Exposing the Hellacious Lies Advanced by Phil Johnson’s in Interview with Justin Peters about John MacArthur’s Trip to Assassination Site of Martin Luther King Jr.
Sunday, March 7, 2021 at 3:04PM Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 PM. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 PM. The photo below shows King laying in his pool of blood immediately after he was shot.
Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You and a pastor in John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church, did an interview with Justin Peters on February 16, 2021. It covered three subjects: MacArthur’s wealth, MacArthur’s story about his trip to the assassination site of Martin Luther King Jr., and MacArthur’s past teaching on the mark of the beast.
I covered the first subject about MacArthur’s wealth in this article. I also promised a second article about the trip to Memphis, TN where King was murdered.
Phil Johnson Covers Up John MacArthur’s Extraordinary Compensation & Lifestyle in Devious Statement to The Christian Post & Interview with Justin Peters
Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 8:16AM
On Tuesday of this week [Feb. 16], Phil Johnson was interviewed by his friend, Justin Peters. Peters is a devotee of MacArthur’s. He has spoken at The Truth Matters Conference sponsored by Johnson. He also speaks with MacArthur at conferences like the upcoming G3 Conference. Peters is never going to ask hard questions or probe deeply for the truth. He believes what he is told as is evident throughout the interview.
The following transcript is from minutes 34:25-35:26 and 35:57-41:45. It covers Johnson’s comments about MacArthur’s three homes. This was a new development. MacArthur and Johnson were forced to address the issue because people were reading Roys’ article.
In another place during the interview, Johnson addresses MacArthur’s trip to Memphis after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is full of spin and falsehoods. I will address that in the future.
The transcript below is verbatim and complete. Nothing has been added or deleted. In sections, I’ve added comments that expose the hellacious lies advanced by Phil Johnson in his diabolic attempt to cover up for John MacArthur.
Phil Johnson’s Interview by Justin Peters
February 16, 2021
Minutes 50:38-1:00:26
Peters: Another controversy that is a couple years old now but I figured since I had this opportunity with you. You know back in 2019 much was made of this article that came out, I don’t even remember the name of the person who wrote it but anyway, it said that John MacArthur’s claim of being with Charles Evers, who was the brother of Medgar Evers who had been killed I think back in 63.
Comment: Peters says, “Back in 2019 much was made of this article that came out.” That’s for sure! It was written by Paige Rogers for The NOA Report after 3 months of careful research. In it civil rights leader, Charles Evers told John MacArthur to stop lying about all kinds of things including his fake narrative about being friends, being in his Jackson, Mississippi office when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, and going with Evers to Memphis that night.
Exclusive: Iconic civil rights Leader tells Pastor John MacArthur to stop lying
by Paige Rogers
February 4, 2019
##
Peters: But anyway, in 1968, John says that he was with Charles Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, not far from where I am from, and the night that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and that then they drove up from Jackson to Memphis, which was about a three, three and half hour drive. And so within a few hours John said he was there at the Lorraine Motel and saw even where James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King, Jr. So anyway, it is a story he’s told and some people have tried to discredit that. So is there anything regarding that controversy you want to address?
Comment: It has been repeatedly and thoroughly proven that John MacArthur was NOT with Charles Evers in Jackson, Mississippi and Charles Evers did NOT go with John MacArthur to Memphis, Tennessee at any time and certainly not the night of the assassination. There are abject lies told by MacArthur from 2007-2018. Then Roger’s article came out in February 2019. Nevertheless, the lies by MacArthur and Johnson continue.
##
Johnson: Yea! Yea! I am glad you asked me about that as well because I think this doesn’t get enough publicity. That is a story John has been telling for years, that’s not something he made up in 2019 and you know suddenly that became part of his life’s tale. I’ve heard that going back years. I don’t know how public he has been with it but I knew about that for years.
Comment: Johnson is pretending that he is “glad” because it “doesn’t get enough attention.” Remember, he is performing for Peter’s audience who are comprised MacArthur devotees. MacArthur made up the story in 2007 when he was 67 years old. Not 81 years old. Johnson lies when he says, “I don’t know how public he has been with it.” Yes he does! He edited MacArthur’s biography in 2011 where the story is told. It doesn’t get any more public! He also read my article in June 2019 where I documented all seven occasions over 12 years when the story was told or written publicly.
##
Johnson: He was ministering at the time with John Perkins, who was a black civil rights leader, but more than that a minister, a gospel minister, who ministers in the black community. And John Perkins was led to Christ by John’s father, and so John spent a couple of summers, I actually don’t know every fact related to this, I don’t know if it was more than one summer, but I know he spent time going through the south, preaching the gospel in black communities with John Perkins, and um, he was there, he was in Mississippi, when Martin Luther King assassination took place. They did drive up to Memphis and stand on the balcony at the Lorraine Hotel where King was assassinated. The only thing I am not sure about, and you know I don’t trust my own memory of what happened in 1968.
