The Rev. John MacArthur, among the many nation’s most influential evangelical pastors with a prolific media attain — and whose San Fernando Valley megachurch grew to become the face of spiritual resistance to California’s COVID-19 public well being orders — died Monday. He was 86.
MacArthur’s dying was introduced on the web site of Grace Neighborhood Church in Solar Valley. He had just lately contacted pneumonia, in line with the church.
Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn., paid tribute to MacArthur on social media, calling him one in all “America’s nice Bible lecturers.”
“He might get extra out of a Bible verse than anybody I’ve ever identified,” wrote Graham on X. “His voice will likely be significantly missed.”
Although primarily based in Los Angeles — the place his devoted crammed a 3,500-seat auditorium twice each Sunday for his sermons — MacArthur reached thousands and thousands of individuals internationally by his radio and tv applications and books, and guided the lives of numerous younger theologians as president of the Grasp’s College and adjoining seminary in Santa Clarita.
He was identified for his fundamentalist biblical requirements, strictly specializing in the writings of the Scriptures and eschewing sermons that touched on extra fashionable themes.
Grace Neighborhood Church mentioned in an announcement on its web site this week that his “ministry was an unwavering dedication to declare God’s fact, and Pastor John preached the Phrase in season and out of season. Even in recent times, although beset with well being challenges, he continued in educating, main, and investing within the ministries the Lord had entrusted to him.”
From a household with an extended line of pastors, MacArthur mentioned he was at all times spiritual and described how a automotive accident in Alabama that left him in excruciating ache helped push him to the pulpit. As a freshman faculty scholar in South Carolina, he was despatched for therapy to California, the place docs needed to take away street asphalt from his severally broken again.
“I needed to lie in my mattress on my abdomen for about three months and let that every one heal, on the finish of which I actually was able to do no matter God wished me to do,” he mentioned in a 2004 interview posted by his media firm. “And I knew by then I used to be going to evangelise and train.”
MacArthur was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Los Angeles. His father, Jack, was a pastor of a Baptist church in South L.A. and would would quickly department into evangelism, which might take the household to Chicago and Philadelphia.
He attended Bob Jones College in Greenville, S.C., after which transferred to Los Angeles Pacific School. When he took the pulpit of Grace Neighborhood Church in 1969, Sunday attendance averaged about 700 individuals within the northern San Fernando Valley neighborhood.
His affect expanded as 1000’s of radio listeners tuned into “Grace to You,” his syndicated half-hour present, and he would later launch an intensive media outlet that broadcast his teachings to dozens of nations.
He grew to become president of the Grasp’s School in 1985, which later modified its title to the Grasp’s College, and presided over unprecedented progress on the fundamentalist establishment, The Occasions wrote in 1990. He helped oversee a seminary subsequent door.
In 1997, The Occasions described how McArthur refused to make use of a typewriter or laptop and painstakingly handwrote his Bible research. “I don’t have time for the training curve,” he mentioned.
He wrote greater than 400 books and examine guides, together with “The MacArthur Examine Bible,” and appealed to ultraconservative churchgoers by adhering to fundamentalist biblical requirements that centered on educating an “inerrant” Bible — a dogma that sees the Bible as devoid of errors.
On the similar time, he rejected the user-friendly sermons, rock music and group outreach that outlined some evangelical church buildings within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties and took goal at those that he mentioned used gimmicks to draw individuals to church.
The church “isn’t a pub for the neighborhood,” he wrote in his 1993 e book, “Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Turns into Just like the World.” “It isn’t a group heart the place events are held. It isn’t a rustic membership for the lots.”
The Occasions lined his assaults on fellow clergy, writing in 1991 that MacArthur changed into the “enfant horrible of conservative Protestantism.”
Over the span of his profession, he referred to as Catholicism a “false faith,” criticized standard spiritual figures together with Joel Osteen and Beth Moore, and referred to as Black Lives Matter “a corporation that’s the enemy of God” due to its help of LGBTQ+ equality.
In recent times, no less than two media retailers that cowl faith — Christianity Immediately and the Roys Report — reported on allegations that girls who sought biblical counseling over abusive marriages had been suggested by church elders to stick with their husbands and feared church self-discipline over the matter. The church didn’t reply to the allegations within the tales.
After the 2020 pandemic left spiritual establishments reliant on livestreams and out of doors gatherings, Grace Neighborhood Church continued to carry indoor companies, with MacArthur questioning the existence of the coronavirus and difficult whether or not the authorities might limit prayer practices.
County well being inspectors who tried to enter the church the place blocked by safety guards.
“There isn’t a pandemic,” MacArthur advised his followers in August 2020, although later he would acknowledge the virus.
Los Angeles County sued the church however finally settled within the face of Supreme Court docket rulings that sided with spiritual establishments. In a 2021 letter to supporters, MacArthur introduced the church’s authorized charges can be paid. The church later acquired $800,000 from the state and county for the charges.
“We all know that there isn’t a circumstance that may trigger the church to shut,” he wrote within the letter. “The church isn’t solely a constructing however is the bride of Christ and exists to proclaim the reality.”
MacArthur is survived by his spouse, Patricia; 4 kids; fifteen grandchildren; and 9 great-grandchildren.
