Pastore: Recently, Dr. Jerry Falwell passed away, as well as Dr. D. James Kennedy. There are articles asking, “Where’s the next generation of the Christian leaders?” The past generation of leadership, of which you would be a part, where those that established the conservative Christian movement if you will…. Talk to me about what you’re trying accomplish and what you see from your perspective on Christian leadership and the next generation of Christian leaders and what it is they’re going to have to contend with.

MacArthur: First of all, I want to say that it doesn’t depend on me. Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” I’m not really worried about whether He can pull that off or not. The Lord buries His workers and His work goes on. It’s like taking your hand out of a bucket of water. There’s no hole. God knows what the future is. He’s established the future. That’s from the divine perspective. We rest in that.

On the human side, we serve. We are slaves of Jesus Christ. We’re His doulos, His slaves. In fulfilling that, we understand that everything in the life of the church comes down to spiritual leadership. It comes down to the impact that people are going to have. So, our view at the Master’s College and Seminary is to train people who are influencers. The way you influence, I’ll make it real simple: Whoever’s got the most information at the time of the crisis is in charge. Simple enough. We want our students to have the most biblical information for whatever crisis may come. We want them to virtually master what the Bible teaches, its theological truths, its propositional truths, its concepts. We want them to know God in a personal and intimate way—so that from a spiritual standpoint and biblical worldview standpoint they’ve got the most information, they can step into the issue. It’s not about personality as such, it’s not about Type-A personalities. It’s about being able to speak to the issues of the time biblically and be the instrument of God in that regard.

Pastore: Apply that to our two greatest threats. Externally, we’ve got the threat from radical Islam. Internally, it is secularism….

MacArthur: Of course, the only antidote to error is truth. The only thing, borrowing the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 10, that smashes the fortresses of error is the truth. Now let’s get personal on this: If we want to stop Islam, there’s only one thing that can transform a Muslim. That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. On the opposite side of that, we can’t agree with Tony Campolo who says Muslims are basically better Christians than Christians. We ought to acknowledge that and embrace them. That’s not true. That will lead us into real disaster. We can only confront error with the truth, we do it lovingly, compassionately, but boldly.