Dear Dr. John MacArthur:
Recently I have spent more time indoors than usual because of a leg injury and so have listened to a number of your “Grace To You” broadcasts. I have spent most of my life teaching the Bible and so am quite familiar with the hyper-calvinistic view with which you approach the Scriptures.
I have noticed over the years that many people of your persuasion have done some serious re-thinking of that position. However, I was somewhat surprised to note that you continue to passionately promote a TULIP theology (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints).
My heart was truly saddened as I listened to you holding forth a biblical vision that largely is, in fact, very bad news. You call it good news but when you think about it, it is only good news for the few whom God has elected.
Your message to these few presently alive was that they should not be fearful but look forward to their glorification. They should remain confident because their salvation depends entirely on what God has chosen to do, and of course since he is sovereign he will accomplish his will.
Seen from this perspective, your broadcast should probably be renamed as “Grace to the Few,” instead of “Grace to You.”
It goes without saying, that your message can easily be interpreted as an elitist expression of the gospel. All except a chosen few experience damnation through no fault of their own. There was no call to faith in your presentations, only a smug regurgitation of the joys reserved for those few out there who have found out that they have won God’s lottery.
I suppose you imagine God to fold his arms, when all is said and done, and declare that mercy, love and justice have been accomplished according to his sovereign will. Even while 95 percent of persons created in God’s image languish in the fires of hell for an endless eternity.
Have you ever entertained the notion that such an interpretation may be a “misreading” of the Scriptures? For me it seems arrogant to assert, on the one hand, that one can be cock-sure about God’s election for salvation and damnation, and on the other not have any idea why God made such choices. (In the Old Testament, Israel was chosen with the clear purpose of bringing Yahweh’s light to the nations.)
Why would anyone worship a God who dispassionately chooses some and not others? You seem to allow very little room for a humble recognition that we “see through a glass darkly.” Contrary to the view of the Apostle Paul, for you everything is crystal clear, even when the picture you paint is horrific beyond human comprehension.
Oh how my heart pains for those who are regularly bombarded with such a damning hopelessness because they simply have been excluded from God’s inner circle. Because of this kind of presentation of the gospel, some people I know have simply chosen to abandon the faith all together. They simply can not continue to believe in a God who chooses some people for salvation and others for damnation.
When I try to convince them that that is not the true picture of the God of the Bible they find that very difficult to comprehend. They have been indoctrinated so thoroughly that even now, after abandoning such a view of God, they find it hard to respond to the God of the outstretched arms as depicted in the parable of The Prodigal Son. I know your answer to that would likely be that this proves they never were elected by God in the first place. But that is so very unsatisfactory and, from my point of view, a major distortion of biblical truth.
I suspect that this letter will simply be cast out as another one of those distractions coming from a faithless person, and ultimately from Satan himself. That, of course, will be your choice. But for me it is a simple witness of having discovered a much different God in Jesus Christ than you hold forth.
I was raised on your theology and it was the source of unspeakable torment for me as a young child in the context of a home where I did not trust my father and so could not hope to trust a heavenly Father either. How did I know that God had not chosen me for damnation? I was desperately trying to respond to God and “accepted the Lord” every night as best I knew how, but my fragile emotional situation, combined with a damning theology that I heard so regularly, convinced me that I was not chosen by God. And therefore, through no fault of my own, I would burn in hell for eternity.
The emotional and spiritual scars from that time in my life remain with me to this day. But fortunately, along the way, I found a good measure of healing as I discovered that the vision of God I had learned about in childhood was a distortion of the image of God reflected in the Bible.
God, as revealed in Jesus, is long-suffering and not willing that “any” should perish. If that is indeed the heartbeat of God, how can you take such a cavalier approach to the perishing masses? Do you have any compassion at all for those poor wretches whom you say God has simply consigned to damnation? I suppose you would say that since God does not, why should I?
May God have mercy on you and reveal his nature more fully to you before your active ministry days are over. I know it would take a miracle for someone so entrenched as you are in your dogma to catch a bigger, more graceful vision of the God of the Bible.
But it is my prayer that you would catch that vision and then hold it forth as a message of hope and salvation for all people, not only for those few elect who are chosen by God for reasons unknown to us.
Sincerely,
Jack Heppner
