterized by a lack of separation, a lowering of music standards, a disparaging of dispensationalism, and the acceptance of charismatic style worship.

Because his ministry is dividing fundamentalism and drawing young people in a wrong direction. In a day when churches are losing their young people to the world and worldly churches, we don’t need another “bridge-maker” to lure them away from dispensationalism to Reformed theology and away from traditional, sacred Christian music, to loud, raucous, “Christian” pop and rock, and away from reverential worship to a casual, worldly, charismatic style of worship.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.” (Rom. 16:17)