“The truth is, the United States was born out of a violation of Romans 13:1f.”
Rev. John MacArthur
“The Christian and Government: The Christian’s Responsibility to Government – Part 1”
“So the United States was actually born out of a violation of New Testament principles, and any blessings God has bestowed on America have come in spite of that disobedience by the Founding Fathers.”
Rev. John MacArthur
“By the way, we are the original protesters. We go back 500 years to the Protestant Reformation. We’re still protesting lies and deception for the sake of the truth.”
Rev. John MacArthur
Tucker Carlson Interview 28 July 2020
I want to start off by being clear that I thank the Lord Jesus Christ that Johnny Mac has flipped flopped on this issue. Indeed, this past Sunday Morning in the Long Pastoral Prayer I thanked God for MacArthur’s stand and asked God to strengthen MacArthur in his proper defiance of Gov. Newsome’s tyranny against the Church. It is easy to see that even though many others long ago took this same stand that a rainmaker like MacArthur taking this stand strengthen’s everybody else’s hand.
However, having admitted all that I couldn’t help but whimsically think that this was a case of Rev. John MacArthur being a “Johnny come lately.” As they say though, better late than never.
Still, I think MacArthur is now left in the position of telling us just exactly how he now understands Romans 13:1-7 given this obvious flip-flop on his part.
Now, Johnny Mac could say that he still thinks the founders were in disobedience to the Crown by not submitting but his not submitting is different because it has to do with the State closing down the Church. However, if Johnny Mac did say this Johnny Mac would reveal his lack of understanding of American history. One significant reason for the American war of Independence that most Americans are unaware of is the fact that the Crown intended to place a Anglican Bishop over the Colonies. This would have had one effect of the Church no longer being able to be the Church as the Presbyterians, Dissenters, and Independents understood the Church. (Johnny Mac’s tradition would have fallen in that list.) So, the Founding Fathers were seeking to protect the Church from Government over-reach as it relates to the Church not being under the Parliament’s jurisdiction, just as Johnny Mac is seeking to protect the Church from Government over-reach as it relates to the Church not being under the California State Government’s jurisdiction.
So, Johnny Mac has a significant flip-flop to explain. He could just say he was previously in error but I’d be shocked if he does that.
Just so it’s clear…. Johnny Mac was in deep and serious error when he said this country was born out of a violation of Romans 13. That was a monumentally stupid thing to say. It reveals what we already know about Johnny Mac and that he has no clue regarding covenant theology. When it comes to political covenants Reformed history has long taught, as based on Scripture, that parties to the political covenant arrangement (in Colonial America’s case the parties to the political covenants were the King of England and the people in their respective Colonial charters) are required to be faithful to the covenant and if there is sustained unfaithfulness on the part of the ruling Party (King George III) then the other party of the political covenant (the thirteen Colonies) no longer had any obligation to yield obedience to the Sovereign. Did Johnny Mac know any of this before he shot off his mouth disrespecting the “Black-Robed regiment” ministers of the colonial era time who did support the colonial counter-rebellion and did so on a proper understanding of Romans 13 and Reformed covenant political theology?
This is why, contrary to the Pope of Moscow I cannot look at Johnny Mac as some kind of “Daddy figure” or Prophet for whom all churches in America should be thankful. Instead Johnny Mac’s voice is more like a Step-father’s voice. He’s late to the family. He doesn’t understand the family’s past and because of that he’s always getting family issues wrong.
How can I look at MacArthur as a Daddy figure when MacArthur continues to find glory in standing over the blood of Martin Luther King and standing in the place where James Earl Ray shot MLK? All of this is an attempt to share in a modern version of seeking to gain holiness out of being in a saint’s (MLK) presence. When Johnny Mac tells these stories he suggest that MLK was some kind of hero when in point of fact MLK was a grifter, plagiarizer of epic proportions, whore-monger, and a front man for Communist. How can I look to Johnny Mac as a wise Prophet or having the Daddy voice?
MacArthur implicitly defends the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s which in point of fact it was driven by a Marxist ideology. In this way MacArthur is like many minister of his generation who, swallowing the fake media narrative of the time, completely misunderstood that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s was funded, guided, and cheered by those who were either bedrock Marxists, fellow travelers, or useful idiots. Sixty years later the fruit of the Civil Right’s movement (BLM, Black family disintegration, Black abortion rates, Black voting patterns) demonstrate that MacArthur’s “wokeness” at the time was a disaster for the black community, the country and for Biblical Christianity.
