Rich Gregory, assistant to John MacArthur, said he was there when it happened and that Driscoll’s books were not confiscated and there was nothing confrontational. “It was great, we were happy to have him at the conference. He brought books to hand out. We explained to him that all the books distributed on campus need to be approved. He told us that he wanted them to be a gift to us from him. One of our conference directors took that gift and brought them up to the offices.”

As many of you know, John MacArthur is hosting the “Strange Fire” conference at his church in California this week. The conference is focused on reasserting a cessationist position and highlighting the dangers of the charismatic movement.

The Christian Post is reporting that Mark Driscoll showed up to the conference today, engaged attendees, and handed out free copies of his new book, which has a chapter advocating the continuationist position. Driscoll himselfposted pictures of his visit on Instagram.

Driscoll also says that the books he was handing out were confiscated by security.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey reports that conference organizers are disputing that claim. From Bailey’s report:

Rich Gregory, assistant to John MacArthur, said he was there when it happened and that Driscoll’s books were not confiscated and there was nothing confrontational.

“It was great, we were happy to have him at the conference. He brought books to hand out. We explained to him that all the books distributed on campus need to be approved. He told us that he wanted them to be a gift to us from him. One of our conference directors took that gift and brought them up to the offices. If you hear from him and he wants them back, we can send those back if he wants them. We were not looking at him like, ‘Boy you’re trying to stir up controversy.’ I don’t want to judge his motives for what he wasn’t trying to do. I wish they had actually stayed for the actual content of the conference.”

Read the rest here.

Wow.

Denny Burk is Associate Professor of New Testament and Dean of Boyce College, the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminar. He blogs on matters concerning politics, theology and culture. This article is used with his permission.