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.
Copyright© 2002 SWORD OF THE LORD Publishers
Sermons & Books by Dr. John R. Rice
