Yearly Archives: 2007

YOUR SHIBBOLETH OR YOUR LIFE! During the judgeship of Jephtha, a civil war erupted between the Gileadites, members of the tribe of Benjamin, and the Ephraimites. The controversy was about the failure of the latter to help Jephtha in his war against the Ammonites. When Jephtha was victorious, the Ephraimites complained that they should have […]

‘The whole earth one community in Christ’ In his Miscellany 262, Jonathan Edwards predicted that in the future there will be better contrivances for assisting one another through the whole earth by more expedite, easy, and safe communication between distant regions than now. The invention of the mariner’s compass is a thing discovered by God […]

For years, modern readers of the Bible have shunned the food laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about as religiously as the ancient Israelites shunned pork and shrimp. A recent New York Times bestseller, however, touts the benefits of the biblical food laws for obese and unhealthy North Americans. In his book, The Maker’s Diet,1 […]

…and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things. Ephesians 3:9 The 16th century Reformation, which brought so much good to Europe, which delivered people from ignorance, poverty, superstition, and the darkness of paganism and idolatry, had a catch phrase […]

By far the best spiritual biography of David that I have read, Walter J. Chantry’s David: Man of Prayer, Man of War1 is an exemplar of biblical depth, pastoral insight, and contemporary relevance. It will no doubt find a welcome home in the hands of busy pastors looking for fresh material on the life of […]

to proclaim … the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3:8 Recently four teenagers, three of whom were entering their last year at high school, were killed in a car accident. I cannot imagine the grief and heartache of the parents of these young people, knowing that their children’s lives were snuffed out at such a […]

JOHN BRAINERD: MISSIONARY TO THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 1747-1781 David Brainerd’s life and legacy have become a special part of Christian history for Christians worldwide. The sacrificial giving of himself to take the gospel to the North American Indians, as recorded in his journals and Jonathan Edwards’ Life of David Brainerd,1 has been used of […]

Alexander Whyte, an eminent Scottish minister in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, wrote of Christians who lived as if sanctification were by vinegar. I was reminded of this when preparing recently to preach on Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. As Luke concludes his account of this eunuch’s conversion, he […]

Some years ago I made the decision to work a little on Truth’s Victory over Error, David Dickson’s early commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. I had a copy of the Robert Wodrow edition, dated 1749, and with that I began. I did this in what time I could spare while minister of the […]

Horace Bushnell, the 19th-century Congregational minister from Hartford, along with Universalist Hosea Ballou, and Unitarian William Ellery Channing altered the way many people thought about Christ’s atonement. Until that time, the conventional view in the church of Christ was God-centred and objective. That is, the sovereign Triune God who created man requires obedience from mankind. […]

‘You’re going to sin. If you didn’t yesterday, you will today or tomorrow.’ Thus one of America’s best-known Evangelical magazines promoted an article. But is it justifiable to suggest that there is anyone, no matter how godly, who did not sin yesterday? Rather the quotation points to the lack of a sense of sin so […]

In this the third of three articles1 on the 2007 Annual Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales at Aberystwyth, Geoff Thomas summarizes the third and fourth addresses of Edward Donnelly. The Nature of Our Calling (1 Cor. 1:26-31) The world cultivates personality far more than character. Celebrities have replaced heroes in our culture. People […]

This article is Chapter 2 of the author’s Pentecost – Today?: The Biblical Basis for Understanding Revival. ‘For a long time it was supposed by the Church that a revival was a miracle, an interposition of Divine power. It is only within a few years that ministers generally have supposed revivals were to be promoted […]

This is the second of three articles1 reporting on the 2007 Annual Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales held in Aberystwyth in August. Edward Donnelly gave the four morning addresses on the opening two chapters of the First letter of Paul to the Corinthians. It was the third time he had spoken at the […]

Sunday, March 4, 1739 – Age 24 Rose much refreshed in spirit and gave my early attendants a warm exhortation as usual. Went to Newgate and preached with power to an exceedingly thronged congregation. Then hastened to Hanham Mount, three miles from the city, where the miners live altogether. God favoured us in the weather. […]