Yearly Archives: 2019

This excerpt is taken from chapter three of Maturity by Sinclair B. Ferguson, a new release from the Banner of Truth Trust. * * * In the early years of a plant’s life, the basic function of pruning is not to produce fruit immediately, but to prepare for future fruit. Good pruning helps create the proper form […]

To do good to others, is an honour that comes from God only. The very desire is Christ-like; and those that are Christ’s have both the desire and the power. If you have lived without Christ, you have done nothing either for God or man in the past. If you would now take Christ, what […]

This past January at the 2019 G3 Conference, Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, stopped by the Banner book table and was kind enough to recommend some of our books. We followed him around the table to document his recommendations for you and we hope you’ll find them helpful as you consider your […]

The world today is looking for a note of optimism. The dark clouds of war hover ominously over the inter­national scene. Political confusion, economic un­certainty, and social unrest produce anxiety and fear in various parts of the world. Amid all our scientific and technological progress, the twentieth-century man seems disillusioned with the promises of peace […]

Now, you are aware that there are different theories of Redemption. All Christians hold that Christ died to redeem, but many Christians do not teach the same redemption. We differ as to the nature, of atonement, and as to the design of redemption. For instance, the Arminian holds that Christ when He died, did not […]

In the report of the Archbishop’s Committee on Evangelism, published in 1945 under the title: Towards the Conversion of England, the work of evangelism is conveniently defined as follows: ‘so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept […]

‘Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’ –2 Corinthians 12:10 Notes from a Sermon of the Rev. Thomas Jones (1752-1845). The subject before us can be understood only by Christian warriors, and it is understood by all who […]

‘Puritanism has left a vast literature of homiletics and casuistry, which is wholly dead save for an occasional excursion of the curious. Nothing could be more wearisome to the modern reader than its voluminous controversy. The Calvinistic theology, which was the intellectual form of Puritanism, is dead beyond recall.’ These words were penned in 1912 by a Fellow of All […]

Traditionally, Baptist have been very wary of written prayers. Our Baptist forefathers strenuously objected to the liturgical format of the Church of England, in which the corporate recitation of set prayers was a major element.  For instance, a prominent item at the trial of John Bunyan (1628-1688) in 1661 was Bunyan’s adamant opposition to the […]

The following is abridged from a pamphlet by James Begg (1803-1883), The Art of Preaching, printed in 1863, twenty years after more than 400 ministers had left the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. While in the context in which Begg wrote there were no doubt peculiar historical circumstances affecting the […]

‘Then shall the Kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. . . at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh….. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour […]

‘The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.’ — 2 Timothy 4:13 Paul is in prison and in a short time is to lose his life at the instigation of the Roman Emperor Nero. But in prison he invites Timothy to bring with him […]

It belongs to God to put the world right; the Christian’s first duty is to put himself right. In so doing the believer takes the first step towards influencing others for good. But it is a difficult and an unwelcome task and one in which he can expect little help or encouragement from others. Repentance […]

‘And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.’ –Revelation 20:15 Can there be any more sobering reality than what we read in the verse noted above? And should you not, my dear friend, contemplate your own eternal existence after your earthly demise? […]

The statement with which Paul concludes his prayer in Ephesians 3 is so remarkable that it is undoubtedly true to say, as Dr Lloyd-Jones has said, that ‘there is no more staggering statement in the whole range of Scripture than this’. It may be described accurately as the ‘climax of all prayer’. 1 It is […]