In the fall of 1956, I began my final year at the Stony Brook School, then a boys college preparatory school in New York. Among the required courses that last year was Senior Bible, taught by the school's headmaster, Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein.

Dr. Gaebelein was the quintessential prep school headmaster, somewhat eccentric and extremely cultured. We thought he talked funny. What we didn't yet realize was that his "funny talk" was actually a magnificent command of the English language. Only later we would all realize that "the Gabe" was what they call a renaissance man.

Perhaps it is worth noting that, in his later years, Frank Gaebelein became a major player in the development of Christianity Today and served as one of its senior editors.

But most important, Dr. Gaebelein was a deep-thinking, devout Christian. It speaks to the kind of man he was that, for almost four decades, he insisted on teaching the last Bible class most of the boys at Stony Brook would ever take. His core passion was to ...