Yearly Archives: 2005

The Christian faith and controversy go hand in hand. Wherever the gospel of God’s grace in Christ is planted it will inevitably provoke controversy and opposition. The reason is not so hard to seek: the gospel confronts and provokes the sin-ingrained self-will and “auto-soterism” of this fallen, God-denying world. The armour-piercing truth of God’s word […]

[An address given at the 2005 Banner of Truth ministers’ conference at Leicester.] The triumph of grace in the ministry of the prophet Hosea shows itself in a number of ways: 1. In the length of Hosea’s ministry. The opening words of his prophecy don’t look much, that list of the names of the kings, […]

The Evangelical Library is pleased to announce the creation of the Geoffrey Williams Bursaries, named in recognition of the Library’s founder. The Bursaries are for the purpose of advancing understanding in some aspect of Evangelical Christianity, using the Library’s unique holdings to do so. Recently the Library opened its new Reference and Rare Book Room. […]

(This is an extract from the recently published book by Terry L. Johnson) 4: SOLA FIDE How may a man be made right before God? We are justified by faith alone (sola fide), in Christ alone (solo Christo), the Protestant Reformers answered. This conviction – sola fide – based upon solo Christo, was the principle […]

(This is an extract from the recently published book by Iain H. Murray) If we ask why God was moved to exercise his holiness and justice in such a manner, at such a cost, in the sacrifice of his own beloved Son for our sins, the answer is ‘God so loved the world’. And it […]

Of all the dreams that ever deluded men, and probably of all blasphemies that ever were uttered, there has never been one which is more absurd and which is more fruitful for all manner of mischief, than the idea that the Bishop of Rome can be the head of the church of Jesus Christ. No, […]

At the Livingstone airport in Zambia pastor Michael Bwembya met me and took me to his home, and on the next day we set off for the Victoria Falls 20 minutes away. We were hampered by a power cut which lasted 12 hours, the water supply was cut off too for 18 hours. On the […]

The flight to Lusaka, Zambia, was good; I enjoyed reading William Haslam’s “From Death to Life,” the Cornish preacher who famously came into assurance of salvation as he himself was preaching to his congregation: “The parson’s converted! The parson’s converted!” they cried. But the later years of his life were perplexing and the book finally […]

On Sunday 21 March 2004, the BBC aired Jeremy Bowen’s latest foray into biblical archaeology. Having previously examined the life of Christ and the exodus from Egypt, his subject on this occasion was the Genesis account of Noah and the Flood. Describing it as ‘one of the great myths of human history’, he set about […]

A careful study of the history of the west reveals certain recurring types of anxiety. After centuries of suppression of the true Gospel, the early 1500s found Europe full of anxiety over guilt and condemnation. Following the collapse of both Rationalism and Romanticism, the present age is riddled with anxiety over the loss of identity […]

Edmund P. Clowney (b. August 30, 1917) met his Lord face to face on Sunday, March 20, 2005 at the age of 87. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Jean Wright Clowney; by his five children: David Clowney, Deborah Clowney, Paul Clowney, Rebecca Jones, and Anne Foreman; by his twenty-one grandchildren; and […]

The Church Order of the Christian Reformed Church says that only those persons who “meet the biblical requirements” are eligible for office. Passages like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 teach that, among other things, an “overseer” must “be above reproach,” “manage his own family well,” “have a good reputation with outsiders,” and be “self-controlled, […]

During the first week of December, one of the major French weekly magazines, “Courrier International,” dedicated its cover article to the “phenomenon” of evangelicalism. The evangelical church in France represents only about 0.8 percent of the population according to the most optimistic statistics. Many (if not most) French people have never heard of “evangelicals” or […]

All who came into contact with the late Aaron Ndebele as fellow-travellers on the highway that leads to Zion and who spent some time in his company will remember him as a Christian and a gospel minister of no ordinary stature. So well endowed was he intellectually that he would undoubtedly have become eminent in […]

It was about October or November 1952 that a popular witch-doctor went to stay in the home of a local chief at Nkayi in the Shangani reserve. The woman claimed to have been sent by some great spirit in the Matopo hills to make rain, heal the sick and kill the witches and wizards in […]