Spurgeon Says that MacArthur Gets Israel Wrong

Well, since I've waded into the whole "calvinists should be premillennialists" thing let's just go swimming in the deep end. 

I hope you will take me at my word when I say that the title of this post is meant to be a tad snarky, but not necessarily mean spirited.  As I have mentioned before John MacArthur has been very helpful in my Christian life, but I think he went off the rails with this "calvinists should be premillennialists" thing.  Since he was very forthright in calling out his opponents I do the same, but hopefully in a way that is constructive.

And, I have enjoyed the interaction I have had in the blogosphere with Phil Johnson and the Pyros, and Phil is famous for giving us all a weekly dose of Spurgeon.  This week was no different and this week's dose of Spurgeon was given to substantiate MacArthur's claim that calvinists should be premillennialists. I'll concede that point to a point, as long as Phil and others are willing to concede that, though Spurgeon may have been premil to a degree, he was definitely not dispensational premil.  As Dennis Swanson of the Master's Seminary points out: 

While Iain Murray thought Spurgeon had a "fundamental uncertainty in his mind" regarding eschatology a careful examination of his sermons, his two commentaries (The Treasury of David and Matthew: The Gospel of the Kingdom) and his other writings reveal that he consistently and clearly not only affirmed a historic or covenantal premillennial position; he also rejected the salient tenets of the amillennial, postmillennial and dispensational (italics mine) premillennial schemes.

Having conceded that, since Phil offered a dose of Spurgeon in support of MacArthur's position I want to offer my own little dose of Spurgeon in contradiction to a very important position of MacArthur's.  In Tim Challies summary of that first message he reports MacArthur saying something along these lines:

The central argument went like this: If you get Israel right, you will get eschatology right. If you don't get Israel right, you will never get eschatology right and you'll drift forever from view-to-view.

So, let's see what Spurgeon says about Israel and the church.  Here's my own "whenever I feel like it dose of Spurgeon," courtesy of Dennis Swanson at the Masters Seminary and currently posted at the internet's finest Spurgeon site, run by Phil Johnson:

Distinctions have been drawn by certain exceedingly wise men (measured by their own estimate of themselves), between the people of God who lived before the coming of Christ, and those who lived afterwards. We have even heard it asserted that those who lived before the coming of Christ so not belong to the church of God! We never know what we shall hear next, and perhaps it is a mercy that these absurdities are revealed at one time, in order that we may be able to endure their stupidity without dying of amazement. Why, every child of God in every place stands on the same footing; the Lord has not some children best beloved, some second-rate offspring, and others whom he hardly cares about. These who saw Christ's day before it came, had a great difference as to what they knew, and perhaps in the same measure a difference as to what they enjoyed while on earth meditating upon Christ; but they were all washed in the same blood, all redeemed with the same ransom price, and made members of the same body. Israel in the covenant of grace is not natural Israel, but all believers in all ages. Before the first advent, all the types and shadows all pointed one way—they pointed to Christ, and to him all the saints looked with hope. Those who lived before Christ were not saved with a different salvation to that which shall come to us. They exercised faith as we must; that faith struggled as ours struggles, and that faith obtained its reward as ours shall.

And, Swanson summarizes things this way:

On the central feature of Dispensational Premillennialism, Spurgeon does not hold to the distinction of Israel and the Church that would be common to a "classic dispensational" approach.

The bottom line is that Spurgeon is not canonical so neither MacArthur, nor Phil, nor the Master's Seminary folks, nor the amils who are opposed to their eschatologies are obligated to follow Spurgeon.

But if we are to bring Spurgeon in as a witness on the eschatology issue we have to say that his view of Israel and the church is the same as that of the amil, and is directly opposed to the dispensational premil view.  Further, this is going to push his version of premillennialism in the direction of historical premillennialism, probably closer to George Eldon Ladd and others like him than to the Master's Seminary's eschatology.

And, using MacArthur's standard, we must conclude that Spurgeon gets his eschatology wrong, or if we lean on Spurgeon we must say that MacArthur is the one who gets it wrong.  Actually, I hate to speculate what a figure from the past would believe if he were here today, but I doubt Spurgeon would be throwing down the kind of gauntlets that say "get this piece of the eschatological pie wrong and you get everything else wrong."

 

Related Tags: Religion, Theology, Church, Christian, Christianity, Eschatology, Premillennial, Premmillennialism, Amillennial, Amillennialism