How can I look at Johnny Mac as a “Prophet” when he doesn’t understand the Scriptures? Getting covenant theology wrong means that everything else the Baptist Johnny Mac touches is going to be wrong in one way or another. The man is a walking contradiction by embracing both Reformed theology and Dispensationalism. (It’s ok Johnny Mac… most ministers are walking contradictions today on that score what with the rise of R2K Reformed Dispensationalism.) Despite Pope Doug’s suggestion that Johnny Mac not baptizing babies is not a big deal, it is a big deal and it doesn’t fade into the background when Johnny Mac gets right telling the California Governor to go pound sand.
However, as said at the outset, we are thankful that Johnny Mac got this one right. It will indeed make it easier to defy disobedient authorities when someone of Johnny Mac’s stature is in defiance also. We are also thankful that Johnny Mac has, in the past, taken on the loopy Pentecostal continuationist movement. These are matters in which Johnny Mac has been most helpful.
But Johnny Mac as the country’s Daddy or the Church’s Prophet per Pope Doug? That’s almost as absurd as saying that Federal Vision amber ale is inside the Reformed brewery.
“It [Dispensationalism] turns up on every part of the political spectrum, from followers of Karl Marx to those of Ayn Rand. We tell ourselves a dispensationalist story each time another economic crisis comes around, when “the economy” gets saved and an official sigh of relief is breathed while millions of people suffer foreclosures and layoffs that tear apart families and impoverish communities. For now, at least, in this day and age, this is what must be done. These are the rules.”
“Along the way, Scofield encountered the writings of a marginal Irish preacher (and fellow lawyer), John Nelson Darby. Scofield, following Darby, taught that God governs and manages the world according to a sequence of distinct ages, or dispensations, each with distinct sets of rules and expectations. Each meets some kind of catastrophic end. In the Bible, as in Scofield’s life, things always got worse before they could get better—for instance, by Noah’s flood, or the destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple, or whatever social degeneracy we observe around us. Fear not, for God is in control. The job of believers is to accept whatever dispensation they’re in and await, like eager spectators, the next catastrophe.”
https://catholicclimatemovement.global/the-climate-crisis-and-the-insidious-hold-of-dispensationalism-whenever-we-conclude-in-conviction-and-resignation-that-things-have-to-get-worse-before-theyll-get-better/
If you want to learn more about Dispensationalism, There is a book written some years ago by Ovid Need Jr. named “Death of the Church Victorious”. It is a little disjointed at times but very readable. Scofield was a scoundrel , in your catholic reference it was said that he was divorced, In truth he deserted his family. By the way he was born in MI.
This is a note for Clint Frazier who elsewhere on Social Media was confused by this “Our Step-Daddy; Johnny Mac” post.
Clint wrote,
I’ve read this and can’t figure out the point. Perhaps there’s some common knowledge that has missed me, but when speaking poorly about men that God has ordained to lead his church, I expect some substantiation of negative claims. The author makes claims about John MacArthur and MLK with no evidence. He refers to him in a condescending way and calls Doug Wilson the Pope of Moscow. This type of argument doesn’t do much to enlighten or persuade so it seems pointless.” Clint Frazier
___________
Bret responds,
I typically figure that people know how to use a search engine.
That MLK was a whore-Monger is substantiated by a book by one of King’s best friends, Ralph Abernathy. Clint can find more information on his own. The paragraph below comes from a Chicago Tribune article,
King`s most trusted friend, in his book; “When the Walls Come Tumbling Down” has succeeded in doing what his bitter enemies could not accomplish. The detailed confirmation of King`s alleged sexual escapades-three in the single night before his death-has been supplied by Ralph David Abernathy, an intimate of King for virtually the whole of King`s public career and the man tapped by King himself as his successor.
In his book Abernathy related an extraordinary story that indicated King spent the last night of his life enjoying the attentions of not one but two lovers, followed by an encounter with a third woman whom he knocked sprawling across his motel room bed.
As to King’s plagiarism… here is a whole book that documents it thoroughly
https://www.amazon.com/Plagiarism-Culture-War-Prominent-Americans/dp/0873190459
As to King’s Marxism (Communism) again… there is an information glut, but consider this quote to his wife in 1952,
“I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic,” he wrote, adding that capitalism had “out-lived its usefulness” because it had “brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”
As to Doug Wilson being the “Pope of Moscow,” that is an old handle that has been around for ages.
