A one minute video about qualifications for women preachers precedes a 7 minute video that contains Dr. John MacArthur’s inappropriate comments about Beth Moore.
The following one minute video makes two simple points that all women who aspire to preach the gospel ought to meditate upon; also, those who currently are preachers would benefit from such meditation (video is from theologynerd1).
The following video is from a celebration of MacArthur’s 50 years of ministry. Therein, he made an inappropriate comment about Beth Moore.
I was troubled by vlogger comments about this video, so I decided to post it and comment too, below the video.
Regarding the above remarks by Friel and MacArthur, I agree with the vloggers’ posts that those remarks were prideful and disrespectful, and these preachers certainly behaved inappropriately in terms of biblical admonitions such as:
Rom 14:1 Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong.
Rom 14:13 So let’s stop condemning each other. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall.
Rom 14:17 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Rom 14:18 If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too.
Rom 14:19 So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up.
Yet, I disagree with the two vloggers whose critiques I heard. They focused mostly on the social inappropriateness of the remarks, which warranted a rebuke, but they went on to give respect to Beth Moore as a legitimate teacher of the Bible.
I am in total disagreement with that. Please see, categories, Beth Moore, to examine a video wherein MacArthur and Moore preached the same scripture; and another post wherein Moore and Meyer are critiqued.
My critique shows that her teaching is not biblical, it is man-centered, like much of the preaching has been during most of the 20th century and now in the 21st.
His preaching, on the other hand, is godly. It honored God and was instructive to His sheep.
Lastly, consider Christ’s words to those who taught the doctrines of men:
Mat 15:7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,
Mat 15:8 ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.
Mat 15:9 Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.'”
Jesus gave many more rebukes to the Pharisees and Scribes, see Matthew 23 for example. The apostle Paul doesn’t speak kindly of false teachers either; none of the apostles do. It was an important part of their role as apostles to guard the doctrine given once to the church by Christ.
I would lump Moore in with McLaren, Bell, Meyers and many other current (questionable) teachers and preachers who do not honor God with their work; they clearly write against the Bible while they call themselves Christian. They obviously are not!
I didn’t just come to that opinion by sitting on the sidelines of the Christian life trying to believe what the mainstream believes, I’ve been studying the Bible and reading from the works of men whom God gave to His church to instruct the body of Christ: Calvin, the puritans…Sproul, MacArthur and such.
These days, everyone wants to be politically correct; more than that, it seems that everyone in the body of Christ is afraid to give rebukes. Moreover, most seem terrified to say that the Bible is truth; or to argue any thing, claiming to be right about it because that is what the Bible states it to be. That is, most seem to be cowering to postmodern culture which states that there are many ways to Christ; many truths about any given topic….
I am not a preacher or a teacher of the Bible, only a student of it. I give much respect to Dr. MacArthur because he is not afraid to rebuke false teachers; and Moore has shown herself to be one.
Yes, in this example, he was mean in public. His comments were not directed at her teaching, they were attacking her person. But, any of us who are seriously striving to walk the Christian life know, it is easy to sin against God and others if we aren’t monitoring ourselves. In this case, he was set up by Friel, but he could have declined to feed into the situation.
Therefore, based on my own experience of having listened to the biblical teaching of Dr. MacArthur since I was converted 15 years ago, I forgive him for his sinful conduct and still respect him and his teaching because he is obviously striving to walk with the Lord.