John Paul II

John Paul II

May 18, 1920 - April 2, 2005
Bishop of Rome
From Wadowice, Poland
Served in Vatican City, Italy
Affiliation: Catholic (Roman Rite)
"Only in Christ can men and women find answers to the ultimate questions that trouble them. Only in Christ can they fully understand their dignity as persons created and loved by God. Jesus Christ is "the only Son from the Father…full of grace and truth."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

December 11, 1918 - August 3, 2008
Writer and Historian
From Kislovodsk, Russian
Served in Germany and Russia
Affiliation: Russian Orthodox
"This is certainly true. Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul. That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life. We have arrived at an intellectual chaos."

Bob Lindsey

Bob Lindsey

August 16, 1917 - May 31, 1995
Pastor or Narkis Street Congregation and Co-founder of Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research
From Norman, Oklahoma
Served in Jerusalem, Israel
Affiliation: Protestant
"The significance of the Gospels and the variety of current opinion regarding them make it incumbent on both the ordinary reader and the dedicated scholar to acquire as much knowledge as possible if he or she wishes to form an accurate portrait of Jesus and, indeed, the very origins of the Christian movement."

Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul

January 6, 1912 - May 19, 1994
Philosopher, Law Professor, and Sociologist
From Bordeaux, France
Served in Bordeaux, France
Affiliation: Christian
"The biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to 'counterpower,' to 'positive' criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century)."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

February 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945
German Lutheran Pastor, Theologian and Anti-Nazi Dissident
From Wrocław, Poland
Served in Germany
Affiliation: Confessing Church
Death: Executed by hanging as the Nazi regime collapsed
"Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end."

Harold J. Ockenga

Harold J. Ockenga

June 6, 1905 – February 8, 1985
Pastor, author, and founding president of both Fuller Seminary and Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary
From Chicago, Illinois
Served in Boston and Pasadena

Affiliation: Congregational

There has evolved today a different emphasis … one that is able to say, ‘Christ is the answer. Christ is the answer to your sin problem. Christ is the answer in the biblical framework of reference because there is no other Christ. Christ is the answer when he and his teachings and biblical Christianity become translated into the framework of the social picture in which we live.”