Resources

Christianity is the religion of the Gospel. The Gospel was defined by William Tyndale, the Bible translator, as ‘good merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him to dance and sing and leap for joy’. ‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing’, we might add. But as time […]

Be imitators of God . . . walk in love. (Ephesians 5:1) Forty-five per cent of people living in America claim to have had a born again experience, but the born again people have virtually the same levels of divorce, adultery, fornication and use of pornography as the rest of the population. Evangelicals are those […]

Even in the midst of temporal troubles, there is always something to be thankful for. Thanks-giving isn’t easy. Two things make it difficult. (1) Our sinful natures act like a ship’s anchor let down at sea. When we try to stir ourselves to give thanks, we find our souls are ‘dragging anchor.’ In the Bible, […]

I was converted some years after the death of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, so I never heard the great man preach. But his published sermons and life story have had a profound impact on my life and ministry. As a relatively new believer, I devoured his sermons on Romans[2] and Ephesians[3]. ‘The Doctor’s’ emphasis on Reformed doctrine […]

I have been a missionary doctor in Mozambique for many years, and an unusual way to spread the knowledge of the Christian faith has developed here, that of a Scripture memory catechism class. There are 21 men from various churches and backgrounds who meet together on Saturdays to check out on Scripture memory they have […]

‘Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.’ (Samuel Rutherford) ‘You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, – a rock rising above the […]

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in Jonathan Edwards, the New England preacher-theologian. For many a long year his great treatises lay neglected. The Age of the Enlightenment had little time for a hell-fire preacher who taught that mankind is enslaved to sin. But the evils of the 20th century made […]

Masab, son of Palestinian West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates. It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: the son of […]

Jeremy Brooks is the recently appointed Director of Ministries at the Protestant Truth Society, for whom I work on a part-time basis. We discuss his new role and matters of Protestant interest. GD: Hello Jeremy Brooks and welcome to ‘Exiled Preacher’. Please tell us a little about yourself. JB: Hi Guy, and thank you for […]

The Christian life is to be a life of constant, unhindered joy – or at least, so says the apostle Paul: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!’ According to Paul, joy is not to be an occasional feature in the believer’s life, it is to be a constant reality, a […]

The following are links to selected blogs where comments on or reviews of Banner of Truth titles have been posted during October, 2008. The views expressed are of course those of the respective bloggers. For each title mentioned, a link is also provided to the appropriate page of the Banner online Bookstore, where orders can […]

The Banner of Truth has published Let Christ Be Magnified: Calvin’s Teaching for Today by J H Merle d’Aubigné1. A preface by the publisher introduces Merle d’Aubigné (1794-1872), the author of an extensive, thorough and eminently-readable history of the Reformation. He was greatly influenced by Robert Haldane in Geneva at a time when the theology […]

I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) Charles Hodge and Henry Ward Beecher were 19th century contemporaries and both were leaders in the church of Christ at the time. Both also were reared in God-centred, Christ-exalting homes. One remained faithful to his biblical heritage and the […]

‘All have sinned’, Paul reminds us (Rom. 6:23). Because of our fall in Adam, we are all coming short of the glory of God; there is never a moment in our lives when we meet God’s demands for perfect obedience to his law. While we remain in a state of nature, our sin leaves us […]

The Banner of Truth has reprinted the Letters of Thomas Chalmers, edited by William Hanna, with an introduction by Iain H Murray.1 Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) preached and practised the graceless and Christless morality of the Moderates until his conversion after several years in the ministry. He later became the acknowledged leader of the Evangelical party […]

The Tyranny and Necessity of Narrowness The story is told of a Puritan who was asked, ‘Why are you so precise?’ He replied: ‘Because I follow a precise God.’ I very much like the old Puritan’s answer. The God of the Bible, the living God, is indeed a precise God. When the Lord instructed Moses […]

Are altar calls biblical? If they aren’t, then why are so many evangelical churches doing them? The altar is mentioned often in the Scriptures, but there’s no mention of an altar call. Then again, we’re not told that the 3,000 who were saved on the day of Pentecost came forward to some sort of ‘altar’ […]

Anyone who will make a careful examination of the state of our churches will be astonished at the low degree of spirituality which they manifest. This is owing, among other causes, to the laxity which they display in church discipline, and the leniency with which they regard the errors of those who lay themselves open […]

Editoria Fiel is the organization that runs the Fiel Conference each year, which was begun twenty-four years ago by Richard Denham, Sr., an American missionary to Brazil, for the purpose of edifying ministers and promoting Reformed literature in Portuguese-speaking countries. Eighty attended the first conference which has now grown to 1,300 attendees this year, including […]

Of all the Christian authors whose works have blessed me, Iain H. Murray’s biographical writings come top of the list. Murray’s books are written in a beautifully unadorned prose, with a respectfulness of tone for their subject which is refreshing in a world of hero destroying literature. I also love the fact that Iain H. […]

The year 1968 was a momentous year for me revolution was in the air. I was a freshman architectural student in Boston. Having been raised with generally conservative morality in a liberal Congregational church there was nothing to prevent me from being radicalized. I soon joined the Boston Resistance and felt sure that I was […]

Although the name of Herman Bavinck may be unfamiliar to some readers, his labours have probably affected all those reading these lines. Bavinck’s legacy to the Reformed world, like that of his contemporary, Abraham Kuyper, was disproportionate to the size of his native Netherlands. I write these lines on the eighty-seventh anniversary of Bavinck’s death […]

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Bavinck’s Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the appearance in English of the final volume of his four-volumed Reformed Dogmatics1. The time is ripe, therefore, to get (re)acquainted with Bavinck. Bavinck’s Early Life and Education Herman Bavinck was born in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands, on December 13, […]

On Saturday 4th October the twelfth Salisbury Conference took place at Emmanuel Church. Over 150 people attended to hear Richard Barcellos of the Midwest Center for Theological Studies in Owensboro, Kentucky. Dr Barcellos’ first study was on John Calvin and the Decalogue. Why should this Genevan Reformer be studied? He had a great impact on […]

The author views the Old Testament Book of Jonah ‘not as a book about a great fish’ (seriously, does anybody?), but about God and one man in particular. He sees it as a piece of biography. That poses a stumbling block for this reviewer, who reads Jonah as humorous fiction. Ferguson finally uses the word […]