The Words Ring Hallow Now: John MacArthur's Hypocrisy

**Update below**

Jas 2:1  My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. 

Associations, coalitions,friendships, self preservation, institution preservation, legacy preservation, and fear of men cause a man to become a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is a moral/character issue as Jesus clearly points out repeatedly (Matt. 5-7,23, and Gal. 2:11-14 for example), not just sin of a physical nature like fornication or drunkeness (in fact, those at the root are spiritual issues as well). Unrepentant sin is also a moral issue and disqualifies a man. The sin of partiality is such a sin that many elders refuse to confess. Go **here to hear MacArthur revel in rebellion regarding submitting to the accreditation process in relation to starting TMS (where he said that forgiveness later is easier than permission, so they started the seminary in rebellion to the regulations.)

MacArthur with unprincipled men who should be silenced.

**Speaking with false teachers and worldlings
Info on Roma Downey here

Things have shifted with John MacArthur since 1993 when he preached this (excerpts are in italics;bold and red are mine):

But part of the ministry of leadership in the church is to silence certain men.  They must be muzzled, gagged, made dumb.  And apparently a fairly large group of them existed on the island of Crete in the various cities there and in the churches.  And young Titus - who is now in Crete and is left with the responsibility, according to verse 5, of setting in order what remains and of ordaining elders there - has as one of the formidable tasks for himself and the elders and the churches the silencing of these false teachers because of their deadly and destructive teaching.  Obviously this issue, described in verses 10 to 16, is one of the compelling reasons why you have to have elders who are qualified by the qualities in verse 9, as I noted.  God is not going to supernaturally cut out their tongues. The church can't do that.  We can't go around cutting the tongues out of people that we disagree with.  God has decided to give them a little bit of space before He silences them physically.  But we now have the task of silencing them until God silences them.  He may silence them by salvation, making the tongue of their former life cleave to the roof of their mouth and causing them only to speak His truth. He may silence them in death.

But in the meantime, we must silence them.  How’re we going to do that?  Let me suggest three ways.  Number one, we silence them by revoking their right to teach or speak.  We can silence them by revoking their right to speak. That is to say, we give them no platform.  We give them no opportunity.  We take away the privilege of teaching.  Scripture always shows us how God protects His people from the teaching of error.  He never desires that they be exposed to it in the name of “equal time,” or in the name of “open mindedness,” or in the name of “academia and scholarship.”  We can silence them by giving them no place to speak...

Second Timothy 3:13, "Evil men and seducers [or imposters] will proceed from one level of badness to another." They'll go “from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”  And then he goes on to say, "And you stick to the Scripture, which is able to make the man of God adequate, equipped for every good work."  That's all you need.

We can silence them by taking away their platform.  We don't do that in our day.  We put them on radio.  We put them on TV.  We publish their books.  We let them have rallies in our churches.  We propagate their tapes....

There is an obligation on the part of Christianity to give voice to some men and to silence others.  And we silence them by taking away their platform....

There's a third way that I think we silence men who must be silenced, and that is we silence their speaking by means of holy living, by means of holy living.  Divine truth, the truth of God, produces holy living.  Peter, 1 Peter 2:15 says, "You silence the foolishness of ignorant men by your holy conduct." ...

The problem is that hypocrisy is not holy living. Nepotism is not holy living. Having your name on a Bible and university building isn't holy living. Preserving your legacy and reputation in defiance to reality and authority isn't holy living. Partiality isn't holy living. And you can't have holy living when you think doctrine is a mere opinion that can be tossed around like a theory and that not holding to is has no consequences. Spiritual harlotry isn't holy living.

So, you don't put false teachers on a platform.  You don't give them a class in college or seminary.  You don't give them a Sunday school class.  You don't give them a Bible study.  You don't put them on radio, television, or publish their books.  You silence them.  And policing this problem is really the work of the elders in the church....

