Articles

This year is the two hundredth anniversary of the passing of the ‘Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade’. It was the culmination of a long period of agitation against a trade which ran strongly in the face of every claim that Britain was a Christian nation. Many of the leaders of the campaign […]

I praise Thee, Father . . . that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to infants. Matthew 11:25. Katherine Hepburn, the four-time Academy Award winner, was born in Hartford on November 8, 1907, her mother being from the Houghton family of the Corning Glass company, and her […]

The Bible is essentially a practical book. Its principles and teachings are never merely academic, philosophical, or speculative, but are always anchored in and aimed at the living God and the daily living of his people. That is one reason why there is so little in the Bible about heaven. The focus of the Word […]

Some selections by Mack Tomlinson of Texas from Rutherford’s The Loveliness of Christ.1 The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand, planted me here in this part of his vineyard; here I grow and here I will abide till the great Master of the […]

William Still was the pastor of Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, for nearly fifty-two years. He could remain in that pulpit for so long, according to Sinclair Ferguson, because he ‘seemed to live in the Bible.’ Still preached the Bible, the whole counsel of God, straight through, several times in the course of his […]

There are some things that we can do that our God cannot do. We can lie, he can speak nothing but truth; we can sin, he can only do righteousness; we can die, he has lived and will live forever. Our capacity to do such things does not make us greater but infinitely less than […]

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12. Robert E. Webber, in his book The Younger Evangelicals (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002) observes that denominations as we have known them […]

Paul described himself to Titus as ‘a servant of God’. And that was how he imagined himself in his pre-conversion days. He was, so he thought, blameless as ‘touching the righteousness which is in the law’ (Phil. 3:6); he was, in his own eyes, a marvellously-faithful servant of God. But when he met the risen […]

Thy word is truth. John 17:17. David Wells, in his book Above All Earthly Powers [Eerdmans, 2005], observes that postmodernism has done in one generation what evangelicalism has not been able to do in one hundred years, and that is to dismantle modernism. For those of you not familiar with these terms, please allow this […]

It is clear that there is to be preaching during the public worship of God. There must be some instruction and exhortation during the service or else it degenerates into pure formality and ritual, like the Roman mass. In the Bible we find the examples of Christ instructing the multitude on the mount (Matthew 5-7), […]

When Augustine found himself in controversy with fellow believers, he remarked on more than one occasion to his friend Alypius, ‘Remember, we are washed in the same blood.’ The great Church Father was not downplaying the importance of accurate doctrine. Rather, he was highlighting the foundational truth that, whatever their differences, believers are one in […]

The year 2007 has been one of significant anniversaries for the Christian church. Among the most notable were the births of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (see faith Cook’s biography1) and of Charles Wesley exactly three hundred years ago. From far different backgrounds, these two became closely linked in God’s purposes during the great Evangelical Revival […]

Definition, Indications and Motivations Surrogate gestational motherhood1 can be defined as an arrangement where one woman carries a pregnancy to term for another woman who is either unable or unwilling to do so. There are two types of surrogate mothers. The one type is ‘partial surrogacy,’ in which the surrogate mother is also the genetic […]

Let the peoples praise Thee, O God; let all the peoples praise Thee. Psalm 67:3. John Paton1 was born to godly Presbyterian parents in 1824 in a small village outside of Glasgow, Scotland. He was reared on the Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith in daily family worship, and from his earliest days […]

David Brainerd,1 the great missionary to the American Indians, was born in April, 1718 at Haddam, Connecticut. His father, a legislator in Connecticut, died when David was nine years old and his mother died when he was fourteen. He lived with a godly aunt and uncle until he was eighteen and then tried farming for […]

There’s a lot of talk in the Christian world concerning humility and the handling of God’s Word. Prominent in this discussion are some of the statements emanating from America’s branch of the Emerging Church. According to this school of thought, humility as applied to Scripture entails a sense of uncertainty about Scripture’s meaning, message, or […]

JUSTIFICATION IN THE COURT OF CONSCIENCE: BIBLICAL TRUTH OR DANGEROUS ERROR?1 What Exactly do we Celebrate on Reformation Day?Wednesday, October 31, 2007 marked the 490th anniversary of the Reformation and no doubt this event was observed by many churches which trace their origins to this great movement of the Spirit. Sermons will have been preached […]

ANTI-MISSIONARY THREATS TURN VIOLENT IN TURKEY A Protestant pastor in the Turkish industrial city of Izmit woke up one morning last month to find a huge red swastika pinned to his apartment door, with a handwritten hate letter shoved underneath. The writer threatened the safety of Wolfgang Hade and his family unless they left the […]

Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. Ephesians 3:13. My wife Wini was recently engaged in a service project where she was asked what was our church’s position on homosexuality. Wini responded by saying that we have had an extensive ministry with HIV […]

Pastor Conrad Murrell of Louisiana helped one man who came to him in this unusual manner. This is how he reported it. A few years ago a pastor brought a troubled man to me for counselling. When I asked him about his problem, he replied, ‘I want to serve the Lord but I am having […]

A Christian farmer had two small boys named John and Tom. He called into the bedroom to see them before they went to sleep, and he asked them had they prayed. They hadn’t, and one of them – John – complained that he wasn’t feeling well. They said that they didn’t know how to pray. […]

I arrived to take up the pastorate at Kabwata Baptist Church on 1st September 1987. I was a young man of 25 years of age and green between the ears. I was still a bachelor and had never seen the inside of a theological college. The church took a great risk in calling such a […]

Geoffrey Thomas is Pastor of Alfred Place Baptist Church, Aberystwyth, where he has served the Lord for over forty years. His preaching and written ministry are deeply appreciated by many of God’s people around the world, and he is no stranger to Northern Ireland [where ‘Men for Ministry’ is based], having spoken in a number […]

Dr. Edward J. Young was one of the greatest Christian scholars, and the godliest of Christians whom I ever met. I came to Westminster Theological Seminary in 1964 for postgraduate work. I had just completed a master’s degree at Princeton and was tired of the liberalism that seemed to permeate all the lectures and grading. […]

We live in a world where sorrow repeatedly enters. Indeed, at any given moment, multitudes all over the world are experiencing sadness for all sorts of reasons. Death follows illness, accidents and disasters into families and leaves sorrow behind. And death, however unexpected – however unwelcome – is irreversible; no one returns from the eternal […]