Widow of end times televangelist Jack Van Impe carries on his Troy-based ministry (2024)

Frank Witsil|Detroit Free Press

Widow of end times televangelist Jack Van Impe carries on his Troy-based ministry (1)

Widow of end times televangelist Jack Van Impe carries on his Troy-based ministry (2)

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Michigan televangelist Jack Van Impe saw signs of the end times for decades,only, as things turned out, his end came first.

Earlier this year — more than a monthbefore the coronavirus pandemic struck in America — one of the foremost preachers ontheology concerned with the final destiny of humankind died.

Now,Van Impe's widow,Rexella Van Impe,is continuingthe multimillion-dollar, Troy-basedministry at a time whenAmericans are facing what seem likesigns Van Impe warned about.

Wildfires in the west rage, burningan area almost the size of Connecticut. Violent storms swirlin the Atlantic, threatening destruction on the East and Gulf coasts. Apandemic infects29 million people worldwide, killing more than 930,000 — so far.

"Obviously, people are extremely concerned about what's going on,"Executive Director Ken Vancil said Monday. "The Bible does talk about plagues and pestilence, and while this is not the tribulation pestilence, it is leading up to that."

In other words: The pandemic is a sign of the end times, butnotthe sign.

Meanwhile, the ministry soldiers on.

Since Van Impe's death, the ministryhas recorded two 30-minute broadcast specials without him. The first was "Awake America 2020."The other, "Socialism Exposed,"is set to air the morning ofSept. 27 in metro Detroit and in other markets.

Donations are down, Vancil acknowledged, but he and other ministry leadersare still working daily. Tax documents show that in 2018, the ministry had revenues of about $6.6 million.

"I think that my husband knew from the Lordexactly what was coming, not only in the world but what was coming in his own life," Rexella Van Impe said in aninterview with the Free Pressin February. "He knew that the Lord would probably take him."

The 88-year-old minister died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak on Jan. 18.from pneumonia, afterenduring illnesses and heart troubleon and off in the last few years of his life. He was buried at White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery.

Christianity Today, a national evangelical magazine, called Van Impe "one of the world’s most well-known end-times preachers."

In his broadcasts, the minister interpreted Biblical prophecy and preached to millions of people about the rapture, the tribulation,and Armageddon, the planet's last, cataclysmic battle.

Rexella Van Impe, who married the minister at 19, said they initially sharedthe gospel with others in churches and, later, through television.Her husbandpreachedwhile she sang.

The grieving widow — or theMissus, as some of her faithful staff affectionately refer to her — ischarting a new course for Jack Van Impe Ministries without its namesakefounder.

It isa task, shesaid, that she plans to carry out until the rapture —an eschatological concept when believers are lifted up to heaven— or her own death, whichever comes first.

Theevangelistin America

Spreading the gospel through public preaching has long played a role in shaping American culture and influencing politics, from the Great Awakening inthe early 1700s through the digital age.

As technology changed — radio, television, and now the internet —ministers adapted.

This year, churches have gone online, urging congregants, for example, to post Ash Wednesday selfies tosocial media and, during the pandemic, turned to digital services to prevent spreading the coronavirus.

Rexella Van Impe has said she believes that the rapture will happen soon, just as her husband had predicted, and, until then, she added, the ministry will continue to produce occasional shows with guests.

She is concentrating on the ministry's next broadcasts.

Butthe coronavirus — and the uncertainty it brings with it — has both heightened people'sconcerns about their own lives and the future of the world, and also made it more challenging to run the ministry.

In the United States alone, there have been more than 6.7 million coronavirus cases, with nearly 200,000 deaths,of which more than 110,000 cases, and 6,500-plus deaths, have been in Michigan.

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Rexella Van Impe — who, according to 2018 Internal Revenue Service records, earned nearly twice as much as her husband — said she also is planning for the19,000-square-foot ministry offices to be converted into a museum and library dedicated toefforts to study and interpret Biblical prophecy.

