John MacArthur

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John MacArthur, is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California and has been since February 9, 1969. He also currently serves as the president of The Master's College in Newhall, California and The Master's Seminary in Sun Valley, California. The fifth cousin of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, MacArthur attended Bob Jones University before transferring to Los Angeles Pacific College, which is now known as Azusa Pacific University (Biblebb.com, 2011). He later obtained his Masters of Divinity from Biola University's Talbot Theological Seminary in La Mirada, California.
MacArthur is a well-known having preached thousands of sermons and authoring or editing 150 books (Powlinson, 2003), but what about the man behind Biblical Counseling? Biblical Counseling lets God speak through His Word, and to handling the word of truth rightly (2 Tim. 2:15). It confronts sin as the root issue. It deals with issues stemming from having unresolved sin as the core basis for the struggle is going through. God works in Biblical Counseling though His sovereignty, holiness, justice, kingly authority, and power in our lives The Biblical Counselor takes steps to look at the sin issues in the counselee’s life and points them to the heart of the matter. The greatest counselor we have and it implies scriptures to show how sin could be causing the issues in the counselee’s life and struggles. (Powlinson, 2003)
It follows the Bible and seeks to minister the love of the true and living God, whose love deals with sin and produces obedience (1 John). So what is the mystery behind the man regarding Biblical Counseling? If you were to ask what MacArthur was known for, Theology would probably be the first answer that someone would...

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...n pure psychology methods. Upon reading the research the idea I perceived was that all issues no matter what they are can be managed through proper interpretation of the Bible. Biblical Counseling can be done by layman and pastors in the church body. Training can come in the form of the Biblical Expository teaching but I could not find what he believes in a formal training. Meaning, he does support the certification for Nouthetic Counseling, but with proper Biblically training laymen can counsel.
In regard to the views that he has concerning Christian psychologists and non-Christian psychology: “At the present time there is no acceptable Christian psychology that is markedly different from non-Christian psychology. It is difficult to imply that we function in a manner that is fundamentally distinct from our non-Christian colleagues" (MacArthur, 2001, p. 145).

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