How should we respond when someone who uses theology to promote ignorant, misogynistic, racist, power mongering authoritarianism dies?
To use biblical language, we might call these people false prophets, ravenous wolves, deceivers, anti-Christs, evil men, seducers, lovers of self, foolish and unlearned men, just to name a few.
And to be clear, I’m talking about John MacArthur.
After 55 years of using the church to promote his own power, John MacArthur, the Wicked Warlock of the West, is dead. As BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield wrote in 2023, “There is no single pastor who has been more influential on young theological conservatives in the last 50 years than MacArthur. Not Billy Graham. Not Adrian Rogers. Not Charles Stanley. Not John Piper. MacArthur has been the gold standard for conservative and Reformed theology not only through his preaching but through his books, his commentaries, his study Bible, his podcasts, his videos, his conferences, his public appearances.”
And while his minions across the world commit the pastoral malpractice of singing his praises, it would be an act of journalistic irresponsibility to miss this opportunity to highlight how MacArthur, according to his own words, was a false teacher who abused the least of these and thus deserves to have a millstone hung around his neck and be cast into the sea.
MacArthur’s definition of a false teacher
In a Q&A dated Aug. 29, 2024, MacArthur answered the question, “What are the marks of a false teacher?” He began by quoting the words of Jesus, saying, “We will know them by their fruits.” According to MacArthur, “The kind of person (a prophet) really is cannot help being revealed.”
MacArthur warned that “it is easy for (believers) to be deceived by someone who pretends to be orthodox.” Then he offered three tests to know whether a preacher is a false prophet — character, creed and converts.
“A person’s basic character — his inner motives, standards, loyalties, attitudes and ambitions — will eventually show through in what he does and how he acts,” MacArthur explained. Despite being able to disguise bad fruit with “ecclesiastical trappings, biblical knowledge and evangelical vocabulary,” MacArthur said, “what is in the heart will emerge, and corrupt theology will result in a corrupt life. False teaching and perverted living are inseparable and eventually will become manifest.”
Regarding a false teacher’s theology, MacArthur said, “What he teaches may seem biblical and orthodox, but careful examination will always reveal ideas that are unscriptural and the absence of a strong, clear theology.” Then he continued: “They have a ready hearing among most people, because they say only what people like to hear. … They want to hear illusions, not truth.”
“Their followers will be like them — egotistical, proud, self-centered, self-indulgent, self-willed and self-satisfied, while being religious.”
Then regarding a false teacher’s converts, MacArthur declared, “They will attract to themselves people who have the same superficial, self-centered and unscriptural orientation as they do.” And he proclaimed, “Their followers will be like them — egotistical, proud, self-centered, self-indulgent, self-willed and self-satisfied, while being religious.”
If one were to summarize his three characteristics of a false teacher, it would seem to be a person who uses theology and the church to create illusions that attract others toward the ascension of the self.
So let’s see how MacArthur fared according to his own standard.
MacArthur sacralized power mongering authoritarianism
All the spiritual abuse MacArthur perpetrated from his pulpit stemmed from his fundamental understanding of reality.
“Authority and submission pervade the whole universe,” MacArthur claimed. “In the relationship between man and man, there is authority and submission. In the relationship with man and God, there is authority and submission. In the relationship between God and God, there is authority and submission. The entire universe is pervaded by this concept.”
Notice how he didn’t interpret the universe through a lens of love, or the fruit of the Spirit, or the presence of becoming, or of wholeness and expansion. No. He saw all reality through the lens of power. And that power structure of hierarchy, whether discussing issues of race, gender and sexuality, or science and politics, always conveniently featured MacArthur at the top.
“He saw all reality through the lens of power.”
MacArthur sacralized racism
MacArthur’s racist theology begins with his promotion of the Curse of Ham. In a series of sermons in Genesis from 2001, MacArthur told the story of Noah being seen naked in his tent by his son Ham and then cursing Ham’s son Canaan to be “a servant of servants … to his brothers.” Canaan would serve Shem, while Japheth would be “enlarged.”
Then MacArthur admitted the massacre of the Canaanites in the Hebrew Bible was genocide, and claimed it was justified because “Canaan and his progeny was cursed.”
From there, MacArthur asserted, “Japheth is the father of what we call Indo-European nations. … Our forefathers in Europe, obviously, were the descendants of Japheth.” Then he claimed Shem’s descendants became the Jews. And what about those cursed Canaanites? ““If you study the territory of Ham, the territory of Canaan coming from Ham, it included Sodom and Gomorrah. … Afterward, the families of the Canaanites were spread abroad. … Wicked, wicked people. Corrupt and corrupting.”
