(RNS) — John MacArthur, megachurch pastor, culture warrior, author and longtime voice of the “Grace to You” radio program, has died.
He was 86.
“John MacArthur went to heaven at 6:17pm California time,” Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You,” told RNS in a text message.
During a Sunday (July 13) service at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, Tom Patton, one of the congregation’s longtime pastors, announced MacArthur had been hospitalized and was near death.
“You need to know that this week, Pastor John contracted pneumonia,” Patton told the congregation, according to a livestream of the service posted on social media. “He was admitted into the hospital, and may be in the presence of the Lord soon.”
Patton then asked the congregation to pray for MacArthur, the church’s longtime senior pastor, his wife, Patricia, and the couple’s four adult children and their families.
John MacArthur. (Photo courtesy Grace to You)
On Sunday, Johnson told RNS that doctors had done all they could for MacArthur and that he was on “the precipice of heaven.”
“He has suffered much in recent weeks,” Johnson said in a text message on Sunday evening. “His mind is still sharp but his body is spent.”
Known for both his preaching and his penchant for controversy — especially his feuds in recent years with public health officials in Los Angeles during COVID-19 shutdowns, his critique of women in ministry and his criticism of pastors who discussed racism in church — MacArthur had been ill for much of the past year after having surgery in 2024 to replace a heart valve.
The son and grandson of preachers, MacArthur was born June 19, 1939, in Los Angeles, where his father, John “Jack” MacArthur, was pastor at Manchester Baptist Church. His father became a traveling evangelist, and the family lived in Chicago and Philadelphia before returning to Los Angeles, where his father led the “Voice of Calvary” radio ministry.
After graduating from high school, where he played football and baseball, MacArthur spent two years at Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist school in South Carolina, where he got his first taste of preaching during a student mission project. During a cross-country trip as a student, MacArthur was thrown from a car while traveling in Alabama, which left him with painful abrasions and burns on his back. After that experience, he felt a call to the ministry.
He then transferred to Los Angeles Pacific College, where he played three sports, then attended Talbot Theological Seminary from 1961 to 1964. While in seminary, MacArthur claimed the Cleveland Browns professional football team called him after star wide receiver Paul Warfield was injured and asked him to sign as a backup.
“No,” he told them, according to an account of his early years in ministry published by “Grace to You.” “I’m going to seminary.”
However,