The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-17, titled "Bible Questions and Answers." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.
Question
You have made a statement on one of your tapes, "that anyone who says, that they can get to heaven any other way than through Jesus Christ, really doesn't understand the gospel." Later you stated, with regard to ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together Unity Movement), that, ". . . . of those men that were arguing from ECT's side (reuniting Evangelicals and Catholics), these men understand the gospel, but what they are really not willing to commit to is the fact that Jesus Christ is the only way to get to heaven." My question to you, in respect to these men, who in the past we have consider great theologians, what is the bottom line as far as the pronouncements of Scripture against these men?
Answer
This is a big question and I'm not sure that I can answer every aspect of it concisely, but let me say it this way. Some of you know what we are talking about: these guys that are coming along saying, "We are Christians, we are Evangelicals, but we also think that all the Catholics are saved, and the Greek Orthodoxs are saved," and then in this book, The Ecumenical Jihad, "when we all get to heaven, we may find the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Confuciusists, the Atheists who sought for truth, and the Jews, and they are all going to be there, and what they didn't know about Jesus down here got sorted out when they got there."
And the question is, and it is a very legitimate question, and it's a question that I battle in my own mind, the question is, "Are these people Christians who advocate this kind of thing?" If somebody says a Muslim might get to heaven, does that mean that they are not a Christian? That's the real question. If somebody says that a Catholic might get to heaven, does that mean that they are not a Christian? And at this particular point I can't go so far as to say that. The point that I was trying to make on the tape is this, I know these men and I know they believe the gospel, and they understand the gospel, and they can articulate the gospel, but what I don't understand is . . . they believe the gospel, they believe the gospel is the means of salvation, they understand justification by grace through faith alone, they can articulate it better than I can, they have written books on it. And I know that if you believe that, then you are saved, and they believe that. What I don't understand is how they can have this other category of people, and say about them, "Well, I know they don't believe that, but they might make it anyway." And that really is your question.
Question (continued)
Well, isn't that another gospel?
Answer (continued)
Well, there is no other gospel, and they wouldn't say that the Muslim way is the gospel or any other thing is the gospel. It's sort of like those people who say, "I believe the gospel, I'm saved, I heard the gospel, I believe it, I commit my life to Christ by grace through faith, but (I have heard people say this through the years), but those people over there in Africa, who never heard anything, surely God has some way to deal with them differently because they have never heard about Jesus Christ. It is sort of like that kind of mentality.
I guess the ultimate question is, "Can a person understand the gospel, be saved, and have bad theology elsewhere"--answer: Yes, unfortunately that's true. When I ask these men, and I asked them personally, "The doctrine of Justification by grace through faith alone, do you believe that?" "Yes, we believe that, absolutely." "Do you believe that is God's means of salvation and that alone is God's means of salvation?" "Well, yes, we believe that." "Well, then how can you make this other statement. How can you dichotomize your thinking and create this other possibility over here?' It just seems to me like it is a kind of schizophrenia. And I don't want to deny them the salvation that they personally affirm, but at the same time it is incomprehensible to me, that if you say salvation is by grace through faith alone, that you can turn right around and say something else to some other group. I don't know whether they feel some emotional pressure to do this that causes them to compromise the gospel on that front, which in their heart they believe. Maybe it's not a lot different than somebody who believes the gospel is the gospel, but maybe in a conversation, with somebody they don't want to offend, mitigates the real gospel a little bit so as not to offend their friend. Maybe it's just that gone mad--I am not sure what it is.
But again, God has to sort all that out, and God knows the heart, and I don't know the heart. I just know we need to be faithful to the gospel as it is revealed in Scripture. But it is very disappointing, it's extremely disappointing to all of us. I got a letter from one of those men, who said all those kinds of things about "Jihad", and he said, "MacArthur has got the wrong end of the stick." Well, I don't know what that means, but it is the only end I got handed, because if you read that thing (ECT Document), if there was another end then I would have taken it, but that stick had one end, and that is the end they gave me, so I don't know what that means.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
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