JOHN MACARTHUR
MAINSTREAMING PAGANISM IN THE CHURCH
PART 5
FALLING AWAY FROM THE FAITH
BART D. EHRMAN
Dale B. Martin’s Sex and the Single Savior, which blasphemes Jesus Christ as a homosexual, is dedicated to Bart D. Ehrman.
“Finally, I thank Bart D. Ehrman and dedicate the book to him. His incisive mind and scholarship has been an inspiration and a model. But more importantly, his friendship for more than twenty-five years has been one of the most valued treasures of my life.” (Sex and the Single Savior, p. xii)
BART: No, I don’t see the basis for that claim. I think they’re painting Paul in their own image. They’re against slavery, so they want to believe Paul was against slavery. I don’t see the evidence. I think that in the letter of Philemon, Paul was not asking Philemon to set Onesimus free from slavery but to give him to Paul as Paul’s slave. I don’t see any grounds at all to see that Paul would have come out against slavery. - See more at: http://www.readthespirit.com/explore/414-conversation-with-bart-ehrman-on-a-skeptical-look-at-the/#sthash.bZNQ8BdH.dpuf
BART: No, I don’t see the basis for that claim. I think they’re painting Paul in their own image. They’re against slavery, so they want to believe Paul was against slavery. I don’t see the evidence. I think that in the letter of Philemon, Paul was not asking Philemon to set Onesimus free from slavery but to give him to Paul as Paul’s slave. I don’t see any grounds at all to see that Paul would have come out against slavery. - See more at: http://www.readthespirit.com/explore/414-conversation-with-bart-ehrman-on-a-skeptical-look-at-the/#sthash.bZNQ8BdH.dpuf
BART: No, I don’t see the basis for that claim. I think they’re painting Paul in their own image. They’re against slavery, so they want to believe Paul was against slavery. I don’t see the evidence. I think that in the letter of Philemon, Paul was not asking Philemon to set Onesimus free from slavery but to give him to Paul as Paul’s slave. I don’t see any grounds at all to see that Paul would have come out against slavery. - See more at: http://www.readthespirit.com/explore/414-conversation-with-bart-ehrman-on-a-skeptical-look-at-the/#sthash.bZNQ8BdH.dpuf
Bart D. Ehrman is cited by John MacArthur as translator of The Shepherd of Hermas, Letter to the Philadelphians from Ignatius and Letter to the Philippians from Polycarp. In his translation of these non-canonical works, Dr. Ehrman rendered the Greek word doulos as slave. (See Part 3)
Bart D. Ehrman is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he has served as Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He graduated from Wheaton College and received his Masters of Divinity and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is presently a critic of the New Testament and early Christianity, having written or edited twenty-four books, numerous scholarly articles, and dozens of book reviews.
Bart Ehrman claims that he was a born-again Christian but apostatized after discovering “errors” in the Bible which he attributes to scribal revision. Now Ehrman writes books that debunk the Bible and promote the false God and counterfeit Jesus found in non-canonical writings:
The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations
Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Forged—Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament
The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament
Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend
Four of Ehrman’s books have been on the New York Times Bestseller list: Misquoting Jesus; God’s Problem; Jesus Interrupted; and Forged: Writing in the Name of God. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.
When Bart Ehrman was asked in an interview, “Do you agree with Crossan and Borg that Paul was opposed to slavery and, perhaps had he lived longer, he might have come out even more strongly as an abolitionist? They use the letter Philemon as evidence,” the New Testament critic responded:
“No, I don’t see the basis for that claim. I think they’re painting Paul in their own image. They’re against slavery, so they want to believe Paul was against slavery. I don’t see the evidence. I think that in the letter of Philemon, Paul was not asking Philemon to set Onesimus free from slavery but to give him to Paul as Paul’s slave. I don’t see any grounds at all to see that Paul would have come out against slavery.” (Conversation with Bart Ehrman)
In Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Prof. Ehrman falsely stated that the apostle Thomas, who was enslaved by Jesus for his disobedience, was also Jesus’ twin brother. Referring to the Gospel of Thomas, Ehrman wrote:
“It is a forgery of the teachings of Jesus written in the name of one who should know them better than anyone: his twin brother, Didymus Judas Thomas.
