Imagine you were a lecturer in a Bible college and one day, halfway through your class, you were faced with this from one of your students: “I don’t believe that Jesus is coming back”. How would you respond?

Well this recently happened to one of our members who has just taken up a post in a college that for many years has not held to biblical truth.

The student was not a young first-year with an honest doubt about a minor doctrine, but a student in his final year questioning a fundamental truth referred to in the Apostles’ Creed. The lecturer’s response was to advise the student that if he sincerely did not believe in the return of Christ then he should reconsider whether being a pastor was the right vocation for him. The student replied: “But I’ve been here for four-and-a-half years and you are the first person who has told me that this is something I need to believe.”

“On another occasion,” the lecturer told us, “every student in my class of third year and fifth year students failed to identify the cross as the moment that Christians were made right with God. In many ways these views are not unexpected, but still the reality of being at seminary for over four years and not understanding some of the basics of the Christian faith still manages to surprise me.”

He has asked that we might pray for the students of the seminary, that they would receptive to the truth in the midst of what is a battle. Particularly pray for two students, one in his second year, the other in his fifth. “They both show interest in the gospel message, but it would cost them more than we could imagine to embrace it fully.”

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