Then the following week, MacArthur added, “Ham settles the south: Africa and to Asia.” And then the next week, he clarified, “It seems that Ham became a more servile people and may have moved south and wound up in Africa.”
So to MacArthur, white Europeans are blessed and enlarged thanks to being in a “peaceful partnership with” Israel, while Black Africans are cursed to do the serving.
MacArthur also used dehumanizing language about Black people, speaking with such terms as “pygmies in Africa,” and “primitive people” that “have painted their faces with some kind of plant — these people that run around stabbing pigs in the jungle naked.”
And perhaps most concerning was how he applied all these racist tropes to slavery today.
“The curse falls on Canaan,” he declared. “And the curse is that he would be a servant of servants, and he would wind up enslaved under the dominant rulership of others. … And here we find that in God’s purposes, children of Ham through Canaan would be servants to the descendants of Japheth and Shem.” He added that their descendants “are doomed to perpetual slavery because they followed the moral turpitude of their ancestors, Ham and Canaan.”
“To throw out slavery as a concept simply because there have been abuses, I think, is to miss the point.”
Then putting it all together, MacArthur said: “It is a little strange that we have such an aversion to slavery because historically there have been abuses. There have been abuses in marriage. We don’t have an aversion to marriage particularly because there have been abuses. There are parents who abuse their children. We don’t have an aversion to having children because some parents have been abusive. … To throw out slavery as a concept simply because there have been abuses, I think, is to miss the point. … There can also be benefits. For many people, poor people, perhaps people who weren’t educated, perhaps people who had no other opportunity, working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds. … So we have to go back and take a more honest look at slavery and understand that God has, in a sense, legitimized it when it’s handled correctly. … Slavery is not objectionable if you have the right master. It’s the perfect scenario.”
Lest we think Christianity somehow subverts the power dynamics of empire that lead to slavery, MacArthur claimed: “Christianity does not free slaves. Christianity does not give equal social rights. … Jesus did not propound equal rights and he did not upset the social order. Neither did Peter, neither did Paul, neither did John, neither did any New Testament writer. Rather, they all affirmed that with great fear of God and great respect you are to be submissive to your masters, whether they’re good and gentle or whether they are unreasonable. You are to submit.”
And there standing above this perfect scenario, as one who is blessed, enlarged and served, is MacArthur, the white descendant of Japheth.
MacArthur sacralized misogyny
In addition to applying his authority and submission dynamic in a way that subjects Black people to servitude in perpetuity, MacArthur applied the same hierarchy to women.
Going back to his comments about the universe being pervaded by authority and submission, his immediate application was to marriage.
“What is new here is not that the wife is to be subject to her husband. That isn’t new, because the Old Testament taught that,” he said. “What is new is the vastness, the scope of this principle. That it absolutely pervades everything.”
And lest you limit that principle to marriage, he applied it to women in general as well.
“A woman, whether she is married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men.”
“It’s clear, as you study the Bible, that God has a divine order in society related to man and woman,” he said. “And, of course, that is manifest in marriage, it’s manifest in the church, and it’s manifest in every dimension of human life. And God’s basic pattern is there are two factors in society: authority and submission. And God has designed that men be given the position of authority, and women the position of submission. … A woman, whether she is married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men.”
So of course, MacArthur couldn’t imagine the idea of a woman standing behind a pulpit. As everyone was celebrating MacArthur’s 50th year in the pulpit, he told Beth Moore, a conservative evangelical Bible study leader, to “go home.” Then speaking of women preaching, he said, “They want power, not equality. … This is the highest location they can ascend to — that power in the evangelical church.”
In other words, to MacArthur, the preacher stepping behind the pulpit is an ascension to the highest power. And only men can have that. Women must sit in silence and submission.
Perhaps worst of all, this misogyny affected the most marginalized women in his church. When a woman in MacArthur’s church divorced her husband after her husband committed adultery and stuffed tissues into their children’s mouths to hinder their breathing and left her to live in another home she didn’t know they had, MacArthur and his elders refused to assist her and threatened church discipline on her.
When a woman attempted to divorce her husband who was convicted of child molestation and abuse, again MacArthur and his elders threatened church discipline on her.
When one of their elders resigned over these abuses, MacArthur’s elders released a statement saying: “Grace Church’s elders do not publicly discuss details arising from counseling and discipline cases — especially on social media.”
