Popular and prolific Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe died on the evening of 2 May, days short of his 90th birthday.
Wiersbe was converted in May 1945 just before his 16th birthday when he attended a Youth for Christ rally and heard Billy Graham speak. Though he had attended church and Vacation Bible School, he trusted in Christ for the first time in response to Graham’s altar call.
Insatiable appetite for the Bible
A few years later, the president of Youth for Christ, Torrey Johnson, asked him what he wanted to do with his life. Wiersbe responded: ‘I want to go to school and get some Bible training and then preach the gospel.’ Johnson said: ‘Young man, find the one thing you do that God blesses, and stick with it!’ Wiersbe later wrote: ‘I had developed an insatiable appetite for the word of God, and I wanted to study and understand the Bible more than anything else in all the world.’
In June 1953, he received his Bachelor of Divinity degree and married Betty Warren, who was a librarian at the university where he studied (he had practically lived in the library). Together they had four children.
During his time as a pastor in Kentucky, a local Cincinnati radio station broadcast his Sunday sermons as the Calvary Hour.
Wiersbe authored more than 150 books, the most famous the BE Series of exposition-al commentaries, which covered the entire New Testament and most of the Old.
10,000 books
In the course of one house move, Betty told the estate agent: ‘We are looking for a library with a house attached.’ Their house would eventually have the entire basement devoted to Warren’s collection of more than 10,000 books.
In one interview Wiersbe said: ‘Writing to me is a ministry. I’m not an athlete, I’m not a mechanic. I can’t do so many of the things that successful men can do. But I can read and study and think and teach. This is a beautiful, wonderful gift from God. All I’m doing is using what He’s given to me to teach people, and to give glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.’
