Full Episode 034: A Conversation with John MacArthur - Part 2 | Inside The Epicenter

John MacArthur provides insight on common ground, compassion and the Truth of Scripture.

In Part 2, John MacArthur continues his conversation with Joel C. Rosenberg and Dr. Carl Moeller. He speaks about his interview with millennial conservative and Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro, shares his thoughts on the importance of finding common ground in any relationship, and explains compassion's role in leading others to Christ.

Episodes 33 & 34 of Inside The Epicenter with Joel C. Rosenberg were recorded in Los Angeles, CA, at The MacArthur Center for Expository Preaching:

Did you miss Part 1? If so, you can watch it here: Full Episode 033: A Conversation With John MacArthur - Part 1.

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Transcript: 

- [Narrator] Coming up on this episode of Inside The Epicenter.

- [John] See this is the whole essence of what the church is. It's not about one group of people, it's not about one ethnic group. It's about all in Christ, Jew, Gentile bond free, male, female, all one in Christ.

- [Carl] We're back again, you ever sit in a room like this, and you see superstars around and I'm just so grateful, Joel, that we're actually able to be here with one of my spiritual superstars, one of my heroes of the faith, John MacArthur.

- [Joel] So we're in this center and particularly in a room, that you use for podcasting that is got ancient, well, maybe not quite ancient, but some of the earliest translations of the Bible, you've got, tell us a little bit about this room and then we're gonna get into our topic of why did Ben Shapiro, ask you of any American even chuckle to sit down and talk to him? We're gonna get to that in a moment. Just describe this room and because I think this is a microcosm this room.

- [John] Yeah.

- [Joel] Of your whole life's work.

- [John] So this generation of young people these millennials, pride themselves on their disconnect from history. They pride themselves on the fact that they've arrived on the planet and they have an identity that is so isolated from anything in the past or anybody else, and this is what they're proud about. And it's very hard in that kind of environment, to bring the full richness of the past into their lives. So what we wanna do, even with the guys that come this is at the Master Seminary, we want them to understand when they step into this seminary, they're stepping into history, they're stepping into a heritage, that we didn't invent the church, we didn't invent expository preaching, we didn't invent systematic theology, or biblical theology or sound doctrine. We are just the next guys with the baton in the long run toward the final glory of Christ in the end, and we're trying to take the baton to this generation. So we want them to have a sense of history, so we created this room, they call it the MacArthur Center and it's really the museum of expositional history.

- [Joel] And we'll take some pictures and post in the show notes.

- [John] Yeah.

- [Joel] So people can see.

- [John] So on the ceiling are basically reproductions of famous paintings of all great preachers through history, starting with our Lord, speaking to the doctors in the temple when he was 12 years old, and coming all the way through history so that they understand this is sort of like, the cloud of witnesses over their heads. You're taking the baton from some great monumental sort of Mount Everest in church history. You have to understand the seriousness of soberness of that, and us in this little booth here, are the tools of exposition, the ones that I've used through the years, some of the greatest things that have ever been written like "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" over my left shoulder, and original edition the first Bible ever printed in Scotland, that's it right there, the original King James first edition, and some of the commentaries and some of the writing, some of the old books that these men used, that we just want to put weight on this challenge of being an expositor. And you understand that you are in a long line of men who basically not only gave their lives living, but gave their lives many of them as martyrs, for the sake of proclaiming the word of God. So this is a sort of a tribute to the history of expositors and some of the ones who touched my life in special ways, Jim Boyce, my friend R.C. Sproul, Dr. Charles Feinberg, and there's a little picture of me preaching in Calvin's Cathedral. That was the night that they introduced the French edition of the "MacArthur Study Bible," and it was first introduced in Calvin's Cathedral.

- [Joel] Wow.

- [John] And I was preaching in his pulpit and somebody said, it was the first time that someone had preached a message on the authority of Scripture in 100 years in Calvin's Cathedral.

- [Joel] Oh, my gosh.

- [John] So there's just a lot of sort of history.

- [Joel] Speak of the great cloud of witnesses. I don't know of course exactly how it works in heaven, but you almost have to picture the Lord bringing Calvin over to open up a portal. Say just for a moment, I just want you to see that.

- [John] Well, if that does happen.

- [Joel] Who knows.

- [John] if it does happen, we just want these guys to know these are the ones that are looking down, checking their surroundings.

- [Carl] Right.