Peters: Sure.
Comment: No one disputes MacArthur ministered with John Perkins in Mississippi.
Johnson avoids Peters’ assertion that “John [MacArthur] says that he was with Charles Evers in Jackson.” Nevertheless, he asserts “They did drive up to Memphis.” That is a flat out lie. Neither Evers nor Perkins made a trip to the site of the murder with MacArthur. Yet, he is sure of it! The only thing he is not sure of – when they took the trip. More lies are on the way.
##
Johnson: In fact, I was recently, I was in a marching band that did these contests and stuff, and we traveled all around, I had this vague, or I had what I thought was a vivid memory of a thing we did in 1968 or 69 in Winnipeg, Canada. And I recently had the means to look up the facts on it from some newspaper archives, and discovered in reading, rereading the news accounts of that day, that I had compressed some things in my mind that weren’t right.
Peters: We all do.
Comment: Peters’ is a stooge. Johnson is about to play the amnesia card because he knows it was impossible for MacArthur to have stood on the balcony and enter the boarding house bathroom within hours of the assassination. He attempts to provide cover for MacArthur’s lies.
##
Johnson: And I, I think it is possible that John has compressed the timeline of those events in his mind but he absolutely did go with John Perkins and his team to Memphis and stand on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, he says within hours, I think it might actually have been within 48 hours or 72 hours after the assassination. It was right afterwards and John describes how the blood stains were still on the balcony and that is a matter of historical fact.
Comment: MacArthur didn’t compress the timeline. He was emphatic about the timeline. This is what he told executive pastor Rick Holland 12 years ago in an interview for Grace Community Church.
“And Charles [Evers] was talking and a man burst through the door and said, “Martin Luther King has been assassinated.” That happened that night while I was there with Charles and John [Perkins] and some others. … So they took me. And in those days the police weren’t nearly as protective, forensics hadn’t developed to what they had and they didn’t necessarily protect crime scenes. So we went to the motel, up to the landing, saw the blood where Martin Luther King had been shot just hours before by James Earl Ray.” (A Retrospective on 40 Years: John MacArthur with Rick Holland, Jan. 25, 2009)
Johnson says MacArthur “absolutely did go with John Perkins and his team to Memphis.” He leaves out reference to Evers. Fact is Perkins never went to Memphis with MacArthur. Now Johnson moves on to irrelevant information as a diversionary tactic.
##
Johnson: In fact, I read one story that I’m, you can sort of find the facts on this one. But that in order to preserve some of the stuff people in the area had actually cut that piece of concrete with the blood stain out and moved it, removed it, and it has been replaced where it originally was at the Lorraine Hotel and covered up with plexiglass so that you can see the blood stain apparently even until today. There is an article online that is titled something like, again this is from memory, something like, “The blood stain that won’t go away” or something like that. You can read about the facts of that.
Comment: Johnson is using a totally irrelevant article as evidence MacArthur stood on “the blood stain.”
Blood Stains that will Never Wash Away…
March 19, 2013 by kittynh
But note carefully, MacArthur didn’t just stand on blood stains, he “saw the blood where Martin Luther King had been shot just hours before.” It had not yet been cleaned up. Why? “They didn’t necessarily protect crime scenes.”
##
Johnson: But anyway, John describes that, he describes how he was in the room where James Earl Ray shot the fatal bullet, here’s how I know John’s memory on it isn’t exactly precise in every detail, because he says he stood on the toilet from where; or he was in a room where the toilet was that James Earl Ray stood on when he shot Martin Luther King. The fact is he was standing in the bathtub. There is a toilet right next to it but he was standing in the bathtub. Little facts like that I think that John misremembers. But the fact is he was there. And there are other eyewitnesses who will verify that.
Comment: Johnson says, “I know John’s memory on it isn’t exactly precise in every detail … Little facts like that I think that John misremembers.” So, it is a memory problem. Keep in mind, MacArthur claimed he “climbed up on the toilet” in 2007 at John Piper’s Conference when he was 67 years old, not now in 2021 when he is 81 years old. A far better explanation: MacArthur was never in the bathroom.
Moreover, MacArthur’s supposed memory problem extends to all the BIG facts. Why? Nothing he said in 2007 actually happened!
Certainties That Drive Enduring Ministry (Part 2)
John MacArthur
Desiring God 2007 National Conference
September 29, 2007
Look, I was down in the South, I was down in the South in the office of Charles Evers – the brother of Medgar Evers – when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I was in Jackson, Mississippi with some leaders down there and they actually put me in a car and took me to Memphis and put me, they took me into the building where James Earl Ray shot him. Put me up on the, I climbed up on the toilet to look through the window where he held the gun.
