Articles

‘Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor’ (1 Peter 2:17). Most reading this will have some idea what it means to honour everyone, to love the brotherhood and to honour the emperor. But how many know what it means to ‘Fear God’? This is not an abstract or arcane question. We need […]

We noticed recently a leading religious commentator acknowledging that the West will collapse without a Christian revival. There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a rapid moral decay. He went on to say that the West will fall unless it rises up against the forces that oppose it. But how is […]

Clear and concise, encouraging and exhilarating, reliable and readable are six words that quickly come to mind. They help explain why the writings of J C Ryle have such an enduring value. But they are not the main reason why I, and so many others, find his books so beneficial. Ryle tackles controversial issues in some of articles and tracts. He […]

In the same paper, Pharisees and Sadducees, Ryle goes on to speak words that are remarkably prescient: To keep gospel truth in the church is even of greater importance than to keep peace . . . The Apostle Paul valued unity very greatly as we know, but here he runs the risk of all the […]

Indebtedness to the Reformation In his paper Lessons from English Church History, Ryle draws out the benefits that have accrued from the Reformation. Whatever England is among the nations of the earth, as a Christian country, whatever political liberty we enjoy, whatever freedom we have in religion, whatever safety for life and property there is […]

May 2016 marks 200 years since the birth of J. C. Ryle. Soon to be released is Iain H. Murray’s new biography of the first Bishop of Liverpool, entitled J. C. Ryle: Prepared to Stand Alone.1 Ryle’, says Marcus Loane, ‘marked out a path for evangelical churchmen in days when much of the Church of […]

Elizabeth Prentiss lived in a different century, but the challenges she faced, and the way she responded to those challenges, speak powerfully to us today. Early in their married life, Elizabeth and her husband, George suffered the loss of two of their six children. Eddie died aged five and Bessie died when just a few […]

Introduction When Jude writes in his Epistle, ‘Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints’ (Jude 3), he expresses a need that […]

As we consider the state of the church today there is much to discourage us. We think of the conformity to the spirit of the world, the lack of depth in Christian experience, the absence of heart religion, the paucity of the fear of God, the disregard of the Lord’s day, the lax attitude to […]

Australian missionaries Jocelyn and Ken Elliott, both in their 80s, had been running a hospital for some four decades in the town of Djibo in the West African country of Birkina Faso when they were captured by an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group over a month ago and are believed to have been held in neighbouring […]

The following is an excerpt from Why Read Church History1 by J. Philip Arthur It is fatally easy to develop an uncritical admiration for our heroes, but no one is beyond criticism. One of the most refreshing things about the Bible is that it never conceals the faults of God’s servants. There are numerous examples […]

‘Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood.’ (Isaiah 59:7) On the evening of April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was flying into the airport in Kigali when his plane was struck by two rockets, killing him and all on board, including the President of nearby Burundi, Cyprien Ntariyamira. […]

The Bible, at times, makes for very uncomfortable reading. Consider these opening verses of 1 Kings 11:1-8: ‘Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter […]

“. . . He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death,” (Colossians 1:21) Ideas matter. Ideas have consequences. Secularism is a political and moral philosophy devoid of any faith or worship. Last week I noted the lead up to the French Revolution, showing how three combustible ingredients-corruption in government, oppression of the […]

2015 marked the two-hundredth anniversary of a change of pastorate for the Rev. Thomas Chalmers. On Sunday 9th July 1815, after a ministry of twelve years, Chalmers preached a farewell sermon to his congregation in Kilmany (Kilmany is a village in the Fife region of Scotland). Later that month he was inducted to the pastorate […]