November 6, 2007
A comparison between John MacArthur, a Catholic Priest, Joel Osteen and Billy Graham.
Posted by The Pilgrim under Apostasy/Lukewarm, John MacArthur, Pilgrim's Corner, Roman CatholicismIn this post you will see videos from three prominent men of the Christian faith and one Catholic. Each one is interviewed by Larry King and each one is given an incredible opportunity to share the true Gospel of Jesus Christ with millions of viewers; an opportunity of the like that the Apostle Paul never had.
I present the following short video clips for your examination. Please view each and every one of them before coming to a conclusion. When you’re done, I’d like to hear from you.
Of these four men, (preferences and preconceived notions aside), which one best defends the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and which one’s teachings would you want to sit under as the shepherd of your church?
JOHN MACARTHUR
Part One
Part Two
CATHOLIC PRIEST, MICHAEL MANNING
Part One
Part Two
JOEL OSTEEN
Part One
Part Two
BILLY GRAHAM
Part One
Part Two
November 6, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Wonderful videos!! Thanks for sharing them.
John MacArthur is such a blessing!
And so is this ministry. Keep up the good work.
Michael
November 7, 2007 at 2:29 am
What a contrast John MacArthur is to the other lost compromisers he was debating, and the other so called ‘evangelists’ like Osteen and Graham.
God help them.
Thanks for the videos.
God bless.
November 19, 2007 at 4:20 pm
John MacArthur is the only prominent Christian leader boldly standing up for the faith in America today. I pray that more will join him soon. America’s political situation appears to be beyond repair. Christians should look to the Church and resist the false teachings that are coming from all directions. The remnant must not lose faith.
December 15, 2007 at 10:52 am
Hi,
Thanks for using my videos on youtube. I hope the Lord will bless you and your ministry in the coming year
mikejmon333
Michael Monaco
December 27, 2007 at 11:19 am
thanks for the video’s, they really expose people for what they believe!
December 28, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Other than John MacArthur, the guests seem to be either ignorant of the bible or unwilling to align themselves with it. I would expect that from the priest but am surprised by Billy Graham’s “mellowing”. Joel Olsteen is slick….his “I don’t know” responses are very disarming. He seems to know much about God except that which might be devisive.
December 28, 2007 at 7:52 pm
The Church of Jesus Christ in America is in poor shape. It matters little who the best answerer is here when the church is in such pathetic spiritual shape. We have a form of religion, but are ignorant of the power that is missing. We think we do God service by beating people over the head with dogma, and forget that Jesus said, “It is the spirit that makes alive; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Only by the Holy Spirit is true fruitfulness seen. Our greatest need is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So let us come before the Lord and allow his light to reveal our defective faith, our defective service and our great neediness. We have served him in the flesh. He wants to fill us. He calls us to absolute surrender. He wants our measly five loaves of absolute surrender that is imperfect. He wants our lump of clay to be yielded. It is he who takes the measly five loaves and feeds a multitude. It is he who takes the lump of clay and forms it into a beautiful vessel for his special use. Our job is just to be willing. Yes Lord. Of him is our fruitfulness. Unless the Lord builds a house they labor in vain who build it.
December 31, 2007 at 6:21 am
I’ve recently left a church that their vision was to reach the mainstream or be “seeker-friendly”. In the midst of that, the message of true repentance was lost. The senior pastor had an affiar with a much younger congregant and mis-used church funds.
His cry was for the church to be loving and forgiving all the while never truly repenting for his sin. Some folks left, some stayed. Lack of true teaching divided this church family. Repentance has to be a key part of today’s churches message.
December 31, 2007 at 9:06 am
pshdsa, what you said is so true and so beautiful. Thank you for blogging that blessful reply.
My heart aches for those who claim to know our Lord and Saviour but fear man and deny His Truths. Thank God that He always raises up His servants in each generation to speak His Truth for His Bride, the true chruch. John MacArthur is one of those servants.
We all need to pray for all of God’s true servants that they stay strong in our Lord and also for those who are self-decieved to hungry and thirst for the real God and not a god made by men to make man content about their rebellious ways against the True God.