Jack, she added, had been thinking about building a museum bymoving part of his personal book collection from theirhome to the ministry headquarters, and she is carrying out his wishes.

Their weekly TV program

For 30 years, Jack and Rexella Van Impe appeared ona weekly program.

They examinedcurrent events, scripture — and prophecy. Their 30-minute show, "Jack Van Impe Presents," aired on cable and satelliteTV, reaching, at its height, more than 150 countries.

During each episode, the couple satnext to each other on a stage that lookedlike a broadcast news set.

The program beganwith thelead-in:"From the heartland of America to every nation on Earth, this is 'Jack Van Impe Presents,' the truth in news and commentary."Then, Rexella, seated to Jack's right, lookedinto the camera and introducedthe show.

Usually,she startedwith current event headlines.

This gave her silver-haired husband a chance to connect what was happeningin the world to what he said the Bible predicted. He'd talk about things he saidthat "the Holy Spirit has been bringing, clearly, to my mind."

Even before the TV show, the couple held what they called crusades.They would travel to various communities — at least 260 by Rexella's count — leading more than 600,000 people to Christ.

Butthe TV program, the couple realized, couldreach even more people.

Was Van Impe a prophet?

Over the years, some worshippersbelieved Van Impewas a prophet.

"I believe he was another Apostle Paul," Rexella said, drawing parallels between the two men. "He preached to leaders of the world, to senators, to presidents, to anybody, and he’d reach them on that level, buthe also could reach somebody that didn’t know anything."

After his death, the ministry website overflowed with condolences.

Someremembered how they grew up watching Van Impe on television, recounting how he brought them "to the Lord," and affirmed their beliefsthat "the end is near."Others were affirmations of their faith in the end-times predictions.

"Jack brought me to the Lord and I have been a student ever since!"Nina Dodd wrote in the comments. "We all have an Angel of God looking over us now don’t we? He was spectacular in God's word and the best servant to our Lord Jesus! We are all here for you, just know that!"

Born in Freeport, Jack Leo Van Impegrew up in metro Detroit.He was an only child. His parents, Oscar and Marie Louise, immigrated from Belgium during the Great Depression. For a while, they worked as farm laborers.

Oscar Van Impetook a job in a Plymouth factory.His wifebecamea homemaker.At about 5, Jackbegan performing with his dad.They both played accordions.At 12, Jack had a conversion experience.

Later, Jack'sparentsdecided to go backto Belgium to be missionaries.

A break with other ministers

Jack stayed behind, attended theDetroit Bible Institute, which was later named William Tyndale College. He met Rexella, a musician, and married her. He took inspiration, he said, from preacher Billy Graham and started his own ministry.

Van Impe had a knack for learning Bible verses.

He spent more than 80,000 hours memorizingmore than 18,000 of them, something that he said on his website allowed him to confront critics and opponents. He developed his own method: He wrote the verses onIndex cards, 50 at a time.

On one side, he scribbled the verse. The other, the reference.

Over the years, Jack Van Impe made a variety of predictions, including that Christ would return between 2001 and 2012.The evidence, Van Impetold anyone listening, was everywhere.

The antichrist, the minister predicted, wouldset up a one-world government and the masses wouldbe wiped out by apocalyptic nuclear war,natural disasters, and diseases.

What would he say about the pandemic?

Some of his predictions and conclusions garnered controversy.

In 1994, he said Saucier, Mississippi, would be one of many staging areas for up to 500,000 foreign troops being concealed "in our national parks and in vital underground cities throughout the nation."

He had what he considered proof: pictures of trucks and other military equipment.

The groundwork for a United Nations takeover of America, he said,was laid during the Kennedy administration.In 1987, hewarned that AIDS — caused by the human immunodeficiency virus — could wipe out the human race by 2025.

But some poked fun at the minister.