Now Johnson is about to make a fatal and foolish mistake. One clearly ordained of the Lord to expose MacArthur. He introduces a letter written by Dr. David Nicholas in June 2020. He is the President of Shasta Bible College & Graduate School in Redding, CA. Johnson claims this eyewitness “will verify that” MacArthur, Evers and Perkins made the trip to Memphis.
##
Johnson: One of them is the President of Shasta, I think it is called Shasta Bible College. Okay, so let me read this. The President of Shasta Bible College, his name is David Nicholas. He was part of that team that John was with when he was, when all of that happen. He has written a fairly thorough account of that summer with John Perkins. I say fairly thorough, it is a letter. He wrote a letter, a lengthy letter to his constituents and described some of the same events that John described. And when I saw this letter, I took it to John and said “Do you remember this guy?”. And John goes, “Oh, yea. I remember. We went to college together. And he mentions that he was there, John was there, they went to the assassination site and all that.
Peters: Yea.
Comment: Johnson did not read the letter despite his, “Okay, so let me read this.”
The key sentence is “He [Nicholas] was there, John [MacArthur] was there, they went to the assassination site and all that.” The key words are “and all that.” The “all that” includes Evers and Perkins going to “the assassination site” with them.
##
Johnson: Confirming eyewitness testimony which I have sent to some of these people who are insistent on calling John a liar and all that. There is this Brent Detwiler guy who puts stuff out all the time.
Peters: Yes. Yea.
Comment: Thanks for the shout-out Phil! I am more “insistent” than ever that you and John MacArthur are serial liars. Why put out articles “all the time”? To protect God’s people from your insidious deception and show you cannot be trusted and should not be in ministry.
I will list my “stuff” at the end of this article. The most important piece is this one. It is overwhelming proves my point.
Here’s another lie. You never sent me or Paige Rogers (aka Artsy Anglican) the letter from Nicholas.
Aɾƚʂყ Aɳɠʅιƈαɳ
@ArtsyAnglican
Replying to @ModernDayZorro
In the video, PJ stated that he sent the letter to those who were writing about JM’s account. For the record, it was not provided to me. I retrieved the letter this afternoon from the link provided beneath the YouTube video. It’s dated May 2020, 1+ yr after my report.
6:32 PM · Feb 20, 2021
##
Johnson: You know they simply ignore any testimony that would corroborate John MacArthur’s account and cite the testimony of people who say they don’t remember being there as if somehow that is proof that John MacArthur is lying about this.
Peters: Right. Right.
Comment: The extent of Johnson’s lying is incredulous! First, the testimony of people who “don’t remember being there” are Charles Evers and John Perkins. I guess they don’t count!
Second, Nicholas’s testimony does not “corroborate John MacArthur’s account” in reality. It disproves it. Here is what Nicholas wrote in the letter but it must be understood in context. I’ll explain.
“Later we traveled to Memphis and stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was shot and looked out the window of the bathroom of the rooming house where James Earl Ray aimed his .30-06 at Rev. King.”
The “we” in “later we traveled to Memphis” did not include Evers and Perkins. It excluded them. It only included Nicholas, MacArthur and their three white friends from Biola College in California who were musicians.
But here’s the problem – Nicholas’s account is not MacArthur’s account! MacArthur never mentions four white guys going with him to the assassination site. He only mentions going to Memphis with black leaders including Evers and Perkins. There weren’t any other white men along for the ride!
How do I know who the “we” is with absolute certainty? Nicholas told me in a 32 minute conversation I had with him on February 23. I will cover that in my next article. His recorded testimony obliterates MacArthur’s and Johnson’s fake narrative.
##
Johnson: It is not a lie. He may have some incidental details wrong but I think we all have fuzzy, the details of our memories from 50 years ago, are, tend to be a little bit fuzzy.
Peters: Yea
Johnson: That’s more than 50 years ago isn’t it.
Peters: Its 53 now.
Johnson: It is 53 years ago.
Peters: Yea. Before I was even born. So I mean that is a long time ago. Yea.
Johnson: Yea. Well, I remember the event. I remember that week what I was doing but, you know, how detailed I can be with regard to the specifics, is pretty questionable.
Peters: Yea. And it is perfectly understandable. Yea.
Comment: This is purposeful deception by Johnson. It is the “fuzzy” memory defense about “some incidental details.” In addition, they make it sound like MacArthur is recounting the incident now, 53 years later; instead of 39 years later in 2007.
##
Johnson: So if you wanted to pick apart John’s story and say, “No, this couldn’t have been hours later, well it depends on what you count by hours. If it was 72 hours later, it is actually credible.
Peters: Yea.
