In these days after Dr. Robert L. Reymond went to be with The Lord, I am giving glory to God in thanksgiving for the life of His Servant. Dr. Reymond preached Christ Jesus as the only Savior and Lord. He faithfully declared the Bible to be a “Word from another world.” He regularly evangelized “publicly and from house to house.” Dr. Reymond should be recalled as a great preacher of the Word, a compassionate pastor, an unfailing evangelist, and a constant friend. Dr. Reymond was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and his family reflects the covenant promises of God. Bob Jr. and Sheri are close friends who were core members of the church we prayed for in Dr. Reymond’s living room back in 1990 and his son serves as a ruling elder there now. That Dr. Reymond sat under the preaching of Reverend James Baxter, another of his former students (Jim graduated from Covenant Seminary) and that Jim will preach his funeral in our home church in Olathe, Kansas, speaks to the breadth and expansiveness of the great theologians’s influence.
Bob and Shirley were well known for their in bounding hospitality. My wife and daughter stayed with the Reymond’s for three weeks when we moved to seminary. My son spent the first week of his life with us in an extra bedroom in the Reymond home. After almost two decades of faithful teaching at Covenant Theological Seminary, Dr. Reymond had accepted Dr. D. James Kennedy’s challenge to help found Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale. Dr. Reymond, with Drs. George Knight, Joseph Hall, and Laird Harris, became a popular teacher and a frequent preacher in the pulpits of Coral Ridge and other congregations in South Florida.
We went through Hurricane Andrew together and I heard Shirley say, “Wake up Bob, you just slept through the worst natural disaster in American history.” To which Dr. Reymond responded, “Shirley, a good conscience allows for good sleep anytime, anywhere.” When I was ordained he was there. When I planted our first and second church, he was there at the dedication services. He taught me, counseled me, and tutored me in pastoral ministry. Indeed, while he is being recalled as one of the greatest systematic theologians of our time, for those like myself, who sat under his teaching, he was preeminently a pastoral theologian. All theology, for Dr. Reymond, ultimately, was pastoral and applied.
Truly Dr. Reymond is remembered as a man who believed and taught the Westminster Confessional standards as the very Gospel of Jesus Christ. That Gospel transformed his life and thousands of other lives of ministers who preach today.
As the mantle of Dr. Kennedy’s falls upon me to preach the Truth that Transforms, I am remembering that Dr. Reymond had now joined Dr. Kennedy in the Church Triumphant. The Truth has now transformed and translated.
Dr. Reymond had a “life verse” and encouraged his students to also consider applying a verse
to one’s life. When he recited his, tears came to his eyes. Now, tears are coming to mine.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 KJV).