Dr. J. Vernon McGee | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Vernon McGee June 17, 1904 Hillsboro, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | December 1, 1988(1988-12-01) (aged 84) Templeton, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Mountain View Cemetery and MausoleumAltadena, California |
| Education |
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| Occupations |
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| Known for | Worldwide evangelistic radio |
| Spouse | Ruth Inez Jordan McGee[1] |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | www |
John Vernon McGee (June 17, 1904 – December 1, 1988) was an American ordainedPresbyterian minister, pastor, Bible teacher, theologian, and radio minister.[2]
McGee was born inHillsboro, Texas, to itinerant parents,[3] John McGee and Carrie McGee (née Lingner).[4] His father held many jobs, his last one being an engineer at a cotton mill in Oklahoma,[3] where he died in 1918 when Vernon was 14 years old.[5] After his father's death, Vernon's family relocated to Tennessee. Before entering the ministry, Vernon worked as a bank teller.[6]
After attendingSouthwestern at Memphis where he majored in Greek,[3] he graduatedmagna cum laude with aBachelor of Divinity degree fromColumbia Theological Seminary[7] andMaster of Theology andDoctor of Theology degrees fromDallas Theological Seminary.[3] The bank manager for whom McGee had earlier worked paid for his seminary education.[8] McGee's ordination occurred on June 18, 1933, at the Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee.[4]
McGee's first church as a pastor was located on a red-clay hill in Midway, Georgia. He served Presbyterian churches inDecatur, Georgia;Nashville, Tennessee; andCleburne, Texas, where he met and later married Ruth Inez Jordan. McGee and his wife moved toPasadena, California, where he accepted the pastorate at the Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1941. The McGees' first child, a daughter named Ruth Margaret McGee, was born prematurely and died when she was a few hours old. The McGees later had another daughter, Lynda Karah McGee, in 1946.
At the Lincoln Avenue Church, McGee started theOpen Bible Hour radio program, which aired once per week. In 1949, the program was expanded to a half-hour daily schedule and renamed theHigh Noon Bible Class.[9]
McGee became the pastor of theChurch of the Open Door in downtownLos Angeles in 1949, succeedingLouis T. Talbot (1889–1976). That same year, McGee gave one of the daily invocations atBilly Graham's two-month-longChrist for Greater Los Angeles Campaign.[10] In 1952, McGee was asked by evangelist and university presidentJohn Brown, owner of KGER radio station (nowKLTX) inLong Beach, California, to take over a radio program (started in 1950 byyoung-Earth creationistHarry Rimmer, whom McGee admired) to which listeners could send in questions that were answered on the air.[11] In the next year, 1953, another family tragedy occurred. McGee's mother was killed after being struck by an intoxicated driver in Pasadena. McGee did not press charges against the driver and only requested of the judge that justice be done. This story was told in Thru the Bible, Vol. 29: The Prophets (Jonah/Micah), Chapter 3: "The Prophet's Third Message."
By 1955, McGee had a well-publicized break with thePresbyterian Church, in which he claimed that the church's "liberal leadership [had] taken over the machinery of the presbytery with a boldness and ruthlessness that is appalling."[12] ThisFundamentalist–Modernist controversy within the Presbyterian church had been growing since the 1920s. It was during this time that a large number of nondenominational evangelical Protestant churches, such as theMoody Church in Chicago, had begun to appear across the U.S. After retiring from the pastorate at the Church of the Open Door in 1970, McGee devoted his remaining years to theThru the Bible Radio Network. He also served as chairman of the Bible department at theBible Institute of Los Angeles[13] and as a visiting lecturer atDallas Theological Seminary.
In 1967, he began broadcasting theThru the Bible radio program (TTB). In a systematic study of each book of theBible, McGee took his listeners fromGenesis toRevelation in a two-and-a-half-year "Bible Bus trip", as he called it. He had earlier preached a "Through the Bible in a Year" series of sermons, each devoted to one chapter of the Bible, at the Church of the Open Door.[14] After retiring from the pastorate in January 1970, and realizing that two and a half years was not enough time to teach the whole Bible, McGee completed another study of the entire Bible in a five-year period. At the time of McGee's death, theThru the Bible program aired in 34 languages, but has since been translated into over 100 languages. It is broadcast onTrans World Radio throughout the world every weekday.
