Dr. John MacArthur
                       Songtime USA Radio Interview
                           Audiotape Transcript


     .....Lorne Decker: Interesting, when you consider the first
Christmas and the lowly manger, just the life that Jesus lived upon
this earth as a carpenter, a very simple life, and then a simple,
wooden cross. It talks to us about the character of our God Who
gave us those images.
     Why then, John MacArthur, do you see a tremendous desire, it
seems, in the Christian world today, to make everything glow and
neon and be bigger, brighter, bolder than ever before? Does it seem
to fit for you?

John MacArthur: Aw, no, it doesn't really. It's the age we live in.
Hey, we've been raised with all that imagery. We've been raised
with all the glitz. The culture is so oppressive. I mean it's
everywhere; it's on our radios, it's on our televisions, it's in
our music. It comes at us every way on every front and, you know,
it just elevates our expectations, it jades our appreciation, our
inability, really, to appreciate the simple things, and I just
think we get victimized by what is around us and we don't, we don't
think deeply, we don't meditate. We just kind of emote and move
from one feeling and one emotion and one high to the next. And
that's a sad thing because, you know, Christianity is built on
truth and truth has to be contemplated and thought through and
meditated on and, you know at some point in the process of
spiritual growth, you do begin to grow away from this stuff that
the culture pounds into you, as you get more mature in Christ, but
it's very challenging to get there because it's such a constant
blitz.

Lorne Decker: We were talking before the broadcast, and you told me
that you used to expect to fight a major battle for doctrine and
theology about once every decade. Now it seems like the shield is
up all the time and we can hardly stay abreast of the developments
and the errors of doctrine that seem to come at us full force so
often. Can you just share a little bit, your thinking on that,
because it's fascinating.

John MacArthur: You know, if you go back, Lorne, in history, and
I've studied the church history quite carefully in this regard, but
if you go back, you find the great sweeping movements of church
history lasted, sometimes, for a century, sometimes for more than
a century. And then as you move into the twentieth century,
movements, emphases or drifts, whatever you want to call it, early
in the twentieth century, maybe took twenty, twenty-five years to
have their impact. You get past 1950 and movements are coming now
more rapidly, aberrations. Deviations from the truth are moving
more rapidly, and the reason is because of the advancement of
media, the development of mass communications in print and radio
and television and film and publications of all different kinds.
And then as it gets more sophisticated and more sophisticated and
more sophisticated, those movements become more rapid, and that's
true on the negative. That's true in the world of the secular
world. I mean it's true in the moral realm.
     There was a fixed morality, even in America, that lasted for
centuries. And then when it began to unravel, it unravelled, you
know, sort of slowly, and then, since the sixties, we can not even
keep up with the moral aberrations, they're coming so rapidly. So
it's part of what media does in the culture that escalates all of
this, and when I was, back in 1978, looking at the church and the
Lord laid it upon my heart to write a book called The Charismatics,
which I wrote to address what I thought was the major issue
confronting the church with regard to doctrine.
     It wasn't until ten years later that I felt I needed to write
another book, and I wrote a book called The Gospel According To
Jesus, which seemed to me to be crucial, because there was
confusion about the gospel. Well since 1988 I've had to write about
two books a year, and I cannot keep up with the issues. From '78 to
'88 I didn't really feel there was anything else that was really
significant in terms of an aberration in the church, but since '88
it's just a flood. And now it's coming so rapidly, frankly, two
books a year wouldn't even begin to touch it. So there's an
escalation of error, of, I guess you could call some of it heresy,
deviation away from sound doctrine. And that's why, finally, I just
got to the place where I wrote this book, Reckless Faith, instead
of trying to address every issue, try to give people criteria to
allow them to address the issues as rapidly as they come, and the
whole idea of the book is to teach people to be discerning, to use
the criteria that we have as believers in the Word and through the
Holy Spirit to judge what's going on.

Lorne Decker: This escalation of error. Does it speak to you
prophetically about the times we live in?