- [Joel] So this is fascinating to me, and it's an interesting way to begin this particular podcast, because you had a fascinating conversation, with one of the leading millennial voices in the United States, Orthodox Jewish, modern Orthodox, Ben Shapiro. Not a believer in, Jesus as Messiah, respectful of Christians fascinating voice commentator of what's going on in our society today. Now it's not surprising to me that a leading conservative or just media voice, would wanna talk to a leading American Evangelical, but that tends to happen because they wanna talk about politics. If a person chooses you to put on their program, you're very googleable, you're gonna know well.

- [John] There's no mystery.

- [Joel] No, there's no mystery.

- [Carl] An open book.

- [Joel] You're not here to talk about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. You're not here to talk about the politics, you're here to talk about the Bible, about Jesus, about the gospel, you do it lovingly and winsomely, but you can't sit with you and not have that conversation. So if you're Jewish or at least whatever your faith or lack of faith, if somebody invited you on the program, they just need to know what they're gonna get, and it'd be impossible to thank you. So Ben Shapiro, I love Ben and I don't know him personally, I've been on the program, talk about how that got started. What literally happened that he invited you to have you on the program? And then let's get into, why do you think that happened? And then we'll get into the actual conversation.

- [John] What happened is that his entire Daily Wire, is not far from here.

- [Joel] Okay.

- [John] So I was cheap.

- [Carl] Regulations and so forth.

- [John] Yeah, but no, I mean, not only are they close here.

- [Carl] Okay.

- [John] But there were number of people who worked at the Daily Wire, who came to Grace Church. That played a part in it, because there were times when they said, we've talked to Ben and we wish he'd have you. So I think there was some personal connections at that level, but yeah, no, he had to get past the reality that he was gonna go into the lion's den in a certain sense, because he was gonna hear things from me that he didn't believe.

- [Joel] Which again, Larry King in his day would have Billy Graham on.

- [John] He had me on so many times.

- [Joel] Okay, there we go, but that's a little bit different from a keeper wearing Orthodox Jewish man, because then you're getting into, the most sensitive very attention.

- [John] Larry King by his own confession was an agnostic, but Ben was a true believer in Judaism. But anyway, the bottom line, I think is what he said to me after the conversation.

- [Joel] Okay.

- [John] He said, you cannot know how refreshing it is, to talk to someone about the Bible, who actually knows what's in it.

- [Carl] I know, wow.

- [John] So he said, I'm weary of having conversations about the Bible with people who claim to know the Bible and don't know anything about it. I think the common ground, I think what Ben saw in a conversation with me, was that from the standpoint of ethics and morality, and virtue, and honesty, and truthfulness, and character, the Old Testament and the New Testament taught the same thing. And that was the common ground. And that's what he focused on, at the beginning of the conversation, he would say things like, when it comes to life and all of that, we believe the same things. Well, of course we do because we have the same God in the Old Testament that we have in the New Testament, He's not gonna change His character.

- [Joel] Yes, I just wanna make a point here because I have great respect for Ben, and obviously we wouldn't agree about and probably on every issue and certainly not feel logically, but common ground in our culture today, is not enough for most people. If you are come from a tribe politically.

- [John] No, I understand.

- [Joel] And philosophically, it's like a betrayal, to talk to someone and have a respectful interesting conversation, and be friendly about it even if you disagree, I'm finding that opportunity with major Muslim leaders, but some on my own even jungle tribal, how could you do that? Because they are open to having a conversation. I believe in that but.

- [John] It's an astute observation, that people are defining themselves narrower and narrower and narrower all the time. And when you talk about common ground, it's almost offensive to people. Particularly if you say you're an evangelical, how would you find common ground with a Jew? Well, that's the first thing you look for, right? I mean the Apostle Paul, when he wanted to get to the gospel with Gentiles, he went to creation, he talked about the creator because everybody has to understand that if you have an effect, you have to have a cause at least every rational person. But whenever he talked to the Jews, he talked from scripture. So I knew that there was one point of common ground, that was, what God said in the Old Testament, been confessed to believe.

- [Carl] Yes, amen

- [John] He confessed to believe, so.

- [Joel] Which is not true of every American-Jew, or every Jewish person abandoned the scriptures.

- [John] I just took Paul and the Ethiopians thing, and I just said, okay, let's go to Isaiah 53. And what amazed me was that for 20 minutes, and that's a long time and I'm like this far from his face, and 20 minutes and he doesn't move and he doesn't say anything, and it's kinda frightening thing to talk to him because he's so smart and he's so fast.