“The very beginning of the Gospel of Thomas is quite striking, in that it reveals the author’s stated purpose and his understanding of the importance of his collection of sayings and, relatedly, of how one can acquire eternal life:
‘These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.’ (Saying 1)
“The sayings recorded here are said to be secret: they are not obvious, self-explanatory, or commonsensical. They are hidden, mysterious, puzzling, secret. Jesus spoke them, and Didymus Judas Thomas, his twin brother—wrote them down. And the way to eternal life is to discover their true interpretation.”
Source: Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, pp. 23, 58.
Ehrman proceeds to demonstrate that the Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic work in which Jesus teaches that salvation is attained through gnosis, or knowledge. Ehrman explains the Gnostic gospel:
“Gnostic Christians varied widely among themselves in basic and fundamental issues. But many appear to have believed that the material world we live in is awful at best and evil at worst, that it came about as part of a cosmic catastrophe, and that the spiritual beings who inhabit it (i.e., human spirits) are in fact entrapped or imprisoned here. Most of the people imprisoned in the material world of the body, however, do not realize the true state of things; they are like a drunk person who needs to become sober or like someone sound asleep who needs to be awakened. In fact, the human spirit does not come from this world; it comes from the world above, from the divine realm. It is only when it realizes its true nature and origin that it can escape this world and return to the blessed existence of its eternal home. Salvation, in other words, comes through saving knowledge. The Greek term for knowledge is gnosis. And so these people are called Gnostics, ‘the ones who know.’ But how do they acquire the knowledge they need for salvation? In Christian Gnostic texts, it is Jesus himself who comes down from the heavenly realm to reveal the necessary knowledge for salvation to those who have the spark of the divine spirit within.”
Also by Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, portrays the God who created the material world as the evil Demiurge, the “Great Invisible Spirit” of the ‘Pleroma’ as the true God, Jesus as his prophet, Judas Iscariot as the only disciple who understood Jesus’ teachings and will therefore transcend the material world, and the other disciples as clueless about this ‘sacred revelation’ of Jesus.
“Judas approaches Jesus and says that...he too had a vision that needs to be explained. For the third time Jesus laughs... In this case it is not because Judas is lacking a spark of the divine, as is evidently the case with the others, but because he has not yet understood all the mysteries that Jesus is to reveal... Judas is called a ‘spirit.’ The literal meaning is daimon,... The word daimon does not carry the same connotations as its English counterpart demon, which refers to an evil spirit. A daimon is a spiritual being that is superior to mere mortals...
“Jesus begins to talk about Judas’ persecution by the Twelve. As Jesus indicates, ‘You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations (46:17-21)... Judas will transcend the Twelve, who continue to think the creator god of this world is the true God, and he will enter into the truth. Upon his death (when they stone him), he will ascend ‘to the holy [generation]’ (46:23-47:1).
“Jesus then explains the real mysteries that lie at the heart of this Gospel, the mysteries of how the divine realm (the Pleroma) came into being and how this inferior world came to be created. This is the sacred revelation that ‘no one has ever seen.’
“...[El is] one of the names of God in the Old Testament. Here El is said to have created twelve angels to rule over the realm of chaos and the underworld... Then there appear the divine beings who will create the world... Nebro... whose name means ‘rebel’...also called Yaldabaoth, a name familiar from a number of other Gnostic texts that describe him as the maker, or demiurge—that is the creator of our heavens and earth. Yaldabaoth has a number of angelic assistants, including one named Saklas at their head, a word that means ‘fool’ in the Aramaic tongue...
“And then Saklas, the fool, is the one who says to his angels, ‘Let us create a human being after the likeness and after the image’ (52:16-17). So they form Adam and Eve, and tell Adam, ‘You shall live long.’
“Even though the details of this complex myth are almost impenetrable in places, the overall point is clear. This world was not created by the one true God. Not even close. The divine beings responsible for creation are far removed from the ultimate realm of divinity. The god of the Old Testament, El, is nowhere near the top of the divine hierarchy; this world was created by a wrathful, bloodthirsty rebel, and humans were created by a fool. The other disciples—and, of course, their followers in the ‘orthodox’ Christian tradition—are so far wrong in what they think about this god that it is hard even to know where to start in explaining their error. They are hopelessly lost. Only those who receive this ‘secret revelation,’ Judas and those like him, will come to realize how we came to be here, who Jesus really is, and how we can return to our heavenly home...
