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re: Conservative pastor John McArthur dead from pneumonia at age 86
Posted on 7/15/25 at 5:33 am to dickkellog
Posted on 7/15/25 at 5:33 am to dickkellog
quote:
he's a protestant so if i were him i'd be worried!
Good luck with depending on the pope to save you.
0
Posted on 7/15/25 at 6:21 am to L.A.
Johnny’ Mac was a rock who used the gift that the Lord gave him to plant, water, disciple, and shepherd. Verse by verse.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 6:39 am to L.A.
RIP Good Sir
Posted on 7/15/25 at 6:53 am to olemc999
From a New York Times article...
The Rev. John MacArthur, a theologically uncompromising pastor in Southern California who influenced generations of evangelical preachers and became a culture warrior late in life, died on Monday in Santa Clarita, Calif. He was 86.
His death was announced by Phil Johnson, who headed up Mr. MacArthur’s media ministry and edited many of his books. Mr. MacArthur had several operations on his heart and lungs over the years, and he had been hospitalized this month after contracting pneumonia.
Mr. MacArthur, a theological conservative and natural polemicist, preached from the same pulpit at Grace Community Church in the Los Angeles area — often at length, up to five times a week — for almost his entire career. When he was preaching, he always wore a suit and tie, eschewing the casual style of many evangelical pastors.
His church’s growth defied conventional wisdom about “seeker-sensitivity,” a model that emphasized appealing to non-churchgoers. Mr. MacArthur rejected a more accessible evangelical preaching style that favored ostensibly real-life anecdotes and practical applications. His dogged emphasis on expository preaching — narrowly focused on the meaning and historical context of a particular piece of scripture — influenced thousands of conservative Protestant pastors who studied at the seminary he led, or simply listened to his sermons on the radio or online.
“Evangelicalism is a pulpit-driven movement, and John has driven the most influential pulpit in evangelical Christianity for more than a half a century,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview earlier this year.
In recent years, Mr. MacArthur increasingly waded into political and cultural skirmishes. He denounced critical race theory and became a leading Christian critic of “wokeness.” After his church closed for several months at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, it defied state public health orders and began holding indoor in-person services. The church later received an $800,000 settlement from the state and Los Angeles County, after suing on the grounds that the restrictions impinged on religious freedom.
In August 2020, Mr. MacArthur told an interviewer for a podcast associated with Liberty University that President Trump had called him to thank him for “taking a stand” on church closures. The two men discussed why “Christians could not vote Democratic,” Mr. MacArthur said. “There’s no way that a Christian could affirm the slaughter of babies, homosexual activity, homosexual marriage or any kind of gross immorality.”
Mr. MacArthur didn’t just clash with secular authorities and liberal politicians. More often, he took on perceived enemies within Christianity. He preached on the errors of Roman Catholicism and published multiple books on the dangers of charismatic theology and the prosperity gospel — strains of Protestantism that emphasize miraculous healing and promises of wealth, and that flourished over the course of his lifetime. He attacked popular evangelical figures like the Bible teacher Beth Moore and various pastors, including the televangelists Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen, always citing specific Bible verses in his critiques.
The Rev. John MacArthur, a theologically uncompromising pastor in Southern California who influenced generations of evangelical preachers and became a culture warrior late in life, died on Monday in Santa Clarita, Calif. He was 86.
His death was announced by Phil Johnson, who headed up Mr. MacArthur’s media ministry and edited many of his books. Mr. MacArthur had several operations on his heart and lungs over the years, and he had been hospitalized this month after contracting pneumonia.
Mr. MacArthur, a theological conservative and natural polemicist, preached from the same pulpit at Grace Community Church in the Los Angeles area — often at length, up to five times a week — for almost his entire career. When he was preaching, he always wore a suit and tie, eschewing the casual style of many evangelical pastors.
His church’s growth defied conventional wisdom about “seeker-sensitivity,” a model that emphasized appealing to non-churchgoers. Mr. MacArthur rejected a more accessible evangelical preaching style that favored ostensibly real-life anecdotes and practical applications. His dogged emphasis on expository preaching — narrowly focused on the meaning and historical context of a particular piece of scripture — influenced thousands of conservative Protestant pastors who studied at the seminary he led, or simply listened to his sermons on the radio or online.