- [Carl] He's very fast.

- [John] And you don't know what's coming. And so it's like an Alzheimer's test first of all. But secondly, you're just saying, Lord you know how that works when you're having a conversation, you pick a direction and you go, and that's what you do. And, but no, I loved the conversation, he was so respectful.

- [Joel] I felt my respect for him, which was already there, but it grew in part because at this point about, sometimes you're on with interviewer, you've been on with so many over the years, and they're really not interested in your point. They're interested in making their point and they just want you to say yes or no, or you're there for.

- [John] You're absolutely right.

- [Joel] But he on his own show, he's telling you what he thinks, And he kept the same principle with you I actually wanna know what you think. I may or may not agree with you, but I will just make your case.

- [John] I think what makes Ben so effective is his confidence. He knows what he believes, you're not gonna knock him off his feet, you're not gonna confuse him, you're not gonna even convince him probably, I mean, he's locked down on what he believes, in the security of that makes him open. But my only prayer was, Lord all I can do is give him the truth. And then I gave him the book that I wrote on "The Gospel according to God," which is on Isaiah 53 has been translated into Hebrew, and it's over in Israel. They give it to the, some of the was first distributed among the military in Israel. But anyway, Isaiah 53 is pretty hard to swallow, if you're trying to reject, Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and so that's where I went and he was respectful, he loved the conversation. I think there was a connection in the friendship side of things, and if we had the opportunity, I mean, his desire in mind both was to spend more time together, but then COVID came and then they had him for Tennessee.

- [Carl] I think that something you brought up right there, just always resonates with me that we have lost the capacity it seems in so many of angelical circles to be people who respect other views. And to hear you say, he was respectful, it's wonderful, it's a great testimony, but I think your ability to step onto his ground and be respectful, I think maybe common ground is a dying place, maybe it's a slower.

- [Joel] Well it feels like, too many people generally, but even evangelicals calls have treated common ground as a capitulation of truth. That if I'm not trying to go for the juggler and the win, meaning salvation conversion right at the table, that somehow anything else, a conversation sort of wishy-washy and well, think that that can happen, right?

- [John] So this is one of the issues I think, Joel, that leads to that. We have a lot of canned gospel presentations. This is what you do, this is what you say, you throw the law in their face, and then you ask them four questions about the law, and they don't, when they say, you bind them by the law and then you offer him, Jesus, you go in with this prescribed approach. You can't find that in the Bible, every gospel conversation in the Bible starts at a different point and goes down a different path. It's your ability to find that common ground, it's your ability to stand together and walk together, to can't possibly walk together unless they're agreed, so if you're gonna get to a destination, you've got to find a pathway of agreement, at some point, you come to the fork in the road, but we have over simplified the gospel presentation so that some people can only get to the gospel one way. And we've also caused people to have almost a cantankerous attitude toward people who don't believe what they believe. And that kind of thing is completely contrary to the attitudes that we need to have, in speaking the truth in love. So love says, "I need to find a way to this man's mind and this man's heart by affirming." Even when he asked me about the president and some political questions, I knew I was saying what he would've said or something close to what he would have said. I mean, because I agree with him on so much, I don't have any trouble finding common ground with Ben Shapiro, my goodness, even politically, and economically, and even on a moral level and just a common sense level, I can listen to the guy and say, "I don't know that I've found very many things if any that I would disagree substantially with him on." So I think we have to approach people with that common ground in view, and then at some particular point, we get to the crux of the issue, which I did when I gave him Isaiah 53, and then it's in the hands of the Lord.

- [Joel] Well, this goes to another point, which is, I think that there's a sense from many too many, I can't quantify it, but that conversations with people who don't believe, are one-shot opportunities is to get as much of the gospel message as rapidly as possible, and then sort of insist on a decision. And then if they say no, or if they're offended 'cause you're doing too much, well, that's the stumbling stone of the gospel maybe. Or maybe you're not interested in having a friendship that could take years to a person. I think that's different, Jesus saying in Acts 1, you will be my witnesses. You can be a witness and not be asked every question that has ever been asked in the first moment on the witness stand. Some of that is just a relational thing and Jewish people, I will just say, feel so defensive about the crusades, about the inquisition, about most Jews are not rejecting the actual gospel because they haven't heard it. What they're rejecting is Christian-Jewish relations.

- [John] No, of course.

