Question And Ansers Macarthur
The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, By John MacArthur Jr.. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-9, titled “Questions and Answers.” A copy of the tape can be received by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412.
I have made every effort to ensure that an accurate transcription of the original tape was made. Please note that at times sentence structure may appear to vary from accepted English conventions. This is due primarily to the techniques involved in preaching and the obvious choices I had to make in placing the correct punctuation in the article.
It is my intent and prayer that the Holy Spirit will use this transcription of the sermon, “Questions and Answers” to strengthen and encourage the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Scriptures quoted in this message are from the New American Standard Bible.
Questions and Answers #1
What I am going to try to do is to get into some of the questions that you asked, and do as many as I can, in just 40 minutes or so that we have.
Question #1
“I see that someone is speaking on MacArthurism. Could you let us know from the pulpit, what your belief is on the Blood of Christ?”
Answer #1
I have done that in the past, and just in order to “touch base” with the fact that he may have created some questions in your mind, [let me say]. Through the years there has been no question about what I believe, regarding the Blood of Christ, none at all. For twenty years that I have been preaching here, and all the myriad of books and tapes, and things that have come out of the Church, and out of my ministry, no one needs to question anything that I believe about the Blood of Christ.
I believe that Jesus died on the cross and literally shed His physical blood. He died as a sacrifice for sin. I saw a letter, the other day, from someone who said, that Christ could have died “any other way,” as long as He died. That is not correct, that is not true, I do not believe that. He had to die by being lifted up. He had to die shedding blood in a sacrificial way to fulfill the pattern of Old Testament prophetic truth.
I believe what the Church has always believed. And somebody always says to me, “Well, why are they always attacking you on the Blood of Christ?” And I need to tell you what I have mentioned before, that this basically has very little to do with theology. It has very little to do with the Blood of Christ and everything to do with trying to discredit me. And so, they are trying pick an issue that is volatile, misrepresent what I believe, just for the sheer sake of attacking me.
I will never forget, of course, when this first came out. It came out in a magazine put out by Christian College, that I denied the Blood of Christ. I called the president of the school, and I said, “You know better than that, you know me, you know exactly what I believe, you know what I teach. Why would you do that?” He said to me on the phone, “We have made a terrible mistake.” I said, “Well, is there some way that you could correct it?” He said, “No, we could never do that.”
So, he admitted to me it was a mistake, personally to me, over the telephone. But what was curious about it was, that I heard from a faculty member, that there was a faculty prayer meeting there, a prayer meeting with the administration, in which the request that was given for the prayer meeting was, “Lord, help us to find a way to discredit the ministry of John MacArthur.” Now, that was the prayer request. Now if you are seeking to do that, you can find some way, I suppose, to do it.
For some reason, perhaps unknown to me, these people have decided to try to discredit our ministry, and to attack our belief in the Blood of Christ, that is, the sufficiency of the atoning work of Christ for salvation, would definitely be a way to upset people and that’s what they have done.
But what we believe about the Blood of Christ, is available for all to see, in fact, I gave a special communion message on that, a number of months ago. And I believe exactly what the Bible teaches and what the church has always believed. And I just think, that we have to just keep dealing with this onslaught, because of the effort to discredit. And I realize there are ramifications of this, I realize that. I realize that people have left our church over the last couple of years. It has been a tough two years, and part of it has been the endless attacks on our church. I know there has been attacks on our church, but we just keep trying to be faithful to the Word of God and moving ahead. If you have question about what we believe on the Blood of Christ, you can read the New Testament and we believe that. Exactly what it says.