JOHN MacARTHUR: MANDATED BY GOD

Before she became a Catholic, staff apologist Rosalind Moss used to be a member of John MacArthur's congregation, Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. He runs a ministry called Grace to You. Its motto is "Unleashing God's Truth One Verse at a Time." The unleashing is done chiefly through a widely-syndicated radio program.

In a June letter to his ministry's supporters, MacArthur wrote about John Paul II and the "amazing release of emotion" that accompanied his death. "From politicians and media pundits to Hollywood celebrities and everyday citizens, everyone had praise for John Paul II, his gentle ways and his social and political achievements as a world leader and statesman. I can understand that.

"What I cannot understand," continued MacArthur, "is the response of some Evangelicals to what matters most about the pope: his beliefs about God and the gospel. … Influential leaders embraced the deceased pope as a brother in Christ and the Catholic church as just another Christian denomination. …

"During the Reformation, countless men and women died rather than deny the biblical truths of salvation. Countless others today are giving their lives as missionaries to people lost in the darkness and guilt of Catholicism."

MacArthur goes on to write about the "damning error" that is Catholicism and notes that he has released a new 90-minute lecture called "Unmasking the Pope and the Catholic System." He says that "the church I pastor is loaded with people who were saved out of the Catholic church. … A longtime Grace to You board member and dear friend of mine is a former Catholic. He speaks with great emotion about the bondage he and his wife lived under."

How many times have we heard these claims before? "The Catholic Church is not really Christian." "Catholics believe you 'earn' your salvation through good works." "Catholicism is based on guilt, not truth." "People are in 'bondage' to Catholicism–and we need to save them."

Each Sunday 7,000 people attend MacArthur's church. This is what he tells them about an institution that was around for nineteen centuries before he was born and that is now headed by a man who shows not a hint of MacArthur's arrogance. It is MacArthur who claims a divine commission: "I do have a mandate from God to compare what others teach to the gospel of the Bible." He says, "'Does the pope teach the gospel?' is a valid question."

Rosalind Moss left John MacArthur's church because she realized that, yes, the pope really does teach the gospel–and that John MacArthur does not.

The Grace to You ministry's letterhead has this slogan at the bottom: "The Bible Teaching of John MacArthur." Benedict XVI is more modest in his claims. His letterhead does not have at the bottom "The Bible Teaching of Benedict XVI" because the Pope is not trying to push his own agenda.

Instead, he is the custodian of what has been passed down through the centuries. His job is not to refashion the Bible in his own image but to convey to us what each of his predecessors conveyed to the people of their time.

Grace to You is built around one man. It may have many employees, but when John MacArthur dies, his ministry will die. His flock will scatter, taking with them the silly prejudices he has imbued them with.

When Benedict XVI dies there will be another pope to succeed him, and another, and another, until the end of time. Each of them will demonstrate to those with open minds and hearts that, yes, the pope does teach the gospel.

Actually, the evidence is that such usually continue.

Yikes! The gospel Francis is preaching, such as seen in his last verbose encyclical, is that of seeking salvation from climate change, and poverty by income redistribution, etc.

In an interview with Portugal-based Radio Renascença aired yesterday, Pope Francis declared that the current refugee crisis in Europe is being caused by a “bad, unjust” socio-economic system that worships “the god of money.”

In the interview, where questions were posed in Portuguese and the responses were given by Pope Francis in Spanish, the pontiff said coveting money will bring about both human and ecological ruin:

“This is the tip of the iceberg. We see these refugees, these poor people who are escaping from war, escaping from hunger, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. But underlying that is the cause, and the cause is a socio-economic system that is bad, unjust, because within an economic system, within everything, within the world, speaking of the ecological problem, within the socio-economic society, in politics, the person always has to be the center. And today’s dominant economic system has removed the person from the center, and at the center is the god of money. It’s the fashionable god today. I mean, there are statistics. I don’t remember very well, but — this is not exact and I could be making a mistake— 17% of the population has 80% of the wealth.”

Pope Francis said that refugees from rural areas are being “deforested” and driven into big cities:

“Why are ‘favelas’ (shantytowns) formed in big cities?” It’s the people who come from the country because they have been deforested. They have made a mono-cultivation. They have no work, and they go to big cities.”

