LARSON: Well, I'm thankful to be joined by
Dr. John MacArthur now, as in God's providence, it seems that we are one of the first conferences
to have been canceled in the Christian community. And Dr. MacArthur, you were scheduled to be
with us. And so thankful that from Los Angeles you're
joining us to really talk through the current situation and to bring some context to what
Christians are facing in this day. And so maybe just starting from a big picture
perspective, what should the church right now be thinking about this global health crisis? MACARTHUR: Well, I think we should be the
most balanced, the most stable, the most sane, the most reasonable and rational. And even beyond that, of course, we have a
living hope. We know where we're headed. Eternity is settled for us far better to depart
and be with Christ so that the worst that could ever happen to us would be the best
it could ever happen. And I think this is a time for us to make
manifest our faith. And yesterday was Sunday for us and we weren't
allowed to have anybody here, but I preached anyway on Matthew 6 where Jesus three times
said, "Stop worrying. Why are you worrying about your life, your
food, your drink, your clothing? Your heavenly Father knows you have need of
all these things." And the Psalms are just full of divine promises
that God is our refuge and our strength. And so this is an opportunity for Christian
people who say they trust in the Lord and they put their faith in Jesus Christ to demonstrate
that by being stable and even hopeful and even joyful. The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Spirit
and this is a great time for that. This isn't like the Black Death. I told our people, 75 million people died
in the Black Death and one writer said that the bodies were stacked like lasagna. Some Italian writer said that, it was a horrific
time. And of course, every year 60 million people
die around the world. Death is not new to us. So we should be the people who have no fear. We should be without fear because our trust
is in the Lord and this is an opportunity for us to declare that if you have no hope
and if you have fear and all people do when it comes to controlling their life and particularly
their death, this is a great time for us to be a living testimony of what true faith in
the Lord looks like. LARSON: Many within the church are wondering,
is this an opportunity to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world? Do you think that there is a window of opportunity
here to proclaim the gospel in a way that perhaps we wouldn't have had an opportunity
to do even just a few weeks ago? MACARTHUR: Yeah, there's absolutely no question
about that. I was thinking back of the times when I've
had to deal with some kind of a global or national problem, going back to a massive
earthquake that we had here called the Northridge earthquake. People came into our church panicked because
this was really a severe earthquake and we were able to address that. There was what were called the Watts riots. You may remember those that happened here
in LA, and we addressed the evil of mankind and went to the gospel. When the Gulf War broke out, I did a series
on what the Bible says about war and how fragile life is. And then maybe the big one was 9/11 and I
ended up not only preaching a message on that, but before I knew it, I was on the Larry King
Show and the question asked, what is the lesson of all of this? And I said, "The lesson is, you're not in
control of your death. It could happen any time and you need to be
ready." And we were able to give the gospel on CNN
and it kept going and going. So absolutely, I think the fear of death is
real and it's legitimate if you have no hope. If you're just wishing for the best after
you die and you're not in control of your death, that's a terrifying reality. So this is a time for us to speak of the gospel
and the security we have in Christ and the eternal life that He promises those who put
their trust in Him. This is a great gospel opportunity. And even though it's not the kind of plague
where, you know, millions and millions of people are going to die, it still brings up
the issue of the fact that you're not in control of your life and you could be one who dies
in this situation and that specter hangs over people's head. This is a perfect opportunity for us to declare
the gospel. LARSON: In your recent message that you gave
at the Shepherd's Conference from Philippians, you talked about unity in the church and the
need for the church to be really seen as a place of joy. And certainly, joy now in the midst of suffering
and this trial that is upon us, how should the church come together to be able to meet
the needs of our neighbors? MACARTHUR: Yeah, this is a great follow-up
question to what I was just saying. This is when we need to show the joy in the
Holy Spirit that Paul talks about in Romans 14. This is when we need to show the peace that
passes all understanding in our hearts because we know we're locked into an eternal redemption
and we have an eternal inheritance laid up for us in heaven. And this is the time for Christians to have
joy, to demonstrate peace, to declare their faith. And also, and I've been thinking a lot about
this, in fact, this was the message I would have given at the conference, that we need
to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think for many people, they think of their
responsibility to witness, to give the gospel as kind of a confrontation and it can be a
little bit, I don't know, off-putting that you're going to confront somebody. And you see examples of evangelism where you
go to somebody and you nail them to the law and you start an argument and a debate. But when you go to the Scripture, it's very
different. We're not called by the Great Commission to
have some kind of an argument or even some kind of evidentiary presentation with the