John MacArthur: Sure. I think, you know, I think evil men are going
to grow worse and worse. Christ said in the Olivet Discourse that
false Christs are going to come and error is going to increase and
I just think that that's how it is. I think everything in the world
tends toward disorder. Certainly from a physical standpoint the law
of entropy says everything is tending toward chaos and disorder
scientifically. That is, it's a fallen world and it's winding down,
and I think the same thing is true morally. I think there's a
continual disintegration.
     And in the middle of it all, the Lord has a pure people and He
maintains His pure truth. But, hey, I can look back a few years ago
when the whole evangelical church was fighting existentialism. The
whole evangelical church took a stand against what was called neo-
orthodoxy, which was "the Bible means whatever you want it to
mean." And I remember as a student in seminary, that was the battle
ground, and every evangelical was fighting against that neo-
orthodox trend.
     And now Evangelicalism has embraced mysticism wholeheartedly,
and mysticism is exactly what neo-orthodoxy was! And now we say,
"Well, this verse means this to me," and "Jesus showed me this
verse means this," and we're doing exactly what we fought the neo-
orthodox who were doing it fifteen and twenty years ago.
     So the church has just fallen whole-heartedly into a bland
sort of non-discerning definition of the Christian faith that
tolerates anything and everything, and the main issue is, don't
offend anybody and let's all be loving and let's not make doctrine
an issue. And I look at 1 Timothy 3 and the apostle Paul says the
church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. If there's
anything that we are all about in the church, it's all about
identifying clearly the truth.
     Another thought comes to mind while I'm at it. Psalm 138:2.
God said He's exalted His Word equal to His Name. That's an amazing
statement because it puts the Word of God where God wants it. Now
I don't think there are very many evangelical Christians who would
want to blaspheme God. I really think we're all very, very fearful
of doing that. We don't want to dishonour the name of God. We
wouldn't think of blaspheming God's name. And yet any trivial,
trite, whimsical, capricious treatment of Scripture that does not
pursue the truth and the meaning of that Scripture to get at
exactly what God meant is to blaspheme His Word, and He holds His
Word equal to His own name.
     Treating God with disrespect is a frightening thing, but
treating the Word with disrespect is equally frightening, and the
mandate for the church and the mandate for Christians is to know
the Word, to study to be approved unto God, workmen who need not to
be ashamed because they rightly divide the Word of truth. 
     And obviously you know and I'm sure many of the listeners know
that this has been a real challenge for me, and a real part of my
ministry is to help Christians really understand the Word of God
because not to interpret it rightly is really to dishonour the very
God Whose Word it is, and that's why we write these books and
that's why I address these issues. It isn't that you want to, you
don't like the people in error. It isn't that you want to hold up
your own theology as the standard. It is that you want to defend
the honour of God as revealed in His Word.

Lorne Decker: You end up at times, I guess, -- and I shared this
with you, I think we feel this way too, sometimes, here at Songtime
Radio -- you end up feeling a little bit like a stick-in-the-mud
sometimes because there's so much experience going on out there, so
many feel-good type meetings, where it doesn't stack up doctrin
ally, and folks wonder why you're not quick to climb on board,
because it seems so wonderful, it seems like Jesus is blessing it.
Do you end up feeling a little bit like you're dragging your feet?

John MacArthur: Yeah, and I understand that Lorne. I mean, yeah,
you feel like "Goodness, can't I just be a positive guy out there?
Do I always have to fight these wars?" And yet you remember that
that's what the prophets of old did, that's what the apostles did,
that's what all of church history is all about. It's all about
refining and contending for the faith once for all delivered to the
saints, to keep the faith pure. And we're losing it.
     I mean, when I read about this Toronto Blessing or the
Laughing Revival, and now it's turned into a barking revival and a
roaring revival and people flopping around, barking like dogs, and
roaring and bouncing up and down on the floor and, you know, all
that stuff that we can all see firsthand, and they say this is the
Spirit of God, the question I ask is "On what basis do we assume
it's the Spirit of God? There's nothing like it in the Bible, so
it's not biblical. So how do we know it's God? On what basis?
Simply because you say it's God? And how do you know it's God? How
do you know it's not Satan or demons or just an altered state of
consciousness that is very much like the occult?"
     You see, if you get outside the pages of Scripture and try to
define any kind of human experience, you're really just guessing,
because there's no objective standard in the Bible by which to
define this, and therefore for you to say that it's God is no more
convincing than for somebody else to say it's Satan or somebody
else to say it's an altered state of consciousness self-induced
through hypnosis or whatever. I mean, there's no authoritative
description of this because it's beyond Scripture or it's outside
of Scripture.
     So you have to go back to the Word of God and understand that
the Word of God defines all spiritual issues and the Word of God
draws the line on all spiritual issues, and to get outside of that
is purely to be operating above and beyond what God has intended.
And then to say that this is God is purely someone's opinion.

