Topic Archives: History & Biography

Christmas Evans was a man of lowly birth, and little education. But in the hands of God he became one of the most eloquent and powerful preachers in Wales from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries. Great crowds would gather to hear his vivid, imaginative sermons. HIS EARLY LIFE On the evening of […]

Readers will recall the murder of Rami Ayyad, a member of the Baptist Church, who managed Gaza’s only Christian bookstore and was involved in many charitable activities. He was found shot in the head, on a Gaza street in early October 2007, 10 hours after he was kidnapped from the store. Ayyad had received regular […]

Not many people can say they have been to seminary. I have been to two: the first for two years to train as a Roman Catholic priest in Ireland; the second was a Reformed Seminary in London. Like most young boys growing up in Ireland in the 1980s I was brought up as a Roman […]

Cyril John Pocock, (always known as John), faithful deacon of the church at South Moreton for fifty-five years, passed away on November 24th, 2007, aged 89 years. The following details are taken from his own writings: I was born at Gainfield Farm, Buckland, on March 14th, 1918. My father, Mr. Jacob Pocock, was a minister […]

Mission Statement The Project has as its objective the transformation of society through faith in Jesus Christ, using the life and works of John Newton as one great example.1, 2, 3 The Better Hour During February 2008, The Better Hour, a documentary on William Wilberforce, was shown on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television channels right […]

‘Berkhof’ – it has a certain ring of defiance about it, an abbreviation for an almost 1,000 page volume of systematic theology which is considered a touchstone of orthodoxy, but . . . ‘surely a bit out of date’ . . . ‘Dutch’ . . . ‘not a note about revival’ . . . ‘rather […]

A Visit to Artillery Street Chapel in Colchester At first we couldn’t find it. We walked a long way down Artillery Street in a less than thriving area of Colchester, England. I was the guest of Graham Stevens and Abbeyfield Community Church, where he is the senior pastor. I had spoken there on Saturday night […]

An old writer on the Puritans tells us how Robert Atkins, in one of his last sermons at St. John’s, Exeter, before the Great Ejection of 1662, took the opportunity of declaring in the presence of Bishop Gauden and other dignitaries that ‘those ministers who beget converts to Christ may most properly be called Fathers […]

Why a Translation from Hebrew to Hebrew? Spoken Hebrew differs from biblical Hebrew far more than Shakespeare’s English differs from the English of today. Biblical Hebrew speaks of a large woman (2 Kings 4:8) to indicate a woman of influence. Hosea (8:4) speaks of Israel’s idolatry: ‘With their silver and gold, they make idols for […]

The year 2007 has been one of significant anniversaries for the Christian church. Among the most notable were the births of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (see faith Cook’s biography1) and of Charles Wesley exactly three hundred years ago. From far different backgrounds, these two became closely linked in God’s purposes during the great Evangelical Revival […]

Let the peoples praise Thee, O God; let all the peoples praise Thee. Psalm 67:3. John Paton1 was born to godly Presbyterian parents in 1824 in a small village outside of Glasgow, Scotland. He was reared on the Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith in daily family worship, and from his earliest days […]

David Brainerd,1 the great missionary to the American Indians, was born in April, 1718 at Haddam, Connecticut. His father, a legislator in Connecticut, died when David was nine years old and his mother died when he was fourteen. He lived with a godly aunt and uncle until he was eighteen and then tried farming for […]

ANTI-MISSIONARY THREATS TURN VIOLENT IN TURKEY A Protestant pastor in the Turkish industrial city of Izmit woke up one morning last month to find a huge red swastika pinned to his apartment door, with a handwritten hate letter shoved underneath. The writer threatened the safety of Wolfgang Hade and his family unless they left the […]

I arrived to take up the pastorate at Kabwata Baptist Church on 1st September 1987. I was a young man of 25 years of age and green between the ears. I was still a bachelor and had never seen the inside of a theological college. The church took a great risk in calling such a […]

Geoffrey Thomas is Pastor of Alfred Place Baptist Church, Aberystwyth, where he has served the Lord for over forty years. His preaching and written ministry are deeply appreciated by many of God’s people around the world, and he is no stranger to Northern Ireland [where ‘Men for Ministry’ is based], having spoken in a number […]