“Now that the reader knows that Judas is the only one among the disciples who has understood the mysterious teachings of his master, the act of his betrayal takes on a completely different character... He is doing Jesus the greatest favor possible. He is enabling him to escape this wicked world to return to his heavenly home...
“...Jesus has gone into the guest room to pray... The leaders find Judas there... Evidently Judas is alone, all the others having fled. This may be a final hint from the author that Judas is the only one to remain faithful to his master until the end. The others have run for their lives, not understanding that life in this material world is not real life, that salvation comes precisely at death, when the soul can escape the entrapment of this material prison and return to its heavenly home. That is what Jesus himself is about to do, thanks to the act of Judas...
“There is no account of Jesus’ death here; that is almost an afterthought. And there is certainly no account of his resurrection. That would violate the entire point of the Gospel: that Jesus was to be saved—as all of us are—not in the flesh but from the flesh...
“Judas, even more than Jesus, is the hero of this account. To be sure, Jesus is the divine revealer who alone knows the mysterious truths that can lead to salvation. But the Gospel is about Judas: how he received these revelations; his superiority to all the other disciples, who continued to worship the false god(s) who created this material world; and how he would ultimately transcend this world, as at the end of his life he would enter into that ‘luminous cloud,’ in which dwells the ultimate and true God himself.” (Ehrman, pp. 93-98)
See also: The Alexandrian Gnostics: Valentinus
Bart Ehrman’s interpretation of the Gospel is not the way of salvation but the path to spiritual blindness and ruin. Likewise his mistranslation of the Greek word doulos in Apocryphal works referenced by John MacArthur, whose new understanding of salvation is based on a mistranslation by unbelieving, anti-Christian scholars whose faith is in a counterfeit Jesus! Slave theology precludes anyone from knowing Jesus Christ, because “the slave does not know what his master is doing.” (John 15:15, NASB)
“Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” John 15:15 (KJV)
THE NEW ATHEISTS
Jennifer Glancy, Dale B. Martin, J. Albert Harrill, Bart Ehrman and John MacArthur seem to be taking over where rabid atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens left off. Although postmodern Ehrman does believe in God and that Jesus existed, stating that no serious scholar denies the existence of Jesus Christ (seektheos.com), he is also offering the masses, especially appealing to young people, the counterfeit Jesus of Gnostic forgeries.
“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come,
except there come a falling away first…” 2 Thessalonians 2:3
Before the great falling away from the faith could take effect on a global scale, the sprouting seeds of faith sown by the Word of God had to be plowed under. This has been accomplished to a large extent by hardened atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens who have made careers of destroying whatever faith still exists in God, Jesus and the Bible, especially among young people. The Lord Jesus foretold this end time apostasy when He asked, “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
The modernist movement was the precursor of the postmodern Jesus Seminar and their benighted students – pseudo-scholars all – who started an epidemic of atheism and skepticism among the youth, whose minds are now closed to rational discussion of what the Bible actually says and respond to the mere mention of God with a verbal torrent of anti-Christian vitriol. Like the postmodern scholars, atheists must misrepresent and misquote the Word of God to make their otherwise unsupportable case.
Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, contains the following shameless lies:
“Then there is the very salient question of what the commandments do not say. Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide?” (p. 100)
“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.” (p. 102)
Likewise, Sam Harris misrepresents the teaching of Scripture, asserting that God requires Christians to own slaves:
“The Creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves. This is true in the Old Testament. This is true in the New Testament. Jesus clearly expects us to keep slaves. Many Christians believe that Jesus has repudiated or somehow rescinded all of Old Testament law. This is untrue. I can assure you that the ecclesiastics who were burning heretics for centuries in Europe had read all of the New Testament. But on the subject of slavery, 1 Timothy 6 in the New Testament admonishes slaves to serve their masters well. ‘Serve your believing masters all the better and thereby partake in their virtue.’ So if we think that this book was written by the Creator of the universe,...we should own other human beings.” (What does the bible say about slavery?)
