My church is currently looking for a pastor and there is much debate over this as one can imagine! I ran across this great description of a pastor by John MacArthur. I really appreciate his completely Biblical viewpoint and his absolute refusal to allow the world to pressure or change his view of what God says a pastor should be. Here are some excerpts:"And my heart aches for pastors these days, it really does, because it's seemingly more difficult now than it was in past years. We live in an anti-authority culture, we live in a culture that has lost all respect for people in positions of influence and authority. It's tear down everybody, tear down everything. It's a destructive culture and it's hard for us to survive in that because even our churches are filled...it seems to me that this is the age of Diotrephes, people want to rise to have the preeminence..."
"You get discouraged because you don't have more people, or your church isn't growing. You go to some seminar and somebody gives you a bag of tricks how to get more people, and books are written about how to increase your numbers. And you go to another seminar and somebody tells you how to impact your culture and how to penetrate your community, and how to come up with this program and that problem...that program so you can reach beyond the church and grasp the culture and revolutionize the culture., and pastors get beleaguered with this stuff, they get discouraged with this. It's all intimidation. It really is, and it's really off the point of what we do, and I want to tell you what the point is as simply as I can..."
"If you're a pastor, you have one job...you have one job. It's this, Shepherd the flock of God among you....that's your job. You are not a cultural evangelist, you are not a society penetrator, you're not an entrepreneur, you're not a revolutionary, you are a feeder of the flock of God."
Jesus said:
“I will build My church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
“All whom the Father chose will be called.”
“All who are called will come.”
“All who come will be received by Christ.”
“All whom Christ receives, He will keep. All whom He keeps, He will raise at the last day.”
"Our job is to feed His sheep. And the day you move your eyes beyond the people sitting in your church who belong to Christ, that's the day you just lost your purpose."
“I will build My church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
“All whom the Father chose will be called.”
“All who are called will come.”
“All who come will be received by Christ.”
“All whom Christ receives, He will keep. All whom He keeps, He will raise at the last day.”
"Our job is to feed His sheep. And the day you move your eyes beyond the people sitting in your church who belong to Christ, that's the day you just lost your purpose."
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John MacArthur & Pretrib Rapture
ReplyDeleteWho knows, maybe John (Reformedispy) MacArthur is right and the greatest Greek scholars (Google "Famous Rapture Watchers"), who uniformly said that Rev. 3:10 means PRESERVATION THROUGH, were wrong. But John has a conflict. On the one hand, since he knows that all Christian theology and organized churches before 1830 believed the church would be on earth during the tribulation, he would like to be seen as one who stands with the great Reformers. On the other hand, if John has a warehouse of unsold pretrib rapture material, and if he wants to have "security" for his retirement years and hopes that the big California quake won't louse up his plans, he has a decided conflict of interest. Maybe the Lord will have to help strip off the layers of his seared conscience which have grown for years in order to please his parents and his supporters - who knows? One thing is for sure: pretrib is truly a house of cards and is so fragile that if a person removes just one card from the TOP of the pile, the whole thing can collapse. Which is why pretrib teachers don't dare to even suggest they could be wrong on even one little subpoint! Don't you feel sorry for the straitjacket they are in? While you're mulling all this over, Google "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" for a rare behind-the-scenes look at the same 180-year-old fantasy.
“Don't you feel sorry for the straitjacket they are in?” Humm…I don’t feel sorry for John MacArthur. He is great Bible teacher and a very wise man of God. I realize his stance on a pretrib rapture, and I’m not sure I agree either, but regardless of this point, he is still right on when it comes to the job description of a pastor. I’m not sure how eschatology ended up as response to this post, but that’s fine.
ReplyDeleteSince you brought it up, a note about eschatology; I don’t believe this is a point over which Christians should divide. I happen to be an avid reader/listener of John Piper, John MacArthur, RC Sproul, Michael Horton, and many more…some of these men agree on eschatological issues others don’t, but what they all do agree on is the gospel and this is the mountain upon which all Christians should “die.” After all, “The gospel is the power of God unto salvation…” (Rom. 1:16) Matters of eschatology are important. They should be studied, discussed, and probed, but they shouldn’t serve as reasons to divide. I would also hope that you and others would see that wise men of God disagree on matters, and yet this does not disqualify them as great preachers or men of God. The gospel is our rock. This is the issue upon which we should all agree. This is the issue we fight for, defend, and if necessary, divide over, because if we don’t have the gospel, we have nothing.