Student days ended at Talbot in 1964 when MacArthur gradu- (continued)
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 restaurant. 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 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 Memphis, 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 possibility 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 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