Saturday 28 June 2008

John MacArthur on No Trances in Scripture

"God does not bypass men's minds either to reveal or to teach His Word. There were no ecstatic, bizarre, trancelike experiences related to divine action or the prophet, such as occured and occurs with demonic revelation".

John MacArthur - "The MacArthur New Testament Commentary - 1 Corinthians" - Moody Bible Institute, Chicago (1984) - (p391).

5 comments:

lydia said...

Dan - Can you please explain this to me??

Anonymous said...

A surprise to Peter no doubt:

Acts 10:9-11 (ESV) The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat,
but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened . . .

Dan Bowen said...

Nothing to explain really Lydia. I just put it in because John MacArthur is exalted as a Bible teacher. I've heard Macarthur himself slate charismatics for being "woolly standing on Scripture". Yet here he is boldly saying what he does.

And as anonymous has said ... Peter himself in SCRIPTURE fell into a trance.

Why is no one calling Macarthur to account for this FALSE teaching?

Anonymous said...

Because it is not false teaching. If you read carefully in Acts 10 you can see this is not what John MacArthur was talking about at all.

There was a purpose to this event - to correct Peter and to educate him. It was not for the purposes of "feeling good" or "getting a buzz" etc. It was not wishy-washy stuff. It was critical teaching that Peter needed to hear so he did not lead people astray.

Anonymous said...

Last anonymous, from 2010: then perhaps Dr. MacArthur should choose a different word. Such things are all throughout Scripture. But as MacArthur also once said, Satan does not counterfeit that which has no value. :) Satan produces counterfeit visions and trances PRECISELY BECAUSE there are godly visions and trances, not only in Scripture, but even experienced by such people as Jonathan Edwards and his wife! :D As 1 Thess. 5 says about prophetic utterances, so we must do with these: test EVERYTHING.