Author: Benjamin Dean

At the Paris Olympics this summer, people cheered on their nation’s athletes as they took part in many different sports, disciplines, and events.
Revd Dr Bekele Deboch, a prolific evangelist and church planter, organized John Stott’s first trip to Ethiopia, and is now involved in training pastors at the Ethiopia Graduate School of Theology. Great Truths caught up with him recently and asked him about the pressures and possibilities for gospel ministry in Ethiopia.
The gospel can be cast in both careful formal language as well as in everyday informal language. It is something that addresses and speaks to all of us, something that all of us can grasp hold of, understand, and relate to at whatever level we will. ... There is a comprehensiveness and an immensity to the Biblical good news. Yet all its elements are interlinked, gathered around a central strand, unified by a single person. ...
‘The physical resurrection of Christ is not an isolated historical fact. It is inexhaustibly rich in meaning for Christ himself, for the church, and for the whole world.’ Certainly, the significance of Christ’s resurrection saturates every aspect of New Testament teaching. Its meaning may be presented in several ways.
The texts of the New Testament claim that although Jesus was dead and buried on a Friday afternoon, early the following Sunday morning, roughly 36 hours later, his corpse had revived, and he had physically come to life again in a new unprecedented bodily form. Supporting this is substantial detailed historical evidence, including numerous first-hand eyewitnesses ‘who talked with a person whom they took to be Jesus, and witnesses who saw the empty tomb.’
The world we inhabit contains an endless array of contrasts. Every human life is born out of crisis, proceeds in conflict, and invariably ends with irreversible loss. Yet, there is astonishing goodness. Between the boundaries of birth and death, breath-taking wonder combines with utter misery, sublime beauty with callous cruelty. Ecstatic joy, deep satisfaction, and heart-capturing tenderness, are bound up with terrible agony. Life is far worse than we ever feared and much better than we dare dream.

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