I missed my chance to meet Pastor John MacArthur in person, but when I spoke to him for the first and only time, it was over the phone for 15 minutes and he cared about my soul.
Days after Christmas in 2021, I interviewed MacArthur for an article I was working on at Fox News about Canada’s Bill C-4, which purported to ban “conversion therapy,” though critics claimed it effectively criminalized counseling that does not affirm LGBTQ ideology.
The bill, which was fast-tracked through the Canadian Parliament in late 2021, described the belief that heterosexuality and cisgender identity are preferable as a “myth.” Under the law, counseling that does not align with such a worldview carries a potential five-year jail sentence.
MacArthur, whose father was born in Canada, helped lead the charge of around 5,000 pastors throughout North America who pushed back against the legislation by affirming biblical sexual morality during their sermons on Jan. 16, 2022.
Six days after their protest from the pulpit, the first trucks set out from British Columbia toward the Canadian capital of Ottawa in what would become the trucker convoy. The truckers would go on to expose to the world the totalitarian spirit of their government, and I have always found the timing curious.
I published only a few sentences from my conversation with MacArthur, but when he died earlier this week, I listened to my recording of the call again.
When I pressed him to explain why he was taking the stand he was, MacArthur delivered to me a mini-sermon about what happens to nations and individuals when they reject God. He was succinct but deep. He quoted verses from memory that I could tell grieved him.
“When a culture goes through a sexual revolution, then a homosexual revolution, and winds up with a kind of insanity about sin and sexuality, you know that culture is under divine judgment,” MacArthur told me, referencing Romans 1:18-32.
MacArthur was echoing some of his sermons that I remember most, when he offered sobering reflections on the prophets who were called to prophesy to a nation they knew would not repent.
Much of what he told me in our phone call reflected his sermon titled “Such Were Some of You,” which he delivered at his Grace Community Church in Los Angeles to mark the protest against Bill C-4. He told me that during his many decades ministering in the second-largest American city, he had seen many repent of sexual sin, including one of the leaders of the Hollywood Gay Pride Parade.
As he concluded that hour-long message, MacArthur read from Isaiah 3. The chapter recounts the prophet predicting to ancient Judah that God would remove from their leadership “everyone who has value, everyone who could help,” as MacArthur paraphrased it.
He noted that while the chapter indicates a nation under inevitable general judgment, Isaiah offered hope that “it shall be well” for individuals within it who are righteous.
In another sermon he preached in March 2021, while his friend, Canadian Pastor James Coates, was imprisoned in Alberta for keeping his church open during COVID lockdowns, MacArthur expounded upon the grief Isaiah suffered when God called him to preach to a nation for which it was already “too late.”
Like Isaiah and the other prophets, MacArthur seemed to know his ministry would not save his nation, but he cared most about individuals, and God used him to snatch many out of the fire.
Much ink will be spilled this week by those whose interactions with MacArthur were extensive and spanned decades. My interaction with him only spanned a quarter-hour, but I will always remember it because I believe it showed his heart.
During our phone call, MacArthur’s wife, Patricia, who was listening in and didn’t know I could hear her, whispered to him, “Is he a Christian?”
Because he knew of me through his attorney Jenna Ellis, who was one of my sources when I covered MacArthur’s successful battle against California’s COVID church clampdowns, he quietly and quickly assured her I am.
Despite the high-profile, international spiritual battles they were in, both he and his wife privately cared about the salvation of some reporter they had never spoken to and would never speak to again.
I think that says a lot.
MacArthur finished well, standing firm to the end against some of the darkest and most powerful encroachments Christians are facing today.
Rest in peace, Pastor John.
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Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