Ultimately, the world “is at war against itself, the Pope declared:

“Today, the world is at war, is at war against itself. That is, the world is at war -- as I say -- a war in parts, piecemeal. But it is also at war against the earth, because it’s destroying the earth, that is, our common home. The environment, the glaciers are melting. In the Arctic, the polar bear goes increasingly northward to survive." - http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/full-text-of-pope-francis-interview-with-portuguese-radio-station-44460/

http://www.arkansas-catholic.org/news/article/1232

Dudley and I met and married after we had both gone through divorces. We blended a family of eight children, so our life was full of excitement and difficulties.
We had both been raised in Protestant churches and have families who serve the Lord according to their understanding of scriptural truth. We had little disagreement over our beliefs. Even though he was taught the doctrine “once-saved-always-saved” and I wasn’t, we studied the doctrine and concluded this was not the truth.
We were both taught that miracles were not for today, that God never used supernatural gifts or events, and that there was a “great gulf” between the living saints and the dead saints.
We were both taught that Catholics were doctrinally off base and to be pitied because they were generally not “born-again.”
We went to several different churches and studied many other denominations, including Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness and a few splinter spin-offs of the charismatic non-denominational movement. Each time, after a great deal of study, I rejected these churches.
Of all the churches we explored, visited or studied, the Catholic Church was the only church we had never considered. It was as though this one was completely unworthy of consideration. We thought we knew all about the Catholic Church and what we knew was wrong, so why bother?
In the late ‘90s, after the “Left Behind” series of books and movies were released, we started studying the “rapture” doctrine for ourselves. We felt the Bible did not substantiate what we had been taught.
I decided to research the end-time teachings with the early Church writings. Time and time again, I found helpful historical documents on Catholic sites, and my searching always ended up in the Catholic Encyclopedia. After concluding that the rapture doctrine was not taught by the early Church, I began checking into many other doctrinal teachings we had been taught.
Studying the writings of the early Church Fathers lead me to conclude that the early Church was Catholic! I was shocked, and it took me a few years to have the courage to share my discoveries with Dudley.
I feared he would reject that which I had already believed to be the truth. Not only did I fear his reaction, but our families’ reactions. Not only did I study online, but I would secretly listen intently to EWTN and was constantly moved by the things I was hearing.
I thought, “I am actually Catholic, but maybe I can be Catholic in my heart and not actually join the Catholic Church.”
The day arrived when I was so convicted I could no longer keep these things in my heart. Dudley came home from work one day, and I blurted out “Guess what? We are Catholic!”
He laughed, saying, “Why do you say that?”
I replied, “Because I have been studying what Catholics believe for a long time, and they believe everything we believe! Remember how we have always said that if we could find a church that believes all the true things we have gleaned from all our church experiences, we would have the right church? Well, they believe everything we have been believing!”
One by one, I answered his list of questions proving that what we had been told about Catholics and what they really taught were two different things. Instead of being upset with me, he seemed genuinely excited.
For the next few days, we discussed these things and I showed him EWTN. When we studied about the Eucharist and what the early Church taught about the Lord’s Supper, that was it. We knew we had to be Catholic. It was so plain in the Bible that our search was over.
The only questions we still had to have answered, were praying to “dead people” and the doctrinal teachings about the Blessed Mother, Mary.
On our wedding anniversary, Oct. 5, 2005, Dudley asked me where I would like to go to celebrate. I told him “To see a priest.”
We went to see Father Gregory Pilcher, OSB, at Holy Redeemer Church in El Dorado. The next day we had an appointment to talk with him and attend Mass. Dudley had gone to Catholic Mass many times while attending school in Lafayette, La., being one of only two Protestant students in his class.
When the school dismissed class for saints’ feast days, he would go right along with his friends until his mom found out. Back then, considering Catholicism was unthinkable for him, but he shared that he always felt very comfortable in the Catholic Mass.
Naturally, we had to go through the Tribunal process to deal with our previous marriages. Even though we had been successfully married for more than 25 years, it was a shock to know we could not join the Church or take the Eucharist until we received annulments.
This was a huge test of our faith and our patience, and it took more than two years to accomplish. It was even a struggle for us to find cooperative witnesses for the Tribunal. We discovered that very few Protestants would help a person become Catholic. Perhaps this long wait has made our “journey home” all the sweeter, because Easter Sunday is a day we are so excited to see arrive. Hopefully, our families and friends will see the Catholic Church in a new light because we represent Christ and our Church properly.
We still feel much gratitude and appreciation for our former churches and teachers, because they gave us the importance of knowing what we believe, or learning to study the Bible, and for our strong consciences. We had good and early formation, so that we hungered after the truth, after righteousness, and we know that these things will never go to waste.
Now that we have studied what we believe, we can also find our Church teachings in the Word of God. This is important because we are often called upon to have a ready answer as to why we have done such a strange thing like joining the Catholic Church.

