Articles

There are some profound and practical implications contained in the way that the Ten Commandments are stated. One of the easiest things that anyone reading them can observe is how they are cast in negative terms. We are not to have any gods before the Lord God our redeemer; we are not to make and […]

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. (James 4:4) For good or ill, without question our children imitate us. What they see in us – our values, actions, and speech – significantly influence them. After giving four reasons for the quarrels and conflicts we face in our […]

Some people may feel that, if Christ was still present in the world, spiritual conditions would be very much better than they are. They may imagine that he, now exalted to heaven, seems remote from them and their needs – but if they could meet him in a Jerusalem street, for instance, or by the […]

And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. (Luke 8:53) These words record the reaction of certain people to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh. In different forms they are the words which are to be found constantly in the Gospel records of his life and […]

He has risen; he is not here. (Mark 16:6)1 Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus. Why do Christians say that? Because the Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly prophesied it, both directly and through typology! King David said that God would not allow his Holy One to undergo decay, to see hell or what the […]

The Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference 20111 began April 11 with Steven Curry on Matthew 6, expounding an extract from the Sermon on the Mount. STEVEN CURRY In this section Jesus deals with the piety that should characterize those who are in the Kingdom of God. Jesus requires his followers to be different from formal […]

The concluding part of a paper delivered at the 2009 Theological Conference of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. See here for the first part of this paper. 3. Echoes of the downgrade movement The echoes we can hear of the downgrade movement which destroyed the orthodoxy of the old Free Church, and indeed brought […]

Introduction Martin Luther is not merely a key figure in the unfolding of events in the Protestant Reformation; he also played a major role in moulding its ideas. ‘Perhaps more than any other person, Luther shaped the presuppositions that define Protestantism.’ (Stephen J. Nichols) These presuppositions are known to scholars in their Latin form as […]

Extracts from ‘Definitive Sanctification,’ (pp. 277-280, 284) and ‘Progressive Sanctification,’ (pp. 294-296, 299), in The Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume 2.1 When we speak of sanctification, we generally think of it as that process by which the believer is gradually transformed in heart, mind, will, and conduct, and conformed more and more to the […]

You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:2a-3) In the context of our ministry here in West Hartford, I live with a constant two-fold state of desperation and hope. At least […]

The English verb ‘to evangelize’ comes from the Greek word euangelizo, which means ‘to proclaim good news.’ It is employed in the New Testament to describe the proclamation of the Christian message to the world. This New Testament verb has an interesting linguistic background in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), particularly […]

John Brown was one of the most illustrious Bible commentators of the nineteenth century. The Banner of Truth publishes his commentaries on Galatians and Hebrews in the ‘Geneva’ series, and his 3-volume work on The Discourses and Sayings of our Lord. Also published by Banner of Truth, but currently out of print, is his 2-volume […]

If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it? (Amos 3:6) The mammoth earthquake, 9.0 on the Richter scale, that struck northern Japan on March 11, and the ensuing tsunami, captured so dreadfully and spectacularly on video, has, […]

Owen’s teaching1is based on Romans 8:13: ‘If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live’, although he also alludes to the other New Testament reference to mortification, notably to Colossians 3:15, where the Apostle Paul exhorts his readers: ‘Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, […]

Augustus Toplady was born at Farnham, Surrey on 4th November 1740. His father, who was a soldier, died soon after he was born. He was educated for a time at Westminster School. When he was still a boy, his mother went to Ireland to claim some property there and he accompanied her. It was in […]