Is John Mac Arthur a Heretic?

Welcome to the One Sheep Podcast, I’m Frank your host.

In today’s episode, we examine what was said by Pastor John Mac Arthur. If you're not familiar with John Mac Arthur he is the head of a 12 million-dollar Mega Church called Grace To You. 

John has been featured on Larry King and countless other talk show programs for many years. The span of John’s ministry career has been spent on Biblical Exposition. To the extent that he even produced a John Mac Arthur Study Bible. It breaks my heart to do this episode as I used to enjoy John's expositions when I was deployed to Iraq, and hungry for spiritual food in the desert. I used to listen intently, So with a heavy Heart and a Biblical scalpel we will dissect what John Mac Arthur said and determine if John Mac Arthur is indeed a Heretic.

All right let's get right into it.

Let’s hear from John Mac Arthur in his own words...first

So what did you hear? 

What are your thoughts on the matter?

I do hope to open this Podcast up to open feedback on the Club House App. If you have something to say I would love to hear from you.

So, let’s dive into some feedback on the web. Well, more specifically Grace To You’s blog.

I was going to read you a blog post from someone else’s online commenting about this whole ordeal. As I was reading this gentlemen's post he came off as a bit of a fanboy. 

I felt as if his arguments defending John Mac Arthur were clouded by his adoration of the man and so I discarded his post. He tried to compare what John Mac Arthur said and what you just heard to the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. 

He tried to imply that taking the Mark of The Beast was not an unforgivable sin. He even went so far as to try to say you could get the mark but not worship the beast and be forgiven. I find that to be disingenuous. Simply because the Holy Spirit authored all the books of the Bible. So if an Angel says not to take the Mark, You can bet the Holy Spirit told him to say that...Let’s look at a rebuttal posted by Phil Johnson one of Grace To You’s fellow mega-church pastors.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Several years ago in a live Q&A session, someone asked John MacArthur if taking the mark of the Beast during the Great Tribulation would be an unpardonable sin. His answer, in short, was no. Though there is a stern warning against taking the mark of the Beast in Revelation 14, the sin is not categorically said to be unpardonable. (That would contradict Matthew 12:31.) The point of the severe language in Revelation 14 is to make clear what an utterly reprehensible sin it will be to swear an oath of willful loyalty to the Antichrist.

Someone posted John MacArthur’s reply to that question on YouTube with a melodramatic one-word title in all caps: “OUTRAGE.” Gossip-mongers on the Internet got hold of it, apparently, and within days someone wrote to our ministry saying, “I saw pastor John on a YouTube video saying the way to be saved in the Tribulation is to take the mark of the Beast.”

Well—no.

If someone listens to Pastor MacArthur’s reply and imagines he was saying it’s no great sin to receive the mark of the Beast, listen again; that grossly twists what he actually said. The question is not (as one writer suggests) “How Far Can You Go and Still Be Able to Repent?” The point John MacArthur was making is about the extremes to which God’s grace will reach in order to seek and save a sinner.

Yes, Revelation 14:9–11 says, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or