The death of Dr. Gary North

Earlier today, I read that Dr. Gary North had died on February 24, 2022. The following was posted on Gary North’s Specific Answers website (link):

Gary North, RIP

When Gary Kilgore North passed away on February 24, 2022, at the age of 80, he left behind a massive storehouse of Christian scholarship without parallel in the modern church. For nearly fifty-five straight and solid years he applied himself as a craftsman with single-minded devotion to researching, writing, and speaking about God’s world from the perspective of God’s Word. While he lived his work benefited his large readership around the world. For generations to come it will be of great use to the Church of his Lord Jesus Christ.

[A concise biography of Dr. North follows the above, opening paragraph.]

Personally speaking, I became aware of Dr. North via an article by Rodney Clapp that was published in Christianity Today back on February 20, 1987 under the title, “Democracy as Heresy” (pp. 17-23). The article was a brief history of the movement that became known as “Christian Reconstructionism". [See Michael J. McVicar’s contribution at A.R.D.A.  for more historical details - link; McVicar is the author of the scholarly book, Christian Reconstruction, which I mentioned here at AF back on May 4, 2015 – link.]

Rodney Clapp included Dr. North as one of “the three primary figures of the movement" (p.18)—i.e. Christian Reconstuctionism—the other two being Greg L. Bahnsen who passed on Dec. 11, 1995, and R. J. Rushdoony who died on Feb. 8, 2001.

When the Christianity Today article was published, I was a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I discovered that Dr. Bahnsen was an ordained minister of the OPC, and this prompted me to begin an in depth study into Christian Reconstuctionism. I ended up obtaining almost all of the books and journals published by Bahnsen, North and Rushdoony—as well as those by a number of their prominent followers—e.g. David Chilton, Gary DeMar, Kenneth Gentry, James Jordan, Ray Sutton. [See THIS LINK for free PDFs of dozens of their contributions.]

I was a devoted student of Christian Reconstructionism for well over a decade, with Dr. North being one of my favorite authors of the movement. Though I no longer consider myself part of the movement, I am able to acknowledge some positive influences and memories from that period of my studies.

It is my sincere hope that Dr. North is now with our Lord...

Grace and peace,

David