I have always known that whatever is good and is of God in my life has come to me through the blessing of others. In my short life I have been privileged to know and be exposed to some terrific Christian role models whose influence still shapes me today. This past March I had the opportunity to spend a few days in the presence of three of these role models. I've been meaning to do this post since March, and am finally getting around to it. In March I went to the Shepherd's Conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA. The keynote speakers were John MacArthur, Al Mohler, and R. C. Sproul. But before I say what I want to say about them, let me tell you a little story about myself.
A few years ago I was installed as pastor at a church and my old boss, pastor, mentor and friend, Rod Whited, from Pinewood Presbyterian Church in Middleburg, FL, gave me a charge. I don't remember everything he said, but I do remember a story he told. He told the story of Bob Feller, a great baseball pitcher for the Cleveland Indians who enlisted in the Navy two days after Pearl Harbor. When Feller enlisted he was told that, due to his fame he could be given some job that would keep him out of harm's way. But he would have none of it - he wanted to go into battle. When asked why, Feller replied "Because this country needs heroes and it needs heroes now." Rod told the story and looked at me and said "this country needs heroes in the pulpit and it needs them now - make it your goal to be a hero in the pulpit."
It occured to me as I reflected on my time at the Shepherd's Conference that the three keynote speakers are modern American heroes in the church. It remains to be seen how history will remember them, but for now, in our time, I think we have every reason to judge them to be heroes in our day.
In saying this I'm not being starry-eyed and naive, nor am I merely trying to write a short piece of hagiography. In fact, I know that alot of people will write you off if you are too effusive in your praise of someone. So, in order to not be written off, let me say the following. I'm a Presbyterian so I wish Al Mohler could see it my way on the whole baptism and church government thing. I'm covenantal in my understanding of redemptive history so I wish John MacArthur would abandon his dispensationalism. I had R. C. Sproul as a professor for some classes in seminary and, though he was a strong advocate for the classical school of apologetics I found myself coming down on the presuppositionalist side of things. There, now that I have established my credibility as a someone who is not a mindless follower, let me move on. All of these differences are picayune compared to what these men have accomplished on behalf of the kingdom of God. Each of these men has impacted my life greatly from afar, so here are some personal reflections on why I think these men are modern day heroes.
1. Al Mohler
To understand why I appreciate him so much I need to tell you a little of my own history. I came to Christ in 1979 at the age of 16 through the ministry of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It was my football coach who led me to Christ and began taking me to a local Southern Baptist church, which I later joined. (As a sidenote - this football coach has a son - Dr. James H. Scroggins IV, whom I know as Jimmy, who now serves directly under Al Mohler as the dean of Boyce College, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY). At that church I had the privilege to be discipled by my coach, a youth minister and some others who grounded me in the Scriptures and taught me that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God. We had a pretty loving fellowship there and I was naive enough to believe that Christians generally loved each other, got along, and all agreed on the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.
So, imagine my shock when I went off to college at the University of Florida and started hanging around the Baptist Student Center, and finding out that things were different. The Baptist Student Center used to carry the state Baptist newspaper and I found myself reading it one day and reading an address by the then President Roy Honeycutt calling his followers to war against conservatives and fundamentalists who were trying to take over the convention. This was shocking to me - he was wanting to go to war against fellow Christians, and fellow Christians who took the Bible as the Word of God. Looking back, I can't help but think of that address as the SBC's modern equivalent of Harry Emerson Fosdick's famous sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?"
That was my introduction to Southern Seminary and Southern Baptist politics. For the next several years I was witness to a war in the denomination between those who insisted on the inerrancy of Scripture and Biblical fidelity. Mind you, the moderates in the convention, as they were called, mostly affirmed the inerrancy of Scripture, but they thought the fundamentalists were going too far. The conservatives and fundamentalists wanted the seminaries to require their professors to teach in accordance with the historic distinctives of the SBC and some even had the gall to suggest that the professors sign statements affirming their fidelity to the Bible and the historic Christian faith. The SBC moderates, with their unwavering commitment to the priesthood of the believer as the pinnacle of doctrine and their allergy toward anything that smacked of creedalism, couldn't stand for this. In this respect, the Southern Baptist moderates were like the PCUSA signers of the Auburn Affirmation back in 1924, who said that "we affirm the fundamentals of the faith, but don't think that adherence to these things should be a requirement for ordination.