Lorne Decker: Let me pin you down on that just a little bit and
continuing to talk about the Toronto Blessing. We've seen so much
mail here and we've talked with many folks on the telephone after
radio broadcasts have been finished.
     Jesus warned about this, I think, in the parable of the sower,
where the seed went forth and the enemy tried to snatch it up
before it took root, but there's a lot of comment, Pastor
MacArthur, where people say "You know, I went to Toronto and the
songs they sang all glorified Jesus, the preaching was about Jesus.
It seemed to be a very Christ-honouring meeting. How could error be
present?" Can you answer how that can be possible?

John MacArthur: Sure, and I think it's a very, very good question,
and you framed it very well.
     First of all, keep this in mind; Satan is disguised as an
angel of light. Satan never shows up and says "Hey, everybody, this
is error. Hey, I'm going to tell you lies. I'm going to bring in
false doctrine and heresy and apostasy, so get ready!" Satan always
comes and says "This is the truth. This is from God. This is all
about Christ. This is the Holy Spirit." He is disguised as an angel
of light. He is called in the Bible the deceiver, and his deception
is subtle because the best of it is always framed up in terminology
that is Christian.
     Of course, if Satan wants to deceive people, he's going to
couch that deception in something that's going to make it subtle
enough for them to buy into it, and so that's exactly what you
have. Nothing makes Satan more successful than to partner up with
Christian truth, and introduce into the midst of Christian truth,
error. That is the subtlety of it. That is the deception of it.
     Satan's not going to announce error. He's going to come in and
sing your songs and hum the tunes that Christians hum, and he's
going to be there, you know, right in the midst of all that little
worship time, and he's happy as he can possibly be, and so are all
of his emissaries, to let people sing songs about Jesus and then
engage in what is absolutely and utterly unbiblical, and may well
be satanic. 
     I really do believe, and I say this knowing that it has
implications, I believe this is occultic. If you've ever seen a
video. There's a video that was done by the Bhagwan Rajneesh up in
Oregon. He was some years ago up there. He had a lot of Rolls
Royces and he had these thousands of people up there in his place,
and they did a video on their behaviour. It is exactly the same
kind of thing that you'll see in a Vineyard or places where this
laughing revival or whatever is going on. It is the same gyrations,
the same jumping up and down, falling on the floor, bouncing, you
know, while you're prone on the floor, the same kind of hysteria.
It's exactly the same phenomenon. And of course, in his case, there
was no consideration of the true God. It was purely occult and
everybody defined it that way.
     Here's the same phenomenon without any biblical warrant, and
people are saying it's of God? But see, that's the subtlety of
Satan. He wants it to come right in and appear to belong because
everything around it looks so good.

Lorne Decker: We understand from our researchers, and I told you
about our New Age correspondent who says he has seen this in India
and places. There's a gentleman in China who has hundreds of
thousands of followers and he creates laughter and ecstatic
experiences much the same way, and there is no mention of the true
God in that following as well.
     Pastor MacArthur, you're really explaining this so well for so
many, and we appreciate it, but there are questions about the role
of this kind of experience in history, and I think that your new
book Reckless Faith in chapter six really answers a key question,
because many will go back to the Great Awakening and outline that
signs like this, experience like this, seem to have been present
there as well, and they bring in Jonathan Edwards name right along
with this. Well, you've done some research on this and you have a
key chapter that illustrates how Jonathan Edwards really perceived
all this. Could you summarize this for our radio audience?

