The Master's Seminary

And I remember as after listening to that sermon, I said, Lord, if I could learn how to preach something like that, I'll give my life to it.

And that set a trajectory to go to the Master's Seminary.

And what I appreciate about my time there is that from beginning in, the whole curriculum is really built on being an expositor, opening up God's word, And and so, you know, John MacArthur is known for sometimes taking a long time through the text.

I think I got there.

And, uh, I was just very confused, and, uh, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

And I really cut my teeth, uh, at a church, a very dear church that was more in the s- in the tradition of John MacArthur and the Master's Seminary, and I'm always grateful for them and for Dr. MacArthur from a distance.

Because he taught me and demonstrated to me that we can work through the Bible in order, you know, lectio continua, and we should care about the words of the Bible, and of course, the word of God as a whole.

But, uh, that grammatical-historical exegesis and, and, uh, verse by verse exposition of scripture was new, and it was enlightening to me.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, well, the reason I ask, and if there's a little bit more details, I'm curious because I have a friend who is close friends with several people at the Master's Seminary, MacArthur's place.

Apparently, what I was told was that not very long before his death, he gave permission for the fathers to be read.

Apparently there was not permission for them to be read.

they handled them, you

know, with respect, but also with humor and a kind of light touch.

Well, it was interesting because a few people have already started heading in the Catholic direction at Master's Seminary.

And I know that, and I'm sure that comes as no surprise to you.

So when Phil approaches this issue, he's addressing Christian nationalism.

He recognizes that there's many within even his own congregation and within Master's Seminary that would disagree with him.

He mentions a paper that a student had just brought up.

But he addresses Christian nationalism, and he calls it, and specifically at the end of his address, he calls it a dangerous issue.

Yeah, you know, my husband reminded me the other day, we were talking, you know, oftentimes because of just the nature of this ministry, there are some heavy things that we deal with, some heavy things that come my way.

And I'm very thankful for a husband that actually went to the Master's Seminary.

And I can go to him and say, hey, what do you think about this? Or how should I respond to this? Or what do you think of XYZ? And I'll admit, sometimes there are circumstances that come my way.

And in my flesh, I feel like that's not fair.

And I've just told you, I'm not a covenantalist, but I do think that there's theologically value to what they're saying.

That's why we here are very odd duck at Master Seminary.

We're reformed.

We're reformed.

Now, we didn't say Christian nationalism in 2011, okay? Uh, we said-- we used other terms.

We were talking about really the old school religious right, and there was a lot of critiques coming out of Grace Community Church and Master Seminary about the religious right, things like they're trying to f- you know, find salvation.

Uh, I, I kid you not, I, I heard people there saying that they were, they were looking for salvation from the government and not from, from Christ, not from the gospel.

And so, um, it, it-- At the time, they would've been talking about people like Jerry Falwell, who had deceased in the fair- fairly recently at that point, uh, Pat Robertson.

That's right, Dr. Nathan Busenitz.

He was at Master's Seminary.

He has been preaching regularly at Grace Community Church, and they made a most wonderful decision.

Chris Hamilton, he's the chair of the elder board, he made the announcement, and, uh, Nate Busenitz received a hearty standing ovation.