10 Questions with Nick Needham

In the new issue of Credo Magazine, “Prophet, Priest, and King,” Nick Needham was our guest for our usual 10 Questions.

Rev Dr Nick Needham is a Baptist minister from London. He holds the degrees of BD and PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Nick joined the teaching staff of Highland Theological College in 1999. Since 2004 he has also been the minister of Inverness Reformed Baptist Church. He has taught in Scotland at Edinburgh University and the Scottish Baptist College, and also in Africa.

Nick has published a number of books, the first two of which were in the area of Scottish Church History. His chief publishing project is a general church history series entitled 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power. The first three volumes have been published, covering the early church fathers, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance and Reformation.

Here is the start of his interview:

Have you always loved church history and if not, what sparked your interest to become a church historian?

I disliked history at school. It was my conversion that made me a lover of church history. In becoming a Christian, I had a sense of joining a people that had a history, and I was very curious to know all about it.

What is it that makes someone a great church historian?

A blend of things, I suppose. Scholarship, imaginative sympathy with the past, ability to enable readers to see through the past’s eyes, and discerning lessons for the present.

What figures in church history do you find yourself continually drawn back to and why?

Very difficult. Maybe three Johns and a Clive: John Calvin for his sane and humble commentaries, John Milton for his poetry, prose, and epic life, John Henry Newman for his crystal-pure Anglican sermons (before he went to Rome), and C. S. Lewis for almost anything – Lewis’ understanding of the relationship between Christianity and modern society was masterful, not to mention his Narnia Chronicles and Cosmic Trilogy. …

Read the rest of this interview today!

Read the magazine as a PDF

A. W. Tozer once said that the most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think about God. I think the same could be said about Jesus. Who you think Jesus is and what you think Jesus did has major consequences for eternity. Jesus himself said this much in John’s Gospel. Belief in him, he taught, results in eternal life; yet unbelief results in eternal condemnation (John 3:18). So what we think and believe about Jesus really matters. Eternity hangs in the balance.

For this reason alone it is critical that Christians spend time studying what the Bible says about Jesus, who he is and what he has done. One of the most fruitful ways to do this is to look at Jesus through the traditional categories of prophet, priest, and king. As we transition from Old Testament to New Testament we discover that these offices find their fulfilment in Christ. He is the long-awaited Davidic king who inaugurates the kingdom of God, reigning and ruling over God’s covenant people. Yet this kingdom is announced, since Jesus is the prophet, the one who not only speaks the word of God but who is himself the Word, the Logos. Yet Jesus is not only a king and a prophet, but a priest. As Hebrews explains, he is our great high priest, the one who mediates between God and his people, interceding on their behalf by offering up himself as the perfect and sufficient sacrifice, the Lamb of God.

In this issue of Credo Magazine, three theologians walk us through this three-fold distinction, helping us understand each office better in light of the coming of Christ. So we invite you to come, like Mary (Luke 10:38-42), and sit at the feet of Jesus in order to marvel at how these offices display the glory of Christ.