“When I heard he was coming back I was very, very excited.”

“I regard him very, very highly,” John Dickson, founder of the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX) told Eternity. “He is one of the world’s leading scholars on the Gospel of Mark. He has extraordinary ability both in the area of biblical studies and cultural analysis.

“When I heard he was coming back I was very, very excited.”

CPX said Watts “combines a high level of scholarship with a passion for the Bible and a belief that it speaks into every area of life today”, introducing some video interviews (below).

Watts has served as an instructor at Gordon-Conwell (Boston), Wycliffe Hall (Oxford), La Trobe University (Melbourne), and the Bible College of Victoria (Melbourne).

The students at Regent College will miss him. They voted him a high raking of 4.2 on the “Rate My Professors” site. But students at Alphacrucis (Australia’s largest Pentecostal college) should take note – he is graded as a hard marker. One student wrote “Rikki Watts is one of the wonders of the theological world. Drummer, engineer, Australian crazy man, with a big heart for the Lord Jesus and a soaring IQ.”