Pastor John MacArthur has rebuked popular Bible teacher Beth Moore, criticised Donald Trump's spiritual advisor Paula White as "a heretic", and admonished any other Christians who support the notion of women preachers, in an extraordinary rebuke at the 'Truth Matters Conference', held at his Grace Community Church in California last week.
MacArthur, who is this year celebrating the 50<sup>th anniversary of his preaching ministry, said: "I think the Church is caving in to women preachers. Just the other day the same thing happened with Paula White. A whole bunch of leading evangelicals endorsed her new book. She's a heretic and a prosperity preacher, three times married. What are they thinking?"
Televangelist MacArthur also leads Grace Community Church, CA.
The preacher's comments came during a panel discussion when the topic of Beth Moore came up. Moore is a popular evangelical author, and founder of Living Proof Ministries.
When asked to comment on Moore, MacArthur said: "Go home! There is no case that can be made biblically for a woman preacher. Period. Paragraph. End of discussion."
During the discussion he also added, "Just because you have the skill to sell jewelry on the TV sales channel doesn't mean you should be preaching. There are people who have certain hawking skills, natural abilities to sell, they have energy and personality and all of that. That doesn't qualify you to preach."
Explaining that the notion of women preachers was "profoundly troubling" to him, he said: "The #MeToo movement again is the culture reclaiming ground in the Church. When the leaders of evangelicalism roll over for women preachers, the feminists have really won the battle."
He added, "The primary effort in feminism is not equality. They don't want equality. That's why 99 percent of plumbers are men. They don't want equal power to be a plumber. They want to be senators, preachers, congressmen, president. The power structure in a university, they want power, not equality and this is the highest location they can ascend to that power in the evangelical church and overturn what is clearly scriptural. So I think this is feminism gone to Church. This is why we can't let the culture exegete the Bible."
He later spoke about the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and its passing of Resolution 9 - "On Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality" - earlier this summer. He said, "When the Southern Baptists met in June and they passed resolution 9 and they said intersectionality and critical theory are useful tools in interpreting the Bible, that was a watershed moment for that entire movement because if the culture has the right to interpret the Bible they will interpret the Bible and liberalism will take over."
"This is an evidence that they are allowing the culture to interpret the Scripture. A couple weeks after that there was a panel discussion of Southern Baptist leaders who said there should never be another [Bible] translation committee without a Latino, an African American and a woman on it. Translation of the Bible? How about somebody who knows Greek and Hebrew."
"This is not a minor issue. When you literally overturn the clear teaching of Scripture to empower people who want power, you have given up biblical authority. This is not a small issue."
Moore appeared to respond to his comments on Monday, posting on Twitter: "I did not surrender to a calling of man when I was 18 years old. I surrendered to a calling of God. It never occurs to me for a second to not fulfill it. I will follow Jesus - and Jesus alone - all the way home. And I will see His beautiful face and proclaim, worthy is the Lamb!"
She added, "Here's the beautiful thing about it & I mean this with absolute respect. You don't have to let me serve you. That gets to be your choice. Whether or not I serve Jesus is not up to you. Whether I serve you certainly is. One way or the other, I esteem you as my sibling in Christ."