Richard Dawkins is Oxford University professor of zoology and author of the bestsellers, The God Delusion (2006) and The Selfish Gene (1976). Like Harris and Hitchens, Dawkins has influenced a generation of young people to believe that the Bible is fiction, that Jesus never existed, that God is a delusion, and that if God does exist He is a cruel tyrant.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion)
Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins have the effrontery to charge God, all the while withholding from their Biblically illiterate audiences passages of Scripture that vindicate God’s laws and judgments as righteous. If the devotees of the postmodern scholars and atheists would only read the Bible for themselves, they would discover that God commanded the death penalty for Hebrews who practice or turn a blind eye to child sacrifice and the extermination of pagan cultures which sacrificed children in fire. They would learn that God “has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ex. 33:11), that evildoers were warned well in advance and given every opportunity to change their evil ways. Noah preached to his generation for 120 years, but to no avail. The human race had interbred with fallen angels who so thoroughly corrupted their morals and bloodline that drastic measures were the only option of a righteous God:
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them... The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” Genesis 6:4-7, 11-12
The unlawful intercourse between angels and humans produced a hybrid race of giants whose alien DNA threatened to contaminate the Messianic bloodline.
“The Lord Jesus had a human body which had pure DNA that could be traced back to Abraham, then to Noah and finally to Adam. His DNA was 100 percent human, and thus when He shed His blood on the cross for sin, He could redeem mankind!
“Hebrews 2:14,16 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil ... For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” (Genetic Armageddon)
Noah alone was genetically untainted in his lineage, having perfect human genes uncorrupted by the fallen angels.
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” Gen. 6:8-9
Thus it is easily proved that Richard Dawkins’ false accusations against God of genocide and infanticide are baseless and that he has withheld essential information which changes the verdict altogether. When the tribes of Israel adopted the heathen customs of the Canaanites and sacrificed their children to Baal, God was again justifiably angry. In order to put an end to the abomination of infanticide, the very crime of which Dawkins accuses God, divine judgment was decreed on the whole house of Israel—the Assyrian invasion of the ten northern tribes and the Babylonian captivity of Judah and Benjamin.
“Because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they have turned unto me the back, and not the face: though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house, which is called by my name, to defile it. (Jeremiah 32:35)
As of late, Richard Dawkins is changing his view of Christianity seemingly in response to the popular trashing of the New Testament gospels and the epistles authored by Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, and the preaching of a counterfeit Jesus by a horde of neo-Gnostic scholars like Bart D. Ehrman. Dawkins, who despises Jesus Christ as He is presented in the Christian Bible, rather likes the Jewish-only Jesus invented by Eric Zuesse, the author of Christ's Ventriloquists: The Event That Created Christianity, who states:
“The religion of the New Testament has nothing to do with the person of the historical Jesus. The New Testament was written and assembled to fulfill Paul’s Roman agenda, not Jesus’ Jewish one. This is shown to explain the entire Christian myth.” (How Christianity Was Created by Jesus’s Enemies)
“What I am doing in this work is to reconstruct from the New Testament the crucial events that produced it, without assuming whether what the NT says in any given passage is necessarily true or even honest. Instead of treating the NT as a work that ‘reports history,’ the NT is treated as a work whose history is itself being investigated and reported. Its origin goes back to this coup d’état that Paul perpetrated in Antioch in the year 49 or 50 against Jesus’s brother James in Jerusalem, whom Jesus in Jerusalem had appointed in the year 30 as his successor to lead the Jewish sect that Jesus had started. The Gospel accounts of ‘Jesus’ reflected Paul’s coup d’état – not actually Jesus, who would be appalled at the Christian concept of ‘Christ.’ That concept was radically different from the Jewish concept of the messiah, and Paul knew this when he created it.” (Eric Zuesse)
To which atheist Dawkins responded: “My skeptical ear detects a very distinct ring of plausibility in his gripping tale. Zuesse’s account of the origins of Christianity is provocatively interesting . . .and I find it clearly and forcefully written.”
The author’s synopsis of Christ's Ventriloquists makes the astounding claim that a new “development (during the past 70 years) of modern legal/forensic methodology” has made it possible to determine whether the authors of the New Testament intended to deceive their readers:
“CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS is a work of investigative history. It documents and describes Christianity’s creation-event, which occurred in the year 49 or 50, in Antioch (present-day Antakya, Turkey), 20 years after Jesus had been crucified in Jerusalem for sedition against Roman rule. At this event, Paul broke away from the Jewish sect that Jesus had begun, and he took with him the majority of this new Jewish sect’s members; he convinced these people that Jesus had been a god, and that the way to win eternal salvation in heaven is to worship him as such. On this precise occasion, Paul explicitly introduced, for the first time anywhere, the duality of the previously unitary Jewish God, a duality consisting of the Father and the Son; and he implicitly introduced also the third element of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost.
