David Beckman

  Dr. David Beckman, a Colorado native and resident, passed away Thursday, March 6, 2014.  Born in 1926, David received Jesus one Sunday afternoon, his senior year in high school, or possibly his junior year, after listening to a sermon on a big family radio in the living room.  A journey began for David where this incredibly gifted man would use his gifts to serve the Lord in many ways, including as a teacher, pastor, and university president.

  Dr. Beckman was the best preacher I have ever heard for two reasons.  First, he was always prepared.  The beaming man who stood in the pulpit on Sunday had always sat at his desk for hours at some point in the week to study the passage.  He almost always had historical information about the passage to share which contained facts that most people had never heard before, since he would read numerous books regarding the passage.  He was devoted to the sacred Scripture.  I use to drive across town to hear Dr. Beckman preach, and I would take notes!

  The second reason I thought he was the best preacher was that he almost always gave an invitation to receive Jesus.  Note this man preached for 20 years in a retirement community church where the average age in the congregation was quite elderly, and many of those folks had been following Jesus since long before I was even born.  Yet Dr. Beckman opened up the opportunity for following Jesus as if there was even one person in that room who did not know Him, and he did so in love.  I can testify that one person in that room, who was in her late 70’s, did turn to Christ.  A bitter and lonely women deep in her heart, my grandma, knew little about the Bible, did not go to church her entire adult life other than the sunrise Easter service at Red Rocks, and did not have a personal relationship with Jesus.  Because of the faithful ministry of Dr. Beckman, and the genuine kindness of the associate pastor, Pastor Chambers, my grandma gave her heart to Jesus.  The change Jesus brought about in my Grandma in the following years, though maybe subtle on the surface at times, was incredible.

  David Beckman had a heart for Jewish people.  A graduate of Wheaton College and Dallas Theological Seminary, David even served as a chaplain in Jerusalem for a year during the time when he was still single.  Then Dr. Beckman led groups on trips to Israel, at least 18 of them.  He cared for people who were of the ethnicity of the Messiah, the Jewish people, and he had an interest in the land where Jesus did ministry work when incarnate.  I am grateful to be writing this as a friend of Dr. Beckman’s, and it was because of him that I enrolled for a second B.A. in Youth Ministry at Colorado Christian University, the institution which Dr. B made phenomenal sacrifices for.  Dr. Beckman gave me a book years ago which contains marvelous paintings of some places in Israel.  Painted on a trip in 1839 by British artist David Roberts, he employed a romanticism genre touch, yet I find something unique about the paintings.  In one, groups of people are aside the Jordan River, darting into the Jordan River, or already basking in the water.  Some people are merely spectators on the shore, while others are saturating themselves in the water.  In a time of reflection of the passing of David Beckman, I pictured him joyful at the River in heaven.  He ran right in.

Hunter Irvine

 

“I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful.”   (Jeremiah 31:4 NIV)

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”   (Matthew 26:28 NIV)