Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/1181004
ENGAGE 3 PRESIDENT'S LETTER Mark Young, PhD PRESIDENT For over five hundred years Christians have repeated this three-fold affirmation of the gospel. We proclaim it every Sunday when we worship in the church Priscilla and I attend. It centers us. It removes the clutter in our hearts and minds. It reminds us of the Person whom we worship. It gives us hope. You may have noticed that for the past two years, Engage Magazine has focused on the first two of the affirmations. These issues have explored the centrality of the crucifixion and the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This school year we will focus on the promised return of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, a lot of people think the point of studying Christ's return is to figure out when it's going to happen and what we're going to go through before He comes. Others try to decipher world news in light of prophecies about His return. We're not going to follow either of these approaches because both fail to capture the essence of what Christ's promised return means for us today. Rather than a blueprint for the future, the Bible gives us a road map for how to live as we await His coming in the future. There is a "not-yet-ness" to our faith. The story of God's redemptive mission hasn't fully played out yet. Redemption has been accomplished but it is not yet fully consummated. So we wait with eager anticipation for the end of the story, the completion of redemption, when everything that is wrong in the world will be made right, everything that is broken in the world will be made whole, and everything that is ugly in the world will be made beautiful. And while we wait, we yearn. We can learn about ourselves if we're honest enough to ask, "What am I yearning for?" Our prayer is that the next two issues of Engage will help us peer into our hearts to answer that question in light of the promised return of Jesus Christ. Yearning, Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!