gospel. We're called to proclaim the gospel. This goes back even to the Old Testament. "Declare His glory among the nations, His
wonders among all people." I think this is the time for us not to decide
whether we can win the argument with a nonbeliever, but to take the opportunity to declare the
gospel. You know, there's a verb in the New Testament
that's used many, many times, kērussō. It's translated a number of different ways,
but it basically means "to herald." Without newspapers, authorities would send
a herald into town and he would declare a message from the authorities to the people. That's how we need to present the gospel. It isn't that we're looking for some kind
of argument or debate. You just herald the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in Acts 13, I think it's so interesting. That's what they did. They declared the gospel and it says in the
next verse, "And as many as were appointed unto eternal life believed." LARSON: So it sounds like you're saying just
as preachers walk into the pulpit, depending if they're able to gather by livestream or
just in smaller communities to just keep on keeping on? MACARTHUR: Yeah, and declare the gospel. Just declare that God is God and men are sinners
and Christ has provided the sacrifice to allow God to be just and the justifier of sinners
and just give the gospel, declare it. It doesn't have to be an argument or a debate. And I think, again, the declaration of the
gospel is what we do. We declare the gospel, we proclaim the gospel
and let the Holy Spirit take that and do what He will as He has ordained. LARSON: The theme of our conference was, "Made
in the Image of God," and as it relates even to this current situation, what do we need
to be communicating about the dignity of who humanity is in light of being made in the
image of God? MACARTHUR: Yeah, obviously that is completely
lost on our culture. A culture that murders babies wouldn't have
any adequate or accurate assessment of the value of human life. It's an oddity, isn't it, Chris, that they're
advocating abortion at almost ramped up prior to this coming election. At the same time, they're trying to save old
people from the flu. There's such a confused understanding of human
dignity and the image of God. Again, this is the opportunity for believers
to declare the truth. And I would play off of that and say, look,
everybody is in a panic that all people might die, but don't seem to be disturbed to slaughter
babies in the womb. What is this? If human life has any value at all, you would
think they would grant more value to that beginning life than that at the very end of
life, but this is the confusion of a godless culture. So I think we would start by reiterating the
dignity of life and remind people that there's something innate in us that understands that. And that's why we see something like this
virus, even though it's not lethal at a high percentage. The thought that people might die disturbs
us. Why doesn't it disturb us that they're being
slaughtered in the womb? I think this is an opportunity for us to make
the connection. LARSON: And so as God's people who are being
remade in the image of Christ, how should this idea of being made in God's image and
this renewal that comes by the working of the gospel and the Spirit's application of
that in our life? How should that motivate us to live a holy
life? MACARTHUR: Well, look, that is the motivation. The motivation for us to live a holy life
is that Christ is in us and we are in Christ. There's no higher motivation than that. If we're motivated by anything other than
the honor of Christ and the glory of God, that's a secondary or tertiary motivation. Everything should be for the love of the Lord. Everything should be for the honor of the
Lord. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink
or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. All things are by Him, all things are for
Him. The end of all things, even evangelism, it
says in John and Romans, is for the sake of the name, for the glory of the name of the
Lord. So I think we have to understand that God
is having justified us and transformed us and begun the process of sanctification, God
is conforming us to the image of His Son by the Holy Spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:18. Everything that comes our way, by the way,
even this kind of thing as James would say, "Count it all joy when you fall into various
trials because they have a perfecting work." This is all part for the believer of the conditions
in life that maybe we wouldn't choose, but that God uses as part of our perfection, part
of our move toward Christlikeness. So I think we embrace these things. I can go back in my pastoral ministry, and
I've said this to our people many times, that most difficult personal times in my life,
whether it was an illness, or whether it was a disaster or whatever it was, the most difficult
times in my life personally have been the times when there is the most evident expression
of the power and the presence of the Lord. So, these are the best of times. I even tell pastors, embrace trouble, embrace
tribulation because this is God doing best work in your heart and drawing you near to
him. And I think believers in this hour need to
look at this as God perfecting them. God may be trimming off some unnecessary things,
maybe lessening their preoccupation with what is temporal because it is so fragile and so
temporary. So the Lord is perfecting you, if you're His
child. Embrace the trouble and find in that trouble
the hand of the Lord moving you more toward the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, one of the things that is going
to become very fresh to us is the idea that we're not in control of all the elements of
our lives and we can hold a lot of things much more lightly than we do. We hold sometimes a death grip on temporal
things. This is a good time to reassess that. LARSON: As you know, your good friend, Dr.
