We do our best to ensure that everything you read on our website is free from error. Our transcript archive presents unusual challenges, however.

There are a number of factors unique to John MacArthur’s preaching ministry—e.g., the depth study; theological vocabulary; and historical (and contemporary) names, places, and events—pose unique challenge to any transcriptionist. The best transcripts you’ll find on our website were probably produced by Arline Hampton; she transcribed John’s sermons for more than three decades. Her familiarity with John and her love for this ministry provided all of us with transcripts that are largely error free. We are grateful for her labor of love. Though she is now with the Lord, the fruit of her ministry continues.

Several years ago, when we were considering posting all of John MacArthur’s sermon transcripts online, we had to decide whether we would allow the public to see transcription errors or wait until all of them were corrected.

A large number of sermons had originally been transcribed on paper, using a typewriter. We then used character recognition software to convert them into a digital format, but they were far from perfect (e.g., question marks came out as 7s, the capital letter “I” came out as the number 1). So we stopped that approach and assigned a large batch of John’s sermons to a professional transcription company. The quality of those transcripts was quite good but still less than perfect since the transcribers lacked the in-house familiarity with John’s ministry, theological terms, etc.

In the end, we decided the best approach was to open the transcript archive, warts and all, because we thought the ministry benefit would exceed the error liability. We accepted the imperfections, knowing we would chip away at the errors over the years to correct as many mistakes as possible.

And that’s where you come in, website user! We have always depended on you to inform us of errors so we can correct them as soon as possible. You can email us at [email protected].

If you’ve become part of the team of informants, helping us to achieve the greatest accuracy possible in our transcripts, please accept our sincerest thanks. We very much appreciate you and your partnership in unleashing God’s truth, one verse at a time!