Five days a week, as I do my live, two-hour radio broadcast, I hear the voice of John MacArthur in my ears, and it is a voice I enjoy hearing. As local radio stations are playing their own ads or announcements during the one-minute or two-minute breaks during the show, I hear a feed from the main satellite network, and it often repeats the same clips over and again, with Pastor MacArthur’s one-minute mini-messages being prominently featured.

I can tell you honestly that during the most intense moments of the Strange Fire controversy, or after reading what I considered to be outlandish statements in the Strange Fire book, I have never been agitated in the least when hearing my elder brother’s voice. And, when I am able to focus on what he is saying (since those short breaks during live radio are often quite busy), I have almost always enjoyed and affirmed his message.

So, this book is not written out of frustration, nor do I have an axe to grind, nor I am trying to win an argument, nor do I have an allegiance to a particular party or group that would color my sentiments. Instead, I have written this book with people like Jason in mind. He is in his mid-to-late thirties and has been seriously committed to the Lord the last few years. He posted this on Facebook in the immediate aftermath of the Strange Fire conference, shortly before my interview with Phil Johnson, John MacArthur’s editor:

"I’ve been listening to [Pastor] MacArthur in the morning on my way to work and Dr. Brown’s radio show at night for a while now. Please keep this in mind, both Dr. Brown and MacArthur have been the top two Christian leaders in helping me come to Christ and helping me to not fall away by reminding me to keep my focus on Jesus. Dr. Brown has helped me a great deal with apologetics as well and learning the balance between legalism and grace. This is a dicey topic that in the long run has potential to reveal a greater truth and hopefully help Christians to become even more unified. I’m more interested in that than any kind of one upsmanship, and I know for sure that Dr. Brown and I would assume that [Pastor] MacArthur are too."

A woman emailed me to let me know that she was a monthly supporter of my ministry and a member of Pastor MacArthur’s church, encouraging me to keep addressing these issues while expressing love and respect for both of us. And, to be sure, every day as I go on the air and talk about relevant issues, I’m aware that Dr. MacArthur is heard on these same stations (plus many more), that he has been on the radio far longer than I, and that I have a responsibility to the larger listening audience, not wanting to tear down but to build up. It is in that spirit that this book has been written, and so it is invitation as much as it is exhortation.

Authentic Fire is not meant to be a rebuttal of Strange Fire at every point. Instead, while interacting at times with material from the book and conference, and while correcting what I believe to be serious errors and misstatements, the book is more of a positive response to Strange Fire. So it is my hope that Authentic Fire will serve a lasting, worthwhile purpose even for those who will never read Strange Fire.

But before you dive into Authentic Fire, allow me to explain the origins of this book. In June of this year (2013), callers began to ask me if I had heard about the Strange Fire conference, which I had not, and it was with some degree of shock that I watched the promotional material and read the pre-conference quotes. As a result, I felt prompted to write a series of articles that addressed the controversies head on, beginning June 20,[1] respectfully appealing to Pastor MacArthur to tone down his charges while appealing publicly and privately for a face to face meeting to discuss things together with other leaders. (That has not yet happened but I do hope it will in the not too distant future.)

Along the way, I learned that he would be releasing a book as well, but writing my own book in response to his was the last thing on my mind, given the major writing deadlines I was already under, not to mention a fairly intense ministry schedule. Interestingly, when I was sent an Advanced Reader’s Copy of the book, Randy, one of my staff members who opens my packages, emailed me when it arrived on October 4th (I was out of state), saying, “I suspect another Real Kosher Jesus miraculous writing assignment coming!” He was referring to something that happened last year when my good friend and frequent debating partner, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, was about to publish his book Kosher Jesus and I got burdened to write a full-length response (also a stand-alone, Jewish evangelism tool) called The Real Kosher Jesus. God gave me grace to write the bulk of the book in three weeks, and within ten weeks of writing the first words of the book, the published version was sitting on my desk, to me a publishing miracle.

Would the same thing happen with Strange Fire? In my mind, it couldn’t, although I didn’t dismiss the email out of hand, wondering if perhaps I would write a thirty-fifty page rebuttal, releasing it quickly as an e-book. But then something happened. The day before the Strange Fire conference began, I felt stirred to write one last article, which went viral (for details, see Chapter One). This only added to the fact that somehow, through my past articles and the radio show, I had emerged in the eyes of many as a leading voice challenging Strange Fire. (In fact, some of Pastor MacArthur’s team had replied to my previous articles on his Grace to You website or elsewhere, and some of my concerns were respectfully addressed at the conference in one of Phil Johnson’s sessions.)