Comment: Johnson continues his lying. MacArthur was crystal clear about when they supposedly arrived. It was the night of the assassination. It wasn’t 24 hours, 48 hours, or 72 hours later. Then again, “it depends on what you count by hours.” How pathetic. He’s desperate.
Here is what MacArthur said 12 years ago in 2009. He often repeated the timeline thereafter.
“So we went to the motel, up to the landing, saw the blood where Martin Luther King had been shot just hours before by James Earl Ray. I actually went to the little building opposite the motel, went up on the second floor, stood up on the toilet and looked out the window where James Earl Ray had shot him. And I was there at that very, very, very crucial time.”
“Just hours before” is not a day or two later.
##
Johnson: And in fact, photographs of the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel within days after the assassination, loaded with people looking and seeing and wanting to visit the event. And putting up plaques and flowers and stuff like that. I have a ton of those pictures, so.
Comment: Johnson’s comment is irrelevant. The crime scene on the balcony was quickly processed because doctors found the bullet during the autopsy. As a result, people had access to it “days after the assassination.” MacArthur didn’t claim they arrived days later, he explicitly claimed they left Jackson, MS for Memphis, TN immediately upon hearing the news Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death around 7:05 PM. It was a three hour drive going the speed limit.
##
Peters: Yea. And I find it so ironic that some of these folks that are so going after, some of them, not all of them, but some of them, are to varying degrees influenced by the social justice movement, and they’re far more concerned about the minutia of the details of John’s account that night with that event than they are with fact that he was in the deep South in the 1960’s purposely preaching the gospel to black people. I mean, I’d say that is a tad more significant than the minutia of the details of what happened that night.
Johnson: Yea. I agree.
Comment: First, I am not “influenced by the social justice movement” at all. Read my article about Thabiti Anyabwile. Second, we are not talking about “the minutia of the details.” We are talking about MacArthur’s entire story. It is completely false. None of it is true as told! Get ready for another lie.
##
Peters: He was arrested for it right?
Johnson: Well, yea, arrested. In fact, this letter, I’ll put the letter from this president of Shasta Bible College online so that you can link to it and your people can read it because he talks about the fact that they were stopped by this sheriff in Mendenhall, Mississippi, who arrested them, and John was apparently driving the car. These are details John doesn’t tell in his version of it. That he was driving the car. That’s why he was the one arrested.
Peters: Uh. Okay.
Comment: Sheriff Willis did not arrest them. This is another lie MacArthur and Johnson have told for many years. I will address it in my next article. The lying continues.
##
Johnson: But the sheriff’s beef was the fact that there is these white guys were running around with black civil rights leaders, preaching in churches and stuff like that, and it wasn’t that John broke any traffic laws, but he happened to be driving without his wallet. So he didn’t have his driver's license on him apparently. So they threw him in the clink for the night. John says that he did have money in his pocket and the sheriff just kept all that. That will be your fine. I’ll just take whatever you got. It sounds like one of those old movies, “In the Heat of the Night.” And you can see this guy sort of thumping his hand with a night stick and sort of threatening John. It is an interesting story. I wrote about it maybe 15 years ago on my blog because John had told this story. And Ligon Duncan picked up somewhere and repeated it and so I wrote about it. And the headline on my blog was “John MacArthur Arrested in Mississippi” and apparently that headline gave everybody a heart attack.
Peters: That’s awesome.
Comment: The sheriff didn’t throw “him in the clink for the night,” didn’t keep all the “money in his pocket,” and did not fine him. These too are lies according to Nicholas. Nicholas thought he was helping MacArthur’s cause in talking to me, but like Johnson, he was blowing it up.
10 FEBRUARY 2006
John MacArthur arrested in Mississippi
by Phil Johnson
I am working on an article with audio clips that explode the false narrative John MacArthur has been telling from 2007 to the present. In meantime I put the audio clips on my Twitter feed @BrentDetwiler. Listen here.
Relevant Articles in Chronological Order
Phil Johnson & Tom Chantry Charge Me with a “Hit & Run” for Not Answering the Question, “Did You Know about Sexual Abuse in SGM?”
Thursday, May 4, 2017 at 4:49 PM
John MacArthur Refuses to Follow His Own Teaching in Dealing with Phil Johnson’s Egregious Sins
Friday, June 30, 2017 at 3:54 PM
Thoughts on Julie Roy’s Excellent Article “The Prosperous Lifestyle of America’s Anti-Prosperity Gospel Preacher” – John MacArthur
Thursday, February 4, 2021 at 4:20PM
Who Will Stand Up to Phil Johnson for His Vicious Verbal Attacks Upon Journalist Julie Roys? Certainly Not John MacArthur!
Tuesday, February 9, 2021 at 6:47PM
Phil Johnson Covers Up John MacArthur’s Extraordinary Compensation & Lifestyle in Devious Statement to The Christian Post & Interview with Justin Peters
Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 8:16AM
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