Jack Leo Van Impe (February 9, 1931 – January 18, 2020) was an American televangelist known for his half-hour weekly television series Jack Van Impe Presents, an eschatological commentary on the news of the week through an interpretation of the Bible. The program airs around the world through both religious broadcasters and the purchase of paid programming time on commercial television stations. He was known as the “Walking Bible”, having memorized most of the King James Version of the Bible. His wife, Rexella, shared his television ministry as co-host.

Van Impe’s parents, Oscar Alphonse Van Impe and Marie Louise, née Piot, immigrated from Belgium to the city of Troy, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, in the United States in 1929. Jack Leo Van Impe was born on February 9, 1931, in Freeport, Michigan.[3][4] He was the couple’s only child. Van Impe decided to become an evangelist after he saw his father become a missionary with very strong faith.

According to Van Impe, he and his father Oscar played the accordion at night clubs, and Oscar regularly swore and drank alcohol, and believed that religion was hogwash. At meals, Van Impe would drink alcoholic beverages along with his father, which is a European tradition. Then when Van Impe was twelve years old, Oscar converted to evangelical Christianity, and Oscar and Jack together smashed all of their bottles of alcoholic beverages. Since that event, Van Impe did not consume any alcohol.

Jack Van Impe played accordion duets with his missionary father across Michigan and other states. In 1948, Van Impe graduated from high school and entered Detroit Bible Institute, where he earned his diploma in 1952. It was then that he began his career as a preacher and evangelist and extensive recording career.

While working with the Billy Graham crusades, he was at a Youth For Christ rally with Chuck Ohman (a friend of Jack’s who was a trumpeter for Percy Crawford’s “Youth on the March” television broadcasts). Here, Jack Van Impe met his future wife, Rexella Mae Shelton, who was an organist with the crusades. Rexella was born in Missouri on November 29, 1932, and was named after her father, Rex Shelton. The couple were married on August 21, 1954, and together started Jack Van Impe Ministries.