gospel message. Race tensions were running high. John Perkins
The Bible Tikes First Place DS
4. John with John Perkins, at Mendenhall, Mississippi, 1967.
gospel message. Race tensions were running high. John Perkins
had earlier seen his brother killed on the street by members
of the white supremacy Ku Klux Klan. At Mendenhall John
MacArthur always stayed in the Perkins home, and because of
that known association he was refused meals at a white restau-
rant. In the near hopeless conditions in which black youth found
themselves—life without meaning, purpose, or direction—he
saw how they needed a vision to make life worthwhile. John
reported in the columns of his father's Voice of Calvary Bulletin
(March 1968):
Young people need a goal. They need to feel they are getting somewhere and that their efforts are worthwhile. We encouraged them to go on with their schooling. We pointed out the relevancy of the gospel to the problems of
today. We showed them how Christ can help them to be
26 JOHN MacArrHur: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
better students, better neighbours, better football players and just generally better all-round people.
Inevitably black Christians such as Perkins had sympathy
and connections with the Civil Rights Movement, although
by no means all adherents to that Movement were Christians.
Some—often white activists—discredited that cause by their
manner of life. On one occasion John MacArthur was falsely
identified with that element and taken to a police station for his
supposed participation in the fostering of trouble. The charge
was not sustained although he was made to pay a fine.
A second Crusade took place from March 31 to April 6, 1968.
While it was being planned no one anticipated that the dates
would coincide with a crisis in the Civil Rights Movement. On
the night of April 4 John was in Jackson, Mississippi, talking
with a group that included John Perkins and Charles Evers,
the black Mayor of Fayetteville, whose brother was regarded as
the first martyr of the Civil Rights Movement. John, the only
white present, described himself later as a very young guy, who
had grown to love these people and their culture. As they were
discussing events a man burst into the room with the news,
'Martin Luther King has been assassinated'.
The group's reaction was to drive though the night to Mem-
phis, the scene of the murder, and John went with them. As they
left the house in Jackson he needed the care of his friends, lest
he became a target for the anger of the black crowds already on
the streets outside. At the motel in Memphis, where the Civil Rights leader had been shot only hours before, they found no
police guard on the crime scene, and there was ready access to the landing stained with King's blood. Recalling that crucial
The Bible Takes First Place oF,
time, John was to say: 'I actually went to the little building
opposite the motel, went up on the second floor and, standing
on a toilet, looked out of the window from which James Earl
Ray had fired the shot that killed him.'
The experiences in Mississippi confirmed the truth to John
that he already knew: the gospel alone could abolish the racial
division, and he saw something of its power in the numbers
of young people who were converted; some of them were to
train for full-time Christian service. Of the 1967 Mississippi
Crusade he wrote, 'I personally witnessed over 2,300 young
people come forward to receive Christ. I watched them go step
by step through the plan of salvation we put into their hands
... each one represents a life committed to Jesus Christ.'
wie
There was a significant maturing of MacArthur's thought
during these itinerant years. When he left Seminary in 1964 he
knew he was called to preach but the sphere of future service
was by no means clear. Perhaps it would be the pastorate, or
the work of an itinerant evangelist. Nor did he exclude the pos-
sibility of the mission field. Germany, in particular, interested
him. Gradually it became clear to him that he was not to be
an itinerant evangelist, 'with ten suits and ten sermons'. His
experience had shown him that the first need of the churches
was not evangelism:
The overwhelming thing I saw was spiritual ignorance. Everywhere I went I saw insipid preaching devoid of
biblical content. That really disturbed me. I constantly
28 JOHN MacArTHuR: SERVANT OF THE WORD AND FLOCK
reflected on the Hosea passage, 'My people are destroyed
for lack of knowledge.'
This deepened his concern to give himself to an intense study
of Scripture. In later life he would advise those who sought his
aid over guidance, that God commonly guides His people by
planting desires in them which He means to fulfil. Thus the
promise, 'Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the
desires of your heart' (Psa. 37:4). This was certainly MacArthur's
own experience.' His great desire was to know the Word of
God and he saw that the time for this would only be possible
when he was settled in one place. If his life was to be given to
the Word of God, the pastorate was the calling for him. He also
remembered his father's words that the preachers who left their
mark on history 'stayed in one place for a long time'.
Patricia's thoughts coincided with those of her husband, for by now their family was arriving. Matt was born in August 1964,
and Marcy two years later. Mark and Melinda were to follow
in 1968 and 1973 before the family circle was complete. The
place the family played was vital for MacArthur, 'I remember
vividly when our eldest son was born, what it was like suddenly
to feel the enormous weight of responsibility that comes with
parenthood.'
During the late 1960s two well-established churches
approached MacArthur with a view to his becoming their
pastor; both decided that a man of twenty-seven or twenty-
" He did not recommend that guidance be found by first understanding one's own spiritual gifts. 'When I entered into the ministry, I didn't even understand what spiritual gifts were, and I was preaching and teaching and exercising my gifts before I knew what they were. It wasn't important that I analysed myself, but that I was obedient to the Holy Spirit and followed the desire He placed in my heart.'
The Bible Takes First Place 29
eight was too young for their needs. Then an invitation is said
to have come in an unexpected way. At a summer camp at Hume Lake in 1968, a group of high school youngsters from
Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, Los Angeles, were full
of enthusiasm at what they heard, and asked him, 'Would you
ever be our pastor?' Their wish was passed on to the officers
of their church with the result that MacArthur was invited to
preach in the fall of 1968. There is another account of how
John first came to be invited, and it has to be given weight
for it comes from Burt Michaelson, who was chairman of the
church's board of nine elders:
One Sunday I heard Jack MacArthur's radio broadcast,
and his son John was on it. So when the committee met,
I brought his name up. Paul Sailhammer, who served on
the committee, knew John. He called him and invited him
to the church. Once John came and we had the chance
to meet him and hear him, we never interviewed anyone
else.
There 1s no reason why both of these accounts could not be
true. An invitation to visit and preach at Grace Community
Church was accepted, and John took for his subject a theme much on his mind: Christians are weak because they do not
rightly understand their new identity in Christ. It is impossible
to live as God intends us to do unless we know who we are. He
took for his basis Romans chapters 6 and 7, spoke with liberty,
and must have entertained the hope that this congregation might
be the scene of his permanent work. If Patricia, who was with
him, shared that hope, it was dashed for her by the time he had
concluded his sermon. She met him with the words, "Do you know how long you spoke?' 'No', was John's reply, unconscious