“Works/righteousness” means salvation is earned. You won’t find that in Trent or the Catechism which specifically rejects the idea salvation is earned. He also thinks no Catholic can be saved.

Canon 32 similarly states, "If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema." (Trent, Canons Concerning Justification, Canon 32.

Shortened, this teaches, "If anyone says that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God does not truly merit eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself, let him be anathema."

As regards merit, the Roman Catholic catechism states,

The term “merit” refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members..., (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2006)

"Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification and for the attainment of eternal life (Catechism of the Catholic church, Part 3, Life in Christ, Merit, 2010)

It is true that God under grace rewards faith in the light of its deeds, though man owes all to God and it is God who moves and enables man to believe and to obey. And it is in the light of works that a man is accounted to have eternal life and is fit to be rewarded. (Mt. 25:30-40; Rv. 3:4)

But the RC emphasis on merit leaves RCs believing they will earn eternal life if they are good enough, and Rome actually teaches that one must become good enough in character to enter Heaven. In contrast to justification by faith, with works justifying one as being a believer.

you can’t expect to go to Jesus because He’s pretty tough himself, so you need to go to Mary, because nobody can resist his mother.... “ That’s baloney too, you won’t find that in the official sources of doctrine. If he would just stick with the official sources (Catechism, etc) but he does not. The above is a misrepresentation, a material misrepresentation of official Catholic teaching.

Pleading "official sources of doctrine" is invalid, as in reality what one merely says does not establish what one really believes, but what they do. And Rome has implicitly sanctioned and exampled the idea that "you need to go to Mary, because nobody can resist his mother."

According to Eadmer (A.D. 1060–1124), an English monk and student of Anselm, “sometimes salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked the name of the Lord Jesus...[who] does not at once, answer anyone who invokes him, but only does so after just judgment. But if the name of his mother Mary is invoked, her merits intercede so that he is answered even if the merits of him who invoked her do not deserve it.” Through her “the elements are renewed, the netherworld is healed, the demons are trodden underfoot, men are saved and angels are restored.” — Andrew Taylor, “Three medieval manuscripts and their readers,” University of Pennsylvania press; page 173

Her prayers and requests are so powerful with him that he accepts them as commands in the sense that he never resists his dear mother’s prayer because it is always humble and conformed to his will.... — St. Louis de Montfort, in Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, #27, 246. http://www.ewtn.com/library/Montfort/TRUEDEVO.HTM

The virgin birth of Mary? Please give me the Catholic document that speaks of the “virgin birth of Mary.” If he means the Immaculate Conception, fine, that is Catholic doctrine.

It is quite certain he meant the perpetual virginity of Mary. Yet of historical note, the Collyridians, an obscure Early "Christian" movement [whom some believe were responsible for Muhammad's belief that Mary was part of the Trinity] that Catholics come close to being like, "imagined that Mary herself was born of a virgin, and they established the worship and offering of manchet bread and cracknels, or fine wafers, as sacrifices to her." - http://www.orthodox.cn/patristics/apostolicfathers/mary.htm

Show me the Catholic document (Catechism, etc) that says pastoral ministry does not involve comfort, care, and compassion.

Show me once place where the Holy Spirit uses the exclusive word for priests for NT pastors , outside being part of the general priesthood of all believers.

Show me the Catholic document (Vatican I, etc) that says papal infallibility means the Pope never makes a mistake and nothing he says can ever be altered.

Show me the Catholic document (Vatican I, etc) that says papal infallibility means the Pope can make a mistake when speaking infallibly. and something he infallibly says can be changed .

“That is why in the history of the Catholic church, nothing ever changes. The church absorbs its dissidents. It absorbs its immoral. [?] It absorbs its heretics. It absorbs everybody, and perpetuates the system. The one thing the Catholic church cannot tolerate is any kind of schism. And so it just keeps absorbing the dissidents in the perpetration of the system.

That’s nice, but you won’t find any of that in the official sources: Catechism, Trent, Vatican II and the Councils, etc. When a person is excommunicated, he is not absorbed. Show me the official Catholic document that says heretics and schismatics are “absorbed.” If you can’t, that is a material misrepresentation of official Catholic doctrine.

Rather, it is not material misrepresentation of official Catholic doctrine as seen in practice, which is what manifests belief, as Rome characteristically does not excommunicate even publicly known impenitent proabortion, prosodomite pols, but treats them as members in life and in death.

