In Depth:  Dave Gobbett

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, widely known as COP27, has just been running in Egypt. In a timely new book*  Dave Gobbett of Highfields Church Cardiff helps us think through a Biblical perspective on the environment. This extract explains how Jesus’ return might impact our thinking on this issue.

‘We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him … The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever’ (1 Thess. 4:14, 16).

We interview Dave Gobbett about why he is backing the Sovereign Grace conference in Bath this month

en: How did you get to know and what do you like about the Sovereign Grace work?
DG: I’ve known and loved the work of Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) since 2000, when I spent a year in the US. I was on staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC with Mark Dever, and in the previous year Mark had become friends with C.J. Mahaney, a local charismatic church pastor 40 minutes from DC as well as the then head of SGM. In Dever’s typically contagious style, that friendship spilled over into our respective church staff teams, and I especially enjoyed getting to know Bob Kauflin (director of Sovereign Grace Music) and Jeff Purswell (head of Sovereign Grace’s Pastor’s College, and former teaching assistant to Wayne Grudem).