Yearly Archives: 2000

One of the off-the-shelf suggestions for church growth is to ‘open the front door and close the back door’ meaning that welcoming and retaining new people will fill the pews. The subheads under that strategy include meeting people’s needs, providing the music they like, activities for children, etc. But Dr Mark Dever, a pastor and […]

The God who knows and controls is under assault. Self-described evangelical theologians such as Clark Pinnock, John Sanders and Greg Boyd espouse a form of inclusivism known as the “openness of God,” the major tenets of which hold that God’s knowledge of future events is not exhaustive, that God is often surprised by the actions […]

In early October, 2000, Dr Joel Beeke of Grand Rapids buried an elderly Christian. He gave the following letter to her children after the funeral (on 1 Tim. 1:15-17), detailing his last visit with her:- The last visit I had with your dear mother last week was quite special for me, so I wrote out […]

Three of the most prestigious Ivy League universities in the USA are Harvard, Yale and Princeton. They are also the centres of political correctness. What happens there is mimicked in universities all over the world. They all had impeccable Christian foundations. Yale came into existence in 1701 in part as a conservative Congregationalist reaction to […]

When Dutch immigrants of Reformed Churches in the Netherlands [GKN] background visit the “old country,” they often find it hard to understand the liberal trends and the many changes in their once solid and strict Reformed denomination. And in turn family and friends find the immigrants from North America rather conservative. As an immigrant myself […]

It’s two o’clock and the lamb race is about to begin. Led out of the barn, Horlicks, Bovril, Pepsi, Expresso, Chocolate and Little Bo Peep enter a field crowded with expectant children and parents. They line up. The children who hold the lambs are instructed about where they should be headed. A boy with a […]

In the extraordinary opening ceremony to mark the opening of the Olympic Games one of the climaxes of the evening was to see that one word that hung suspended from the giant arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The word was “ETERNITY”. It had also been hanging there on January 1 to greet the dawning […]

Chris Harmse of South Africa is a hammer thrower. He holds the record on the African continent for that event. A big man in every way he had qualified for the South African team during a pre-Olympic event in Croatia on July 15. Then he discovered that the final of the hammer throw took place […]

The daily obituary colums in the newspaper increasingly catch one’s eye. One always glances at the age the deceased had attained. Dr Margaret Pollak was 77 when she died earlier this month (The Times, September 14). A London doctor, Peggy Pollak (as she was known) became intrigued by the wide discrepancies in young children’s development. […]

“A QUIET REVOLUTION” “A Quiet Revolution; a Chronicle of Beginnings of Reformation in the Southern Baptist Convention” by Ernest C. Reisinger and D. Matthew Allen, pb., n.p., Published by the Founders Press, editor@founders.org and distributed by Christian Gospel Book Service, DonReis@aol.com 107 pp. This book, written in part by the oldest of the Banner of […]

Good old Archbishop of Canterbury! Well done, Dr George Carey! So said the Times in London on August 1st, 2000. Dr Carey is speaking at the Netherlands’ conference organised by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, “Amsterdam 2000.” Ten thousand people are at these meetings from 185 countries, and Dr George Carey is one of the […]

During June this year I was able with God’s help to make a fortnight’s visit to TIUMEN, ONOKINO, TOBOLSK, NIAGAN and PRIOBYE. In all places there is steady progress, much fervent prayer and faithful robust evangelistic preaching of God’s gospel with souls being added to the church. Nowhere did I find any spirit of complacency, […]

As I write these lines a series of violent riots have taken place in the south of Spain after a girl was murdered by a North African immigrant who tried to steal her money. Hundreds of people thought it was time to take some revenge. They destroyed the slums where all these workers from the […]

At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Long Beach, California a luncheon meeting was held (June 26) at which Dr Joseph Nicolosi spoke (so reports Jack Volkers). Nicolosi is an expert on therapy for homosexuals, and he told the evangelical Christians gathered there that homosexuality can be cured and that studies show […]

This year’s annual evangelical ministry assembly organised by the Proclamation Trust at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, London, at the end of June was well attended with nearly a thousand present. Visiting speakers included Tim Keller and Don Carson from the USA and Phillip Jensen from Australia. The main theme was church planting. One always appreciates the […]

In the Banner of Truth magazine, December 1971, the late S.M.Houghton wrote about the Passion Play at Oberammergau: “In recent days Protestantism has suffered invasion from the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, noted for the Passion Play which it presents to the world once in a decade, a thank-offering, as it terms it, for a deliverance […]

The annual Aberystwyth Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales takes place during the second full week of August. The preceding week is the National Eisteddfod of Wales and the succeeding week is the annual EMW Welsh language Conference which a few hundred people attend. The significance of these weeks, carefully laid out in August, […]

The late Dr Arthur Fawcett lectured on Church History in the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow when I was a student there. His doctoral thesis was published by the Banner of Truth as “The Cambuslang Revival”, and a worthwhile read it is. His unusual appearance, including the shocks of pure white hair on either side […]

I would like to briefly mention some aspects of life in Turkey as a follower of Jesus Christ. From a spiritual viewpoint Turkey’s soil is hard, and life as a Christian is certainly not easy. For example, perpetrators of various crimes often seem to go unpunished, but anyone who becomes a follower of Christ (or […]

Three unrelated items all appearing in the daily paper on the same day have been enough to sound again the warning bells about the steady slide of our society. No doubt they are all true. They present obvious concerns for parents. We are aware that the subtle war for the minds of men is more […]

The heart of the reformed faith – the heart of biblical Christianity – is God-centredness: the conviction that God himself is supremely important. We define all our doctrine in a God-centred way. Sin is horrible because it is an affront to God. Salvation is wonderful because it brings glory to God. Heaven is heaven because […]

By Iain Murray An edited extract from Mr Murray’s new book Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth) In his book on Evangelicalism, James Davison Hunter wrote: ‘A dynamic would appear to be operating [in Evangelicalism] that strikes at the very heart of Evangelical self-identity’. What is this ‘dynamic’? I believe that all the evidence points in […]

For part of Monday, I missed two of the sessions of the SBC pastors’ conference, attending instead one sponsored by the Center for Church Reform, a ministry developed by Mark Dever’s church in Washington, DC. Dr. Roger Nicole was the main speaker, dealing with the extent of the atonement. There were also two Q&A sessions […]

On July 23 1999 Paquito, the seven year old son of Pastor Paco and Mrs Julia Orozco of Hermosillo, Mexico, finally died after three to four years of battling with leukaemia. Jim Adams of the Cornerstone Church in Mesa, Arizona, flew to Mexico for that funeral service, an occasion never to be forgotten. Paco reminded […]

I just returned from a Reformed pastors conference here in Spain. It was refreshing to take four days out of the usual routine to meet with other workers-pastors and missionaries-of like convictions. I preached the opening message at the conference, on Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:10-22. The two main speakers were a Reformed pastor from […]