The New Testament characterizes these men who attach themselves to the church as destructive to the faith, cruel, deceitful, covetous, ungodly, proud, ignorant, hateful, unprofitable, vain, and at all costs they are to be silenced.  At the end of Romans, as Paul closes that great doctrinal letter, he says, "I urge you, brethren," verse 17 of chapter 16, "keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Jesus Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting."  “Be aware, after all I've told you doctrinally, that some people are going to come in and try to teach something else.”

That's men in his seminary, men at his Shepherd's Conferences,men and women in TGC and T4G, men on his church's bookstore shelves, and those at the Getty's Sing 2018 & 2019. 

To the Galatians he says, "Let them be accursed if they fool with the gospel."  Peter says they are headed for destruction.  Their judgment isn't sleeping very long.  There are many of them.  That's their proliferation.

That's Piper and Keller. The hedonism and socialist gospels are false. So is the gospel that has no doctrine of Imputation as Piper offers as valid.

Look at the second aspect of this description, their behavior.  They are described as “rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers.”  “Rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers” - that describes really their behavior.  Their behavior, first of all, is “rebellious.”  That is to say they are unruly and they are out of control.  The church can't control them. They don't respond to spiritual authority.  They don't respond to the control of the elders.  They don't even respond to the control of the Scripture or the Holy Spirit, God Himself.  Here they are, professing Christians, somehow identified with the church, associating with Christianity, refusing to submit to the authority of the church, to the authority of the Scripture, to the authority of leaders, spiritual leaders. False teachers want to associate with the church, but they never want to come under its authority....

I refer to what I said in the beginning of this post regarding MacArthur's rebellion against his own accreditation association he and the school willingly put themselves under. Also, the elders also won't submit to the Holy Spirit's rebuke or exhortation of them when they're caught in sin. Leaders are not above submitting to those in Christ who are standing IN the Truth, because it's really about what spirit is behind them. They are to be teachable and humble to the flock, some of whom really are mature in Christ.

This describes his friend and fellow pulpit teacher, John Piper:

The third thing he says about them is they're “deceivers,” literally “mind deceivers.” They deceive the mind. They make the mind that people think this is truth when it isn't.  They are seducers of people's minds.  And there are always going to be people who want to have their ears tickled, 2 Timothy 4, and they're going to want teachers like that who tickle their ears and tell them fancy, imaginative things; tell them fantasies and wonderful, mystical things, and things that make them feel good.  So that's their behavior.  They are rebels who have nothing to say, and yet they use their nonsense to deceive people. These behaviors mark all false teachers...

This is the way of Evangelicalism, TMUS, GTY, GCC. Unteachable and arrogant, they do not hear the warnings and concerns given to them by discerning Christians. They mock, dismiss, call it a satanic attack, divisive, etc. They won't take you seriously when you don't have a degree from a seminary or are part of their association or network of their good old boys club (so it's a double problem for discerning women). Degrees, books written, conferences, seminares, seminaries, number of followings, size of church, connection to celebrity pastors is how they define if someone *really* is spiritual, *really* knows God. Sorry, but if you study, love, and practice the Truth of Scripture without any of those things, they won't bother with you. Worse, they will rebuke you, mock you, ridicule you, etc. Also, Piper, Keller, Chandler, Voskamp, Francis Chan, Beth Moore, etc are very much into this gnosticism. 

Verse 16, “They profess to know God.”  Obviously they were connecting with the church and saying, "We belong; we know God." They were probably saying, "We know God a lot better than you do because we're circumcised and we keep the Mosaic Law and ceremonies."  There would almost be a sort of Gnostic tone to this statement in verse 16. They're feeling themselves elevated above everybody else and having some mystical knowledge of God, which certainly would also be associated with verse 14, the “Jewish myths” that they had concocted; the allegories and mythical, fantastic things that they conceived to be represented by Old Testament teaching.  They thought they had ascended to another sort of Gnostic, Judaistic level, and they knew God in a higher way than anybody else because they had been circumcised and they had the secret interpretations of the Old Testament and they had concocted all these commandments and rules and they were abiding by them and keeping all the ceremonial laws. And they were saying to Christians, "You only believe in Christ; you're on a very low level; you don't know God until you ascend to the level we're on" - our esoteric, mystical level, which also involved very physical things like circumcision and ritual.

