Yearly Archives: 2009

I have been thinking about the grace of God, not so much in terms of how that grace affects us as the Lord’s redeemed people, but rather in terms of how such grace has affected our Lord himself. Such thinking is not a matter of mere human speculation, for there is much teaching about it […]

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: 1859-2009 By Gregory Wills New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 592 pages, hardback, $35.00. ISBN: 978 0 19537 714 9 This long-anticipated history of Southern Baptists’ oldest Seminary will not disappoint those who have savoured its coming with heightened interest. Greg Wills has given the kind of historical investigation and […]

The annual Fiel Conference for pastors and church workers took place, 8-12 June. Prayers were much needed as the work this year far exceeded what could be done through the scant human resources at our disposal, but God more than made up the difference. There is good reason to think this latest meeting represented another […]

A calm and impartial view of this sad subject has been reserved for this place, and for a chapter1 of its own. The immense advantage of having been able to consult and to weigh the evidence of the principal writers – certainly not fewer than forty – about the case of Servetus, besides several biographies […]

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 […]

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. (Romans 13:11) Paul is writing to the congregation of new Christians at the heart of the Roman Empire. First of all he has given to […]

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 Many church leaders tell us that open air evangelism in the form of preaching or door-to-door evangelism is outdated, that it no longer works because people are post-modern, because people no longer care about heaven and hell, and that promising or […]

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). […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]