Acknowledgments
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to the London Lectures Committee both for inviting me to deliver the AD 2000 lectures and for proposing that the only appropriate topic would be Jesus himself, whose millennial birthday we were supposed to be celebrating. Having made those two decisions, the Committee left me free to develop the chosen theme at my discretion. But they offered me steady encouragement, with John Grayston an excellent chairman and Betty Baker a conscientious and efficient secretary.
I am also grateful to several friends who lent me books, gave me advice and helped me compile a bibliography. I am thinking, in particular, of Richard Bewes, Dick France, Timothy Dudley-Smith, Paul Barnett, Paul Blackham, John W. Yates III, René Padilla and Eunice Burton.
In addition, I am thankful to Inter-Varsity Press, the publishers, to Stephanie Heald, the editor, and to Steve Motyer and David Wright. They were appointed by IVP as the official readers of the manuscript and made a number of perceptive comments.
But my special thanks are due to Corey Widmer, my current study assistant, whose horizons were bounded by the lectures for about eighteen months. In a very personal way he has taken them to his heart. He has shown remarkable persistence in surfing the net, in tracking down references I could not find, in discovering books I needed to consult or read, and in making full use of the facilities of the recently opened British Library. As for the text of the lectures, he must have read it at least ten times at different stages. His suggestions have always been positive and helpful, and he also wrote the study guides which accompany the set of four video-tapes of the lectures. For all this I thank him very much indeed.
Then both of us have relied much on Frances Whitehead: her unique perseverance as my personal secretary for 45 years, her considerable computer skills, and her willingness to see the text through its three main stages – the original edition, its abbreviation for the spoken lectures, and its conversion into this book. When in April 2001 it was announced in a public meeting that the Archbishop of Canterbury had decided to honour her with a Lambeth MA degree, those present gave her an immediate and spontaneous standing ovation.
So I send the book on its way, with the hope and prayer that many readers will acknowledge Jesus Christ as the proper object of our worship, witness and hope, and as deserving the description ‘incomparable’. For he has neither rivals nor peers.
John Stott
July 2001