In those days, Southern Seminary was commonly thought of as the leader in the moderate movement. In the circles I ran in, people I knew were automatically suspicious of a Southern grad and took extra measures to grill them on what they believed, particularly about the Bible.
As the battle was going on I remember hearing ominous things from people who were familiar with Christian history. One person I heard, or read, pointed out that no denomination had ever gone down the road of compromise and come back to biblical fidelity. There were dire predictions of demise for the denomination by conservatives thinking that the SBC was on a track to liberalism and marginalization. There were dire predictions of demise by the moderates, predicting a takeover by a group of theological Nazis.
Over time, the conservatives gained the upper hand and were able to install Al Mohler, a relatively unknown editor of the Baptist newspaper for the state of Georgia, as the President of Southern Seminary. Southern Seminary had been ground zero for the moderate movement in the SBC, under the direction of Roy Honeycutt. When the trustees were able to install him as President, he still had the same faculty that was there under Honeycutt. Things weren't easy for him at all. He went in with a vision to restore this once great seminary to its roots of Biblical fidelity and allegiance to Scripture. The faculty was hostile and he was accused of all kinds of nefarious doings. One former professor accused Mohler this way:
Ego and power and victory and absolutism and fundamentalism reigned, rather than compassion, bridge building and peacemaking,"Some say he turned the seminary into an extremist fundamentalist camp. At the Shepherd's conference one anecdote was told about how Mohler had invited John MacArthur to come preach in chapel during the early days. However, he warned MacArthur that some of the female professors would probably heckle him from the audience.
Mohler didn't back down. To some, their worst fears were realized, Southern has become the antithesis of the moderate (liberal) institution they had hoped it would be. In the meantime, enrollment is up, educational opportunities are expanding and Southern Seminary is quickly regaining its standing as one of the leading seminaries in the country.
His website lists the following activities of Mohler:
Widely sought as a columnist and commentator, Dr. Mohler has been quoted in the leading newspapers of the nation, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal/Constitution, The Dallas Morning News, and many others. He has also appeared on such national news programs as CNN's "Larry King Live," the "Today Show," "Dateline NBC", "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer ", MSNBC's "Donahue" and Fox's "O'Reilly Factor," among others.Time magazine calls him the "reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S."
Mohler has shown extraordinary courage of conviction in the face of extraordinary hostility from critics. In doing so, I think he has become a true hero for our times, as he has demonstrated fidelity to Christ and the Scriptures.
2. R. C. Sproul
I first heard of R. C. Sproul through my in-laws. At the time I was married I was a Southern Baptist without much theological knowledge and my in-laws were PCA members committed to the Reformed Faith. They were very zealous for the Reformed faith, and at one point they gave me a book called Chosen by God, by R. C. Sproul, noting that it would "change my life." At the time I knew very little about Calvinism, except that it was some ancient theological position that was terribly out of date and oh-by-the-way, if these people really thought this stuff was taught in the Bible why were they crediting John Calvin with it. Frankly, the whole idea of Calvinism was abhorrent to me - I couldn't envision a God who would predestine anything. Such a notion went against the freedom of the will, which was absolutely sacred.
But, I read the book anyway. I can't say it changed my life because, frankly, Sproul used too many big words and foreign concepts that I couldn't understand. Not that it was completely non-understandable, it just didn't scratch me where I itched. I guess you could say it did some good, because it at least opened my eyes to the fact these Calvinists had a few Scriptures which, maybe if you stretched your imagination real good, could support their position.
So, now I knew who Sproul was but happily walked away from him. But I couldn't get away from him for long. I went off to seminary shortly after that at Columbia Biblical Seminary and Graduate School of Missions, now simply Columbia Biblical Seminary. Columbia is kind of an eclectic school with a smorgasbord of folks from all kinds of perspectives, including the Reformed. The Reformed folks at Columbia may not have been the majority, but they were the loudest and most obnoxious. The school itself is not to be blamed for this, and the Reformed professors were very gracious. But the students I met who were Reformed all seemed to have a chip on their shoulder. All they wanted to talk about was the TULIP. They loved arguing theology. I remember being in a class and a professor sharing a sad tale about a Presbyterian minister who had fallen and one of the Reformed guys in the class very smugly said "I bet he wasn't PCA." The professor gave him a very good and proper rebuke - saying that it was that kind of attitude that was causing all kinds of problems in the PCA. And oh by the way, one name kept coming up as the hero of all these obnoxious reformed types - R. C. Sproul.