John MacArthur: Yeah. It's to say this, Lorne, that recently the
people who are on this fronetic edge, engaged in all of this, are
always looking for some way to legitimize it, so what they've done
-- and it's a guy named William DeArteaga who wrote the book and
basically did this -- they went back into the Great Awakening and
got Jonathan Edwards and wanted to make him an advocate.
     Obviously, Jonathan Edwards, the most profound, theological
mind maybe in the history of America, and of course we know how God
used him. So they went back and looked at Jonathan Edwards and
assumed from Jonathan Edwards that he would be in the middle of the
laughing revival if he were alive today, and he's a real advocate
of it. And the way they treated Jonathan Edwards material is
nothing more than what we call revisionist history. Revisionist
history is a somewhat popular thing today where you re-write
history around your own prejudices, and it's done in the secular
world and now it's being done in the evangelical world.
     What I've done in that chapter is go back and let Jonathan
Edwards speak for himself; let Jonathan Edwards really say what
Jonathan Edwards says, without the twists that the people who want
to use Jonathan Edwards have put on his writing. And clearly, when
you go back..you see, the revisionist historians say, well, the
reason that the Great Awakening ended was because there was too
much doctrine. People got too involved in theology and the truth of
the matter is you can read the words right out of Jonathan Edwards'
own pen. Jonathan Edwards himself said the reason the Great
Awakening ended in America was because of excesses just like those
that these people are perpetrating today.
     So again, it's just a sad..it's one thing to be involved in
error. It's something else to take the reputation and the truth
about a godly man from another age who is so highly regarded, and
twist what that man believed and what he said, to defend your
aberration, and that's exactly what they've done.

Lorne Decker: Is it going to become harder and harder to hold to
the fundamental truth? I know that Rodney Howard-Browne who, in
many ways, is the founder, I guess, of this present Toronto
Blessing Laughing Revival. He seems to point at those outside the
movement and say they're adversarial. Are we going to see
Christians who want to hold to the basic fundamentals of the faith
and not get involved in excess? Are they going to feel like they're
being steamrolled?

John MacArthur: Well let me just give you a perspective, and I
think this may help everybody who's listening, Lorne, and I'm going
to say this with all honesty. Listen. The whole idea of sound
doctrine is under assault. The whole idea of theology is under
assault, and I mean massive assault, and I'll tell you why.
     People who hold any of these aberrations, people who want to
make experience the test of truth, people who are on the fringe,
people who are calling for all these wild kind of things that are
unbiblical, cannot survive as evangelicals unless they can make
doctrine a non-issue. Do you understand what I mean?
     In other words, they know that to gain acceptance in the
evangelical world, they have got to make sure that they are not
measured up by the standard of biblical doctrine. So two things
have happened. With the escalation of the Charismatic movement, as
it has gained more and more ground, along side that movement has
come a depreciation of doctrine, a downgrading of doctrine. And the
reason is because unless doctrine is downgraded, they're not going
to measure up as historic evangelicals. If you hold them to
historic, reformed doctrine, they don't measure up, because they're
aberrant. So in order to get into the mainstream of Evangelicalism,
have wide acceptance, they continue to harp against people who hold
strong doctrinal position, and they call them heresy hunters, and
they write books about 'em -- and I know they've written them about
me -- and they say doctrine divides and love unites and let's not
let doctrine destroy us, and let's break down..and you have
[unintelligible] promise keepers.
     One of the six or seven things those men promise is to break
down all barriers between churches. Well, look, some of the reasons
there are barriers between churches are doctrinal, because we
believe this is truth and somebody doesn't. You can't just sweep
away all differences, because doctrine is crucial.
     Well, anyway, the point being, that as this movement
escalates, and it's all built around experience, they have to
hammer and hammer and hammer against those who want to hold
doctrine up as the standard, and by doctrine I simply mean clear
Bible teaching. So then what happens then is, as soon as we say
this is wrong and we are going to hold to this scriptural doctrine,
they call us divisive, unloving.
     And so the attack really is coming from them. All we're trying
to do is hold up sound doctrine, and I believe as this thing
escalates, and as it gets wilder and wilder, which it probably
will, if what we've seen in the last ten years is any indication,
what's going to happen is, there will grow a greater hostility
because they're still going to decry any doctrinal standard being
applied to them. But there will also come a crystallizing of those
people who are going to hold to the truth, and a remnant is going
to dig their heels in and say "We're going to stand where the Word
of God stands."
     So it will strengthen the church -- the true church, and those
people who are truly committed to the Word of God -- it'll
strengthen them because the lines will be so clearly drawn. But
there's no question that it's gonna include an escalating hostility
from those people who don't want to be held to a biblical standard.

