LAST LESSONS #123 – LAST THINGS – PART 12 – TEACHERS

 “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

Those who knew R.C. Sproul often called him the Martin Luther of our day. Personally, I saw him as the John Calvin of our day. Why? RC loved Calvin. He loved Calvin’s emphasis on Reformed theology, order in worship, and especially the doctrine of election. He revered Calvin as the most important figure in second generation Protestantism and wanted to preach like Calvin. RC literally went to Geneva to see Calvin’s church so that he could build Saint Andrews Chapel on the plan of Calvin’s church. There is no question that RC Sproul was a Calvinist and a mighty theologian in his own right.

How did RC become one of my teachers? I came to know him through the ICBI and later as part of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. But how I came to know him best was when my husband Bob and I moved to Florida in 2007. We went to his church! I was able to sit under his teaching until the day he died in 2017. For ten years I was able to be taught by one of the best Bible expositors I know. RC preached the funeral of my husband in 2014 and I am still a member of Saint Andrews Chapel.

RC and I were friends (since he was ten years younger than I was, he used to call me “Mom”) and he was willing to help me with Rafiki. When I told RC that I wanted to order 1,000 Reformation Study Bibles (at a good price!) and then ordered another 1,000, he wanted to know what in the world I was doing! Well, it was “what I was doing in the world.” I wanted to send study Bibles to the 23 seminaries Rafiki worked with in Rafiki’s ten countries. The intention was to send Bibles to all the seminary students for the next ten years. After our talk, RC promised to raise funds to help us get these Bibles, plus he gave us literally thousands of his book The Holiness of God that we could distribute as we wanted.

RC Sproul was generous, and he was also fun! Sometimes at our Alliance meetings in Texas, he would sit on our deck at home and smoke his cigars. Fortunately, he always had his wife Vesta with him to keep him in line.

I am grateful that God put RC in my life. He taught me so much. He taught me through his sermons, his life, and his books. He believed that The Holiness of God was his most significant book, but his editing of the Reformation Study Bible was a monumental work of his. His notes included are like having an entire library of Bible information.

RC was a prolific writer. I will mention only a few of the many volumes he wrote for you to consider. Start with his R.C. Sproul Signature Classics (six volumes covering general theology. One of the six is Chosen by God. That book is so comforting when we wonder how God could love us. Of course, RC’s commentaries are great, although he has none in the Old Testament. The Gospel of John is one of his best and I remember hearing him preach through Matthew. Recently Galatians has been published by Ligonier. I’m reading through it now.

There is so much I could tell you about RC, but the best way to learn of him is to read Steven Nichols’ biography R.C. Sproul: A Life.

R. C. Sproul—what a teacher!