Shepherds Conference 2007: Premillennialism

Because of the birth of Hannah Grace, I was unable to attend the Shepherds Conference this year. This kind of upset me at first, for the conference has been a tremendous blessing to me in the past. But when Courtney missed her due date, I realized that God had a very special reason for keeping me here. Now I look at the conference as absolutely meaningless in comparison to the reality of Hannah’s birth.

I’ve got many friends who are there this week, and I’ve followed some bloggers that are writing about the conference as well. From what I hear, John MacArthur opened the conference up with a very ‘in your face’ sermon advocating Premillennialism. I must admit, I was surprised when I heard this, and now I realize that there may have been other reasons why the Lord kept me from attending :)

If you know me very well at all, you understand then that MacArthur is my very favorite preacher/teacher/author. It was his study bible and his books that first got me on a sound theological path in the early days of my conversion. Without a doubt, no man has had more influence on my life in regards to theology than he has. I love the man dearly, and I told him that a few years ago when I had to opportunity to speak with him.

In addition to this, I highly respect MacArthur’s views on the Millennium. We differ, no doubt, but you will find harsher language coming from him towards my position than you will from me regarding his position. His belief is very consistent (though not completely), it is rooted in the biblical text, and he sticks by it without wavering –something I highly respect. But, his position is clearly wrong, in my opinion, and I don’t think his errors are hard to prove at all.

Above all else, we must understand that wisdom is a gift from God, it is supernatural. Wisdom to discern what the scriptures teach is not something that is purely academic. Yes, MacArthur will stress a ‘consistent hermeneutic’ in interpreting the Old and the New Testaments, but the holes in this ‘hermeneutic’ are clearly seen if examined closely.


Revelation 13:18 says:

“This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”

Notice, John says that determining the man and ‘666’ requires wisdom. It is NOT something that can be deduced by taking a man’s name and adding up the number of letters. No, only those with ‘wisdom’ can understand this calculation.

Less we go Charismatic here, wisdom is never separated from the consistent nature of the biblical text –no doubt. But, we get in trouble when we emphasize one over the other. Taking a purely academic approach to biblical interpretation is just as dangerous as taking a ‘wisdom in the Spirit’ approach that separates itself from the text itself.

Thus, I believe that MacArthur is unbalanced in this area, though certainly not by much. He is so infatuated with this 'consistent hermeneutic', that he forgets that truth is not always deduced from looking at scripture and adding up '1' + '1'. If biblical interpretation WAS to be determined in this manner, then we would all be missing our right hands and right eyes, we'd be hating our parents for the sake of the gospel, we would be able to literally move mountains into the sea, and John the Baptist was not the Elijah that was to come.

Above all of this, however, is how MacArthur seems to love attacking Amillennial straw-men. It appears as if he did just that in this recent sermon. If I ever heard MacArthur present an argument grounded in a deep, sound, and honest understanding of Amillennialism, then maybe I would be obliged to take his strong words more seriously.

To read more about this sermon, here is Tim Challies’ perspective (overview, no evaluation), and here is Fide-O’s perspective (entitled 'the mocked shepherd' -coming from the Amill position).


UPDATE: Kim Riddlebarger has written a response here that is worth reading. It is entitled 'With all due respect to Dr. MacArthur"