Rick Warren Casually Lies About John MacArthur in Russell Moore Interview
Purpose Driven Lies
It doesn’t take much to remind ourselves how catastrophically bad a preacher and teacher Rick Warren is. Famous for peddling to the church the poison and spiritual strychnine that is The Purpose Driven Life for over thirty years- a damaging and unbiblical theology that has seeped into tens of thousands of churches, he was mostly dormant for a the last decade, but then has reinserted himself into the conversation as a warrior for women preachers.
We covered him recently after Saddleback announced they were having a “Blacks Only worship service” where no white members were allowed in, so the “black fold” could have a “safe space” to “heal,” and for blasting white Christians for having no discernment and not caring about black people.
In an interview with Russell Moore where he engaged in epic levels of bragging and bible twisting, a few things caught our eye. Apart from the lie that he looked at over 300 bible commentaries on Peter’s sermon in Acts 2. (Because the first 299 didn’t do?) is the casual way he lies about John MacArthur:
Peter says ‘in the last days I will pour out my spirit on all flesh’. All Flesh. ‘Your sons and daughters will prophesy.’ That’s different than the Old Testament. Russell, I’ve looked at over 300 commentaries on those verses and it’s interesting to me that almost everybody goes ‘yep in in the church everybody gets to play, everybody gets to preach, everybody gets to prophesy.’
And the people who don’t like that ignore that verse. John MacArthur doesn’t even cover that verse, he just skips over it.
It’s difficult to express how stupid it is to say that because Mary Magdalene gave a message to the apostles from Jesus about his resurrection, this means she was “preaching” and is sufficient prooftext to declare that women can be senior pastors, contra 1 Timothy 2 and Titus 1. If you want evidence that Warren couldn’t exegete his way out of a paper bag, well, there you go.
But to the point: John MacArthur’s whole ministry is verse-by-verse preaching through the bible. That’s this thing. He has his own study bible with a 200-word commentary on just Acts 2:17 with 18 contextualizing cross-references to other passages. He’s preached on it many times over the last 50 years, and in fact has a 33-book commentary on the New Testament, with a whole book on Acts alone.
John MacArthur has covered this verse in much more depth than Warren ever has and he’s gotten more out of it than simply an assertion that ‘young women will prophecy= they can preach to men and lead churches.’
But Warren is a liar, and his deceit should surprise no one.