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Rev. John MacArthur is among the most influential evangelical pastors in the country with a prolific media reach, and his San Fernando Valley megachurch has become the face of religious resistance to California’s Covid-19 public health orders. He was 86 years old.
MacArthur’s death was announced on the Grace Community Church website in Sun Valley. According to the church, he had recently contacted pneumonia.
Franklin Graham, president of Billy Graham Evangelical Asson, paid tribute to MacArthur on social media, calling him one of the “great biblical teachers in America.”
“He got more from biblical verse than anyone I ever knew,” Graham wrote in X. “His voice will be overlooked.”
Based in Los Angeles – His faithful fills the 3,500-seat auditorium twice for his sermon every Sunday, but MacArthur has arrived internationally to millions of people through his radio, television shows and books, leading the lives of countless young theologians as president of the Masters’ College, leading the life of Santa Clarita’s Saminary seminary.
He was known for fundamentalist biblical standards and focused strictly on Bible and refuge sermons writings that touched on more contemporary themes.
In a statement on this week’s website, Grace Community Church said in a statement on his website this week that “ministry is an unwavering commitment to proclaiming God’s truth, and Pastor John preached the words seasons and out of seasons.
From a family with a long line of pastors, MacArthur said he had always been religious and explained that an Alabama car accident left him in unbearable pain and pushed him into the pulpit. As a student at South Carolina’s freshman college, he was sent to California for treatment. There, the doctor had to remove road asphalt from his severely damaged back.
“I had to lie down in the bed above my stomach for about three months, and as a result, I was ready to do whatever God wanted of me,” he said in a 2004 interview posted by the media company. “And I knew by then I was going to preach and teach.”
MacArthur was born at St. Vincent Hospital in Los Angeles. His father, Jack, a pastor at Baptist Church in South Lora, quickly diverged into Evangelism, taking his family to Chicago and Philadelphia.
He attended Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, and later transferred to Los Angeles Pacific College. When he took the pulpit at Grace Community Church in 1969, Sunday attendance averaged around 700 people in the northern San Fernando Valley.
His influence was tailored to his syndicated 30-minute show, Grace to You, by thousands of radio listeners, and he later launched a wide range of media outlets broadcasting his teachings to dozens of countries.
He became the president of a master’s degree in 1985, and later changed his name to a master’s degree university, moderating unprecedented growth in fundamentalist institutions, The Times wrote in 1990. He supported the superintendent of the seminary next door.
In 1997, The Times explained how MacArthur refused to use typewriters and computers, and struggled to write his Bible study by hand. “I don’t have time for the learning curve,” he said.
He wrote over 400 books and study guides, including the MacArthur Study Bible, and appealed to people in the ultra-conservative church by adhering to fundamentalist Bible standards focused on teaching the “inexplicable” Bible.
At the same time, he refused user-friendly sermons, rock music and community outreach that defined several evangelical churches in the 1980s and 1990s, and aimed at those he said, using gimmicks to attract people to the church.
The church is “not a neighbourhood pub,” he wrote in his 1993 book, “I am ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church becomes like the world.” “This is not a community center where parties are held, not a country club for the masses.”
The Times covered his attacks on fellow clergymen, writing that MacArthur had turned into a “comprehensive enthusiasm of conservative Protestants” in 1991.
Within his career, he called Catholicism “a false religion,” criticised popular religious figures, including Joel Osteen and Beth Moore, and called Black Live Matter “an organization that is the enemy of God” for his support of LGBTQ+ equality.
In recent years, at least two media outlets covering religion — today’s Christianity and Lois’s report — reported on allegations that a woman seeking biblical counseling on abusive marriage was advised by church elders to stay with her husband and fear church discipline on the issue. The church did not respond to the allegations of the story.
After leaving religious institutions where the 2020 pandemic relies on live streams and outdoor gatherings, Grace Community Church continued its indoor service, with MacArthur questioning the existence of the coronavirus and challenged the government to limit prayer practices.
A county health inspector attempts to enter a church that was blocked by security guards.
“There’s no pandemic,” MacArthur told his followers in August 2020, but later said he would admit the virus.
Los Angeles County sued the church, but ultimately faced a Supreme Court decision that sought on the side of the religious system. In a 2021 letter to supporters, MacArthur announced that the legal fees for the church will be paid. The church later received $800,000 for fees from the state and county.
“We know there is no situation where we can close the church,” he wrote in the letter. “The church is not only a building, but a bride of Christ, and exists to declare the truth.”
MacArthur was survived by his wife, Patricia. Four children. 15 grandchildren. and nine great grandchildren.
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