“This book also explains and documents the tortuous 14-year-long conflict Paul had had with this sect’s leader, Jesus’s brother James, a conflict which caused Paul, in about the year 50, to perpetrate his coup d’état against James, and to start his own new religion: Christianity.
“Then, this historical probe documents that the four canonical Gospel accounts of the words and actions of “Jesus” were written decades after Jesus, by followers of Paul, not by followers of Jesus; and that these writings placed into the mouth of “Jesus” the agenda of Paul. Paul thus became, via his followers, Christ’s ventriloquist.
“A work such as this can be documented and produced only now, after the development (during the past 70 years) of modern legal/forensic methodology. Previously, the only available methods, which scholars have used, simply assumed the honesty-of-intent of all classical documents, especially of canonical religious ones, such as Paul’s epistles, and the Four Gospels. Only now is it finally possible to penetrate deeper than that, to reach the writer’s intent, and not merely his assertions, and to identify when this intent is to deceive instead of to inform. Whereas scholars have been able to discuss only the truth or falsity of particular canonical statements, it is now possible to discuss also the honesty or deceptiveness of individual statements. This opens up an unprecedented new research tool for historians, and CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS is the first work to use these new methods to reconstruct, on this legal/forensic basis, not just how crimes took place, but how and why major historical events (criminal or not), such as the event that started Christianity, actually occurred.”
Christ’s Ventriloquists is not based on a new development in ascertaining the truth or dishonesty of the New Testament writers, but is a rehash of the nineteenth century attack on the origin of Christianity led by modernist German scholars. Eric Zuesse merely read about this old heresy which was ably refuted by J. Gresham Machen but is regurgitated by the current rabble of postmodern pseudo-scholars, whose honesty-of-intent should be evaluated instead of the apostles’.
Nearly a century ago, John Gresham Machen’s Origin of Paul’s Religion refuted the modernist lie that the apostle Paul developed his gospel independently of the original apostles and under the Hellenist influence in Syria of which Antioch was the capital. Part 2 of this expose summarizes Machen’s rebuttal which is more thoroughly presented in his excellent book.
“The Origin of Paul’s Religion (1921) is perhaps Machen’s best known scholarly work. This book was a successful attempt at critiquing the Modernist belief that Paul’s religion was based mainly upon Greek philosophy and was entirely different from the religion of Jesus.” (“John Gresham Machen”)
“In The Origin of Paul’s Religion, Machen turns his erudition against critics who disparage the relation of Paul’s teachings to the original message of Jesus. In exploring the crucial questions surrounding this debate from both biblical and historical perspectives, Machen not only offers a convincing defense of the traditional view regarding Paul but also makes a lasting contribution to the study of the beginnings of the Christian faith.” (Amazon)
The publisher’s promotional for Dale Martin’s book, Salvation as Slavery, posed a conundrum:
“Early Christians frequently used metaphors about slavery, calling themselves slaves of God and Christ and referring to their leaders as slave representatives of Christ. Most biblical scholars have insisted that this language would have been distasteful to potential converts in the Greco-Roman world, and they have wondered why early Christians such as Paul used the image of slavery to portray salvation.” (Yale University Press)
“Where’s the good news?” ~ Jennifer Glancy
Photo source: John MacArthur’s Slave Book Trailer (1:04 minutes)
(click on link or photo to view video in new window)
Is John MacArthur not helping the cause of reprobates by portraying Jesus as a cruel slave master and endorsing heretical books that impugn Christianity as complicit in the slave trade? Will MacArthur’s young readers, including many seminary students, consult his referenced sources for their own personal study? Will they become disaffected and fall away from the faith, never really knowing God as He is revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ, that He is merciful and compassionate, not willing that any should perish in their sins? Will they ever come to know the Lord Jesus as the self-sacrificing Savior, their constant Friend, elder Brother, their Beloved who is meek and lowly of heart. Jesus does not abuse His Bride but as a kind and gentle Husband leads her into all truth and reveals “all things that I have heard of my Father.”
Mischaracterizing God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ seems to be the rationale for redefining “doulos” as slave and the Christian life as slavery. Who in their right mind would want to become a Christian after watching the above video? The images presented of the Christian life are of Egyptian slaves laboring under duress or threats, and one of them is being beaten. How long will it be before MacArthur’s Slave video goes viral on the blogs and websites of postmodern liberal scholars, atheists and skeptics as “proof” that God is an abusive tyrant who consigns his Christian “slaves” to a miserable existence.