The first day of the conference (one month ago today), I was flooded with questions via email and social media, asking if I was going to write a book in response, and a publisher contacted me as well, wanting to push out an e-book quickly if I could write one quickly. More importantly, I felt the Lord wanted me to do so, and virtually overnight, this book was born. (When I speak of feeling stirred or burdened to write or say that I felt the Lord wanted me to do something, I’m simply sharing my perspective, not claiming divine inspiration. I imagine that Pastor MacArthur felt the Lord wanted him to do what he did, feeling a burden to address things that deeply grieved him.)

Because I had to finish editing work on another manuscript first, I was not able to get to this book until October 24th, after which, by God’s amazing grace, I was able to write the entire manuscript in roughly two weeks’ time, doing the editing and annotating the third week. My great appreciation to the team at Charisma Media for helping to bring this to completion in such a short period of time, in particular to Tom Freiling of Excel Publishing, under whose imprint this is being published. He is not only moving the e-book forward in incredibly rapid form but is also, in the same time frame, printing paperback copies of Authentic Fire for distribution through my ministry. All of this means that in a period of five-six weeks, this book will have gone from being birthed in writing to being made available to the general public.

My deep appreciation to my colleague at FIRE School of Ministry, Prof. Steve Alt, who carefully proofread the manuscript as soon as it was finished. Whatever errors remain are entirely mine. He also contributed an appendix responding to Pastor Tom Pennington’s presentation on cessationism at Strange Fire. My appreciation is also due to: Prof. Craig Keener for writing an appendix specifically for Authentic Fire; Dr. Sam Storms for allowing me to use his recent, full-length blog article on prophecy today; Rev. David Shibley, for providing a statement from a world missions perspective; John Lambert, one of our ministry school grads, now with the US Center for World Mission, for reviewing some of the relevant demographic surveys; Dr. Adrian Warnock, for allowing the generous use of his material in Chapter Nine of this book (see there for details) as well as for reading this manuscript carefully; Prof. Jon Ruthven, for pointing me to some key references; Frank Viola, for useful input on the manuscript and for making available to me his critique of Charismatic Chaos and Strange Fire; and Andrew Wilson, from the UK-based ThinkTheology blog, for encouraging the use of his material in Appendix 3. I also acknowledge with appreciation Zondervan Publishers for allowing me to use excerpts from my book Israel’s Divine Healer, as well to Destiny Image for allowing me to quote extensively from a number of my books published with them. They greatly encouraged me as well to get this book out.

Let me finally make three brief notes about terminology and citations: First, when I speak of “charismatics” in general, I’m referring to all professing Christians who believe in the ongoing manifestation of the New Testament charismatic gifts (such as prophecy, tongues, and healing), although not all believe in contemporary apostles and prophets. When I distinguish between Pentecostals and charismatics, the former refers to members of Pentecostal churches (such as the Assemblies of God or the Church of God in Christ), the latter to those outside of such churches (which would therefore include charismatic members of traditionally non-charismatic denominations, as well as other movements like the Vineyard). Second, in recent months, I have increased the call for teachers and preachers and professors and Bible translators to stop using the name “James” in place of “Jacob” (which is what the Greek says throughout the New Testament),[2] even encouraging the recovery of “Judah” for “Jude” as well (yes, this certainly makes a difference!). So, throughout the book, although hardly relevant to the larger issues at hand, I use “Jacob” with “James” in parentheses. Third, although I was tempted to provide massive documentation for all controversial points in the endnotes, both the nature of this book and the publishing schedule ruled against that, and so, except for a sections, the annotation is meant to be practical and representative. Also, for the benefit of e-book readers and to make things more accessible in today’s digital age, whenever possible, I cited online versions of relevant texts (all of them were available as of the writing of this Preface).

From my heart, I thank our incredible ministry team for their faithful and loving support and encouragement, our prayer warriors for holding up my hands up during these very intense three weeks, and Nancy, my bride of thirty-seven years, for allowing me to focus on getting this project done. My prayer is that the Lord Jesus, John MacArthur’s Savior as well as mine, would be glorified through this book, that His people would be built up and unified, and that together, we would touch a dying world in the life and power of the Spirit.