Thursday morning....11:00 AM: Every day I check in the news if there is any word on John MacArthur's health. I did so yesterday....as everyday....and again just now.....and lo and behold there were reports everywhere....on John MacArthur releasing a video of himself....giving a very positive update on his health....and saying in the video that he was...."Ready to come roaring back"....to resume his ministry!
Personally I go back to about the mid-80s with John MacArthur. I have dozens of his teaching cassettes in my basement...even a few VHS tapes.....and plenty of his books....including his large print Study Bible....and a regular hardcover Study Bible.....ready to give away to the first person that I find that needs it....and my own Study Bible....and I have a signed copy of one of his books from when I attended a Soli Deo Gloria conference in Pittsburgh. I have been praying....along with so many others the whole world over....for his recovery and return to ministry....should the Lord will it.
This morning my wife looked over to me from her chair and asked me what the computerese term....IMAO....meant? I had no idea....but apparently it means....In My Arrogant Opinion....as opposed to....IMHO....In My Humble Opinion. So....IMAO or IMHO....whichever one it is....in your opinion.....here it is....
John MacArthur has always been a great blessing upon the church.....but he is still just a man....and he is not infallible. He started a string of mistakes in the year 2020....beginning when he received a surprise phone call from first term President Trump....and said very respectfully that every true believer would vote for his reelection....which relegated myself....and more importantly....wonderful ministers of the gospel such as John Piper....to being not true believers....according to John MacArthur's then criteria for what a true believer is.
What made this even more extraordinary is that John MacArthur more than any other modern-day ministry with the exception of R. C. Sproul....was the greatest defender of the salvation message that America had! He had made a big mistake in not spotting Donald Trump as a false prophet....when he himself was a fifty-year preacher who had warned of false prophets!
That was mistake number one.....to be followed by some serious miscalculations during the pandemic....including his own opinion on if there even was a pandemic....which at the time he denied. Then in 2024....he stepped a little back from Trump....but still took the position that Trump was the lesser of two evils. He also....either....IMAO or IMHO....was way too hard on Alistair Begg....which may or may not have influenced Alistair Begg to retire from his pulpit....and we needed him there! Pastor John has hardly been in the pulpit at all over the last sixteen months with his health issues.
Right now we have no minister on a national level to warn us! Billy Graham is long gone....and his son...great man and wonderful Christian that he surely is....is totally buffaloed by Trump.
So....My hope and my continuing prayer is that John MacArthur comes back to his pulpit....very soon....like right now....to warn us as he always has done....but I know very well that he may come back as confused as he has been in the past five or six years. He may come back and still not recognize Donald Trump as the false prophet that he....John MacArthur warned us of from God's Word....over so many decades!
So....once again....please pray with me for John MacArthur....pray for his health....but even more so for his discernment and courage and strength....and humility to be able to say that he was wrong about Trump! We are all wrong on some things along this long pilgrimage....and I have had....and still have I'm sure....more....more than my share in this....but God in His glorious mercy and longsuffering....is there to accept our repentance....pick us up....and put us on the path again!
Addendum: I listened just now....while doing yard work....to a John MacArthur sermon that looks to be only six or eight years ago....the title of which is....Who Is The Antichrist. I do not share all of John MacArthur's eschatology....a pre-trib rapture being just one piece....but I highly recommend his thoughts to you. My hope is that this is the John MacArthur that God might bless us with should he be restored to his pulpit. On that question of the timing of the rapture....after forty years of interest in this Bible topic....and a mind as open as could possibly be....it has long since appeared to me....and this opinion is growing fast in the church today....that we will experience much of what happens in this tribulation period....(should this not instill in us a heightened vigilance....and help us to look even more closely at our own lives)....but not....those final judgments that wreak havoc on the entire earth.
Also.....earlier today I listened to a Jonathan Cahn video of the Antichrist. In that video....which was made sometime before this last election....for he mentioned the previous administration in the White House....he spent considerable time on issues that plague us today such as transgender surgeries in young people. Then he talked about the Antichrist who will come in great deception and trickery. What he did not consider was that the Antichrist could conceivably come opposing the horror of such things....in order to deceive us into accepting him as some sort of conquering hero.
