John MacArthur and the Messianic Jew
The Rest of the Story
By
James Scott Trimm
As I have said, I have been in this movement for a long, long, time. Not long after I became a believer in Messiah, in the 1980’s, I was reading a book by John F. MacArthur Jr. and came across this passage about his interaction with a Jewish believer in Messiah:
I can recall a brilliant young man, a Jew, who had been a professor of economics at UCLA. After five years of teaching, he had dropped out and became a surfer. He wondered into a Charismatic bookstore, and somebody told him about Jesus Christ. He became a Christian and somehow came to our church. I met with him at 6:00 AM every Tuesday morning for eight months to disciple him. I gave him books to read and did my best to reach out and show him love. It was a very crucial time for him because his family had bitterly disowned him as Jewish families often do when one of their members opts out of the Jewish faith.
One day he came to me and said, “John, I really love you, but I just want you to know that I am now going to another church—a Charismatic one.” I asked him why, and he explained that it had nothing to do with doctrine. It was just that “they really love me over there, and I like the feeling.”
Apparently working with me on a one-to-one basis was not enough. He needed the fellowship of the group, and he had not found the kind he wanted in our church.
(The Charismatics- A Doctrinal Perspective; 1978 by John F. MacArthur, Jr. pages 201-202)
Upon reading this, I immediately recalled the “About the Author” material from the back cover of David Stern’s Messianic Jewish Manifesto:
DAVID H. STERN was born in Los Angeles in 1935, the great-grandson of one of the city’s first twenty Jews. He earned a Ph.D. in economics at Princeton University and was a professor at UCLA, mountain-climber, co-author of a book on surfing, and owner of health-food stores. In 1972 he came to faith in Yeshua. …
Yes, the Jewish believer who studied every morning for eight months with John MacArthur, before finding his path elsewhere, was none other than Messianic Jewish theologian David Stern.
Stern went on to become not only the author of Messianic Jewish Manifesto, but was translator of the Jewish New Testament and Complete Jewish Bible and author of the Jewish New Testament Commentary.
I called David Stern in the early 90’s and asked him about the reference in MacArthur’s book, and he said “Ahhh… you found the hidden reference.”
So now you know, the rest of the story.
Donations in April have been very, very low. This is common each year with tax time taking a bite out of people’s pocket books. Unfortunately, our expenses have not decreased during the tax season.
The last two years have been a real trial for us, and the last two months especially so. As you all probably know, our lives have never been the same since my wife returned home from a nearly two month hospitalization and septic shock in 2018.
Then recently in October 2020 my wife was hospitalized for two weeks and and had two surgeries beginning October 9th. She was sent home with a antibiotic resistant infection, under home health care with I.V. antibiotics at home, with visiting nurses. Not long after we got home, we both started having Covid-19 symptoms (mine were only mild), and we both tested positive for Covid-19 (we survived).
Then in late February we were caught in the Texas Snowpocalypse (See that story here)
Just a few days ago my wife was given some follow up tests after her October 2020 hospitalization, and now she has a dilated kidney. They are doing more tests to determine how serious it is.
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