McGee advocatedcreationism and upheld the literal interpretation of thefirst chapter of theBook of Genesis, interpreting the six "days of creation" to six 24-hour periods of time.[15][16] Recurring themes in theTTB broadcasts were the doctrines ofSola fide (salvation through faith alone) and[absolute] assurance of salvation, oreternal security, which proclaims that once a person sincerely accepts Christ as personal savior, there is nothing they can do, no sin they can commit, that will forfeit their salvation.[17] He often spoke of the days of societalapostasy in Christianity andsecularism that he believed he was witnessing during his lifetime, warning that spiritual apostasy was always the first of the three stages leading to the fall of nations, commonly observed throughout the Bible, the second and third being, respectively,immorality andpolitical anarchy.[18][failed verification]
Frequently inTTB broadcasts, McGee would tell anecdotes, many from personal recollection, about prominent evangelical Christian ministers from the past century, such asG. Campbell Morgan,Lewis Sperry Chafer,Mel Trotter, andDwight L. Moody and some of his successors at the Chicago Moody Church, such asR. A. Torrey andHarry A. Ironside. McGee also frequently referenced favorite Bible passages in his sermons, such asGalatians 6:7 (Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap). The continued success of the long-runningTTB program has been attributed to McGee's oratorical abilities, folksy manner, and distinctive accent, as well as his insistence on maintaining the original mission, which was to spread the Scriptures with consistency of message.[19] During one of his programs he chuckled that one of his listeners said that talked like the cartoon character Huckleberry Hound.
McGee received his advanced degrees from theDallas Theological Seminary. Many Bible colleges were modeled after the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Dwight L. Moody, whom McGee often spoke of in his sermons, was influential in preaching the imminence of the Rapture,[20] which is important toDispensationalism. McGee opposed the viewpoints ofFatalism and AbsolutePredestination in Calvinism.[21][22] McGee rejected the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine that "Saint" Peter (not Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ found in The Written Word of God) went to and founded the Church inRome, asserting, rather, in many sermons that the Church in Rome was founded byPaul.[23] McGee often argued for the distinction to be made between the "false" Roman Catholic Church and theEarly Church, particularly in regard to the latter's role in developing theNew Testament of theBible.[24]
McGee was a frequent and popular summer conference speaker at the Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center inCannon Beach, Oregon.[25]
McGee continued many speaking engagements after he retired, including throughout a bout of cancer from which he fully recovered. However, a heart problem surgically treated in 1965 resurfaced, and he died in his chair in 1988.[26] Since his death, the five-year program ofThru the Bible has continued to air on over 800 radio stations in North America and is broadcast worldwide in more than 130 languages viaradio,shortwave, and theInternet.
An obituary distributed by theAssociated Press reported that McGee died of heart failure at a nursing home in Templeton, California, at age 84.[27] His wife, Ruth, died in 1997 after suffering fromdementia for nearly a decade.[28]
McGee was posthumously inducted into theNational Religious Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1989.[29]
| Degree | Year | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) | 1930 | Southwestern (Memphis, TN) |
| Bachelor of Divinity (B.Div.) | 1933 | Columbia Theological Seminary |
| Master of Theology (Th.M.) | 1937 | Dallas Theological Seminary |
| Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) | 1940 | Dallas Theological Seminary |
| Years | Congregation | Location | Denomination |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19??-19?? | ?? | Cleveland, Texas | Presbyterian |
| 1932-1933 | Midway Presbyterian Church | Decatur, Georgia | Presbyterian[30][31] |
| 1930-1933 | Westminster Presbyterian Church | Decatur, Georgia | Presbyterian |
| 1933-1936 | Second Presbyterian Church | Nashville, Tennessee | Presbyterian |
| May 3, 1936 – October 3, 1940 | First Presbyterian Church | Cleburne, Texas | Presbyterian |
| 1940-1948 | Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church | Pasadena, California | Presbyterian |
| 1949-1970 | Church of the Open Door | Los Angeles, California | non-denominational |
| Years | Program | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1941-1955 | The Open Bible Hour | Pasadena, California |
| 1955-1967 | High Noon Bible Class | Pasadena, California |
| 1967–present | Thru the Bible | Pasadena, California |
Notes
BibliographyDelgado, Berta (2004)."A voice from the heavens".The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved2008-08-07.
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