It is difficult to resist the suspicion that John MacArthur is promoting Masonic ideology, which values “freedom of conscience” and the “pursuit of individual happiness” above all else and therefore views submission to God as abject slavery. John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy in fact describes the initiation ritual of Freemasonry as setting the initiate free from the “slavery” of “submission” and “false religion” (i.e. Christianity), and disclosed the Masonic plan to abolish Christianity altogether:
“It was then discovered that this and several associated Lodges were the nursery or preparation school for another Order of Masons, who called themselves the ILLUMINATED, and that the express aim of this Order was to abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government...
“The candidate is presented for reception in the character of a slave; and it is demanded of him what has brought him into this most miserable of all conditions. He answers—Society—the State—Submissiveness—False Religion. A skeleton is pointed out to him, at the feet of which are laid a Crown and a Sword. He is asked, whether that is the skeleton of a King, a Nobleman, or a Beggar? As he cannot decide, the President of the meeting says to him, ‘the character of being a Man is the only one that is of importance.’...
“It surely needs little argument now to prove, that the Order of Illuminati had for its immediate object the abolishing of Christianity.” (John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, pp. 60, 110, 124)
In stark contrast to Freemasonry, which promises men liberty but enslaves them to Lucifer, Jesus Christ liberates men from spiritual bondage:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18-19
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matt. 11:28-29
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” John 8:36
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” John 3:16-17
John MacArthur’s master/slave teaching will have its intended effect during the Tribulation period when the dispensation of God’s grace ends and the Mosaic law is reinstituted by a restored Sanhedrin. The Talmudic Noahide Laws, however, will be instituted for the Gentiles and these draconian laws will enslave the masses to a false Christ as slaves in his totalitarian world empire. As Noahides, every Gentile will be required to “assume the posture of a ‘slave’” and obey the 7 Universal Laws of Noah, a Talmudic invention:
“The Noahide comes to realize that in order to come closer to God he or she has to assume the posture of a ‘slave’ who expects ‘No Reward’ from his master and his actions are out of love, duty, and obligation.” (Becoming a Noahide)
The Noahide Laws forbid idolatry, which may sound Biblical except that the restored Sanhedrin defines the worship of Jesus Christ as idolatry. Thus, the tragic outcome of John MacArthur’s master-slave teaching will be multitudes of new believers beheaded for their testimony of faith in Jesus Christ and multitudes of unsaved becoming literal and spiritual slaves of a false Christ and, by extension, slaves of Lucifer.
“And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” Revelation 20:4
“Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird... Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come... for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones,...and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.” Revelation 18
Considering the sinister aims of John MacArthur’s “master-slave” teaching, the institutions of higher learning which he founded and directs take on new meaning: The Masters College, The Masters Seminary and The Masters Academy International. The question arises, who are “The Masters”? — Master Masons, Ascended Masters, Master Lucifer? (There are actually heavy metal songs of worship and obeisance to “Master Lucifer” that sound appropriately demonic for the Luciferic initiation.)
Theosophist Alice Bailey disclosed in 1922 that, under the direction of the Ascended Masters, Master Masons would infiltrate the Church and rise to the leadership of the various denominations.
“The Master M., the Master K. H. and the Master Jesus will be specially concerned with the movement towards the last quarter of this century. Other Masters will participate also, but these three are the ones with Whose names and offices people should familiarise themselves, wherever possible. Two other Masters, specially concerned with the seventh or ceremonial ray [‘Ceremonial Magic and Ritual’], Whose particular work it is to supervise the development of certain activities within the next fifteen years, work under the Master R. Very definitely may the assurance be given here that, prior to the coming of the Christ, adjustments will be made so that at the head of all great organizations will be found either a Master, or an initiate who has taken the third initiation. At the head of certain of the great occult groups, of the Freemasons of the world, and of the various great divisions of the church, and resident in many of the great nations will be found initiates or Masters.” (Initiation: Human & Solar, pp. 61-62)
Bailey’s Externalisation of the Hierarchy revealed more about the Ascended Master Jesus and the function of the Christian Church as a teaching factor — to train teachers who will spread Bible knowledge, albeit interpreted esoterically.