December 31, 2007 at 11:10 am
The person who wrote about the poor spiritual environment of the churches in America is precisely on the money. For example, there are seventeen different flavors of Baptist in America, which mostly believe from the extreme of each other. The Free-Will Baptist church goers are the absolute opposite than let us say the Reform Baptist. One group is basically Arminian with Pelagius ideas and the other is Calvinistic with the belief of the true doctrine of a Sovereign God and the Doctrine of Grace.
I live in Southern Oklahoma with many different churches within my area. With 140 churches within this area, whereas one would figure that one would preach a belief in a Sovereign God and teach the absolute truth of scriptures? Well guess again! A majority are concerned about numbers, money and the buildings. Some want to be like the Pentecostal/charismatic, whereas they want the liveliness of jiggled wiggled emotions and falseness of using a man centered gospel and using presto-chango….. The falseness and existentialistic esoteric views of scripture within the modern church overall within my area is apprehensible and appalling to say the least! I have had church members to inform me that doctrine and scripture means nothing and their church does not need it; and it is the feelings of the spirit that floats through the pews are all that matters, which makes our haaaiiiirrrrrr stand-up. How sad!
I enjoy men like Pastor MacArthur, Pastor Paul Washer, and Pastor David Harrell and their boldness of the truth. However, most within my area are like those houcs-pocus TV evangelist and their eisegesisical views of God, Jesus and the scriptures.
I pray that American will turn away from this perfidiousness and rapacious views of scripture…..
Jesus is Lord
Jeff
December 31, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Dear Jeff (aka LumpyMeatLoaf),
I too live in an area of spiritual starvation. Plenty of churches, but very little resemble the early Church. Most are concerned with things contrary to what they should be concerning themselves with. That’s why I’m grateful for the internet. It’s a way to still hear sound biblical teaching in spite of the conditions around us. (And blogs like this not only make us aware of the deception that’s out there, but they also provide encouragement knowing that you’re not the only one out there who feels this way).
Check out my website at http://www.reformationnation.com/ for great sermons from great Bible teachers. You can stream them or download them to your computer all for FREE! These sermons have helped me more than I can say.
January 4, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I appreciate all the love that Billy Graham expresses, but what he neglects to say and what John MacArthur seems to understand that the others do not is that one cannot truly understand or embrace the love of God without first recognizing the great discrepancy between God’s perfection and man’s sinfulness. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, all humans have been born sinful and imperfect and are in desperate need of a savior. The greatness of God’s love is found in the fact that there is no way that man could save himself or make a way to heaven. God had to make a way and that way is in Christ alone. No religion or system of works can save man, only a relationship of faith in Christ’s redeeming power can do that. God’s love does not mean that he accepts no matter the condition of our hearts, our beliefs or our behavior. He saves us from our guilty hearts, wrong beliefs, and sinful behavior. That is where the love truly lies–in bringing us to Him, to the truth and to freedom in it.
What John says may seem to be judgmental and exclusive, but honestly, it is a miracle and a wonder that God is so loving to make a way for us at all. How many perfect beings do you know that would die an excruciating death in place of someone who has personally sinned against and rejected him? Only a perfectly loving God could and would do that and we had no right to demand salvation from our sins in the first place. Praise God that there is a way at all!
January 13, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Amen Jennifer - u r right on. People like the priest say, “God is love and a loving God would not send people to hell”. Well that is why we have a choice - to have love you have to choose, it has to be of free will otherwise it’s rape. God is love - in fact He loves us so much He Himself came down from heaven in the humble form of man and suffered separation from the Father by taking our sins upon Himself - there is no love greater than this - and for these people to deny that…well we need to pray they repent and speak the truth of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, our Lord and our God.
January 22, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Our web filter blocks YouTube. Can someone post these on GodTube instead? Thanks.
January 23, 2008 at 8:59 am
Dear Matthew,
I do not possess the videos on my PC so I cannot upload them to Godtube. If anyone else on here can, and is kind enough to to so, please post the links here when you do.
