john macarthur, effective in modern media

Tim Challies captures why John MacArthur is so effective. He was on Larry King Live with a bunch of persons talking about the new reality show, God or the Girl, in which several young men struggle with a calling to the priesthood. He doesn't even waste time with the compulsory, well all of my best friends are Catholic, I respect Catholics, Priests help old ladies accross the street, we have a lot in common with the Catholic church historically, blah blah freaking blah blah, modern polite required bs, he just jumps right into it 1Timothy with this: (and this is coppied from the CNN transcript)

MACARTHUR: "Yes, well I think from a biblical standpoint we need to readdress this issue on a couple of fronts. Number one, according to the New Testament, you can't be a pastor unless you are the husband of one wife and have proven that you're able to manage your household well.

"The apostle Paul also said that one of the false doctrines, he called doctrines of demons, 1 Timothy 4, is forbidding to marry. There is no biblical basis for this whatsoever. You can't use Jesus as an example. He's God in human flesh.

There is no biblical foundation. In fact, Paul said it's better to marry than to burn. So, you put a priest in an impossible situation, then stick him in a confessional all day to listen to people reciting all their sexual sins and I think that's just way over the top if you expect somebody to live a pure life with that kind of temptation thrown at them.

KING: You say a pastor should be married, you mean someone comes out of seminary they have to be married or they can't be a pastor?

MACARTHUR: Well the bottom -- yes, the bottom line is there could be exceptions. You could have a widower. You could have somebody who did never marry. But the qualification for a pastor is the husband of one wife, a one woman man.

KING: So you think the idea that even though it's a discipline of the church it's a bad idea?

MACARTHUR: Yes, I don't think it's a biblical idea at all and it came, as Father Manning noted, because priestly families were building fortunes and in 1079 when that became law at the Lateran (ph) Council, it was because Rome started seeing that money was being kept in these massive families. If you don't have any children, you can't pass on anything."

When you're a talking head on TV and you aren't given enough time for the required BS statement about how tolerant and accepting you are before you criticize anything MacArthur just goes for the one two punch. It just makes you wonder if the Holy Spirit isn't helping out a bit.

God please give me the grace to be that effective in the media if it is ever required so that I am not a bumbling idiot.

Tim's coverage of this is a bit better than mine and I also want to remind you that he will be covering the Together for the Gospel Conference.