Yearly Archives: 2014

Book Review: Four Views on the Historical Adam, Matthew Barrett & Ardel B. Caneday (Eds.)[Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013], 288 pp., paperback. Few questions are more pressing among Evangelicals today than the time and the manner in which God created the world and all life within it. Did he create the world in six literal […]

I had a fellow elder in Darlington, Clifford Scurr, who often expressed the conviction that living Christianity reflected itself in people’s very faces. It was something I was occasionally struck with myself – at least by force of contrast. A duty that fell to me to fulfil from time to time was to take funerals […]

I’ve just come to the end of a Sunday morning series on ‘The Five Points’. I have preached several series going through all the great doctrines of the Bible. But I’ve never wanted to pick out the five points particularly. Partly, that’s because I’m aware that some folk have emphasised them in an unhelpful way. […]

Mark Johnston discusses the background and importance of the Banner of Truth conferences, the Ministers’ Conference in particular, and the impact it has had on his life. Learn more about the upcoming ministers conference in the US here and UK here.

Of all the casualties the church has suffered in recent decades, I wonder if many will have longer-lasting consequences than the loss of the evening service. There was a time, not so long ago, when many or even most churches gathered in the morning and the evening. But today the evening service is increasingly relegated […]

Book Review: iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, by D. Brent Laytham [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012], x + 220 pp. A generation ago, media theorist Neil Postman feared that modern men and women, enamoured with technology and entertainment, were losing the ability to think critically. He also believed that they were erring […]

The Apostle Paul winds up one of the closing sections of his letter to the Galatians with the following exhortation: ‘as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith’ (Gal. 6:10). Our particular interest lies with this ‘opportunity’ of which he speaks at […]

Sometimes reading a Puritan author can take you into another world. The Puritans are not always the easiest of men to read, though the difficulty is often over-hyped. However, what follows is essentially an extract from the Works of John Owen, Volume 2, pages 77-78.1 He has been expounding the Christian’s communion with Christ, showing […]

Meditation 1 from The Life of John Brown with Select Writings,1 pages 159-161. Lord, what am I in myself? Dust and ashes; formed from nothing: I am ‘nothing, less than nothing, and vanity.’ But what am I as a sinner? An infinitely criminal enemy of God, my Maker, my Preserver, and Redeemer; whose heart is […]

Although they have allies and are numerous, they will be destroyed and pass away. Although I have afflicted you, Judah, I will afflict you no more. Now I will break their yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away (Nahum 1:12-13). In July, 1755 as British General Braddock, along with young, twenty-three year old […]

The Apostle Paul was a very great Christian indeed. He was also very human, a fact that is memorably brought home to us in a story that comes from his own pen. Writing to the church in Corinth he says, ‘When we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were […]

Book Review: From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective; edited by David and Jonathan Gibson, with contributions by Sinclair Ferguson, Henri Blocher, Paul Helm, Robert Letham, John Piper, Thomas Schriener and others. [Crossway Books, hardback, 704pp, $50/£25-£33 (also available on Kindle).] Historically referred to as ‘limited […]

Some highlights from Mark Johnston and Ian Hamilton on Banner of Truth books at last year’s US Ministers’ Conference. Want to be there in 2014? Visit banneroftruth.org/us/events for US and banneroftruth.org/uk/events for UK conference information. Banner Book Room Tour Part 1 from Banner of Truth on Vimeo. Banner Book Room Tour Part 2 from Banner […]

This letter was sent from Aberdeen by the late Douglas Macmillan in September 1967 to Angus Smith who was at that time a minister in Snizort, Skye. A member of the Snizort congregation was a young policeman named Archie Angus Stewart. Gravely ill, he had been taken to a hospital in Aberdeen and was visited […]

Sometimes it is not easy to see blessings, and yet when we think more deeply we know that there are so many that it is difficult to single them out. We take them so much for granted, not always because we are ungrateful, but because the blessings we lack fill our thoughts and discomfit our […]