Yearly Archives: 2008

From the ‘one flesh’ teaching about marriage (Eph. 5:22-33) Paul draws out the wonder and the glory of Christ’s relationship with the church. In verse 28 Paul is exhorting husbands to love their own wives as they love their own bodies. It would hardly please a wife to hear her husband say that he loves […]

The child in the manger in Bethlehem, for whom there was no room in the inn, may have seemed powerless, but he was the Son of God. The angel had told Mary, his mother: ‘That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God’ (Luke 1:35). Thus, while he […]

Most readers will be acquainted with Spurgeon and the Downgrade Controversy. Today the apostasy signalized by Spurgeon’s opponents has probably reached its nadir. At least it is hard to imagine how much lower the enemies of the true Christian Faith can fall while retaining the name of Christ. The solid saving truths that were once […]

The Westminster Confession of Faith, insisting that Scripture is sufficient in our day, holds that ‘those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people’ have ‘now ceased’ (1.1). We who adhere to that doctrine are thus often called ‘cessationists.’ That label carries a lot of baggage. By itself, it’s negative. In current debates […]

While commenting upon the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, I was brought into most intimate communion with Thomas Manton, who has discoursed upon that marvellous portion of Scripture with great fulness and power. I have come to know him so well that I could pick him out from among a thousand divines if he were […]

The word reveal means ‘to uncover.’ Suppose there is a plate of cookies on the table covered by a towel. When the towel is removed, then you can see what’s there – a plate and cookies. You see what you could not see before. When we use the word revelation in theology, we are talking […]

David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her. (2 Samuel 11:4) Recently a former Presidential candidate admitted to an adulterous affair against his wife who has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. The National Inquirer broke the story last October but the candidate vehemently dismissed the story, […]

The first wave of Calvinism at the beginning of the 20th century was manifest in Princeton Seminary, in Louis Berkhof and the fledgling Christian Reformed Church and the Grand Rapids publishers, in Principal John Macleod and the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, in the Strict Baptists of England, in Arthur Pink, […]

It was good to be one of around 150 present at the John Owen Centre, Finchley, to hear this year’s Dr Lloyd-Jones memorial lecture by Philip Eveson on Gospel and Creation – the significance of a theology of creation for preaching. A very full paper, it considered what a theology of creation should include (making […]

The Son of God came into the world to do the will of God. He did nothing but the will of God. He did all the will of God. His life perfectly conformed to God’s will. Those who follow him will want to know the will of God, and they will want to know it […]

And Joshua said, ‘Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.’ And all Israel stoned them with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. (Joshua 7:25) From time to time I am asked what the Bible says about cremation. First I realize this can […]

John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man By Carl R. Trueman Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007 The Great Theologians Series 132 pp, pbk, $29.95. ISBN: 978 0 75461 470 8 There has been a resurgence of interest in the Puritans over the last fifty years or so, encouraged by the ministry of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and fuelled […]

The sound of the gospel trumpet was first heard in the Garden of Eden when it fell on the ears of our first parents, who by then had lost that communion with God which they had previously enjoyed. With the entrance of sin into the world, they now were to face up to the reality […]

ROLLING BACK THE STATE AND MENDING SOCIETY Lord Blackwell is the chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies and in The Times on September 8 he made seven suggestions for breaking the dependency culture that has marred life in Great Britain today. How these ideas will resonate in the heart of every Christian! They are […]

Assist me to Proclaim: The Life and Hymns of Charles Wesley By John R. Tyson William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, UK; 2007 356 pp, pbk, £12.99. ISBN: 978 0 80282 939 9 This biography which is based on careful research of Charles Wesley’s life helpfully brings him out from under […]