For financial reasons I didn't finish seminary at Columbia and ended up moving Ocala, FL, my in-laws home town. So, I got to hear more about Reformed theology and that guy's name kept coming up again. Finally, I had had it up to here with this Reformed theology stuff and decided to study the matter, prove it wrong from the Scriptures and do away with Reformed Theology once and for all. I remembered a book recommended by one of the Arminians at Columbia, called Elect in the Son, by Robert Shank. This became the silver bullet I would use to put an end to Reformed theology and Calvinism. I read it and was pretty convinced. The trouble was, if I was going to be fair, I needed to read something by a Calvinist. But I sure wasn't going to read anything by that Sproul guy.
About the same time I was reading the book "Made in America," by Michael Scott Horton. This book was not so much a polemic for Calvinism as it was a polemic against the state of modern American evangelicalism. I resonated with much of what was said and this became the first book that really got me to thinking theologically. Then I heard about the book By His Grace and For His Glory, by Tom Nettles. It was safer to read that book than anything by Sproul because Nettles was a Baptist and could be trusted. Sproul, being a Presbyterian, was suspect, after all everyone knew that Presbyterians were either liberal or "God's chosen frozen."
Lo and behold, through Nettles, I became a Calvinist. His argumentation was impressive, and as he exegetetd the Scriptures dealing the five points, they all fell like dominoes and, much to my chagrin, I gave in and became a Calvinist.
Now it was safe to read Sproul. After becoming a Calvinist I joined a PCA church. There were no Reformed Baptist Churches in the area that I knew of, so I figured I could go into a holding pattern with the PCA for a few years while I looked for a Reformed Baptist church. That plan went awry a short time later when the doctrine of infant baptism began to make sense to me Scripturally and I ended up at home in the PCA. Being at home in the PCA now, not only was it safe to read Sproul, it was heartily encouraged.
So, I read more of his books. A sister PCA church in town had a library of his messages and I started listening to them while driving. For quite awhile I caught only about half or less of what he was saying. I just couldn't keep up with his big words and his highfalutin philosophical and theological concepts. But some of it sunk in. I can remember to this day listening to a tape where he explained the difference between the transcendence and immanence of God and having my eyes opened to just how great God was.
Through the kindness of my in-laws, the blessing of the church I was attending, and the providence of God I was enabled to continue my seminary studies at RTS in Orlando, where Sproul was teaching. I only had him for one class. At the time he was a "visiting" professor, doing a lot of work with Ligonier, and writing and travelling. As such, most of us students didn't really get to know him real well, but I do have some fond remembrances of his class. My favorite memory is the day he decided to play the role of Father Sproul, the Roman Catholic priest who was going to teach us the truth about justification. He took the role of Father Sproul and we were all supposed to debate the doctrine of justification with him. We had these block classes that ran for 2 or 3 hours at a time with breaks in the middle. On this day, for the first hour or so we debated Father Sproul and by the end of it, he had tied us all in knots. Over the break I heard a couple of guys say "well, that's it, I guess I'll quit RTS and go to Notre Dame." When we got back in class he told us that we learned an important lesson that day - never argue with a guy who has a microphone in his hand - you can't win. Then Dr. Sproul went on to counter Father Sproul's arguments and by the end of the day we all felt good about staying at RTS.
Another memory deals with things I had heard about Sproul before I came to RTS. A few folks I talked to said that the great thing about his class was that he didn't give a lot of reading. There are professors out there who feel like they can teach you as good or better than a textbook, so they won't emphasize the texts so much. One friend told me of a class where the only reading was one of his books, which is good because most of his books are in trade size and maybe 200 pages. So, in the midst of a heavy reading schedule in seminary it was nice to know that things wouldn't be so bad, at least in this class. However, when I had him things were different. David Wellls book, No Place for Truth was hot at the time and R. C. had read it recently. Among other things, Wells contends that theological education in America had suffered and R. C. had become convicted that he had not been doing as good of a job of teaching as he could have. So, instead of having us read just one of his books, we had to read three or four massive tomes of theology. Thanks for nothing Dr. Wells.
Having said all of that, I am glad to have had some small exposure to R. C.. He's not perfect, he's got plenty of flaws, he infuriates his enemies and has been known to tweak the nose of his friends. But, what is significant about him is that he is probably the one person most responsible for bringing Reformed theology back into the evangelical marketplace. In his wonderful and laudatory obituary for J. Gresham Machen, H. L. Mencken says of Calvinism that "it occupies a place, in my cabinet of private horrors, but little removed from that of cannibalism." Many evangelical Christians feel the same way as Mencken about Calvinism, but Sproul has been largely responsible for taking Calvinism out of the cabinet and putting it on the table.