“The Master Jesus works especially with the masses of the Christian people who inhabit the occidental countries, and who gather in the churches. He is distinctively a great leader, an organiser, and a wise general executive. A special group of devas work under His command, and His connection with all true church leaders and executives is very close. He acts ceaselessly on the inner esoteric council of the churches, and with Him the groups of violet angels cooperate. In church matters He Himself carries out the behests of the Christ, saving Him much and working as His intermediary. This will seem logical to you, for His destiny is closely interwoven with the Christian Church and it marks the culmination of His work for the West. No one knows or understands so fully and wisely as He the problems of the Western culture, nor the needs of the people who carry forward the destiny of Christianity...
“Secondly, the church movement, like all else, is but a temporary expedient and serves but as a transient resting place for the evolving life. Eventually, there will appear the Church Universal, and its definite outlines will appear towards the close of this century. In this connection, forget not the wise prophecy of H.P.B. as touching events at the close of this century. This Church will be nurtured into activity by the Christ and His disciples when the outpouring of the Christ principle, the true second Coming, has been accomplished. No date for the advent do I set, but the time will not be long.
“The Christian church in its many branches can serve as a St. John the Baptist, as a voice crying in the wilderness, and as a nucleus through which world illumination may be accomplished... Its work is intended to be the holding of a broad platform. The church must show a wide tolerance, and teach no revolutionary doctrines or cling to any reactionary ideas. The church as a teaching factor should take the great basic doctrines and (shattering the old forms in which they are expressed and held) show their true and inner spiritual significance. The prime work of the church is to teach, and teach ceaselessly, preserving the outer appearance in order to reach the many who are accustomed to church usages. Teachers must be trained; Bible knowledge must be spread; the sacraments must be mystically interpreted, and the power of the church to heal must be demonstrated.
“The three main channels through which the preparation for the new age is going on might be regarded as the Church, the Masonic Fraternity and the educational field. All of them are as yet in relatively static condition, and all are as yet failing to meet the need and to respond to the inner pressure. But in all of these three movements, disciples of the Great Ones are to be found and they are steadily gathering momentum and will before long enter upon their designated task.” (“Religious Organizations in the New Age,” Externalisation of the Hierarchy)
Please reread the above and ponder the fact that the Christian Church has already been taken over by Masonic initiates and transformed into a vehicle that will assist in the transition to mankind’s enslavement in Lucifer’s slave empire. Carefully consider the method used to help the Christian Church make the transition from sound doctrine to Masonic doctrine:
“The prime work of the church is to teach, and teach ceaselessly, preserving the outer appearance in order to reach the many who are accustomed to church usages. Teachers must be trained; Bible knowledge must be spread.”
John MacArthur teaches the Bible expositionally and trains future ministers in the method of expository teaching, per Alice Bailey’s instructions. He directs Grace Community Church, The Masters College, The Masters Seminary, The Masters Academy International which is an international network of seminaries staffed by graduates of The Masters Seminary, and Grace Advance, a program which works with seminary graduates to take over and facilitate change in existing churches. MacArthur also has a loyal following of churches planted by graduates of these institutions. Although he claims that he is not seeking to start a denomination, John MacArthur directs an ever expanding international network of seminaries and churches, based on the church growth model, whose members have been indoctrinated in his teachings and programmed not to question them. (See: “What is the Church Growth Movement?”)
The Masters Academy International, John MacArthur’s worldwide network of seminaries, enters into partnerships with businesses and foreign governments and participates in the Communitarian network of Rick Warren. Rick Warren is a protégé of Peter Drucker, who developed the community-based global management system. Drucker was particularly interested in getting churches involved in the implementation of world government. Drucker’s organizational model today is called Total Quality Management (TQM). “Total” stands for “totalitarian.” It was Drucker’s vision that all organizations, including church organizations, within the 3-legged stool (Communitarian system) be run on TQM. He considered churches not conformed to this TQM model to be “still unhealthy.”
Church growth organizations are dedicated to the Communitarian agenda of Saul Alinsky and Peter Drucker, which is to merge the church, government and business sectors for the purpose of implementing global governance. In his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky advised radicals such as Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama on the tactics of infiltration and transformation of American institutions:
“Alinsky’s brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. As Richard Poe puts it, ‘Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.’ He advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes from that platform. This was precisely the tactic of ‘infiltration’ advocated by Lenin and Stalin.” (Saul Alinsky)
In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky also expressed his profound admiration for Lucifer:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.”
