Resources by Macleod, Kenneth D.

On 10 July 1509, almost exactly 500 years ago, one of God’s greatest gifts to his Church was born. This was John Calvin, whose life began in Noyon in northern France. His father held several important positions in the town, some civil and some ecclesiastical; his mother – who died when John was no more […]

Consider a sinner making his way through this life. Sooner or later, he must die and enter the eternal world. But can he, at that solemn moment, be accepted into heaven? This implies another question: Has his sin been forgiven? It should be obvious that, if the holy God against whom he has sinned is […]

God is gathering a people for Himself. He finds them in Satan’s kingdom and calls them effectually by the Holy Spirit in His infinite grace. He convinces them of sin and makes them willing and able to believe in Christ and to follow Him along the narrow way which leads to everlasting life. But will […]

For several months now the financial world has been in crisis. Banks large and small, particularly in Europe and the USA, have been in dire straits. Many have had to go cap in hand to their respective governments for massive bailouts; these have included the second-largest American bank Citigroup, which has been granted $306 billion […]

The Banner of Truth has published A Handful of Pebbles, Theological Liberalism and the Church1, by Peter Barnes. Liberalism (also referred to as modernism) is, in this context, ‘a belief system which rejects the orthodox view of the Christian faith as set out in the Bible, and summarised in the historic creeds’. A S Peake, […]

Abraham was brought up in the city of Ur, not far from the River Euphrates, in what is now southern Iraq. It was presumably very much a heathen environment. Yet even there the Lord appeared to him and called him ‘to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance’ (Heb. […]

John Calvin was not a man who would readily draw attention to himself. When he gave some details of his early life in the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, his purpose was to draw attention to God’s activity. His father had intended him for the priesthood but, says Calvin, God, by the secret […]

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 […]

It was a remarkable testimony that God gave of Enoch: ‘He pleased God’ (Heb. 11:5). Enoch was a sinner and, if God was to mark iniquity against him, he could not stand. At best, his works were imperfect; they could never satisfy the demands of God’s holy law; so he could not earn a right […]

John E Marshall – Life and Writings1 is published by the Banner of Truth Trust and most of the book is taken up with a selection of papers delivered at various conferences. These papers begin with one on John Rogers, the first martyr in England during the time of Queen Mary. It ends with a […]

How does God regard our worship? We may get some insight from the verse: ‘The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is his delight’ (Prov. 15:8), where sacrificing and prayer are taken as two examples of acts of worship. Yet it seems very strong language […]

It was at the end of the period when judges ruled in Israel. This was a time of repeated departures from God – when ‘every man did that which was right in his own eyes’, without any thought of what the Most High saw to be right. The Philistines invaded the land and the first […]

This year is the two hundredth anniversary of the passing of the ‘Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade’. It was the culmination of a long period of agitation against a trade which ran strongly in the face of every claim that Britain was a Christian nation. Many of the leaders of the campaign […]

Paul described himself to Titus as ‘a servant of God’. And that was how he imagined himself in his pre-conversion days. He was, so he thought, blameless as ‘touching the righteousness which is in the law’ (Phil. 3:6); he was, in his own eyes, a marvellously-faithful servant of God. But when he met the risen […]

This is indeed a first-class book and it is a real pleasure to see it in print again, so attractively produced inside and out. David Dickson, best known for his commentary on the Psalms, was one of Scotland’s most notable ministers. He came to the parish of Irvine in 1618 and his time there included […]