Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You and an elder at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church, shared on social media that he is being treated for multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. Doctors discovered the disease during Johnson’s recent treatment for kidney problems.
In a June 10 thread on X (formerly Twitter), Johnson began by thanking well-wishers for their prayers. “I want to say thank you again to the countless people who told me they were praying for me during my hospitalization last month,” he wrote.
“My ‘catastrophic’ kidney malfunction turned out to be a sort of blessing in disguise,” Johnson continued. “In the [hundreds] of blood tests and a bone-marrow biopsy doctors ordered, they discovered I have Multiple Myeloma, a kind of blood cancer that lets the proteins in my blood attack other organs.”
Johnson added that he had just met with “an excellent oncologist” who’s “prescribing a cocktail of drugs, followed by a bone-marrow transplant.”
Remission Is ‘Achievable,’ Phil Johnson Is Told
In his post, Johnson said he was told the prescribed treatment should lead to remission. According to the Mayo Clinic website, the blood cancer can be slow-growing and doesn’t always cause symptoms early on.
“The goal, as I understand it, is to keep me alive long enough for something else to kill me,” wrote Johnson. “The oncologist assures me that’s an achievable goal, and I’m glad that in the providence of God, they were able to diagnose this before the cancer progressed so far that no treatment could help.”
He concluded by sharing Psalm 31:15, “My times are in His hand.”
Johnson, 70, has worked closely with John MacArthur since 1981, editing most of the Bible teacher’s books. He’s also an ordained pastor and the founder and former editor of The Spurgeon Archive.
In early April, Johnson landed in the emergency room after experiencing a pulmonary embolism. Because blood tests revealed “critical kidney malfunction,” doctors started him on dialysis.
On May 11, Johnson shared that “the last 6 weeks were brutal” but that he was feeling “almost human” again. Then on May 28, he wrote that he was having a diagnostic bone-marrow biopsy.
Please Pray for Phil Johnson of Grace to You
From October 2022 to March 2023, Johnson was unable to post any updates to X (which was then still called Twitter). He revealed that he’d been put in “Twitter jail” after commenting on a story about a drag queen crossing-guard at a Denver elementary school. On a repost from Libs of TikTok, Johnson suggested that exposing children to that individual amounted to “taxpayer-funded grooming.”
