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"Jesus was born to die. He knew when and how, and that knowledge was staggering." Professor Elodie Ballantine Emig ENGAGE 3 PRESIDENT'S LETTER Mark Young, PhD PRESIDENT "To live without hope is to cease to live." Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's trenchant observation strikes a deep chord within us. All of us tremble at the thought of finding ourselves in a place where hope seems lost. Nobody wants to go there. Nobody ever wanted to go to a cross either. The roughly hewn timbers that bore the broken bodies of the crucified were places where, like Dante's vision of the entrance to hell, all hope was abandoned. Some might be tempted to find in Jesus' anguished prayer in the garden of Gethsemane an undertone of hopelessness. Anguish? Yes. Hopelessness? No. Although keenly aware of the horror of bearing the wrath of the Father poured out on Him for the sins of the world, He also knew that ultimately His death on the cross would bring God's redemptive plan and promise to its fullness. Rather than a source of hopelessness, the cross is the foundation of our hope. As we entered the final days of preparing this edition of our magazine, the news of Billy Graham's death reached us. Graham's commitment to preaching the gospel never wavered. To massive crowds or small groups, to any and everyone who would listen, his message was essentially the same: "There is a way if you come by the way of the cross. Come to the cross." I pray this edition of our magazine brings you ever closer to experience firsthand the hope of the gospel.