Yearly Archives: 2001

Continued from Part I of this article. The phrase, “O Lamb of God, I come, I come,” has been widely used to encourage people to “come” down the aisle. But it is significant that Miss Elliott wrote the hymn for the infirm and that it first appeared in a hymnal prepared especially for invalids, (9). […]

WOODROW NEWSLETTER Dear Friends: This letter comes one year after the last update many of you have had from Nampula. Much has happened for which we rejoice – the arrival of two missionary interns from Malawi who have helped and encouraged us since last October, the coming of the Chiorino’s in February to assist in […]

THE UNRESOLVED CONTROVERSY:UNITY WITH NON-EVANGELICALS THE REALITY IS WE COULD HAVE DONE WORSE THAN THOSE WITH WHOM WE DIFFER [In the discussion and controversy which followed the publication of “Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 195O-2OO1”, its author, Iain Murray, was invited by Dr John F MacArthur to give an address […]

APOSTASY WE MUST START FROM THE ‘GREAT POSITIVE STATEMENTS OF SCRIPTURE’ John Owen is one who has written comprehensively on this subject. I have, therefore, taken his writings as the basis for what I want to say, while drawing on the contribution of others here and there, and interjecting some comments of my own. By […]

THE NOVELS OF JAN KARON WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU READ A NOVEL WITH PAGES PEPPERED WITH PRAYERS BY THE PROTAGONIST? Many American Christians are enthusiastic about the novels of Jan Karon, and it was in the USA that we first came across them, but we obtained the Penguin boxed set of the best-selling […]

ROBERT MURRAY M’CHEYNE: MINISTER OF ST. PETER’S, DUNDEE, 1836 – 1843. THE ONLY POWER THAT CAN BRING A CHILD OF SATAN AND MAKE HIM A CHILD OF GOD, IS GOD HIMSELF. Two men were working beside a fire in a quarry, one day in winter, when a stranger approached them on horseback. Alighting from his […]

IN THE MIDDLE OF WONDERFUL, YET CONFUSING TIMES A total of 811 persons attended the XVII Annual FIEL Leadership conference in Brazil. Adhering to the theme “Grace, marvelous grace” pastor Jim Orrick from Kansas City and author and pastor Brian Edwards of London brought sixteen challenging messages directed to the hearts of hearers who had […]

CHRISTIAN SOCIETY IN AMERICA: GOD WILL DIRECT THE BULLET! When the Mayflower began her nine weeks’ voyage across the Atlantic in September, 1620, the intention of her passengers was ‘to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia’ under which description they had in view land around Manhattan Island at the mouth of […]

GOD’S PURPOSE ALWAYS HAS THE WELL-BEING OF HIS SERVANTS AT HEART In May 1999 my good friend Daniel Tennant gifted me the book “Conflict and Triumph”, whose cover he had designed for the Banner of Truth. It is a reprint of William Henry Green’s book, first published in 1874 under the current sub-title “The Argument […]

GOD’S THE TRUTH IS A LOVELY SONG, BECOME SWEET BY LONG AND TENDER ASSOCIATION Charles G. Finney believed that Bible teaching without moral application could be worse than no teaching at all, and could result in positive injury to the hearers. I used to feel that this might be an extreme position, but after years […]

IF THEY DO NOT DO WHAT IS RIGHT, THERE MAY BE A MIGHTY BATTLE Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born at ‘Grasmere’ near Lexington, Kentucky, one hundred and fifty years ago this year on 5th November 1851. He died in February 1921 12 weeks after the death of Abraham Kuyper and 22 weeks before the death […]

‘THOU’ SHOULD BE PRESERVED IN HYMNS If some hymn-writers today are more at peace and more conscious of God’s glory using the pronoun ‘you’ in hymns then we have few objections to their doing so and can sincerely sing good modern hymns and metrical versions of the psalms and paraphrases referring to God as ‘you’, […]

WHY I DO NOT SAY, “GOD DID NOT CAUSE THE CALAMITY, BUT HE CAN USE IT FOR GOOD.” Many Christians are speaking this way about the murderous destruction of the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, “God did not cause it, but he can use it for good.” There are two reasons I do […]

JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS Charles Spurgeon July 12, 1885 There is a judgment also passing upon nations, for as nations will not exist as nations in another world, they have to be judged and punished in this present state. The thoughtful reader of history will not fail to observe, how sternly this justice had dealt […]

PRIDE AND THE REFORMED CHURCHES Of all the dangers that can overtake a Reformed church pride is surely the worst and most serious. There is, of course, a right kind of pride, a thankfulness to God for our history or heritage. But the pride I am thinking of is that ugly, self-righteous, self-preening brute that […]

THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE SEMINARY PROFESSORS ARE REALLY AMAZING PHENOMENA One of the many privileges of my seminary education was to sit at the feet of Dr. Cornelis P. Venema, professor of doctrinal studies at, and recently named president of, Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Dyer, Indiana. Seminary professors are really amazing phenomena. Although you […]

GOD BLESS AMERICA Forty years ago this month, on Labor Day 1961, the German cargo boat Carl Fritzen, which I had boarded at the Liverpool docks 11 days earlier, began its entry into Chesapeake Bay. We sailed past the beach where the Jamestown settlers had landed in 1607 where they gave thanks to God on […]

TERRORISM, JUSTICE AND LOVING OUR ENEMIES September 12, 2001 Someone asked me after our Tuesday prayer service in response to the terrorist attack, “Can we pray for justice, and yet love our enemy at the same time?” The answer is yes. But let’s start with or own guilt. Christians know that if God dealt with […]

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF STEPHEN CHARNOCK by William Symington Stephen Charnock, B.D., was born in the year 1628, in the parish of St. Katharine Cree, London. His father, Mr. Richard Charnock, practiced as a solicitor in the Court of Chancery, and was descended from a family of some antiquity in Lancashire. Stephen, after a course […]

BOOK REVIEW THE PRAYER OF JABEZ: BREAKING THROUGH TO THE BLESSED LIFE By Bruce Wilkinson (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2000, hardcover, 93 pages). How many of us have ever heard of The Prayer of Jabez? Had we asked this question a year or so ago most people would have answered with an embarrassed shrug […]

SPIRITUAL REVIVAL THE WANT OF THE CHURCH Charles Haddon Spurgeon “O Lord, revive thy work.”Hab., iii. 2 ALL true religion is the work of God: it is pre-eminently so. If he should select out of his works that which he esteems most of all, he would select true religion. He regards the work of grace […]

The Puritans and Revival Christianity by Iain Murray Following as it did so closely upon the Reformation it is not surprising that the Puritan movement in England believed so firmly in revivals of religion as the great means by which the Church advances in the world. For the Reformation was itself the greatest revival since […]

BOOK REVIEW WHAT’S SO AMAZING ABOUT GRACE? by Philip Yancey, (Zondervan, 1997) “Grace [is] ‘the last best word,’ the only unsullied theological word remaining in our language.” (p.232) So writes Philip Yancey in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace? Other words, like love and charity, for instance, have all but lost their original theological […]

KNOWING AND SERVING GOD A personal testimony (For over twenty years Neil Richards has had a most blessed ministry in Wheelock Heath Baptist Church in Cheshire. He has finally retired from the pastorate, and this is the letter he wrote to his beloved congregation at the end of July 2001). In the Evangelical Magazine of […]

THE CHURCH IN NORTHERN RUSSIA In a recent edition of the Spectator (28 July 2001) Anne Applebaum describes a visit to Vortuka, north of the Arctic Circle where roses do not grow. There are no daisies or lilies; no sunflowers or geraniums, just a few wild flowers which spring up in the very short, very […]