- [Joel] Which has either been, you don't count God's done with you, or you count and I wanna insist that you believe what I believe right this minute and nobody wants that. We tend to not respond well, with what's called contact evangelism, or it would tend to be relational and we curious for being loved.

- [John] Joel, that is life, I've been a pastor for 53 years. If I have been for 53 years, insisting on everybody around me believing what I believe, I wouldn't have been here a year.

- [Joel] You do insist, but you don't insist that day that they hear you.

- [John] Well, no, you have, even with the people in this church from the day I came here half a century, more than half a century ago, my goal just with anybody is to find the common ground to approach them somewhere where we can begin to have a friendship where we can agree, and even if I'm talking to a believer, who's got issues in his life and needs help, I wanna start where we walk together for a while, and that's how you survive half a century with the same people.

- [Joel] Hi, this Joel Rosenberg, there is nothing more powerful than prayer. We serve a prayer hearing and a prayer answering God. So if you would take a moment right now and pray, for our many partners across the Epicenter. Many of them regularly face persecution, harassment, and many, many difficulties. And your prayer could make a tremendous difference in the war against evils that face them. We know how the story ends. Let's pray to that end together.

- [Carl] Well, I think this common ground theme is so rich and so important for discussing Israel and her neighbors, right? Because Christians, Jews, and Arabs in the Land of Israel, they have centuries millennia of frictional places, and finding common places of morality or discussion, it's so crucial. It's actually essential to what we do at the Joshua Fund because we seek to bless Israel, and the neighboring countries in the Name of Jesus. You put those things together and you have to work with a common ground mentality, or it's like throwing gasoline into a fire. The potential for explosion in that sort of mix is always great.

- [Joel] I know especially with Jews and Muslims, right?

- [Carl] I know you always say, don't say explosive growth, but we see the gospel going forward, in ways that is not explosive in the sense that it's conversational and it's conversional, it's really common ground finding. Remember when Paul spoke at Mars Hill, three reactions, acceptance, this guy's a crazy person a babbler, or, hey we'll hear more about this, let's hear more. How could you hear more unless you find a place to have that conversation?

- [John] Let's see this is the whole essence of what the church is. It's not about one group of people, it's not about one ethnic group. It's about all in Christ, Jew, Gentile bond free, male, female, all one in Christ. So there's no sense in which because you're a missionary in particular to Israel that you don't get that, because you understand that to bring somebody from Israel to the knowledge of, Jesus Christ, is not all that you're interested in, it's just the focus of your life. The fact that I'm the Pastor of Grace Community Church, doesn't mean I don't care about the people some other place, I mean, that kind of narrow thinking is pretty rare. I think we all understand the body of Christ is made up of all people, tribes, tongues, and nations, and that's the picture you have in heaven and the Book of Revelation. And the fact that you focus on Israel, in this kind of political climate may bring some scorn on you as if you're isolated, but I know full well, your heart, and I know that you have no narrow view of evangelism. You understand that the world, is to be brought to the knowledge of the gospel, so that people can be saved from all nations. And that's what God is doing.

- [Joel] Traveling to Israel, but also becoming an actual citizen, and trying to put my roots down there, my wife and my kids, and two of our sons serving in the army, really caused me to spend more time thinking about what does unconditional love mean and what does it look like? Because unconditional love means, we talked about in the Joshua context, we remind people that, in Israel there's actually a law, you can't like open a soup kitchen, and invite drug addicts and prostitutes and homeless people in and say okay, sit down, we're gonna share the gospel with you, and then you can have soup. That's very American, but it's illegal in Israel. You can't do something that looks like you're exchanging of a material good with proselytization or sharing the gospel in our case. And nor should you, I'm not saying that in America, that's wrong, but I'm saying Israelite, Jews, and Arabs, and Muslims, are so sensitive to this issue, that it actually is useful to us. We believe the law is right, which is, we are just here in the food distribution area. We do it through the local churches, and the idea is we're doing it because we should care for people. It's not that we're doing social gospel and not the gospel, but we don't want someone to think you're only important to us, if you say yes to something, and then you go down this road. Jesus, didn't feed the 5,000 men and plus the women children and say, you only get your food.

- [John] No, of course.