We don't know the exact form of this heresy.  There's really no need to know it.  We just need to know it was heresy.  And at its heart it was putting confidence in myths and human commandments, rather than in Christ, and believing that circumcision and the keeping of certain rituals and ceremonies could save.

This certainly doesn't happen. In fact TMS allows for error as a matter of 'opinion' as if doctrine is optional:

"Why do false teachers go after you in isolation?  Because they want to pull you apart from the church.  They want to isolate you.  If a false teacher comes into your Sunday school class and gives his stuff, immediately after the class somebody is going to come, if you're confused, and help you to see the truth. If a false teacher comes into your school, the other professors - say in your seminary, who know the Word of God - are going to point out where he made his errors.  But if they can get you in your house where there's nobody else to help you, that's, you see, why the cults even want to come in and do a private Bible study with you. They want to cut you off and isolate you from the source of your strength, the body of Christ.  They pick on families." 

Except that I've been a witness to them NOT saying anything. "Now's not the time or place" to silence false teachers. They don't do it on the church level nor the school level. Nor the social media level. In fact, the defenders of famous Christians who they want to attach themselves or ministry to, often isolate the Truth Teller by mocking, ridicule, name calling, treating such a person as hysterical, emotional, etc. Their own gang will gang up on you as well and slander you behind your back to others so that no one listens to the truth you are saying. 

Here is what Austin Duncan ("Jesus became evil incarnate on the cross"), Keller (Evolution, Marxism, Liberation Theology, Mysticism, Feminism, gay agenda), Mohler (Liberation Theology, gay agenda, Ecumenicism)and Piper (Hedonism, Mysticism, Evolution, Feminism, Sensual spirituality, Romanism, gay agenda) have done. But does MacArthur act on 2 Peter 2:18 to which he refers? No. He continues to give them a platform:

""He says in the same verse, verse 11, as to their effect: "They are upsetting whole families by teaching things they shouldn't teach."  They have no right to teach them.  They say they're the truth of God and they're not.  They misrepresent God's Word.  It's so common today.  In my book on charismatic chaos I have large sections confronting those today - some of those today - who misrepresent God's Word, who misrepresent God and Christ as to His nature and work.  By doing all of this they have the effect of producing confusion, doubt, chaos, upsetting whole families, turning them topsy-turvy in chaos and confusion."

What does he think sharing the pulpit with such men does? It causes confusion at BEST. Moreover it lessens any teaching of Truth to that of opinion with no consequence.

When you mix truth with error (how else will they seduce Christians?), you only have error. Truth by nature is purely truth. Not sort of truth. God is a God of precision and so is His Word (Heb. 4:12-13). So every man who dares to speak for God in a teaching capacity BETTER get it right or else they are not qualified to teach. James 3:1 says they fall under a stricter judgment.  

"We have to silence these people.  We have to silence them by taking away their platform.  Don't put them on the radio.  Don't put them on television.  Don't print their books.  We have to silence them.  The church has got to wake up to this.  We've got to silence them because they proliferate. They're all over everywhere, and in their proliferation, their, their inherently wicked nature has a negative effect on people - it overturns, upsets, creates chaos, doubt, confusion in the church.  And don't we know they do it for money?"

More men who are associates and friends of MacArthur, who should be silenced and their platform removed:

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I should also include other of MacArthur's friends like Mark Dever, CJ Mahaney, Steve Lawson, and Ligon Duncan, who all do the same thing:  if not teaching contrary to Scripture, then NOT silence false teachers but rather JOINING them in an UNHOLY alliance. 

Jas 2:1  My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. 
Jas 2:2  For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, 
Jas 2:3  and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, "You sit here in a good place," and you say to the poor man, "You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool," 
Jas 2:4  have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 

Col 3:25  For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality. 

Pro 18:5  To show partiality to the wicked is not good, Nor to thrust aside the righteous in judgment. 

1Ti 5:21  I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality. 


** I do not support WartburgWatch for several reasons, however they are the only site that has this recording of MacArthur from August 2018 at TMS.