Student days ended at Talbot in 1964 when MacArthur gradu-
The Bible Takes First Place 21
3. John marrying Patricia Sue Smith, August, 1963.
Student days ended at Talbot in 1964 when MacArthur gradu-
ated magna cum laude, and with the Charles Feinberg Award,
'Given in Honour of the Outstanding Graduate'. He was also
touched to receive two heavy boxes from his favourite mentor.
They were Feinberg's personal set of Keil and Delitzsch's Biblical
Commentary on the Old Testament, given with the words, "That's
for you. Now you have no excuse!' That same year he was
ordained to the Christian ministry at his father's church by the
Independent Fundamental Churches of America, headquartered
at Westchester, Illinois.
wie
22 JOHN MacArTHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
MacArthur's way forward was now uncertain. One possibility
was studying for a doctorate at Claremont School of Theology.
This was to be a cross-roads decision that would affect the rest
of his life and is best told in his own words:
When I was considering completing a doctoral degree in
theology, the representative of the graduate program at Claremont looked over my transcripts and concluded I had too much Bible and theology in my undergraduate and seminary work. So he gave me a list of two hundred books of preparatory reading before I could be admitted
to the program. I checked out the list with someone who knew the various titles and learned that none of them con-
tained anything but liberal theology and humanistic philosophy—they were full of profane old wives? fables passed
off as scholarship! The college also required me to take a
course called 'Jesus and the Cinema'. This involved watching contemporary movies and evaluating them according
to whether they were antagonistic to or supportive of 'the
Jesus ethic'. The divine Jesus had been reduced to an ethic! I met with the representative again and said, 'I just want you to know that I have spent all my life learning the truth, and I can't see any value in spending the next couple of
years learning error.' I put the materials down on his desk and walked away.*
This was not a decision lightly taken. To qualify for the course
he had spent two semesters at a college learning German. There
was more involved in his withdrawal than he fully understood
at the time. Historic Christianity in the mid-twentieth century
was in general decline in the English-speaking world and for the
very same reason as it was before the Reformation: preparation
for the ministry was corrupted. 'In the universities', William
* The Master's Plan (Chicago: Moody, 1991), pp. 153-4.
The Bible Tikes First Place es
Tyndale wrote in 1530,
they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture,
until he be noselled [nursed] in heathen learning eight or
ten years, and armed with false principles; with which he
is Clean shut out of the understanding of Scripture.'
MacArthur was being made aware of the same danger. In his
later words:
The mark of theological scholarship in some circles is no longer how well a man knows the Bible but how well
he understands the speculations of the secular academic
establishment.
He refers to the testimony of a friend at 'a well-known seminary'
who asked one of his professors whether a class on personal holi-
ness would not be appropriate for candidates for the ministry.
The reply was, 'That wouldn't have any academic credibility.'
Looking back on his early years, MacArthur was to say:
I am grateful to God that since the beginning of my training my mind has been filled with the truth of God. My mind is not a battleground of indecision about what is true and what is false, over things which 'minister questions rather than godly edifying' (1 Tim. 1:4).°
Had it been otherwise his ministry would never have been
what it became. As a young man he had learned what Samuel
Rutherford meant when he wrote, 'I may be a bookman, and
[yet] be an idiot and a stark fool in Christ's way.'
In the years between his leaving Talbot in 1964 and 1969
MacArthur had no clear sense of direction. His father wanted
5 The Practice of Prelates, repr., in The Works of William Tyndale (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2010) vol. 2, p. 291.
© The Master's Plan, p. 153.
24 JOHN MacArtTHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
him to assist him at the Burbank church, and he did this for
two years. But as Jack MacArthur was to maintain the church's
pulpit ministry there was little opportunity for him to preach
there. In 1965 John was also Assistant Professor at Los Angeles
Baptist College. The next year Talbot Seminary invited him
to act as an extension speaker and representative for them;
the intention was evidently to show what the seminary could
do for young men. He accepted and for the next three years
it provided opportunities to preach in all kinds of venues,
including Youth for Christ and Campus Crusade meetings,
with conferences and camps for young people, especially in
the summer. Sometimes this meant speaking up to thirty-five
times a month.
The farthest from home for these engagements were succes-
sive visits to Mississippi. John Perkins, a black Christian from
that State, had come to know John while temporarily in Los
Angeles. He was also impressed by Jack MacArthur's radio and
television ministry. When Perkins returned to the South it was
to start a black church and a Voice of Christ Bible Institute in Mendenhall, Mississippi. For several years, John responded to
Perkins's appeal for his help. There was a first Voice of Calvary Crusade in 1967, which, in the excitement of the times, Perkins described as 'the most significant ever to happen in Mississippi'. John shared in that first Crusade. It reached some 10,000 young black people from elementary school to college age, and brought home to him the greatness of their need for the gospel: 'At least ninety-five per cent of the people in the schools we visited knew nothing about a personal relationship with God.'
Social conditions in Mississippi in the 1960s showed John the
impossibility of restricting aid to the black people only to the