“Evangelicalism is a pulpit-driven movement, and John has driven the most influential pulpit in evangelical Christianity for more than a half a century,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview earlier this year.
In recent years, Mr. MacArthur increasingly waded into political and cultural skirmishes. He denounced critical race theory and became a leading Christian critic of “wokeness.” After his church closed for several months at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, it defied state public health orders and began holding indoor in-person services. The church later received an $800,000 settlement from the state and Los Angeles County, after suing on the grounds that the restrictions impinged on religious freedom.
In August 2020, Mr. MacArthur told an interviewer for a podcast associated with Liberty University that President Trump had called him to thank him for “taking a stand” on church closures. The two men discussed why “Christians could not vote Democratic,” Mr. MacArthur said. “There’s no way that a Christian could affirm the slaughter of babies, homosexual activity, homosexual marriage or any kind of gross immorality.”
Mr. MacArthur didn’t just clash with secular authorities and liberal politicians. More often, he took on perceived enemies within Christianity. He preached on the errors of Roman Catholicism and published multiple books on the dangers of charismatic theology and the prosperity gospel — strains of Protestantism that emphasize miraculous healing and promises of wealth, and that flourished over the course of his lifetime. He attacked popular evangelical figures like the Bible teacher Beth Moore and various pastors, including the televangelists Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen, always citing specific Bible verses in his critiques.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 6:54 am to captainFid
His interest in threats to Christianity from within was evident early on: He wrote his graduate thesis on Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in the Gospels’ account.
Mr. MacArthur’s preaching style was deceptively simple. He would speak for about 45 minutes, walking his congregation line by line through a single Bible passage. He also produced a popular study Bible and a 33-volume set of New Testament commentaries, among many other books.
His critics said that he misled listeners by insisting that even the thorniest passages in the New Testament had a single clear, true meaning. To his supporters, this was exactly the point. Unlike liberal pastors and academics, Mr. MacArthur believed that “there’s a historical, grammatical, literal sense to the text that can be derived through study,” said Austin Duncan, the director of the MacArthur Center for Expository Preaching at the Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, Calif., which Mr. MacArthur had founded in 1986. “It isn’t a subjective thing, it’s an objective reality.”
In 1985, Mr. MacArthur became president of the former Los Angeles Baptist College, now known as the Master’s University. He opened the Master’s Seminary soon afterward to train men — and only men — to become pastors.
Unlike many pastors who ascend to a national platform, Mr. MacArthur never gave up his local role: He was the head pastor at Grace Community Church for more than 56 years. An online archive of his sermons includes more than 3,000 recordings. For years, he preached the same sermon three times on Sunday morning, a different sermon that night and another on Wednesday evening.
But his sermons found a much larger audience beyond his local congregation, distributed first on cassette tapes and on the radio, and then through his media ministry Grace to You. The ministry’s slogan was “Unleashing God’s Truth, One Verse at a Time.”
Known in many evangelical circles as simply “JMac,” he had a preaching approach that translated well overseas, where it required little cultural interpretation. His books have been translated into at least 40 languages. And even his older sermons have not aged as noticeably as more recent ones from other pastors, who make frequent reference to pop culture or newspaper headlines.
Mr. MacArthur “inspired thousands of pastors to believe that explaining what the Bible means honors God, saves people and is just plain interesting,” John Piper, a retired pastor and popular theologian in Minnesota who was a longtime friend, said in an email. “To this day, from Dallas to Dubai, young people (especially men) come up to me and say that they listen to John MacArthur.”
John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. was born on June 19, 1939. He was the eldest child of Jack MacArthur, a Baptist pastor, and Irene (Dockendorf) MacArthur, who managed the home. The family lived briefly in Philadelphia and Chicago during his childhood, but he was raised primarily in Southern California, where he would spend the rest of his life.
He was an athletic, mischievous child, but he always believed in God. He could not pinpoint a particular moment of Christian conversion.
“I was one of those kids that never rebelled and always believed,” he said in a 2004 interview.
He spent a few years at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, following his father’s prodding, and then transferred to Los Angeles Pacific College to play football and other sports.
