Articles

The following article is featured in the present issue (743–744) of the Banner of Truth Magazine, Aug–Sept 2025. The world is a needy place; it lies in darkness and the only remedy is gospel light. This should weigh on us, as it weighted on the Lord Jesus. As he himself was engaged in preaching the […]

The following article appeared in the February 1982 issue of The Banner of Truth Magazine. In May, 1789, Adam Rankin, having travelled from Kentucky to Philadelphia for the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, made the following query: ‘Whether the churches…have not fallen into a great pernicious error by […]

Beginning on 26 September 1680, John Owen preached three consecutive sermons from 1 Corinthians 15:31, opening up Paul’s statement ‘I die daily.’ At points he is intensely personal, preaching to himself, preparing for his own death which took place almost three years later on 24 August 1683. He was also aware of other noteworthy men […]

The following article is the editorial from the July 2025 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine. You can purchase the issue here, and subscribe to the magazine for monthly features on Christian life, faith, and doctrine. If you were to ask the question, ‘Who needs a creed?’ the answer from many would probably be, […]

The following article by Toni Saad appeared in the May 2025 issue of the Banner of Truth magazine (no. 741). You can purchase a copy of the relevant issue, or subscribe in print or digital formats. It is a truism that even the more sophisticated strains of contemporary Reformed theology lack a developed theology of […]

The following article appeared in the January 2012 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine (Issue 580). Most men engaged in pastoral ministry will be asked, at some time, ‘What exactly does your work involve?’. Often, sadly, they will struggle to provide a clear and comprehensible answer. The ignorance in the popular mind about the […]

John Murray was arguably the premier Reformed theologian of the twentieth century. He was born and brought up in a small crofting community in the Highlands of Scotland and was shaped by the piety and confessional rigour of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in which his father was a much respected elder. However, through […]

The following post first appeared as Picture This… on the Gentle Reformation website. Permit me to ride a hobby horse of mine for a few minutes! I want to issue a plea for an exegetically informed gifted illustrator to produce illustrations for a really excellent children’s Bible story book. I wonder how many children grow […]

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) was a powerful advocate of pastoral visitation (as indeed he was of preaching, which, as the ‘proclamation of the Gospel’, he saw as the minister’s ‘main work’). In his tract On the Right Ecclesiastical Economy of a Large Town he sets out the great benefits which attach to pastoral practice which engages […]

Anne Ross Cousin is best known as the authoress of the hymn, The sands of time are sinking. Its nineteen verses (in its original form) are based on the death-bed sayings of a remarkable seventeenth century Scottish preacher, Samuel Rutherford. What is not so well known is that Anne Ross Cousin put into verse some […]

The following article from the pen of A. W. Pink appeared in the January 1978 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine, no. 172. It was the New Year message from Studies in the Scriptures, January 1939. The dawning of a new year is a fresh call unto each of us to put first things […]

This is about the person who has given his name to Christmas, Jesus Christ. It will only take you a few moments to read. A single word— special—sums up why you shouldn’t grudge the time. Special person Had you seen Jesus after he was born in Bethlehem special is not the word that would have […]

If you would strengthen your faith to suffer great and hard things, study much the book of the Revelation, which is a standing cordial for the relief of the saints, in anti-christian times; and study and read and commend to your children, the Book of Martyrs, where you have examples to the life of the […]

The following short article appeared in Issue 690 of the Banner of Truth Magazine (March 2021). The first volume of William Cunningham’s works to be prepared for the press by his literary executors, James Buchanan and James Bannerman, was The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation. It was published in 1862, a few months […]

Having your children with you in worship can be hard. It can be hard for the parents, for the children, and for the rest of the congregation. The squirming, the shuffling of papers, the loud whispers, and the louder cries, all can make it challenging to have our children with us in corporate worship. But […]