Question

Could you clarify this issue with the "blood"? 

Answer

I received this morning about six pages of stuff that one of our members received in Japan that was being distributed on the "Heresy of John MacArthur."  It actually had about 20 different tapes, maybe 15 of which was on the heresies that I supposedly teach.  One of the major ones that I have been accused of teaching is the denial of the Blood of Christ. 

I don't know how to approach it, because it is so bizarre, but let me just say this,

--I believe that Jesus was 100% man, and as man He had human blood. 

--I believe that when He died on the cross He shed that blood. 

--I believe that it came out in His forehead, it came out in His side, it came out in the opened wounds in His hands and His feet. 

--I believe that He shed His literal blood on the cross. 

--I believe that the blood that came out of His heart and the Pericardium around the heart, when it says, "blood and water came out," in the piercing, was indicative of the fact that He was shedding His blood. 

--I believed it was essential that He die a death that included bloodshed, because He was the perfect anti-type of all of the Old Testament pictures of the sacrificial animal in which blood was poured out.

If you understand in the Old Testament that it says, "The life of the flesh is in the blood," then the pouring of the blood is indicative that the life is flowing out.  The shedding of blood is a very graphic way to see the life flowing out. 

I recently went hunting, and the only thing that I ever shot was a big elk, and I went over and watched the elk die.  You have this, at least I did, this tremendous sense that life is going out, as you watched that blood come out of that animal--that was the picture in the sacrificial system, and that was the picture on the cross, that Christ was giving His life--being poured out symbolically, in a sense, as His blood came out, His life came out, not just symbolically, but really His life came out when His blood came out since "the life of the flesh is in the blood." 

So I believe in the literal death of Christ, the literal shed blood of Christ, that He was fulfilling the pictures and symbols of the Old Testament in dying a sacrificial death. 

Now, what I said some years ago was that I do not believe that was something in that blood itself that saves people, in other words, in the chemicals of it--that's what I said.  I don't believe, for example, the Roman Catholic Transubstantiation, where for example, the "cup" is turned into blood, you drink the blood and it ministers grace to you--I don't accept that.  I don't accept something magic, and nobody else has in the history of Christianity that has been in the mainstream of the doctrine of Soteriology.  We see that the death of Christ was an atonement for sin, He died a sacrificial bloodshed death, but there is nothing in the blood to save or Jesus could have bled on people and not died.  He could have cut His finger and that would have been enough if it is just the bleeding.

So, I said that, some years ago, and then it was taken out of context, and it was put into a magazine that I didn't believe in the Blood of Christ and that was just enough for people who wanted to attack me to have some ammunition. 

Now, you have to know the bottom line, I was told some months ago that there was a prayer meeting held by the faculty of a certain institution, and in that prayer meeting, the major prayer request was, "Lord, help us find some way to discredit the ministry of John MacArthur," that was the prayer meeting.  They set about to find a way to discredit the ministry, and so they came up with that, and they have spun that thing all across the country now, all around the world. 

I believe exactly what the Bible teaches about the shed blood of Jesus Christ--no more, and no less.  But I believe that we are saved through the sacrificial death of Christ for our sins as our substitute, a death in which He shed His blood.  Every time I celebrate the Lord's Table and take the cup of communion I praise God for the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  I don't waver on that one bit, but again you have to understand that this is a conspiracy folks--from beginning to end--this is a conspiracy of people who want to discredit this ministry, for whatever reasons I am not sure, but that is what is behind it.