R.C. Sproul died Thursday at age 78. Months before the theologian’s final illness, WORLD founder Joel Belz interviewed him at Ligonier Ministries headquarters in Sanford, Fla. Here’s an edited transcript of their conversation. 

You said in a video series several years ago that everybody is a theologian. There are good theologians, you said, and there are bad theologians. But everybody's a theologian. So what's the distinction between a good theologian and a bad theologian?

Robert Charles “R.C.” Sproul, the Reformed theologian, pastor, teacher, and lecturer who founded and chaired Ligonier Ministries and authored close to 100 books, including The Holiness of God, died Thursday. He was 78. Sproul was known for delivering uncompromising messages on the holiness and sovereignty of God, in his writing, video teaching series, and as a regular speaker at Ligonier’s national conferences in Orlando, Fla. Ligonier’s mission is “helping Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it,” he once said.

Remember good old Oreb and Zeeb? I try my best, every so often, to reintroduce them to WORLD’s readers. Otherwise, you might confuse them with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran or Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Most likely, though, you didn’t have a clue whom I had in mind when I mentioned Oreb and Zeeb. I had to look them up myself in my Bible dictionary after seeing them mentioned in Psalm 83.

For those keeping track, Dec. 3 marks the first Sunday of Advent. 

It comes at a good time.

The Advent season begins as the advent of a particularly dark cultural moment continues. This week brought more disturbing accusations against more powerful men about sexual misconduct against women they knew. 

Long lay the world in sin and error pining …

With the advent of the Christmas season, I’ve been considering: How did the perfect God-man interact with women when He lived on earth? 

The Gospels show us. 

There has been climate change in America.

I came close to changing a stinky diaper the other day. They caught me in time. On my next volunteer shift at a local Christian ministry, I was taken aside and told in hushed tones that someone had walked into the room and seen me and reported it. I am served notice never to change a diaper in that nursery unless another woman is watching me. That’s the new rule.

SAN FRANCISCO—This year marks the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love—a summer that quickly turned into a winter of discontent, rife with drug overdoses, sexually transmitted diseases, and other miseries. The deteriorating Haight-Ashbury scene proved fertile ground for the Jesus Movement, as disillusioned hippies professed faith in Christ. Many, now old, remember those weird and wonderful days.

In a news week consumed with the ugly convulsions in a Senate race in Alabama, my mind keeps returning to the red roses in a tiny church in Texas.

Have you seen the images?

The members of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, turned the site of a madman’s massacre in their little sanctuary into a moving memorial to the 26 churchgoers cut down during morning worship on Nov. 5.