Mr. MacArthur was a fifth-generation preacher. His grandfather, Harry MacArthur, had a live weekly radio and television program in the 1940s, “The Voice of Calvary.” His father eventually took it over, and Mr. MacArthur began preaching occasionally on Sunday evenings.
He married Patricia Sue Smith, whom he met at his father’s church, in 1963. She survives him, as do their four children, Matthew, Marcy Gwinn, Mark, and Melinda Welch; two sisters, Jeanette DeAngelis and Jane Walker; 15 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Another sister, Julie Noll, died in 1997.
Mr. MacArthur earned a Master of Divinity degree in 1964 at Talbot Theological Seminary at Biola University, an evangelical institution he chose because he wanted to study under its dean, Charles Lee Feinberg, a prominent biblical scholar who had converted to Christianity from Judaism.
Grace Community Church hired him soon after, in part because of his youth, Mr. MacArthur said later. The church grew quickly under his leadership. Early on, a church member with an interest in technology began recording Mr. MacArthur’s sermons for homebound members, making him a pioneer in remote church.
He arrived at Grace Community Church in February of 1969. On his first Sunday, the 29-year-old preached to his new congregation on three verses from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. In the passage, Jesus says that not everyone who professes faith will enter the kingdom of heaven. Most American church members, Mr. MacArthur told his congregants, were likewise “dead spiritually.”
Mr. MacArthur intended to nurture Grace as a living church, which to him meant one that boldly proclaimed the truth, no matter if it led to conflict.
“The church must be the conscience of the world,” he said. “The church must be so well defined that it becomes the antagonist of the world.”
Mr. MacArthur’s preaching style was deceptively simple. He would speak for about 45 minutes, walking his congregation line by line through a single Bible passage. He also produced a popular study Bible and a 33-volume set of New Testament commentaries, among many other books.
His critics said that he misled listeners by insisting that even the thorniest passages in the New Testament had a single clear, true meaning. To his supporters, this was exactly the point. Unlike liberal pastors and academics, Mr. MacArthur believed that “there’s a historical, grammatical, literal sense to the text that can be derived through study,” said Austin Duncan, the director of the MacArthur Center for Expository Preaching at the Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, Calif., which Mr. MacArthur had founded in 1986. “It isn’t a subjective thing, it’s an objective reality.”
In 1985, Mr. MacArthur became president of the former Los Angeles Baptist College, now known as the Master’s University. He opened the Master’s Seminary soon afterward to train men — and only men — to become pastors.
Unlike many pastors who ascend to a national platform, Mr. MacArthur never gave up his local role: He was the head pastor at Grace Community Church for more than 56 years. An online archive of his sermons includes more than 3,000 recordings. For years, he preached the same sermon three times on Sunday morning, a different sermon that night and another on Wednesday evening.
But his sermons found a much larger audience beyond his local congregation, distributed first on cassette tapes and on the radio, and then through his media ministry Grace to You. The ministry’s slogan was “Unleashing God’s Truth, One Verse at a Time.”
Known in many evangelical circles as simply “JMac,” he had a preaching approach that translated well overseas, where it required little cultural interpretation. His books have been translated into at least 40 languages. And even his older sermons have not aged as noticeably as more recent ones from other pastors, who make frequent reference to pop culture or newspaper headlines.
Mr. MacArthur “inspired thousands of pastors to believe that explaining what the Bible means honors God, saves people and is just plain interesting,” John Piper, a retired pastor and popular theologian in Minnesota who was a longtime friend, said in an email. “To this day, from Dallas to Dubai, young people (especially men) come up to me and say that they listen to John MacArthur.”
John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. was born on June 19, 1939. He was the eldest child of Jack MacArthur, a Baptist pastor, and Irene (Dockendorf) MacArthur, who managed the home. The family lived briefly in Philadelphia and Chicago during his childhood, but he was raised primarily in Southern California, where he would spend the rest of his life.
He was an athletic, mischievous child, but he always believed in God. He could not pinpoint a particular moment of Christian conversion.
“I was one of those kids that never rebelled and always believed,” he said in a 2004 interview.