Along with putting Calvinism on the table, Sproul has been instrumental in showing Christians that it is ok, even desirable to think. He has demonstrated that theology is not just the hobby of a bunch of out of touch scholars, it is the stuff of everyday life. He has reconnected many Christians to their past. I've met those who don't care for his constant quoting of saints of the past, why can't he just quote the Scripture and leave it at that. I think this practice is more beneficial than not. C. S. Lewis says that we are afflicted with chronological snobbery, and by showing us the saints of the past, Sproul has shown us how, in most cases they dwarf us. Someone else has said that modern Christians act like the Holy Spirit came into existence at their conversion. Reference to saints of the past reminds us that the Holy Spirit has been working for thousands of years and we are part of something much bigger than ourselves, and much bigger than even our own generation.
So, for these and many other reasons, R. C. Sproul is a true modern day hero for the church.
3. John MacArthur 
I can still remember the first sermon I ever heard by John MacArthur. I was a freshman in college and had a friend named Felix Martinez who was very zealous for Christ. One day he gave me a tape he thought I ought to listen to by this preacher out in California named John MacArthur. The message was on love, what real love is. MacArthur talked about the fact that people tend to equate love with a feeling these days. He asked his listeners to consider what they think they mean when they think of God loving them. Most of us, he said, would think that God must be up there just feeling all warm and fuzzy toward us and thinking "my what wonderful and special little people they are." Ok, those are my words, but that's the gist of what he was saying. He says the Bible tells us clearly what love is, it is action - "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son." Love is an action, it is giving. He went on to tell the congregation that he loved them but the best way for him to love them was not to run around to each individual and hug them and tell them how wonderful they were and have all these warm, gooey emotions toward them. The best way to show his love to his congregation was to take seriously the study and preaching of God's word, so that he could feed them spiritually and protect them from false teaching.
Now let's see, the average person forgets what the preacher preached about within an hour or two of leaving church. It's been 23 years since I heard that sermon and as best I remember I only heard it once. Yet I was just able to write a fairly detailed paragraph about it with some specific references. There is no doubt in my mind that God intended me to sit at the feet (figuratively) of John MacArthur through the years.
Felix wasn't the only person I knew who listened to John MacArthur. My second year in college I had a roommate who listened to him also. I can remember driving from Gainesville to his home in Orlando and listening to John MacArthur tapes. In fact, I can remember a tape we were listening to on one trip where MacArthur made a simple statement that has stayed with me my entire Christian life. He said that the process of Christian growth is the process of making your practice match your position. In our justification we are considered righteous, sanctification is the process of conforming our daily practice more and more to our positional righteousness.
These are just a few of many examples of things I have gleaned from MacArthur through the years. Through the years I have listened to his tapes off and on, and have heard him on radio whenever I could. I always enjoyed listening to him, but without a doubt, the biggest influence he has had on my life came through his book, "The Gospel According to Jesus." Before I read that I was pretty ignorant of any debates about the nature of justification, I knew that protestants disagreed with catholics, but other than that I couldn't have told you much. Reading that book changed my outlook completely. For the first time I saw "easy believism" for what it was and saw the fallacy of the notion that one could accept Christ as savior but not as Lord, which I had heard often. I learned then that one could not claim Christ as savior if they had never bowed the knee to Christ as Lord.
I've never met MacArthur personally and have only followed his ministry from afar, since I have always lived on the east coast and he has always been on the west coast. But, it seems to me that the publication of that book was the turning point in his ministry. My impression is that, up until that time he was known as a great expository preacher, who was committed to Biblical fidelity and integrity, and he was even known and admired for having the courage to practice church discipline. But with the publication of this book, he became a major player in a major theological battle in our day.
The fur flew after that book and evangelicalism polarized to a degree. He had taken on many of the beloved icons of evangelicalism, chiefly Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges of Dallas Seminary. These were men whom he respected and considered friends. But he had to stand by his convictions on what the word of God taught. Ryrie and Hodges quickly responded with books of their own and there were several attempts to rescue what might at that time have been called the "Dallas doctrine," but I think MacArthur's book won the debate hands down. I can only speak for myself, but in the 80's it was common for me to hear people talking about Christ as savior but not as Lord, I don't hear that as much anymore. It may be because I run in different circles now than I did then, but I do think MacArthur's book had as much to do with it as anything else.