Lorne Decker: How important is this, John MacArthur, because I know
that the Lord Jesus said in Scripture, when He separates the sheep
from the goats, there are going to be, there are going to be some
who say "Lord, didn't we do all these things in Your name?" and
He's going to say "But I didn't know you." Are you fearful that
this incredible desire to unite in Jesus' love may actually be the
pursuit of the wrong Jesus?

John MacArthur: Yes, it may well be the pursuit of the wrong Jesus.
It may be the pursuit of the right Jesus in the wrong way. I asked
a well-known radio personality on a large Christian radio station
how this person became a Christian, and she replied to me,
     "Oh, one day I got Jesus' phone number, and we've been
connected ever since."
     And I said, "What does that mean? What do you mean you've got
his phone number?"  "I don't know. I was there one day and I just
connected."
     Is that a biblical understanding of justification by faith?
Where is repentance? What Jesus, and what are you saying?
     I think this movement is loaded with people who have no true
understanding of the gospel, and that's the real tragedy. And yet
they are deceived because of the Jesus talk and the Jesus words,
and all that surrounds it, into thinking that they really belong to
the Lord, and then when they experience these experiences they
become like verification to them, even though they're not of God,
or not of the Holy Spirit, because they are unique and because they
are mystical and because they're kind of occultic, people see them
as God touching them, and that's a verification that they must be
for real. That is the deception of Satan.

Lorne Decker: John MacArthur is our guest on Songtime USA. We're
talking about trends in the church and outside the church.
     You know, Pastor MacArthur, there are so many that want some
sort of experience. They read the Old Testament, they see visions
of heavenly ladders and angels and wrestling with angels and they
feel like their own Christian life is kind of dry. What does God
want His children to experience first and foremost?

John MacArthur: Well, I think communion with Him is the issue. I
think to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and
strength, to know Him Who's from the beginning. I can only tell
you, look, I've never flipped out, fallen on the floor, barked,
roared or laughed in a laughing revival, but my Christian life is
so full and so rich and there's so much joy and peace and
contentment and I have been so enriched in the depth of communion
that I enjoy with the Lord. I've experienced so much answered
prayer. I just think He wants us to know Him, and to know Him
genuinely and in a real way, and to experience the joy and the
peace that comes when we obey His Word. That's really what God
wants for the believer.
     Those kinds of experiences, in all honesty, do not exhibit
great faith. All that stuff doesn't exhibit faith, in my mind. All
it exhibits is doubt looking for proof. Somehow there's not enough
in the relationship.
     You know what it's like? It's like a guy who's married, and he
looks at his wife and he says "Ah, golly, this isn't exciting
enough for me." And so he's got to go out to some bar somewhere or
some nightclub somewhere, where the lights are dancing all over the
place and the pretty girls are bouncing around and the thing is
kind of a wild..and he gets his kick that way. Because the
relationship that he has with his wife isn't enough. And maybe he
drags his wife into that situation and it doesn't mean anything to
her and he goes back home again and she can't compete with that
kind of thing.
     That reflects a failure to understand the significance in the
meaning and to enjoy the richness of a real relationship with the
one that God has given you in marriage. But if your relationship to
your wife is all that God wants it to be, you don't need that!
     And I think the same thing is true in the spiritual dimension.
If you walk with Jesus Christ, you're not running around looking
for some high, some explosive experience, some wild event to
happen. You're very content to know the Lord and to see Him unfold
His perfect will in the day to day routine things of life, and to
know His confidence, His peace, His joy, His contentment which He
give to those who walk faithfully with Him. That's what God is
after, and I think these dear, misguided people, while they think
they're exercising great faith, are really exercising weak faith,
even doubt that looks for proof and needs some external verifica
tion, and in many cases because they may not be Christians at all.

Lorne Decker: That's Pastor John MacArthur. A tremendous applicable
illustration of what we're facing today and so well said. The book,
Reckless Faith, is full of things just like that, and we're highly
recommending it here at Songtime USA, when the church loses its
will to discern.
     Pastor MacArthur, you have a Merry Christmas, and we're
praying for you, and you keep on keeping on. We appreciate you.

Transcribed By Bob Hunter
Internet Address: hunter44@io.org