In 2001, ascientific humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, awarded the Impes an Ig Noble Prize in astrophysicsfor their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.The Ig Noble Prize — read ignoble, or dishonorable, as opposed to a NobelPrize — wassatire.

And a decade later,Van Impe got into a dispute with two California megachurch founders, Robert Schuller and Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church. Impe's beef with them: He said they were promoting Chrislam,a combination of "Christianity with Islam."

The Trinity Broadcast Network, which aired VanImpe's show, pulled the episode in which he said this. This ledJack Van Impe Ministries to quit the network in 2011.After that, he continued broadcasts through other Christian and cable networks.

He alsoturned to distributing his message via DVDs and the Internet.

Ministry minus itsminister

Jack Van Impe is hardly the first to leave behind an organization with followers.

Some ministries have transitioned to new leadership, oftensurviving family members. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, for instance, is alivetwo years after Graham died.

Graham's oldest son, Franklin, is now president, and tweeted in January condolencesto Rexella Van Impe. In the Twitterverse, one person responded that the Michigan preacher was in heaven with the senior Graham.

Still, other televangelism ministriesstruggled after their leaders died.

Schuller, who attended Hope College in Holland and died in 2015,started a ministryin a drive-in movie theater. He built theall-glass Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, that could hold2,890people.

Hisprogram, "Hour of Power," aired in 50 states,drawing1.3 million views in more than 150 countries.But, in 2006, he retired, turninghis ministry over to his children. In 2010, he watched the ministrygo bankrupt.

The Diocese of Orange later bought the Crystal Cathedral— once touted as "the largest glass building in the world" — for $57.5 million and renamed itChrist Cathedral.

The Van Impes hadno children to carry on their work. Jack'slegacy, his surviving staff said, lives in his broadcasts.

The minister is remembered for preaching a salvation message and interpretingprophecies, which, invariably, led to a reminder for thefaithfulto be ready, because Jesus, the end-times signs revealed, was returning any time.

Jack Van Impe often would describe the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, as "the point at which all the prophecies of the ages converge and find their ultimate fulfillment."

Current events, he said,"reflect exactly the conditions and happenings predicted throughout the Bible for the last days of this age," and"this special message has been given to reveal God’s truth, not conceal it; and to clarify God’s eternal purpose, not mystify it."

Rexella Van Impe said she plans to keep sharing his message.In her husband's interpretation of the Bible, Jesuswas always coming. Perhaps, the minister would say, it would be today.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.

Widow of end times televangelist Jack Van Impe carries on his Troy-based ministry (2024)

FAQs

What happened to Jack and Rexella Van Impe? ›

Rexella Van Impe says after her husband Jack Van Impe passed away she move all of his books out of his office and home to create a library at the Jack Van Impe World Ministries' studio in Rochester Hills, Mich. photographed on Feb. 27, 2020. Jack Van Impe, the 88-year-old minister, died on Jan.

Did Jack Van Impe have any children? ›

The couple had no children, and his wife is his only immediate survivor. In the 1990s, Mr. Van Impe predicted that Jesus would return to earth between 2001 and 2012, according to the evangelical magazine Christianity Today.

Is Jack Van Impe living? ›

Jack Van Impe died on January 18, 2020, at a hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan at the age of 88.

What happened to Jack after the war? ›

The theory goes like this, "After killing Edgar ross, Jack travels deep into Mexico and lies low for a year or two. He then heads north again, lives outdoors for a few years, and travels to Saint Denis where he gets on a boat to England."

What happened to Jack Legend? ›

Chrissy Teigen shared this week that the loss of her and John Legend's unborn son in 2020 was an abortion, explaining that it took her “over a year to actually understand that we had had an abortion.” Teigen and Legend in 2020 shared that they lost their son, Jack, at 20 weeks of pregnancy.

What happened to Jack TV? ›

Solar Entertainment announced in late March 2020 that Jack TV would be discontinued due to lack of advertising and redundant programming.

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