"Prayer is asking, and the answer to prayer is
receiving."
John Richard Rice was born in Cooke County, Texas, on
December 11, 1895, the son of William H. and Sallie
Elizabeth La Prade Rice. Educated at Decatur Baptist
College and Baylor University, he did graduate work at
the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the
University of Chicago.
On September 27, 1921, he was married to Lloys McClure
Cooke. Six daughters were born of that union, all of
whom, with their husbands, went on to labor in full-time
Christian service.
Although Dr. Rice served as pastor of Baptist churches
in Dallas and Shamrock, Texas--in addition to starting
about a dozen others from his successful independent
crusades--his primary work was as an evangelist. He was
a friend and peer of Billy and Ma Sunday, Bob Jones,
Sr., W. B. Riley, Homer Rodeheaver, H. A. Ironside,
Robert G. Lee, Harry Rimmer and other leaders of that
era. He himself held huge citywide crusades in Chicago,
Cleveland, Buffalo, Seattle and numerous other key
metropolitan centers.
Called "The 20th Century's Mightiest Pen," Dr. Rice
authored more than 200 books and booklets circulating in
excess of 60 million copies before his death, about a
dozen of which were translated into at least 35 foreign
languages. His sermon booklet, "What Must I Do to Be
Saved?" has been distributed in over 32 million copies
in English alone, 8.5 million in Japanese and nearly 2
million in Spanish. In 1934 he launched THE SWORD OF THE
LORD, which, by the time of his death, had become the
largest independent religious weekly in the world, with
subscribers in every state of the Union and more than
100 foreign countries. Thousands of preachers read it
regularly, and it undoubtedly had the greatest impact
upon the fundamentalist movement of any publication in
the 20th century.
In 1959, Dr. Rice started the Voice of Revival, a
30-minute radio broadcast heard on 69 stations in 29
states, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands. He died
in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on December 29, 1980.
Bio courtesy of
Sword of the Lord |