The point of the Article for Clint’s sake is,
1.) MacArthur is a flip-flopper on defying the State. How does he explain his flip flop?
2.) MacArthur’s history suggests that he is hardly, per Wilson’s suggestion, a Dad’s voice for the country
3.) MacArthur, despite Wilson intimation himself is Woke — which itself disqualifies Johnny Mac for being the Country’ “Dad voice.”
4.) MacArthur, given his history on these subjects is not, as Wilson suggest, a prophet.
As to MaCarthur’s account of standing over MLK’s blood and where James Earl Ray shot MLK,
On at least four other occasions, Pastor MacArthur has either alluded to or directly claimed to have learned of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination while in the company of John Perkins and Charles Evers, and to have traveled to Memphis with those men on that tragic night.
At the 2007, Desiring God Conference [8]
I was down in the South, in the office of Charles Evers–the brother of Medgar Evers–when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated… I was in Jackson, Mississippi with some leaders and they actually put me in a car and took me to Memphis into the building where James Earl Ray shot him. I climbed up on the toilet to look through the window where he held the gun.
2009, A Retrospective on 40 Years: John MacArthur with Rick Holland [9]
Well it was during those times that I was there and I will never forget, I can’t tell you the whole story, but I’ll never forget one night, I was in the middle of Jackson, Mississippi in the office of a man named Charles Evers. Charles Evers had a brother named Medgar Evers. Medgar Evers was the first martyr of the Civil Rights Movement. He was the first person killed. Charles became the first black mayor…the first black mayor in the south at Fayetteville, Mississippi. He was a friend of John’s [John Perkins], and I had come to know him. And we were sitting there and he was trying to explain to me that night in Jackson what was going on. Now remember, I was a very young guy, I had become immersed in that culture, grew to love those people. And Charles was talking and a man burst through the door and said, “Martin Luther King has been assassinated.” That happened that night while I was with Charles and John and some others.
The immediate issue was that there were serious things going on in the street in Jackson and they were trying to get me out of there because I was as pale as a ghost. And here we were worried what might happen to me. And so they escorted me. And then they said, “You know, we’re going to go to Jackson. We want to…we want to go…we’re going to Memphis, we want to see what happened.”
So they took me. And in those days the police weren’t nearly as protective, forensics hadn’t developed to what they had and they didn’t necessarily protect crime scenes. So we went to the motel, up to the landing, saw the blood where Martin Luther King had been shot just hours before by James Earl Ray. I actually went to the little building opposite the motel, went up on the second flood [sic], stood up on the toilet and looked out the window where James Earl Ray had shot him. And I was there at that very, very, very crucial time.
2014, Bible Questions and Answers, Part 62 [10]
I happened to be in Jackson with all the black leaders when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was in the room with all of them. I was the only white guy, but I was there preaching in all the black schools everywhere and living in John and Vera’s house with their family. It was so interesting because John reminded me at the table of something I’d forgotten. He said, “When Martin Luther King was killed, we had to go preach the next two days. We had to go preach in black high schools.” He said, “While the world was trying to figure out what was happening, the black kids were weeping. Every high school we went to,” he said, “the black kids were weeping because of the death of Martin Luther King.”
2017, Bible Questions and Answer, Part 66 [11]
When I was down in Mississippi years ago, I was arrested by those kinds of people for preaching the gospel in Black high schools, and I was put in jail, and they took all my money away. I know that. I was with Black leaders in Jackson, Mississippi when Charles Evers, Medgar Evers brother – Charles was the first Black mayor in the South, Charles. His brother Medgar was the first martyr of the Civil Right Movement, he was killed. I was in the room when Martin Luther King was assassinated with those Black leaders. We went to Memphis, and I stood on the blood spots on that motel with those men. And I stood in the little bathroom on top of the toilet where James Earl Ray shot him out the window. Those men were my friends. That was my community. I couldn’t buy groceries in that town when I got back in Mendenhall, Mississippi. I couldn’t eat in a restaurant.
Clint will probably never see this but if he does… here you go bro…
As much as I hate Lincoln, we would have been better off if he had not been assassinated.
He may well have sent most of the blacks back to Africa.
I am not a kinist as some here. But I definitely agree in the distinctions of the
people groups. Black culture today generally is repulsive to most descent people.
Sorry if that was raaacist.
BTW the step daddy Mac stuff is hilarious. I dont know who Clint is but he needs to lighten up
a bit.