He spent a few years at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, following his father’s prodding, and then transferred to Los Angeles Pacific College to play football and other sports.
Mr. MacArthur was a fifth-generation preacher. His grandfather, Harry MacArthur, had a live weekly radio and television program in the 1940s, “The Voice of Calvary.” His father eventually took it over, and Mr. MacArthur began preaching occasionally on Sunday evenings.
He married Patricia Sue Smith, whom he met at his father’s church, in 1963. She survives him, as do their four children, Matthew, Marcy Gwinn, Mark, and Melinda Welch; two sisters, Jeanette DeAngelis and Jane Walker; 15 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Another sister, Julie Noll, died in 1997.
Mr. MacArthur earned a Master of Divinity degree in 1964 at Talbot Theological Seminary at Biola University, an evangelical institution he chose because he wanted to study under its dean, Charles Lee Feinberg, a prominent biblical scholar who had converted to Christianity from Judaism.
Grace Community Church hired him soon after, in part because of his youth, Mr. MacArthur said later. The church grew quickly under his leadership. Early on, a church member with an interest in technology began recording Mr. MacArthur’s sermons for homebound members, making him a pioneer in remote church.
He arrived at Grace Community Church in February of 1969. On his first Sunday, the 29-year-old preached to his new congregation on three verses from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. In the passage, Jesus says that not everyone who professes faith will enter the kingdom of heaven. Most American church members, Mr. MacArthur told his congregants, were likewise “dead spiritually.”
Mr. MacArthur intended to nurture Grace as a living church, which to him meant one that boldly proclaimed the truth, no matter if it led to conflict.
“The church must be the conscience of the world,” he said. “The church must be so well defined that it becomes the antagonist of the world.”
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:03 am to L.A.
RIP.
He's going to have a lot to answer for.
He's going to have a lot to answer for.
quote:
but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,[a] it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Mathew 18:6
(a) Matthew 18:6 Greek causes . . . to stumble
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:15 am to Snipe
quote:
He's going to have a lot to answer for.
“I’m Snipe and I don’t know how this whole Christianity thing works.”
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:21 am to L.A.
Don't know him but I'm sure he was a Godly man. About the only "TV" type that I pay any attention to is David Jeremiah.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:25 am to the808bass
quote:
“I’m Snipe and I don’t know how this whole Christianity thing works.”
I know enough to not follow a heretic like John McArthur.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:25 am to Snipe
quote:
He's going to have a lot to answer for.
Heck, I'll bite. What sort of things?
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:26 am to Flats
quote:
What sort of things?
quote:
but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,[a] it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Mathew 18:6
(a) Matthew 18:6 Greek causes . . . to stumble
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:37 am to LRB1967
quote:
Prayers for his recovery
You sound sincere, but he died.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:39 am to Snipe
quote:
Snipe
Yeah, I'm familiar with the passage. I think you may have to answer for it.
As long as we're just making claims without any specifics, that's as good a claim as any.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:41 am to Tigergreg
quote:I thought the same thing but the OP was edited after this was posted. Check the time stamps.
Prayers for his recovery
You sound sincere, but he died.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:41 am to Snipe
How was he causing others to sin?
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:42 am to captainFid
Firstly, I’d just like to say that I have no idea if John ever trusted Christ alone for his salvation, but it is my earnest hope that he indeed did do so. I admire the manner in which he took a stand against Covid restrictions, and on many other secular issues of the day, as well as against doctrines within the RCC and these many prosperity charlatans profiteering off of God and weak minded people who are seeking riches rather than God.
That being said, I think it’s critical to point out just how horrific and damaging the man made 5 point TULIP doctrine of Calvinism and lordship salvation he spearheaded really is. The limited atonement of Jesus’ sacrifice, and predestination of some to go to Heaven and others to hell is probably some of the most egregious of it all, and I don’t think we can look past that, as it not only is not the gospel, but it is devastating to humans who found themselves caught up in this stuff, no assurance that scripture gives mention to, and working within themselves to earn salvation through perseverance and proving their fruit to fruit inspectors, rather than simply trusting in Christ alone and His Word alone as their assurance, believing upon the what the Word of God clearly says rather than man’s doctrinal teachings.