I say I have never met MacArthur, I did shake his hand one time and had him sign a book at a conference. In the waiting line I was able to observe how he interacted with people and he was very gracious, and humble and maybe even a bit quiet. I don't know if this is how he is around the people who know him, but that was my impression. Yet, if this impression is somewhat accurate I would also note that he is a man who knows when the time comes to take a stand and pick a fight.
The fact is that if you can name a popular fad or movement in evangelicalism over the last 20 years or so, MacArthur has probably written or spoken against it. He has spoken out against charismania, the therapeutic movement, the seeker-sensitive movement and many other things. Because of this, some have written him off as a cranky old man. But the problem is that modern evangelicalism has a horrible propensity to chase after every wind of doctrine and every fad of culture, and through the years it grows less and less anchored to the Word of God. I for one admire him for this. It's not mere "crankiness," its a passionate fidelity to the Scriptures. Pragmatism and experientialism has almost completely supplanted Biblical fidelity and MacArthur has sought to pull the ship back where it needs to be.
If I am correct in saying that The Gospel According to Jesus was a turning point in his ministry, there is another sense in which it wasn't. MacArthur's passion is and always has been the expository preaching of the Word of God. The Gospel According to Jesus just bubbled forth from this passion as it applied the exegesis of the Word of God to a troubling issue of the day. If it's a turning point in his ministry it's not because his ministry changed, but because his ministry hit a very combustible issue at the time.
At the Shepherd's Conference, Al Mohler said that we were at "ground zero" for expository preaching in America, and he is correct. The Shepherd's Conference and MacArthur's ministry are one of the few things you can find today in evangelicalism that ground ministry in exegesis and exposition, rather than some faddish technique.
The modern church has been trying to bury expository preaching since the days of Harry Emerson Fosdick. But there have always been the Barnhouse's, Lloyd-Jones's and now MacArthur's who have cried "expository preaching is not dead yet." People are still trying to bury it today. Postmodernism encourages us to have talks and interactive discussions. Rick Holland of Grace Community church recently quoted a leading evangelical in a leading evangelical magazine as saying "expository preaching has come, it has had its day, and it is now gone forever."
MacArthur's ministry is testimony to the fact that expository preaching is alive and well. Man still doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The Word of God is still living and active, it is still sharper than any two-edged sword, it is still capable of dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and it still judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Faith still comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
John MacArthur is a true modern day hero, for holding fast to the Word of God.
4. What really makes these men heroes.
Having said all of the above, I believe there is one quality that stands out that makes each of these men heroes of the faith today. The fact is that, for each man, there are those who do what they do better than them. There are more brilliant theologians than Sproul. There are those who can craft a sermon better than MacArthur. If you think about it, he breaks all the rules you learn in seminary about how to craft a sermon. Most of his sermons are about 75% introduction and 25% body. There are times when you have to say "good luck finding an outline." As for Mohler, well, I'm sure there's someone out there who does a better job of being a seminary President, I just can't think of anyone right now.
What sets these men apart is that they have stood for Biblical fidelity over against the tide of popular evangelical Christian movements. There are plenty of people and ministries out there that are standing against the tide of corruption in the world, but often those people and ministries don't see the greater corruption that is present in the church. Speaking to the elders in Ephesus in Acts 20:29-31, Paul says:
29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard!Isn't it interesting that, in his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders, Paul didn't warn them about the dangers that the corrupt Roman society posed to the church, he was concerned about the dangers posed to the church from within the church itself. This stands in stark contrast to our day when we are all a-dither over what is happening out there in the world. In I Corinthians 5:12, Paul says:
The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (Ac 20:29). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?Each of these three men, Mohler, Sproul, and MacArthur, have taken lots of flack because they have dared to shine the spotlight on the real source of the problem. Rodney King is the prophet of modern evangelicalism as we continually shout "can't we all just get along?" But the truth is you can't get along with savage wolves, you have to go into combat with them.
The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (1 Co 5:12). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
This is what I think makes these men heroes. Mohler has been instrumental in righting a sinking ship in one of the great institutions of one of the great denominations in America. Sproul has been largely responsible for making it possible to talk about theology (even Calvinism!) in polite company. And MacArthur has held fast to the expository preaching of the Word, no matter which way the wind has blown against it. Each has impacted my life from afar and I was thrilled with the opportunity to sit under them for a few days at this year's Shepherd's conference.
Thanks men.
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