- [Joel] If you stand in this line and you say, yes. Of course He wanted everyone to believe, but this is just one of these things, the 10 lepers, right? He healed them all, only one came back to worship Him. And only after he was shown that level of love. So I'm trying to ask myself and my team and our colleagues, how can we truly love people? Because they're worthy in God's eyes to be loved. Yes, we want something, we want them to at least hear, one of the books I loved that you wrote, dealt with this issue, if really with Paul speaking to the Corinthian Church saying, "I'm not here to use all kinds of fancy language or tricks." In fact, whatever oratorical skills he had, he was trying to get rid of, I'm just presenting the gospel in the Power of the Spirit, and I want you to believe if it's true, not because Paul was a great preacher. And you make the point there that, the churches sometimes try to do all kinds of drama and sometimes literally, or circuses, I think you use at one point people trying to do all these things, rather than believing that just love someone, tell them the gospel and the word will work. You don't have to do all kinds of things.

- [John] I think that book is titled, "Ashamed Of The Gospel."

- [Joel] "Ashamed Of The Gospel."

- [John] Yeah.

- [Joel] Not ashamed to the gospel, yeah.

- [John] Yeah, and you hate to even say, that the church could be so ashamed of the gospel, that it would try to trick people, try to fool people, try to soft sell, take out all the offensive part of the gospel, but that's exactly what's happened in pragmatism has produced that, and the pragmatic churches today are disastrous, really disastrous to the testimony of Christianity because they're full of unconverted people who are there for their own self aggrandizement, self promotion, self satisfaction, and they have very little to do with Christ, and so you have this large volume of people who go to an evangelical church and claim to be Christians who don't know Christ at all. They caused mince confusion, in terms of what is a real Christian, what is a real church, so yeah.

- [Joel] and it really helped me think a lot about what were my convictions, and then realizing that, when I look at how the church treats Israel, you have these categories, a lot of which are unhealthy. You either have people who are like, God's done with Israel and the Jewish people, and they're supersessionism, or in some category they're replacement theologians. But you have others who absolutely love Israel and they will do cartwheels and back flips, and, but don't worry, we're never gonna tell you about, Jesus because we just wanna support you politically. And I don't find either of those helpful.

- [John] No.

- [Joel] Because I don't wanna stand before the Jewish Messiah one day, and say, "Hey, I stood with my people politically, or I rejected them." I don't want either of those. But I do think this issue of Romans 1:16, and the issue of being ashamed of the gospel, either for the Jew or the Gentile, is a problem that a lot of pastors or even laypeople, but I think I see it at the higher levels struggle with how do I love a nation and a people genuinely, genuinely and want for them to know, Jesus, but not be trying to shove something down people's throats. we had a situation initial just recently, these ultra-Orthodox Family living in an ultra neighborhood were outed as missionaries. I don't know the real truth of that situation, John, but I will say nobody in their community knew they believe in Jesus. So let's say they were missionaries for a moment. What in the world are we talking about to be deceptive, to sort of dress up as an Orthodox Jew, to convince everyone that you are an Orthodox Jew, ultra-Orthodox, and that have nobody around you for decades know that you love, Jesus, and then be outed as a missionary.

- [John] What do you do?

- [Joel] What's the point of that? I don't even understand, but some people do weird things.

- [John] Yeah, I think.

- [Carl] I don't understand it.

- [John] I don't think we need to make this thing complicated. We're born again by the word of truth. We're not ashamed of the gospel, why? Because it is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew and to the Greek. So to be ashamed of the gospel, is to cut yourself off from the very power that saves. So boldness with the gospel is required, it is necessary, you can't be ashamed. On the positive side Paul says, "I'm a debtor." I mean, I owe them that, I owe them Jew or Gentile, I owe them the truthful explanation of the gospel. But I think that's always going to be framed in what we've been talking about because everywhere Paul goes, the approach he takes is different. And it's all based on some connection, some way to connect with people and even backing to the ministry of, Jesus. Jesus connected with people before he ever said anything, by touching human life at the profoundest need. And that was physical suffering. He healed people, He could have jumped off buildings, He could have cartwheeled, He could have created trees, He could have created animals in the air, He could have done all kinds of things to demonstrate divine power. But what He did was demonstrate the compassion of God. And it wasn't always tied to a gospel lecture. It just wasn't, and I think you see that in, Jesus, through his whole ministry, and in the end, when they crucified him, it was an amazing rejection of not only the message of salvation, but this massive act of compassion that had gone on, for three years and they called Him a blasphemer. So you do all that you can do, and in the end they may not accept it. But I think that was the Lord's approach, and I think you have to see that in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts as well, because the apostles go out, and what do they do? They go to the temple, but they heal somebody, and they had that same power, because it was so important to undergird this radical message with compassion, at the level that most people would feel it the most and that is in physical and human suffering. So I think if Christianity thinks that bright lights and rock and roll, are gonna take the place of compassion and love, and kindness, and tender mercies toward people, they're absolutely deceived in.