Sproul was known for saying that there's no maverick molecule. And considering the doctrine of providence,
we can certainly modify that to say that there's no maverick virus. What is the doctrine of providence and how
can that be a comfort to Christians in this time? MACARTHUR: I like to compare the doctrine
of providence to miracles. A miracle is when God suspends natural law
to do something outside of natural law and without natural law and against the grain
of natural law. That's a miracle. Walking on water, whatever it is, raising
dead people, whatever our Lord did. That suspends natural law and supernaturally
invades time and space and acts in a divine way that has no human explanation. Providence in my mind, is a greater miracle
than a miracle because it is God accomplishing His own ends and His own purposes not by suspending
natural law, but by taking all the elements of natural law and blending them together
in a masterful way that He achieves His purpose but never interrupts what is the natural and
normal course of things. This is providence. It is God not suspending circumstances and
acting. It is God taking all the contingencies, all
the actors, and all their activities, and all their thoughts and words, and somehow
out of all of that, pulling it together to create exactly what He wills to do. That is a far more massive miracle than just
suspending natural law and acting. And I look at my life and I know you do, Chris,
as well and I know R.C. did. Every day, I see that. Every day of my life is a day full of providence
and it's a different providence every day. It's something, "Wow, how did that happen? Whatever made those circumstances come together
to bring it to this point?" So we live in...I think the most thrilling
thing about the Christian life is providence. Just seeing it unfold day in and day out and
if you're in tune with the Lord and in tune with His Word, you're really seeing it unfold
and you see God at work in ways that have no human explanation. LARSON: Do you have some sense that maybe
now is one of the most exciting times to be alive as a Christian? MACARTHUR: Yeah, I think for a number of reasons,
because particularly in this flu issue, it's just a reminder to people that they're not
in control. They are not in control of their life and
they are not in control of their death. There are forces and powers outside of them
and actually inside of them that have powers that they can't touch and they can't interrupt. This is a perfect opportunity to speak to
them about eternity, about eternal life, about the forgiveness of sin, about heaven and about
hell and about eternal punishment. Anytime the culture's fear level is elevated,
this is when Christians want to stand up and as I said earlier, be joyful, full of peace,
full of faith, happy, thankful, grateful, anticipating that it would be far better to
depart and be with Christ, but He wants us to stay so we can declare His glory among
the nations, His wonders among all people. So yeah, I think this is the elevated time
for Christians to show their trust in the Lord and to take advantage of the opportunity
to declare the gospel of salvation. LARSON: We sure our thankful for you and for
the ministry God has entrusted to you. And may the Lord continue to protect you and
bless the gospel as it goes forth from Grace Community Church and through your various
affiliated ministries. And you've been such a friend to us at Ligonier
over the years and we look forward to, Lord willing, seeing you maybe next year at our
national conference. MACARTHUR: Well, I love all of you guys and
ladies and say hi to Vesta for me as well in a special way. But we love you very much at Ligonier and
we feel our hearts are knit together in the gospel cause. Thanks for being a faithful partner to us. LARSON: Thank you so much.
