John MacArthur

John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. was born in Los Angeles on June 19, 1939, into a family line of preachers. His father, Jack MacArthur, was a pastor and radio preacher; the ministry went back generations on that side of the house. He nearly died at nineteen. A car accident threw him out along the pavement at speed. He spent months recovering, with gravel worked out of his back a piece at a time, and came out of it settled that he would preach. He studied at Los Angeles Pacific College and then at Talbot Theological Seminary. In February 1969 he took the pulpit of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, a suburban congregation in the San Fernando Valley. He stayed fifty-six years. His method was simple and relentless. Open the New Testament book, start at the first verse, and work through it. He did not preach topics. He did not chase the calendar. Matthew alone took him eight years. Over forty-three years he preached verse by verse through every book of the New Testament, finishing in June 2011 with the last verses of Mark — a project he had begun before anyone in the church owned a computer. Those sermons became the MacArthur New Testament Commentary, more than thirty volumes, and the MacArthur Study Bible, which has sold in the millions and been translated into Spanish, Russian, German, Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Arabic. His radio program Grace to You went out daily on hundreds of stations. He served as president and then chancellor of The Master's University and The Master's Seminary, training pastors to do what he did. He was a fighter, and he did not soften. The Gospel According to Jesus (1988) argued that saving faith submits to Christ as Lord, and set off a public dispute that ran for a decade. Charismatic Chaos and later Strange Fire attacked the modern charismatic movement head on — a position many believers, including many who valued his exposition, rejected outright. He preached against psychology in the pulpit, against seeker-driven church growth, and against what he considered the drift of evangelicalism into entertainment. In 2020, when California ordered churches closed, Grace Community Church reopened and MacArthur refused to shut it again. The county took the church to court; the case ended in a settlement. He was still preaching in 2025 when he contracted pneumonia. He died on July 14, 2025, at eighty-six, after fifty-six years in the same pulpit. What he left is a shelf and a school: a full New Testament commentary, a study Bible in a dozen languages, a seminary, and five decades of recordings from one platform in the San Fernando Valley. Sources: Iain Murray, John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock; John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus and the MacArthur New Testament Commentary series; Grace Community Church's published announcement of his death, July 2025; contemporary obituaries.