Dr. Darla Rakes, Ambassador to Students and Donors
In the Gospel of John, there’s a phrase Jesus uses again and again—one that signals He’s about to speak truth with weight and urgency:
“Truly, truly, I say to you…”
Or in the original Greek: “Amen, amen, I say to you.”
John includes this double affirmation 25 times. It’s not filler language. When Jesus says “Amen, amen,” He’s inviting His listeners to wake up—to lay down misconceptions and see things as they really are. It’s a call to reality, especially when the heart has settled into fiction.
The first time Jesus uses this phrase is in John 1:51, during a moment that seems almost ordinary. Jesus is gathering His first disciples. Philip, excited by his discovery of the Messiah, rushes to find Nathanael. Skeptical at first (“Can anything good come from Nazareth?”), Nathanael approaches Jesus and is immediately disarmed by what Jesus knows of him:
“Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
This small statement moves Nathanael to belief. Jesus then replies, essentially: “You believe because of that? Just wait.” And then Jesus says:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51)
In that moment, Jesus reframes the miracle. The true wonder wasn’t that Jesus saw Nathanael under the fig tree—a place often associated with quiet prayer and reflection on Scripture. The greater miracle was that Nathanael would gain spiritual sight to recognize who Jesus really is: the One who bridges heaven and earth, the ladder between the divine and the human, the way for all of us to connect with God’s higher purposes.
This is the same miracle we long to see in our students.
At our Christian university, education is never just about information. It’s about transformation. Our hope is that, like Nathanael, every student comes to see Jesus for who He is—and, in doing so, discovers who they are in Him. We want students not only to sharpen their minds but to awaken their spirits, to live not by trends or opinions, but by eternal truth.
Your prayers, your generosity, and your encouragement make this possible. You help create the space where students sit under their own “fig trees”—wrestling, praying, asking questions—and where Jesus meets them with clarity, calling, and compassion.
And when they hear Him say, “Truly, truly…”—they’ll know to listen.