Above — Dr. Montgomery as a Guest on the White Horse Inn (2007)

Dr. John Warwick Montgomery died in Christ on Thursday, September 25, from various complications associated with old age. He was 92. Dr. Montgomery had a huge impact on me, and I look back on my time with him as the major turning point in my life and career.

The first time I heard the name John Warwick Montgomery was when a salesman from Bethany Fellowship Publishers told me about Montgomery’s books on apologetics. He suggested that we carry them in our Christian bookstore. I did, I read them, and found them to be far superior to other Christian apologists I had been reading (i.e., Josh McDowell). When Walter Martin announced on his popular Bible Answer Man radio program (broadcast live on Saturday nights in the early 1980s) that he would be teaching at a new law school to be opened in Orange County by Dr. Montgomery, The Simon Greenleaf School of Law (SGSL)[1], I was one of the first to sign up. The school was named for the famed American jurist, who had written a masterful case for Christ’s resurrection marshaling evidence along the lines of a legal argument in a court of law—The Testimony of the Evangelists. Both A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield referred to Greenleaf’s work quite favorably. Montgomery used much the same method to defend the faith in the face of rejuvenated critical scholarship.

Montgomery’s massive list of accomplishments is simply amazing, and I won’t recount them here. But please do check out his Wikipedia entry and you’ll see what I mean. Absolutely mind blowing—eleven degrees including three earned doctoral degrees, and more than forty books on a variety of subjects—mostly apologetics. Shane Rosenthal, as well as the folks at 1517, have written eloquent pieces offering their take on Montgomery’s life, influence, and legacy. For a more exhaustive memorial, see Craig Parton’s Full Obituary. I encourage you to read them.

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