I personally witnessed a women who was sincerely doubting her salvation walk up to a microphone in tears looking for some assurance, and rather than point to the what God’s word says as assurance alone so that her trust is in Him and nothing else, he could give her nothing, and that said everything to me when I witnessed that. The Gospel is not complicated. It is a simple message that even a child can understand, because God made it that way so that even a child can understand it so that even a child can find salvation through placing their faith in Jesus ALONE. Man is the one who complicates it by trying to overly intellectualize and religiously approach a free gift God offers mankind. It’s the Good News, and there’s nothing good news about me having to work for something I am woefully I’ll equipped to live up to or participate in earning, and that’s why Jesus had to pay the price in full and we can only accept it by the faith of a child, because not one person on this earth can add to or substitute what Christ accomplished on the cross on our behalf. He doesn’t need our help. He did it, and deserves ALL of the glory for it, as helping God out by adding our tip through our own efforts is not placing your full trust in Christ alone for your salvation. It places YOU in it.
That being said, I think it’s critical to point out just how horrific and damaging the man made 5 point TULIP doctrine of Calvinism and lordship salvation he spearheaded really is. The limited atonement of Jesus’ sacrifice, and predestination of some to go to Heaven and others to hell is probably some of the most egregious of it all, and I don’t think we can look past that, as it not only is not the gospel, but it is devastating to humans who found themselves caught up in this stuff, no assurance that scripture gives mention to, and working within themselves to earn salvation through perseverance and proving their fruit to fruit inspectors, rather than simply trusting in Christ alone and His Word alone as their assurance, believing upon the what the Word of God clearly says rather than man’s doctrinal teachings.
I personally witnessed a women who was sincerely doubting her salvation walk up to a microphone in tears looking for some assurance, and rather than point to the what God’s word says as assurance alone so that her trust is in Him and nothing else, he could give her nothing, and that said everything to me when I witnessed that. The Gospel is not complicated. It is a simple message that even a child can understand, because God made it that way so that even a child can understand it so that even a child can find salvation through placing their faith in Jesus ALONE. Man is the one who complicates it by trying to overly intellectualize and religiously approach a free gift God offers mankind. It’s the Good News, and there’s nothing good news about me having to work for something I am woefully I’ll equipped to live up to or participate in earning, and that’s why Jesus had to pay the price in full and we can only accept it by the faith of a child, because not one person on this earth can add to or substitute what Christ accomplished on the cross on our behalf. He doesn’t need our help. He did it, and deserves ALL of the glory for it, as helping God out by adding our tip through our own efforts is not placing your full trust in Christ alone for your salvation. It places YOU in it.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 7:46 am to L.A.
RIP, Johnny Mac.
I didn't share his eschatology. And I largely disagree with his 5 Point Solas interpretation.
But I know he was a man of conviction, and he worked tirelessly to his ends. He was many things, but he was never lukewarm. I have a lot of respect for him as a man, as a teacher, and as a man of faith - even when I disagreed.
He's one of those guys I'd have loved to share a beer and talk Theology with.
I didn't share his eschatology. And I largely disagree with his 5 Point Solas interpretation.
But I know he was a man of conviction, and he worked tirelessly to his ends. He was many things, but he was never lukewarm. I have a lot of respect for him as a man, as a teacher, and as a man of faith - even when I disagreed.
He's one of those guys I'd have loved to share a beer and talk Theology with.
Posted on 7/15/25 at 8:36 am to L.A.
He’s doing the jig in heaven make no mistake about that
Posted on 7/15/25 at 8:51 am to Snipe
There’s a place waiting in hell for you too just like Copeland, Duplantis and Olstien just to mention a few maybe yall can have a circle jerk together
Posted on 7/15/25 at 9:10 am to ole man
quote:
There’s a place waiting in hell for you too just like Copeland, Duplantis and Olstien just to mention a few maybe yall can have a circle jerk together
There's a place in hell for all of us. Our duty and our salvation is to reject evil and those that teach the path to hell, like the ones you've mentioned.
False teachers and preachers are leading millions of people to hell. McArthur was one of them. The devils greatest weapon is confusion and doubt, and he has many disciples spreading his lies.
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