A once-in-a-generation man of God

John MacArthur leaves behind a void

BONUS POST:

Last night, about half an hour after he passed away in a hospital bed in Santa Clarita, CA, I heard the news. Pastor John MacArthur was with Jesus. We knew it was coming; his church, Grace Community, had announced on Sunday morning that he was quite ill and unlikely to recover.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who prayed for a miraculous recovery.

Last year, he had been doing what he’s done for decades — preaching verse by verse through a book of the Bible. He was in Revelation — a series he started in October 2023. I wanted him to finish it. He made it to the beginning of chapter 11 before ill health took him away from weekly sermons.

In all fairness, he’d preached on Revelation before, and did complete it, in 1995.

Because he’s preached his way through every book in the New Testament, and many of the books of the Old Testament, a number of times.

I’ve heard him talk about his passion for the Bible, how the lure of immersing himself in Scripture, studying and learning and sharing with others, proved a call he could not resist. That passion shone through every sermon (thousands of them); every book (more than a hundred, including books he edited), even every blog post, every question answered in his church’s occasional Q&A sessions.

He revered the Word because it is what God gave us so we could know Him.

And he was profoundly prolific. I’ve seen speculation that no other pastor in the past few centuries generated more material with the possible exception of another exceptional preacher, Charles Spurgeon. The two, born a little more than a hundred years apart, shared a birthday (June 19) and the same passion for the Bible.

“Johnny Mac” as some called him was not without controversy, primarily because he was unrelenting in standing up to what was not biblical — be it invalid governmental dictates banning church services during Covid, heretical teaching springing out of the charismatic movement, women in the pulpit, ecumenical movements that attempted to paper over heretical doctrine, or reliance on psychology to the detriment of biblical counseling.

In addition to his teaching, his legacy also includes Master’s University, and Master’s Seminary, as well as the Grace to You organization which disseminates his (and others’) work.

To me, the one thing that defines his legacy is his best-selling (and my favorite) book — The Gospel According to Jesus. Saturated with scripture, it was a response to bad theology that still exists today which teaches that mere assent to the truth of Jesus being God is what saves us.

He masterfully shows how wrong this is and how it leads to Christians-in-name-only, of which of course we have an abundance. Bringing the full counsel of the Word to the question, his case is irrefutable and vital for the church — we are saved by grace alone, not by anything we can bring to it — but if we are truly saved, we will begin to seek obedience to Him.

By all accounts, although he was powerful in the pulpit, out of it he was humble and approachable — many stories are surfacing today demonstrating this, but he himself told a funny story once about how his son told him one day, “Dad, when you get in the pulpit and preach you’re really something, but the rest of the time you’re not really special at all.” (Kids are helpful in keeping us humble, no?)

Those who interacted with him personally often spoke of his keen sense of humor. Sometimes his great passion of preaching the Word conflicted with expectations as to sermon length, and he would humorously suggest he only had another three hours to go! In those moments, though, you could almost sense the longing in his voice that he really did have a lot more to say, if only everyone would just stay all day to hear it.

I note that “humor” and “humility” are related. Poking gentle fun at oneself is a mark of a healthy self-image. Known for humility, he did not see himself as “king” of his church, or other organizations he founded or helped lead. He always knew who the only King is.

And he finished well, without the kind of scandals that have rocked the church lately. There are those who will point to a church discipline issue that received some publicity a few years back, but those are complex and private matters about which we do not have all the details, because the church has no business sharing them.

He would be the first to tell you he wasn’t perfect, because no one is. But it is unquestionably sweet to see a well-known pastor come to the end of decades of ministry with his reputation intact, still striving to stay true to the Word and his Lord.

I will say this outright. The world has lost a modern-day prophet, in the sense of that word meaning to proclaim truth (not to fortune-tell the future). It is a loss we mourn.

However. The man left such a rich legacy of material that you could probably spend a lifetime learning from it. The aforementioned Grace To You has all his sermons, searchable by which scriptures he was teaching, and a wealth of other videos, recordings, books, articles, and more. I will continue to visit this site often and invite you to come look around.

I never met him personally. But I will one day. And I will thank him for his part in opening my eyes to the glorious wonder of God and His Word, a wonder he shared prolifically, and effectively.

I want to end with something light-hearted. A couple of years ago, his college, Master’s University, partnered with the Babylon Bee to poke a little fun at woke parents searching for a college. His cameo appearances are worth the watch:

See you soon, Pastor MacArthur.