John F. MacArthur Jr., a megachurch pastor, author, and broadcaster revered as a premier expositor but reviled for protecting abusers while punishing their victims, has died. He was 86.

Phil Johnson, executive director of MacArthur’s media ministry Grace to You (GTY) made the announcement Monday evening after MacArthur’s long battle with pneumonia had come to an end.

“John MacArthur went to heaven at 6:17 p.m. PST,” he texted.

The famed pastor’s church announced Sunday that MacArthur had been hospitalized and might not survive long. On Monday, as the pastor lay in a coma, #PastorJohn was one of the top trending hashtags on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He’s been counted among the country’s most influential pastors, and The MacArthur Center calls him “the world’s premier expository preacher.” When he spoke, he sometimes made national headlines. The MacArthur Study Bible, which he edited, has sold more than 2 million copies.

MacArthur has pastored Grace Community Church (GCC) in Sun Valley, Calif., since 1969, growing it to a congregation of 8,000. He published nearly 400 study guides, books, and commentaries—and more than 3,000 sermons—through his media ministry, Grace to You (GTY), which also airs on the radio in at least 14 countries.

A former president and chancellor of The Master’s University and Seminary (TMUS), MacArthur was also a popular conference speaker and author, headlining GCC conferences and ones hosted by other Reformed organizations like Ligonier Ministries.

But he has faced criticism in recent years over his handling of sexual abuse cases and other issues.

An investigation published by The Roys Report (TRR) showed he received hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in ministry salaries, on top of his church salary and earnings from books and speaking engagements.

In recent years, MacArthur was accused of repeatedly shaming or ignoring abuse survivors and covering for their abusers, as revealed in a series of TRR investigations. A former GCC elder confronted the church in 2023 over what he called “awful patterns” of siding with abusers and endangering victims.

A former member filed suit against the church early this month, alleging GCC publicly shamed her and disclosed confidential information obtained when she sought counseling for her abusive marriage.

“He’s just been connected to almost every part of the conservative evangelical movement,” scholar Beth Allison Barr said of MacArthur.

Barr noted that MacArthur’s pastoral career in Southern California coincided with the rise of the Calvary Chapel movement there, and he became a vocal opponent of the charismatic movement. He was a major voice in the evangelical debates over lordship salvation and gender roles, too.

“He has been one of the loudest advocates for complementarianism, and one of the loudest for, perhaps, the most rigid gender roles for women,” said Barr, whose bestselling book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood” took a critical look at male-oriented power structures within evangelicalism.

Her book doesn’t examine MacArthur’s impact specifically, Barr said, but she has spoken with some women who have felt his influence. She said they described “a very rigid atmosphere where there is very little access for their voices to be heard beyond the male leaders, and even their access to be able to bring to light problems with their husbands or within their church.”

At The Master’s University and Seminary, the institution’s counseling programs during MacArthur’s tenure taught that winning “the abuser over to righteousness” was more important than preventing harm to an abused wife, TRR previously reported.

Barr compared MacArthur’s handling of alleged abuse to that of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has been embroiled in scandal concerning sex abuse cover-ups at member churches.

 “It clearly shows there is a connection, this type of authoritarian, pastoral structure that emphasizes rigid gender roles, and the flourishing of domestic abuse and attitudes that privilege and protect men over the female victims,” Barr said.

 MacArthur had reportedly fallen ill in January 2023, and since then has had a number of surgeries to treat heart conditions and other maladies.

Decades devoted to expository preaching

In 1963, MacArthur, a third-generation pastor, started out as an associate pastor at his father’s church shortly after earning a Master of Divinity from Talbot Theological Seminary at Biola. He moved on to GCC in 1969. That same year, a church member founded Grace to You to distribute tapes of MacArthur’s expository sermons.

Preaching magazine called MacArthur one of the most influential pastors in 2010, partly because of the massive radio audience he had by then gathered.

