John MacArthur's Third Wave

Last week the tall shinny kiwi Andrew Jones reported on the Emergent Conversation's event with Miroslav Wolf at Yale and the Masters Seminary series on the Emergent Church featuring John MacArthur. Here's Jones' post Emergent at Yale and Masters

The folks at Emergent No posted a link to the Masters' series at TMS Emerging Church Lectures.

Andrew reports that, "John MacArthur Jnr has been describing the emergent church as the 3rd wave of movements the threaten our clarity of the Scriptures." The first two being the charismatic movement, and the seeker movement.

The use of the term "third wave" brought to my the book by Alvin Toffler of the same name. So raised the question in the comments to Andrew?s post.

Is McArthur trying to invoke the shade of Alvin Toffler? Granted Toffler?s book "The Third Wave" begins provocatively enough with, "A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it." I don't think McArthur is painting the emerging church with Toffler's brush (he has his own axe to grind), but the use of the term "third wave" may put a link in some people?s minds.

Robbymac responded with this

The term "Third Wave" has also referred to conservative evangelicals who have adopted a more charismatic understanding of spiritual gifts but hold to more Reformed (Calvinist) theology. The term was originally presented as such by C. Peter Wagner, and has been in use in this way since the mid-1980's. It was confusing enough when compared to Alvin Toffler's writing, but for MacArthur to appropriate it for his own purposes will only be more confusing -- but considering MacArthur's track record of burning straw men and ad hominems ad nauseum, perhaps not all that surprising

I found on visiting Robbymac's site that he has done a good deal of research on the charismatic movement. With this being his result, post-charismatic.

The question still stands that while MacArthur may not be trying to tag the emergent movement with Toffler ideas some may want to make a link. I don't think I would want to get tarred with Toffler. But I know he does some fans like Ken here with his post, Getting Ready For Future Shock , for example.