Yearly Archives: 2014

Church historian Prof David Calhoun is well known as the author of a significant two-volume history of Princeton Seminary1, 2 and now is the biographer of Dr William Childs Robinson, a man who had a great influence for good in the Southern Presbyterian Church as Lecturer in Historical Theology at Columbia Seminary (1926-67).3 A 126-page […]

A look at the life of John Bunyan, by Pastor Geoff Thomas. HIS CONVERSION John Bunyan had no family influences encouraging him to become a Christian. His grandfather married four times, his father three times, while he married twice. His grandfather was what we might understand to be a kind of ‘travelling salesman’ who left […]

This is an excellent addition to Banner of Truth’s “Let’s Study” series. Like all the others this book seeks to combine explanation of the text with application. Mark Johnson admirably succeeds in this clear and concise commentary. He shows that Paul was writing to a relatively young church that was being destabilised by a mixture […]

I have now been in the ministry for 37 years and, looking back, deplore the fact that I have made so many mistakes that could have been prevented, had I known better. On the other hand, by God’s grace alone, I have been blessed with a ministry which has been rewarded in the sense that […]

Dr Nick Willborn, editor of the Trust’s recent new title Selected Writings of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, is interviewed by William Hill on the Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary podcast Confessing Our Hope.

Psalm 119 is a large collection of very short prayers, most of which we only pray as we read the Psalm itself. Some of them, however, have so woven themselves into our memories and experiences that we frequently find ourselves praying them at other times. A fine example is the prayer of verse 18: ‘Open […]

Book Review: Beginning Biblical Hebrew: A Grammar And Illustrated Reader, John A. Cook and Robert D. Holmstedt [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013], 324 pages, paperback, ISBN 978 0 80104 886 9. Of the writing of Hebrew textbooks there is no end, and each new production requires explanation and justification. The authors claim that what sets […]

This has been my Ed Clowney week. It began when I was reflecting about how to understand Sabbath better, and remembered I’d never read Clowney’s How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments. There it was, he opened it up, he told us so well just what it meant to rest in Jesus, so pastorally. I couldn’t […]

Sometimes a book surprises the Christian as he reads. A smallish paperback, a modest cover, an eclectic name1 might not at first glance cry: ‘Read me! Read me!’. But when the author’s name is Iain Murray, the Banner men will be eager enough to read it. They know that the modest presentation belies the strength […]

‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’ (John 17:3). These words are from the greatest prayer ever prayed, and they tells us the answer to the quest all mankind has been engaged in since the fall of Adam: What is eternal […]

Supposing you were suddenly to find yourself among 7,000 mainly young people, singing without any band, Reginald Heber’s ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!’, and gathered to hear sermons for three days, you might well wonder where you were and what was happening. My own arrival in that situation was not entirely sudden for I […]

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher/theologian, described life as paddling in an ocean ten thousand fathoms deep. How right he was. This thought is no less and even more appropriate to the study of theology, the coherent teaching about himself that God has revealed to us in the Bible. Some of us know the […]

This book consists of five recent addresses given by Iain Murray the veteran preacher and co-founder of Banner of Truth. The messages cover a wide range of issues: evangelical holiness, the Bible, apostasy, controversy and the fourth commandment. Mr Murray shows in each message how important the subject is and carefully and clearly teaches using […]

‘There is no danger,’ writes Albert Barnes, ‘that more constantly besets Christians, and even eminent Christians, than pride. There is no sin that is more subtle, insinuating, deceptive; none that lurks more constantly around the heart and that finds a more ready entrance than pride.’ In a remarkable section in one of his letters, one […]

Surely the best books are those that keep close to Scripture, and we have never known a book that keeps closer than this. The Christian’s Great Enemy1 opens up, explains and applies 1 Peter 5:8-11 – Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may […]