My only other suggestion is to tweak your web filter or try using someone elses compter to watch the videos.
- The Pilgrim
January 26, 2008 at 12:27 pm
[...] Posted by Job on January 26, 2008 A comparison between John MacArthur, a Catholic Priest, Joel Osteen and Billy Graham. [...]
January 31, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.” Amos 8:11-12 [KJV]
Warm greetings to you, Mr. John MacArthur ~
A Canadian brother told me of these videos and I thank you kindly for your upright service to the God of heaven (Jesus Christ the Lord); this because you contended earnestly for the Faith once delivered unto the saints. I agree that it was a remarkable “Window of Opportunity” that the LORD opened up and you spoke the truth unto possibly tens of millions of Americans watching Larry King that night. Right on!
I’ve no doubt that Almighty God rescued me out of the worlds largest false-church (Roman Catholicism) and that He has effectively called me out as one of His elect, predestinated children. Those wolves-in-sheep’s clothing on Larry King’s program are “blind leaders of the blind” and our Master told us where they be headed, The Ditch (i.e., everlasting destruction).
Be encouraged in the power and might of the living GOD, sir, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! and He’s coming back one day with great glory.
Farewell.
Respectfully,
Billy Hoffmann
Storm Warning! ministry
Merritt, Missaukee County, northern Michigan
North American Union (NAU)
February 29, 2008 at 7:57 am
It is so sad how churches in America today seem to be in such apostasy. I thank God for preachers like John MacArthur, who will stand up for the inerrant truth of the Word of God. The Word is clear that if you do not turn to Christ alone for salvation by faith alone through grace alone, you will be in hell for eternity. That is a precious doctrine that is the very center of the message of the Bible. And to reject that or to say “I don’t know…” as Osteen did, is sheer ignorance of the Bible. Even worse than that, they show just how deeply they have been blinded by satan.
We live in a world where the priority of the preaching of the Word is being diminished by churches daily! This is no time for diminished preaching. If anything, it is time that we have MORE preaching. And not the fluffy, feel-good garbage from Osteen. It’s time preachers everywhere returned to Biblical, exegetical preaching. The task of the pastor is to teach the Bible and tell what it says. If you refuse to do that, you are usurping the Lordship of Christ over His church. It really is a question of authority. I don’t have the right to speak to the church when I stand behind that sacred desk. Only God has that right. And when I step out of the bounds of Scripture when I preach, I can no longer say “this is what God says.”
What saddens me even more is that the preaching of the Word has been so watered down that the non-elect can’t even reject the Gospel! God help us. It’s time to get into a revival of the Bible once again. No great movement of God ever came through dialogue. All the great movements of the Holy Spirit (true movements, not false ones like the Azusa Street Revival for example) came from the PREACHING of the Word. It’s time we got back to our Biblical heritage. We preach the Word because of the dangerous times we’re in. As Scripture says, “how shall they hear without a preacher?”
Truly the time of the end is near when we see things like this becoming more and more prevalent. Even so, come Lord Jesus!
Michael Wilhite
Pastor, Limestone Baptist Church
Bedford, IN
http://www.limestonebc.com
February 29, 2008 at 8:18 am
Dear Pastor Wilhite:
Everything you said is exactly why this blog is in existence.
When you get a chance you may want to check out the five-part post on Faith vs Works.
You may also enjoy this short test.
Thanks for stopping by and thank you for your comments.
Never Compromise!
- The Pilgrim
May 21, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Brent left the following comment on this same post over at reformation Nation. I thought I’d copy and paste it here for your edification:
I bought a Joel Osteen book when I heard of his popularity. Some friends in my church told me about some concerns in his teaching and to read with caution. After seeing this video, I will not even open it. In every video you see here you see men who know the truth of God’s word and they are afraid to share it because of fear of unpopularity. All except Macarthur. “To let someone perish in a false system is the most unloving thing you can do” That’s a Macarthur comment. Some consider him too harsh at times. The problem is that his ideas don’t come from his own understanding, they come from above. Stand firm, and thank God for John’s bravery.
Thanks Brent.
- The Pilgrim