Perhaps the reason they wouldn’t discuss these accusations goes back to these words from MacArthur himself: “When someone comes to bring a formal public accusation against an elder or a pastor, we are not to listen to that. We are not to entertain that. We are not to investigate that.”
And there standing above this scenario is MacArthur, the man whose penis gave him the right to perch his flag on “the highest location (one) can ascend to — that power in the evangelical church.”
MacArthur was foolish and ignorant
The way MacArthur talked about science revealed him to be the very biblical definition of an “unlearned man.”
We don’t even have to get into his embrace of young earth creationism. Notice how he attempted to establish himself as the authority on genetics.
“All human beings came from Adam through Noah, which means that all there is in the genetic code for all human races was in Adam and Eve, and all that there is of genetic coding that is in all the races that exist today was in the family of Noah,” MacArthur assumed.
“That has all kinds of interesting implications because in the world you have so much diversity: You have very dark-skinned people, very light-skinned people. You have various features of certain kinds of people that are identifiable: Caucasoid, Negroid, Austrailoid, etcetera — Mongoloid — particular descriptions of physical features. And you have all these differences in skin color, and all these differences in facial look and body design. And the question is often asked, ‘Where did this diversity come from?’ And the answer is the genetic code for all of that was in Adam and Eve. And the genetic code for all of the humanity in all of its diversity today was in the family of Noah. Everyone from pygmies and dwarves and aborigines to 7-foot-2 Zulus and basketball players came from Noah and his wife. All physical features, all skin colors, all physical characteristics, all eye shapes, noses, eye colors, hair colors, etcetera — all the necessary genetic coding was in Adam and Eve, and all of it was in those eight people.”
Then he added in order to get diversity in skin color: “You’d have to pull people off and isolate them, and then they would begin to be dominated by the genetic features that are within that people group. …The Tower of Babel did that. God separated the languages, scattered the people all over the planet, and they were isolated. And whatever the features were that God designed, in his sovereignty, in those genetic groups then became normalized in those groups. And so, various characteristics began to appear.”
Any geneticist would find this explanation completely beyond laughable.
“The major noble lie is there’s such a thing as mental illness.”
Additionally, MacArthur’s denial of scientific consensus went beyond his rejection of the age of the universe, of evolution and of modern genetics. He also claimed, “There’s no such thing as PTSD. There’s no such thing as OCD. There’s no such thing as ADHD. … The major noble lie is there’s such a thing as mental illness.”
So when COVID came and began killing millions of people, of course MacArthur knew better than scientific consensus there too. His church refused to take any precautions. And instead, they put out a statement using the word “authority” 31 times, “right” 13 times and some form of “head,” “subject,” “command,” “rule,” at least another 70 times.
Then in an interview with The Babylon Bee, while looking back at his defiance against the government, MacArthur claimed, “Those conversations with (California Gov. Gavin Newsom) or with anybody else in that environment, was always an authority discussion.” He said his questions were always: “What’s your authority? Are we supposed to accept you as the authority, sole authority, purveyor of all truth, architect of truth, source of truth?”
Again, there standing above all of scientific consensus is MacArthur, the purveyor of all truth regarding genetics, mental illness and infectious diseases.
MacArthur marginalized ‘the least of these’
In worlds that are structured as hierarchy, “the least of these” are those who are marginalized at the bottom of the power structures. Even if MacArthur was correct that the universe is a hierarchy of authority and submission that absolutely pervades everything, he would be judged based on how he treated those at the bottom of these power structures.
It’s quite clear, when you consider how he treated Black people, women, those with mental illness and those who were suffocating to death with COVID that he consistently postured himself in absolute power over them and dismissed their concerns.
Jesus’ teaching is, as MacArthur would like to say, crystal clear about those who harm the least of these. He said, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”
According to MacArthur: “Every sin ever committed by every person who has ever lived will be punished. That is required by divine holiness and divine righteousness and divine justice. It will either be punished everlastingly in the life of the sinner or that punishment will be borne by Christ.”
And unfortunately, MacArthur died never having repented of his power mongering authoritarianism.
If there’s a Jesus and a judgment in the afterlife, then MacArthur had better hope, despite his decades of preaching retribution, that justice turns out to be restorative rather than retributive. As the books are opened on his life, the verdict is clear.
MacArthur doesn’t deserve a memorial or a monument. He deserves a millstone.
So as his many minions sing his praises in the wake of his death, those of us who care for the marginalized need to speak up for them and proclaim that MacArthur’s fundamental understanding of reality was about his own ascension to power, and it absolutely pervaded everything.
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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