And her own claims of perpetuation require such "absorption" as holding men who were morally more like Judas than Peter to be popes.

As early as the 4th c. you have pope Damasus 1 employing murderous thugs in seeking to ensure to seat from his rival, and a litany of unholy popes and political elections, and the conditions which preceded the needed, if faulty, Reformation:

"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation.

"It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)

And as the oft-invoked Newman confesses,

In the course of the fourth century two movements or developments spread over the face of Christendom, with a rapidity characteristic of the Church; the one ascetic, the other ritual or ceremonial. We are told in various ways by Eusebius [Note 16], that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own. It is not necessary to go into a subject which the diligence of Protestant writers has made familiar to most of us.

The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison [Note 17], are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church. {374} The introduction of Images was still later, and met with more opposition in the West than in the East. - John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power; www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html

I suggest a good reading of JND Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines

Which is what testifies to pope Damasus 1 employing murderous thugs in seeking to ensure to seat from his rival, and that that Ireneaus, Tertullian, and Origen all felt Mary had sinned and doubted Christ

None of these theologians had the least scruple about attributing faults to her. Irenaeus and Tertullian recalled occasions on which, as they read the gospel stories, she had earned her son's rebuke, and Origen and insisted that, like all human beings, she needed redemption from her sins; in particular he interpreted Simon's prophecy in Luke 2:35 that a sword would pierce her soul as confirming that she had been invaded with doubts when she saw her son crucified. (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian doctrines, p. 493)

And on Cyprian:

"Cyprian made plain, that each bishop is entitled to hold his own views and to administer his own diocese accordingly...[In Cyprian's view] There is no suggestion that he [Peter] possessed any superiority to, much less jurisdiction over, the other apostles. - (Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978], pp. 205-206)

Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition (volume 1)

And who stated,

"Recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity..." — Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 46),

“The reformers were catholic because they were spokesmen for an evangelical tradition in medieval catholicism, what Luther called "the succession of the faithful." The fountainhead of that tradition was Augustine (d. 430). His complex and far-reaching system of thought incorporated the catholic ideal of identity plus universality, and by its emphasis upon sin and grace it became the ancestor of Reformation theology. … All the reformers relied heavily upon Augustine. They pitted his evangelical theology against the authority of later church fathers and scholastics, and they used him to prove that they were not introducing novelties into the church, but defending the true faith of the church.”

“...To prepare books like the Magdeburg Centuries they combed the libraries and came up with a remarkable catalogue of protesting catholics and evangelical catholics, all to lend support to the insistence that the Protestant position was, in the best sense, a catholic position.

Additional support for this insistence comes from the attitude of the reformers toward the creeds and dogmas of the ancient catholic church. The reformers retained and cherished the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the two natures in Christ which had developed in the first five centuries of the church….”

“If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was, the legitimacy of the reformers' claim to catholicity becomes clear. (Pelikan, pp. 46-47).

“In the end, the Council of Trent ended up (in true Roman fashion) condemning the true heritage, and canonizing its own path. In its decrees, Trent "selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works, which was only one of the doctrines of justification [found] in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers. When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone -- a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers-- Rome reacted by canonizing one trend [the wrong one] in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted (justification by faith and works), now became required. What had been previously been permitted also (justification by faith alone), now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned its own catholic tradition" — Jaroslav Pelikan [later EO], "ibid, pp. 51-52).

Show me the official Catholic document (Catechism, etc) that there is an inherent uncleanness in marriage and we have a Manichean/Gnostic idea of the evil of the flesh, that the desire for procreation is the enemy of spiritual devotion. Where does he get that one?...........

The (changeable) church law which requires all clergy to be celibate (at least after their spouse dies where a wife is even allowed), flows in part from the unbalanced views of certain "fathers" as Jerome. Who even wrested Scripture to support his antagonitic views on marriage as unclean:

this too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, “God saw that it was good,” on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus Book 1 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vi.vi.I.html

So much for 2 x 2 evangelism! And behold how the scholar resorts to this false dilemma, as on First Corinthians 7 he reasons:

It is good, he says, for a man not to touch a woman. If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil. (Against Jovinianus (Book I, v. 7)

He furthermore stated,

It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil....Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow, whose land brings forth thorns and thistles, and whose crops are choked with brambles. My seed produces fruit a hundredfold.(''Letter'' 22; http://epistolae.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/letter/447.html).

It is the RC who is ignorant of history, and Scripture.

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