John Dwight Pentecost obit

The Life of J. Dwight Pentecost

 

He was not on the list.

The stool in front of the classroom is empty. Dr. J. Dwight Pentecost, the unflappable distinguished professor of Bible Exposition emeritus who always began class precisely on time by taking his students before God’s throne of grace is now face to face with the Savior. He passed into glory four days after his ninety-ninth birthday.

When Dr. P, as he is affectionately called on the DTS campus, fell and broke his femur in December 2012, he missed class for the first time in sixty-five years. Less than three months after surgery and physical therapy, he was sitting on his stool again, teaching—as he always did—with only a Bible, no notes. Doing so, he said, kept him studying the text for fresh insights. Six months after he returned, doctors diagnosed him with malignant tumors on both sides of his neck. But he kept on teaching.

Dr. Pentecost first amazed and enlightened students at Philadelphia Bible Institute for eight years. He taught at Dallas Theological Seminary for fifty-eight more. He was still teaching his signature course, “The Life of Christ on Earth,” during the fall 2014 semester. Fortunately, the course was videotaped on location in Israel in 1985. According to Dr. Reg Grant who assisted with that project, the Seminary wanted to capture that course on tape since Dr. P, seventy years old at the time, “was getting along in years.” In the summer of 2003, that video became the basis of DTS’s first online course. And for the past decade, the “Life of Christ” class has provided students across the world with the opportunity to learn from Dr. Pentecost himself.

God’s path led the professor steadily from his staunch Presbyterian home in Pennsylvania, where he was born in 1915, through conservative Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. And in a last-minute change of plans complete with intercessory phone calls to Dallas two weeks before the beginning of the1937 fall term, he matriculated into the twelve-year-old school that had just been renamed “Dallas Theological Seminary.” President Lewis Sperry Chafer led a faculty of eight part-time teachers. Dr. Pentecost once recalled, “When I got here, I learned that I was student number one hundred. So I have always thought that Dr. Chafer would have taken a Shepherd dog to reach that number.”

The discipline that provided the foundation for Dr. P’s ministry began early. Following conferral of his ThM, he said the last thing he would do after graduation was teach. But, as he later declared, “Knowing him is living; serving him is living; preaching him is living.”

To retain his proficiency in Greek, theology, and Bible, he set aside two hours each morning, separate from sermon preparation, for review and further study in those fields. He continued this practice even when his pastoral duties expanded.

The young pastor’s second church located him near Philadelphia with a part-time position at Philadelphia Bible Institute. That assignment, particularly during the raging debate over the end times, convinced him to return to DTS for additional study. As he completed his doctorate in theology, then-president Dr. John F. Walvoord invited him to join the Dallas Seminary faculty, where he served until his death.

From 1958 through 1973, he served concurrently as senior pastor of Grace Bible Church in North Dallas. There the children lovingly called out “P” and ran to him for a hug. Their horrified parents insisted they could not call him “P” and suggested “Dr. P” Because many of those parents were Seminary students, the nickname quickly caught on at the school as well.

For years, Dr. P volunteered weekly at Luke’s Closet, a ministry that provides donated clothes free to DTS students. In the days when all students were men and were required to wear ties to class, he reasoned that “some of the young men who come in are uncomfortable with a woman assisting them.” More than once, he helped a graduating student select a suit, took it home for his wife, Dorothy, to alter, and returned it to the man to wear when he preached at a prospective pastorate the following Sunday.

Dorothy served by his side for sixty-two years, and after her death in 2001, Dr. P described losing a mate as the hardest thing any man could endure. The Pentecosts had two daughters, one of whom, Gwen, died ten years later. The Pentecosts’ elder daughter, DTS graduate Jane Fenby, survives, along with two grandchildren (both married).

A year after Dorothy’s death, DTS’s Swiss Tower student residence hall opened on campus. At the special invitation of the Seminary board, Dr. Pentecost became the hall’s first occupant. And with the influx of student families, Dr. P. became honorary grandfather and great-grandfather to hundreds. Those friendships led to a broadening worldwide communication network of former students who stayed constantly in touch with Dr. P by email, Skype, and a Facebook page filled with photos.

He often opened his apartment to his neighbors, and when he did so, they noticed that its rugs, antiques, paintings, clocks, and photographs reflected his artistry, his personality, and his worldwide ministry. The antiques dated to the time when he could afford to furnish his home only by finding cast-off pieces, sometimes literally in pieces, and refurbishing them. Through that experience he became knowledgeable about old furniture and skillful at restoration. Dr. P also learned to repair clocks. He kept each set at a slightly different time so that on the hour the chimes moved successively through the rooms.

The art on his walls reflected exquisite taste, diligent study, and years of collecting. His photographs revealed his love for the Creator and, again, the eye of an artist. His departure leaves an empty place in the hospitality of Swiss Tower.

And Dr. P. was not only hospitable—he was generous. President Mark Bailey recalled how, as dean, he doubled the dollar-per-year stipend of the “retired” distinguished professor. After Dr. Bailey doubled the pay again the next year, Dr. P. called a halt, saying, “Enough is enough.”

Chancellor Chuck Swindoll loved to tease Dr. P. Growing wistful, Dr. Swindoll said, “The wonderful thing that I know—because I served as a sort of learner on his staff many years ago—is that behind the scenes he was everything you would wish him to be and see him to be in public. He was a man of remarkable depth and incredible commitment to Christ.”

Dr. Ron Allen, a fellow professor in the Bible Exposition department, recalled, “It was when I, as a college student, read his massive work on biblical eschatology, Things to Come, that I decided to enroll as a student at Dallas Seminary in 1964. Clearly this book—this man—changed my life! He lived an amazing life, teaching students who now serve the Lord across the globe.”

Dr. Pentecost completed Things to Come in 1957. Though he wrote twenty-one books in all, the one on eschatology is the one for which he was best known. Endorsing it, Dr. Walvoord wrote, “Dr. Pentecost has with rare skill dealt with many controversial issues, has met and solved many prophetic problems, and has provided in large measure the substance of the prophetic Word in systematic and theological form.” Walvoord could have been describing the man as well as his first book. The volume, which began as Dr. P’s doctoral dissertation, has been in continuous publication since 1958, having sold more than 215,000 copies.

Dr. P loved knowing that every week he taught in all fifty states and most countries in the world—through the DTS graduates he had discipled. In his words, his was “not a ministry of doing it, but a ministry of multiplication through those I’m privileged to share the Word with.”

When his department chair asked, “Do you want to continue teaching?” Dr. P answered, “Yes, until the Lord says ‘come home.’”

Today the stool and the earthly home are empty, but Dr. P is home. Seeing Him is living.