Articles

TIMOTHY OLEINIK went to Siberia from southern Russia eighteen years ago as one of a large mission team of raw recruits visiting Siberia for the first time. He was destined to stay for many years (see what his wife says below)! He has shown himself to be a born leader and enabler of others willing […]

I imagine every Christian as he goes about his daily tasks looks for those occasional indications of the divine hand in his affairs to confirm that his work is of the Lord and not merely some scheme of his own. We are now beginning to build the hospital and because of the high unemployment rate […]

The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground. (Genesis 4:10) ‘An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule on their own authority, and my people love it so. But what will you do at the end of it?’ (Jer. 5:30-31). […]

2. ‘Through Faith We Understand . . .’1 There can be no doubt that the theory of evolution functions as a strong bulwark for the kingdom of Satan today. Most people in Britain and elsewhere stand firmly in opposition to the claims of the God of heaven, and they are strengthened in doing so by […]

The opening paper at the John Owen Centre Calvin conference (September 14-15, 2009) was given by Joel Beeke and was on ‘Calvin the Revolutionary’. It was very helpful indeed. Dr Beeke’s first concern was to state that Calvin was a man with a holistic, unified way of thinking. There is no real dualism in him. […]

The penultimate paper in the John Owen Centre at the September 2009 Conference on John Calvin was from Sinclair Ferguson – on ‘Calvin and the Holy Spirit.’ Dr Ferguson spoke about the fact that there is teaching about the Spirit everywhere in Calvin’s writings leading to B B Warfield’s famous remark that Calvin was the […]

At the beginning of the final paper at the September 2009 London Conference on John Calvin in the John Owen Centre, Joel Beeke revealed that this was his tenth Calvin conference of the year. He had 10 points in what he introduced as a pep talk, an encouragement to believe in preaching. It was a […]

What do we mean by the sovereignty of God? We believe that God upholds and governs all things ‘from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of nature to the movements of nations, and from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary persons’ all in accord with his eternal, all-wise purposes […]

By the sweat of your face you will eat bread. (Genesis 3:19) In 1776 Adam Smith, a Scottish economist and Deist, a good friend of David Hume the sceptic, wrote his famous book Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that has profoundly affected the capitalist system in our world. Smith […]

INTRODUCTION I have betrayed John Calvin1. We all have. We betray Calvin every time we talk about him, because Calvin did a lot to stop people talking about him. He once commented, ‘I am unwilling to speak of myself, but since you do not permit me to be altogether silent, I will say what I […]

An extract from Chapter 6 of Paul D. Wolfe’s book, My God Is True: Lessons Learned Along Cancer’s Dark Road,1 pp. 96-101. One . . . aspect of the church’s life that we ought to consider in connection to suffering [is that] the Lord uses faithful preaching to shape the hearts and minds of his […]

A Tale of Two Cities The Christian believer is always living in an inescapable tension! Much as we would love to be free of this tension, until we leave this earthly scene and enter the nearer presence of our great and gracious God, we will be engaged every moment of every day in this tension. […]

You have been called as minister in this congregation and you have been ordained in pursuance of that call. There are many functions which devolve upon you in that particular capacity, but I want to draw your attention particularly to two of these functions because I believe they are the two main functions which devolve […]

Events in 1732 made Ebenezer Erskine consider the time ‘a day of trouble’. Twenty years had passed since Parliament had reimposed patronage on the Church of Scotland. This meant that the right to nominate a minister for a vacant congregation lay with, normally, a local landowner. Now the 1732 General Assembly had agreed, in the […]

An extract, with slight editing, from Memoirs of the Rev James Fraser of Brea.1 Being at the University, and being at the age of 17 or 18 years, our minister proposed to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, of which he gave warning the Sabbath preceding the celebration thereof. I purposed (I know not […]