Evangelical firebrand John MacArthur dead at 86
Baptist News GlobalJuly 14, 2025
By David Bumgardner
American fundamentalism has lost its prophet.
John Fullerton MacArthur Jr., 86, died July 14 after a series of illnesses left him hospitalized.
Having served the nondenominational Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, Calif., for 55 years, MacArthur acquired a truly mammoth international audience to which he propagated his fundamentalist evangelical theology through his bestselling books, study Bible, commentaries, media empire of daily TV and radio broadcasts of his fiery “expository” Bible preaching on the Grace to You program, the annual Shepherd Conference, plus the rebranding and expansion of The Master’s Seminary and University.
MacArthur’s reach and influence on American evangelicalism were truly tentacular. His platform also had an international scope. MacArthur will be remembered as a stalwart defender of fundamentalist Christian theology for decades to come by having solidly secured himself a place among other fundamentalist figures such as John R. Rice, Jerry Falwell Sr., John Nelson Darby, Dwight L. Moody, J. Frank Norris, B.B. Warfield, C.I. Scofield and others.
However, no other fundamentalist figure comes close to MacArthur’s sheer influence, power and prestige.
Controversy
True to his fundamentalist heritage, MacArthur also was no stranger to controversy.
MacArthur colleague Phil Johnson posted this to Twitter Sunday morning as the church was gathering indoors.
For the last two decades or so of his life, MacArthur regularly was embroiled in controversy. These included accusations that his church mishandled cases of abuse, one involving excommunicating a woman who divorced her husband after he was convicted of child molestation, another involving his university being placed on probation by an accrediting agency for alleged abuses of power by the administration. Plus misogynistic comments directed toward Southern Baptist darling Bible-teacher Beth Moore, accusations from a former Master’s Seminary vice president that MacArthur was a plagiarist and that he had “never written a book himself,” and, just this year, a claim that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Christian.
Not to mention his battle with Los Angeles County over COVID restrictions on large public meetings.
These controversies are just a few of the dozens in which MacArthur was involved. During his combative life and ministry, he aimed at everyone from charismatic Christians to “Free Gracers,” feminists, theistic evolutionists, LGBTQ people, climate activists and public health officials.
MacArthur’s legacy is thus genuinely mixed. His Calvinistic, dispensational, cessationist, complementarian and fundamentalist theology, which relied entirely on a strictly literal reading of the biblical text, remains the prevailing ideology of countless evangelical churches among independent and so-called “Bible” churches. It even has made inroads into denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, as MacArthur was perhaps the person singularly most responsible for the resurgence of Calvinism among evangelicals.
However, MacArthur publicly distanced himself from the so-called “Young, Restless and Reformed” movement of the 2000s and 2010s, which gave birth to organizations such as The Gospel Coalition and the Acts 29 church planting network. His immense influence notwithstanding, MacArthur’s ministry was constantly surrounded by fights, controversy, accusations, tweets, statements, counterstatements, counter-counterstatements and more. Indeed, controversy is endemic to fundamentalism, and MacArthur and Grace Community Church were not exempt from this time-tried principle.
Biography
MacArthur was the son of John “Jack” Fullerton MacArthur Sr., an independent fundamental Baptist preacher who led the Calvary Bible Church of Burbank, Calif. The senior MacArthur also had a radio program called “The Voice of Calvary” and was heavily involved in grassroots fundamentalist organizations, including the Independent Fundamental Churches of America. He died in 1950.
Billy Graham (center) meets with ministers at Hollywood Presbyterian Church September 14, 1951. Those with Graham include Jack MacArthur, pastor of Fountain Avenue Baptist Church, immediately to Graham’s right in this photo. (Photo by Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images)
For his part, the junior MacArthur was profoundly influenced by his father and followed in his footsteps, including attending the fundamentalist Bob Jones College before transferring to the Free Methodist Los Angeles Pacific College in 1960 as both a student and football player.
In 1963, John MacArthur completed a master of divinity degree at the Biblical Institute of Los Angeles, now known as Biola University and the Talbot School of Theology. MacArthur’s own seminary is best known for having been home to the series of essays titled “The Fundamentals,” which was dedicated to defending what its authors viewed as essential Christian doctrine in the face of modernistic attacks. Many historians of American religion believe this series birthed the American fundamentalist movement.
After graduation, MacArthur was hired by his father to participate in a singing quartet for the Voice of Calvary and as an associate pastor of the Harry MacArthur Memorial Bible Church, a congregation planted by MacArthur’s father and named after MacArthur’s grandfather, a Canadian Anglican priest. John MacArthur also served as a faculty representative at Biola and was ordinained by the IFCA during this time.
Finally, in February 1969, Grace Community Church hired MacArthur as senior pastor. He was the church’s third and youngest pastor. He remained in that pulpit until his death.
Under MacArthur’s fiery preaching, attendance at Grace exploded, and attendance doubled every two years for MacArthur’s initial decade there. The church constructed a Family Life Center and a new Worship Center in the 1970s.
During this period, MacArthur and the church also launched Grace to You, which began as a ministry disseminating audio cassettes of his sermons. The first Grace to You broadcast hit the airwaves in 1977 in Baltimore, Md. The official Grace to You website claims audio tapes of MacArthur were broadcast “seemingly by accident.”
That accident eventually led to Grace to You being broadcast on more than 2,400 radio stations worldwide in nine languages. Some of MacArthur’s sermon manuscripts have been translated into 30 languages.
In 1977, MacArthur was awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Biola/Talbot, his alma mater. Some have criticized MacArthur for allowing himself to be called “Doctor” because standard academic conventions discourage using the honorific if a person has not earned a terminal degree through coursework and research.
In 1985, MacArthur was named president of the fundamentalist Los Angeles Baptist College and Seminary. Upon assuming office, MacArthur renamed it The Master’s College before changing it to The Master’s University in 2016. MacArthur served as president there until 2019, when he stepped down and was appointed chancellor. In 2018, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges placed the school on probation for, among other reasons listed in a 59-page report, a “climate of fear, intimidation and bullying” among faculty and staff. This probation was lifted in late 2020.
In 1997, HarperCollins issued the MacArthur Study Bible, which has sold more than 4 million copies. MacArthur is said to have written nearly 60% of the Bible’s 20,000 notes by hand.
In 2011, MacArthur fulfilled his lifelong dream of preaching through the entirety of the New Testament verse by verse.
MacArthur’s influence among evangelicals will be felt for decades. His views on women, race, the environment and more have given self-identified moderate and conservative evangelicals pause but have invigorated what today is known as conservative evangelicalism.
