No. I was personally involved in Darwin's discipline; in fact, I initiated it. Here's how it came about: In the spring of 1994, we had a large influx of people joining Grace Church. On one Sunday evening in particular several hundred people joined in a large group. After the service that evening I went to the front of the church to greet some of the new members. There I overheard Darwin rather loudly telling a young woman who had just joined our church that John MacArthur is a false teacher, and that he was concerned for her soul, and that she should leave Grace Church and come to God's Word Fellowship—which, he assured her, is the only church in all of Southern California where the truth of Scripture is faithfully proclaimed.

This was my first-ever exposure to Darwin Fish. My first impression was that he resembled Timothy McVeigh with a crew cut and a wispy goatee. I made some inquiries and found out who he was. I also discovered that he was still a member of Grace Community Church.
The following day I phoned Darwin and asked for a meeting at The Master's College later that week. Meanwhile, I listened to several of Darwin's taped messages and discovered he was routinely making public accusations of heresy against certain elders of Grace Church.

Two other elders from Grace Church were present when I confronted Darwin. I first reminded him that when he joined our church he took a public vow to submit himself to the leadership of the elders, to support and encourage them, and to participate in the ministry of the church (all in accord with the New Testament instructions to believers in Hebrews 13:17). I pointed out that as long as he retained his membership in the church, the vows he voluntarily took were binding. I suggested that he had rather blatantly broken the church covenant. I also told him it was the unanimous opinion of our elders that his actions were factious—and under Paul's instructions in Titus 3:10 he was subject to discipline if he failed to repent of his factiousness.

Darwin refused, saying he would not respond to the charge of factiousness unless we were first willing to engage in debate with him about his specific accusations against John MacArthur. He claimed unless we first refuted all his claims from Scripture, we were not entitled to threaten him with discipline. I pointed out that Titus 3:9-11, the very passage that instructs us on how to deal with a factious man, explicitly forbids us to engage in unprofitable discussions with him. Our biblical responsibility was to demonstrate from Scripture how he has sinned, and call him to repent. This I did, reading aloud to him from Titus 3:9-11; Romans 16:17-19; Hebrews 13:17; Jude 9-16; Proverbs 16:27-28; Deuteronomy 23:21-23; and several other passages clearly showing that he was deliberately 1) violating a vow he had made publicly, and 2) being factious. Until he repented of those sins, we told him, we would not debate other points of theology with him. We assured him that If he repented of his sinful actions, we would discuss his theological concerns about the church's teaching as long as he liked.

Darwin flatly refused to repent, claiming his membership vows were nullified because he believed our elders were guilty of heresy. The fact that he retained his membership in the church was, he insisted, a mere "technicality."

We replied that we did not view a public vow to God as such a minor issue, and we pleaded with him to reconsider. We gave him a few days to think it through and pray about it. When he did not call within the next few days to say he wanted to repent, a member of our pastoral staff phoned him to warn him a second time about his factiousness, again in accord with Titus 3:10. When Darwin still refused to repent, it was publicly announced in our next communion service that he was being put out of the church (Matt. 18:17).