Where is the Barf Alert - John is one of the greatest Bible teachers in the history of the Church in the US...certainly in the top 100 of all time. The idiocy demonstrated above reveals the limitations of the author, not the short-comings of John's teaching.
MacAuthor said those things, if you claim he is so great, why is he so wrong?
In late-August of 1999, MacArthur released an extensive statement recanting his position of Incarnational Sonship. A key portion of that statement read as follows:
"I want to state publicly that I have abandoned the doctrine of 'incarnational sonship.' Careful study and reflection have brought me to understand that Scripture does indeed present the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son as an eternal Father-Son relationship. I no longer regard Christ's sonship as a role He assumed in His incarnation."
Sadly, MacArthur's statement gave no indication how widely he planed to publish this doctrinal change, if at all. Moreover, MacArthur showed no remorse or regret or repentance for the many he has misled on this vital doctrine over the years, including, but not limited to, the damage that took place in the IFCA. (It was the same story when MacArthur broke off with Larry Crabb and then Gary Ezzo -- absolutely no repentance for the many thousands led into the clutches of these two psychoheretics.)
Reading the entire August, 1999 statement, MacArthur compared his theological review process to that of Augustine's before his death. But MacArthur's words come off more as a trivialization of a crucial doctrine than genuine remorse for teaching falsely; MacArthur's "repentance" reads more like: "Me and Augustine -- just doing a little theological review before we die." In his statement, MacArthur even said it's no big deal for others to hold to a mere Incarnational Sonship -- NOT "rank heresy" or anything like that -- and still falling within the boundaries of orthodoxy. As if the doctrine of Eternal Sonship is some insignificant gray area that believers have the liberty to accept or reject!
It would have also been helpful if MacArthur had given his followers a little of his thought process in coming to this change in theology to which he had held so adamantly for so many years, in speaking and in writing. Should we now expect a recall of MacArthur's Hebrews Commentary, his 1991 booklet The Sonship of Christ, and The MacArthur Study Bible? Don't hold your breath.]
- After John MacArthur changed his position on the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship of Christ, he wrote a letter in which he explained how he could sign the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (IFCA) doctrinal statement even during all those years when he strongly denied the Eternal Sonship of Christ. These are his words (in a letter to a Pennsylvania pastor dated 9/30/99):
"Frankly, I don't think the breach in the IFCA is merely a matter of the incarnational sonship. That's such an isolated issue. It seems to me that the people who created the rift are, by disposition, divisive. Also, the statement on sonship in the IFCA doctrine is simply that Christ is the eternal Son of God without any explanation. Even people who believe in an incarnational sonship, such as I used to, could affirm the statement that He is the eternal Son of God with qualification."
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/macarthur/general.htm