“Through his Grace to You radio broadcast and his commentaries, he influenced the preaching of many evangelical preachers,” Preaching Executive Editor Michael Duduit told TRR in 2023. “MacArthur has been an effective proponent of a verse-by-verse preaching model through books of the Bible, and many young preachers adopted that format after hearing him model the approach.”

Duduit said he believed MacArthur’s influence has waned since 2010, as younger megachurch pastors and their social media reach have gained more influence. However, MacArthur is still “among the better-known evangelical preachers,” Duduit said.

In 1985, MacArthur was named president of The Master’s College, later renamed The Master’s University in Santa Clarita, California. He founded The Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles in 1986, which has since graduated more than 1,000 into the pastorate. MacArthur remained president of both until becoming their chancellor in 2019 amid accreditation woes.

Later in 2019, MacArthur made headlines with just two words: “Go home.” That was his gut reaction, he said, to well-known Bible teacher Beth Moore, who had spoken at a megachurch one Sunday morning that summer.

Other prominent Christians responded, saying MacArthur was being dismissive of women’s dignity and self-worth.

MacArthur followed up weeks later with a sermon on women’s roles in the church in which he stated “empowering women makes weak men.” He has since said elsewhere that he believes women shouldn’t teach or publicly discuss theological issues.

Recent years bring more controversy

In the face of growing criticism in 2020 and 2021, MacArthur complained of persecution, saying people were trying to smear him as “just another spiritual fraud.”

But he didn’t directly address any of the issues critics raised then, TRR reported.

He had taken heat for his expensive lifestyle, including multiple luxury homes. A TRR investigation also found his son-in-law benefited from millions of dollars in contracts with GTY and TMUS.

Watchdogs pointed out discrepancies between MacArthur’s telling and others’ accounts of the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, too.

In addition, GCC resisted acknowledging the spread of COVID-19 among congregants despite county health orders to report potential outbreaks. Members feared retribution if they revealed anyone was sick, TRR reported. The church finally acknowledged in summer 2021 that the pandemic disease had swept through the church the preceding winter.

GCC dismisses scrutiny of how it handled abuse allegations

The heat on MacArthur intensified further these past three years.

In March 2022, TRR exposed how MacArthur publicly shamed and excommunicated a child abuser’s wife because she refused to take him back into the family’s home. Records showed GCC supported the abuser, former GCC teacher David Gray, for years—and has never apologized to his wife Eileen.

MacArthur’s supporters dismissed pushback stemming from TRR’s exposes.

A former GCC pastor’s daughter then came forward in April 2022, telling TRR her father confessed to MacArthur he was molesting her and providing documents backing up her account. The pastor, Paul Guay, remained on staff at GCC for years after his confession, TRR found.

MacArthur once again complained about “getting hammered on the internet” shortly after the news about Paul Guay broke.

“I want to bless those who persecute me and not curse,” MacArthur said. “What about the wrong they’re doing? Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.’”

However, a GCC elder tasked with reviewing the David Gray case concluded the church still displayed “the same awful patterns of counseling” for decades, through at least 2022. The elder, Hohn Cho, resigned from GCC’s board rather than walk back his conclusions. Cho eventually went public with his concerns in early 2023, saying church members “could effectively be playing Russian roulette if they ever needed counseling at GCC.”

GCC released a statement after Cho went public, which did not reference any specific allegations and stated the church “deals with accusations personally and privately.”

No successor has been named to helm GCC

MacArthur is survived by his wife, Patricia; four married children; 15 grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.

Grace Community Church hasn’t named an individual to succeed MacArthur as lead pastor. In a December 2022 podcast episode about his succession plan, MacArthur said a plurality of elders will continue to lead the church and “it could be a long time before they decide to sort of elevate one individual into the bulk of the pulpit ministry.”

The church already faces a drop-off in donations, TRR reported in June. In response, elders reportedly opted to cut a fifth of the church’s annual budget, starting this month.

Sarah Einselen is an award-winning writer and editor based in Texas.