Apprising Ministries is extremely pleased to point our readers to the following message we came across by Phil Johnson of Pyromaniacs, who is also Executive Director of the Grace to You ministry of Dr. John MacArthur. In it Johnson says:

Now first let me say at the beginning that I do believe the issue of the nature of the atonement is a far more important question than most of the narrow questions people like to debate about surrounding the extent of the atonement. And there are plenty of wrong teachings about the nature of the atonement floating around the evangelical world…

I hope we would all agree that Christ’s death was a vicarious, penal satisfaction. He literally paid the price for our sins. He bore the wrath of God on our behalf. He took what we deserve and He freely gives us blessings that only He deserves. And we who are united with Him are untied with Him in such a way that His death paid the price of our sins and His righteousness now covers us like a garment of absolute perfection. I hope we would all agree on that, whether you’re a Calvinist, an Arminian, or one of those people who thinks, naively, that you can hover somewhere in between…

I warn you now that you may not like everything I have to say about this issue today. But I would advise all of you, Calvinists and Arminians alike, to gain some of your understanding of these complex issues by reading the historical literature on this subject, rather than by simply tuning into Internet debates on this issue. I’m a little weary of those overzealous Calvinists on the Internet who treat everything as simplistically as possible. Always trying to outdo everyone to see who can adopt the highest form of High Calvinism. And as a result, and you can actually see this trend if you watch Calvinist discussions on the Internet.

This is great advice and so the reader is encouraged to carefully examine this teaching by Phil Johnson on particular atonement. You need to understand that with the paralyzing poison of semi-pelagianism killing The Idol of Evangelicalism, and the postliberal Gnostic cult of the amorphous the Emerging Church aka Emergent Church, now morphing into Emergence Christianity, swallowing up the American Christian Church, in our time this will be a very critical issue.

With Satan’s seducing spirits mounting their dastardly attacks on the Biblical doctrines of grace through their doctrines of demons the genuine Christian is going to need to know how to defend a proper view of the atonement. And you can begin by reading this article right here.