The Cross

A question has challenged the human conscience for two thousand years: ''How are we to explain the presence of Jesus Christ in this world?'' Or who, indeed, was Jesus Christ? A man like the rest of men? Or was he a divine Person? Why was it that well-practiced soldiers who failed to fulfill their commission to arrest him said: ''Never man spoke like this man?'' The early church confirmed the apostles’ declaration that Jesus Christ was the eternal Son of God and that he came into the world to fulfill a messianic-redemptive assignment. ''Christ Jesus,'' the apostle to the Gentiles explained, ''came into the world to save sinners.''In The Cross: Its Meaning and Message in a Postmodern World, Douglas Vickers sees the cross as the watershed of history. The divine objectives that the cross addressed bear vitally on the human condition, vitiated as that is by the entailment of sin. In an age in which postmodernist claims have rejected absolute criteria of truth and validity, the Christ of the cross provides the only refuge for those burdened by the search for meaning. The Cross explores the way of reconciliation between God and man. It affirms the apostolic claim that ''In [Christ] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.''''The book you are about to read is destined to be a classic. Many books have been written in a devotional way about the cross of Christ, but this one is very different! Dr. Douglas Vickers has treated this wonderful and very necessary doctrine with depth and has given us much to hold dear.Few studies in print today bring out the essence and meaning of the cross and its message in our postmodern world. Vickers clearly presents the biblical view of the cross, and when it is necessary to dissent from alternative views he remains faithful to the Bible and the Reformed faith. It is refreshing to see quoted such great men of God who studied the cross in depth, as John Murray and some of the great Continental theologians of earlier times.I have appreciated the clarity, consistency, and mature thinking of this fine theologian. As always in Vickers’ writing, the apologetic system of Cornelius Van Til comes shining through.''-A. E. LaValley Senior Pastor, West Springfield Covenant Community ChurchDouglas Vickers (PhD, University of London) is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Among his recent titles are Christian Confession and the Crackling Thorn, When God Converts a Sinner, and The Immediacy of God.