J. Vernon McGee

John Vernon McGee (1904 - December 1, 1988) was born in Hillsboro, Texas. McGee was an ordained Presbyterian minister (Presbyterian Church in the United States - PCUS), having graduated with his B.Div. from Columbia Theological Seminary. He served Presbyterian churches in Decatur, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Cleburne, Texas before he came with his wife to Pasadena, California, where he accepted a call to the Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church. He walked away from the denomination when he moved from Pasadena to Los Angeles, citing inroads of liberalism as the cause of his dissatisfaction, and became the pastor of the Church of the Open Door in 1949, where he continued as pastor until 1970.

In 1967, he began the "Thru the Bible Radio Network" program. In a systematic study of each book of the Bible (the Protestant Bible of 66 books), Dr. McGee took his listeners from Genesis to Revelation in a five-year "Bible bus trip," as he called it. His theological orientation was dispensational, premillennial, and mildly Calvinistic. Dr. McGee died in 1988, but Thru the Bible continues to air on over 400 radio stations including KXEG and KCRO in North America, and is heard in more than 100 languages.

In April 2006, Paul Crouch joked on TBN that many people thought McGee was still alive, but that he had in fact died years ago.