Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe dies at age 89

Warren Wiersbe, a pastor and teacher whose many Bible commentaries brought the Word of God to life for late 20th- and early 21st-century Christians, died Thursday. He was 89. Wiersbe’s grandson Dan Jacobsen confirmed in a blog post that “my grandfather, Dr. Warren Wiersbe, breathed his last breath in his earthly body and took his first breath in glory.” Wiersbe had been in declining health for several years, Jacobsen wrote.

As a 16-year-old in Indiana, Wiersbe heard evangelist Billy Graham speak at a Youth for Christ rally and became enthralled with the Bible in the following years. “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,” he wrote in his autobiography Be Myself. He went on to become a pastor, teacher, and author of more than 150 books, including the best-selling “Be” series of commentaries. Written in straightforward, nonacademic prose, the “Be” series became a must-have for pastors across the nation and earned Wiersbe the nickname of “the pastor’s pastor.”

“Grandpa built bridges from the world of the Bible to the world of today so that we could get to the other side of glory in Jesus,” Jacobsen wrote. Wiersbe also pastored the Moody Church in Chicago from 1971 to 1978, taught theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and served as a Bible teacher for the Back to the Bible radio program. A prolific reader, he had a personal library at his home in Lincoln, Neb., of more than 10,000 books.