- [Joel] And it goes to this at the core, I think where your confidence comes from is the word works.

- [John] Absolutely.

- [Joel] And God Has a plan, that's going tying it back to our earlier conversation, mean not listened to this it's gonna be a Calvinist, I get that, but your view from the scriptures is, if God has a plan for someone to come into the kingdom, I don't know that about them because I'm just meeting them. So you sort of acting as though you don't know what God's sovereignly wants to do in this particular person or family's life, but you are making sure that they know that they're loved, and that they're be-friended, and because of love, you want them to know the truth of the gospel. And then the seed of that word is either gonna work or it isn't.

- [John] Right.

- [Joel] That's not because you're manipulating, that you're allying, that you're deceiving, you're trying to sneak into some community, or you're baiting them with here's some food, if you'll do this, here's some candy, if you'll say yes, and i think that's important.

- [John] That's way over simplifying the gospel. Way because the motivation to receive the gospel, is not tied to something you get, it's tied to repentance. So you eventually, you have to get there. And I think you have to get there in a way that touches the heart. You got to get there not in a way that you poor wretched, lawbreaking, sinner, you're on your way to hell, I mean, that's just so blatant, I mean, there's a time and a place for preaching in that sense. But I think that reality has to be communicated with compassion and love from your heart to the individual, so I think at that point, you trust not in your method, you trust in the truth. The gospel is the power of salvation, your begotten by the word, the truth, Peter says. So it's gotta be biblical and it's gotta be gospel and that does the work. And then it's in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

- [Carl] I feel like I've sat in a graduate seminar in the last hour.

- [Joel] Well, Carl, we are needing to wrap up unfortunately, but you wanna wrap up with any last questions

- [Carl] Sure.

- [Joel] Or comments on your own heart?

- [Carl] It does draw around this issue of Israel and what the scripture says, and what would you say today to your congregation about where Israel is now? I mean a lot has changed in the last 10 years since you talked to, Joel and things are happening, but where would you see that?

- [John] Well, first of all, I think it is an incredible, almost unparalleled apologetic for the truthfulness of scripture. Because not only does Israel look exactly like you would expect them to look, in the plan of God, they're in the land, they're back in the land, there's a movement of the gospel there. There's a bit of openness that there wasn't in the past, the word of God has made entrance. They're translating evangelical books. They're translating a "MacArthur Study Bible" into Hebrew, even though.

- [Joel] The end must be near, John.

- [John] Yeah, and then you look on the bigger side and you say, in the Book of Revelation, pictures this global one world dominating power, that literally can cancel you, so that if you don't have this mark, you're out of existence. And you read an article about digital identity, and all of a sudden you see it one day and it's off the internet the next day, so you know it's true. Once you get a digital identity and that's how you buy food, and that's how you get your bank account and that's how you get medication and that's how you purchase anything, and they turn you off you're canceled that sounds like Revelation 13, exactly. So I would just say in the big sense of things, everything, everything is in the place that would appear to fit the scenario of the Book of Revelation, with the realization that the church is raptured prior to the outbreak of all of that. So we gotta be near the rapture of the church.

- [Carl] Well, I hope so.

- [John] Joel had enough.

- [Carl] Yeah.

- [Joel] Yeah, well, I feel like Paul, there's more to do so if God will give us the strength and the energy to be a blessing, to those who don't know, Jesus in the Middle East, as well as a strength and encourage the church to fulfill the great commission.

- [John] And keep this in mind, and this was helpful for people to remember. The kingdom advances one soul at a time. It's not national conversion, it's not tribal conversion, it's not even family conversion, it's one soul at a time that the kingdom advances. And so we need to find ways personally, to proclaim the gospel to Jewish people, not just in Israel, but anywhere and everywhere as well as anyone else.

- [Carl] That's right, yeah.

- [Joel] It's atheists, it's quite a challenge.

- [Carl] Well, it's been quite an amazing conversation, John, thank you so much. Joel, thank you.

- [John] What a blessing.

- [Carl] Yeah, and thanks to everyone listening, we feel like this has been an intimate conversation with John MacArthur and we're very, very grateful for the time that you've spent with us. So God bless you.

- [Joel] Amen.

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