Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee
His greatest compliment
As a student pastor, Dr. McGee’s first church sat on a red clay hill in Midway, Georgia. It was there he said he received his greatest compliment: “It was from a country boy wearing high buttoned, yellow shoes. After a morning service he came to speak to me. He groped for words, then blurted out, ‘I never knew Jesus was so wonderful!’ He started to say more but choked up and hurried out of the church. As I watched him stride across the field, I prayed, ‘Oh, God, help me to always preach so that it can be said, I never knew Jesus was so wonderful.'”
Early days
John Vernon McGee was born in Hillsboro, Texas, in 1904, the son of very poor parents. At age 14, “Vernon” lost his dad to a cotton gin accident and his mother moved him and his sister to Nashville, Tennessee. Through the investment of significant mentors, Vernon was able to attend college and then seminary. After completing his education (earning degrees from Southwestern University in Memphis, Tennessee; Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia; Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas), he was the pastor of churches in Decatur, GA, Nashville, TN, and Cleburne, TX. It was in Cleburne that Vernon met Ruth Inez Jordan and fell in love with her at first sight. He proposed on their second date, and the two married a year later. Eventually, he and Ruth settled in Pasadena, California, where Dr. McGee accepted a pastoral call to the Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church. He recalled this period as the happiest in his life, with a young family and a young congregation whom he loved.
At the core of what Thru the Bible is and what we do, is the conviction that the Bible is true and trustworthy. We believe God uses His Word uniquely in each of our lives to transform the way we think, believe, and live. How does He do this? We believe that, in part, He does this by telling us His own story: The story of His love, His redemption—a story that He planned and put into place before our time began. At its heart, it’s the story of how He has opened the way for us to know Him, to love and obey Him, to grow deeper day by day in the ways we trust Him. It’s a beautiful story that gets better every time we hear it.