Resources

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism By Timothy J. Keller New York: Dutton, 2008 xxiii + 293 pages, hardcover, $24.95. ISBN: 978 0 52595 049 3 John R. Muether’s fine biography entitled Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman suggests that Van Til was marginalized by Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) and […]

The thought of heaven and especially the second coming used to unsettle me. I can remember growing up with a certain measure of fear associated with the end of this life (whether occasioned by the conclusion of this age with the coming of Christ or the conclusion of my physical life and entrance into heaven). […]

For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you. (1 Thessalonians 1:8). Many church leaders tell us that open air evangelism in the form of preaching or door-to-door evangelism is outdated, that it no longer works because people are post-modern, because people no longer care about heaven and hell, and that promising or […]

A tender farewell The fellowship meal of Abraham with the Lord and the two angels was over, and one part of God’s mission in leaving heaven and coming to Mamre to the patriarch and his wife had been completed. The Lord had assured Sarah that she was going to give birth to a son within […]

Let me begin with a question (not a trick one!): ‘What is the principal exercise of faith?’ It is a straight-forward question and a very important question. For John Owen, the great English Puritan divine, the answer was instinctive: ‘The contemplation of the glory of Christ.’ Saving faith unites the believer to the Lord Jesus […]

In his book titled Miracles, C. S. Lewis writes concerning the time when Christ walked on the Sea of Galilee that it was a glimpse given to us of the powers of the new creation. By that he meant that whereas many of the miracles of our Lord demonstrated some of the powers that the […]

GD: Hello Garry Williams and welcome to Exiled Preacher. Please tell us a little about yourself. GW: I became a Christian aged 17 through studying RS A Level, which I took by ‘chance’ as my third subject, on a whim really. But we studied John’s Gospel verse by verse and the Reformation, so I came […]

Why should Christians be familiar with the great doctrines of the Bible? Let me give you four reasons. 1) The first is the simplest of all: Because we love God. And if you love someone, you want to know everything about them. If a young man meets a girl and falls in love, he’ll want […]

God created man in his own image. (Genesis 1:27) On the sixth day of creation, after making cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts, Elohim, in a marvellous intra-Triune council decided to create man in his own image. The word ‘image’ in Hebrew literally means to cut from a stone, much like what Michelangelo did when […]

Three uses of the law are commonly identified in relation to the believer: (1) the civil use, (2) the law as schoolmaster, (3) the law as a teacher. (1) The civil use of the Law. In commenting on Galatians 3:19, Luther writes: The first use of the law is to bridle the wicked. This civil […]

On 10 July 1509, almost exactly 500 years ago, one of God’s greatest gifts to his Church was born. This was John Calvin, whose life began in Noyon in northern France. His father held several important positions in the town, some civil and some ecclesiastical; his mother – who died when John was no more […]

I have just completed preaching through the twelfth chapter of Romans, thirty years after I had first preached through the letter. It is the Everest of New Testament ethics, corporate and individual, ecclesiastical and personal. I preached fifteen sermons on it and found much helpful material available compared to thirty years ago. There is the […]

One of the effects of conversion is a new desire for the public worship of God. In regeneration, the Holy Spirit joins the soul to Christ, and through Christ the soul is united to all other believers, as members of the same body. The soul now finds itself drawn to the place where prayer is […]

And God blessed them, saying, ‘. . . fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ (Genesis 1:22) On the fifth day of creation Elohim created swarms that swarm in the sea and flying birds that fly in the sky. In his commentary on Genesis, John Currid says that the […]

THE LAW IS VERY GOOD AND PROFITABLE It is exceeding necessary for us to know this use of the Law. For he that is not an open and a public murderer, an adulterer, or a thief, holds himself to be an upright and godly man; as did the Pharisee, so blinded and possessed spiritually of […]