Yearly Archives: 2007

Send in the clowns! Trinity Episcopalian church on Wall Street, New York, had a ‘clowning’ good time at a Sunday worship service. The congregation was encouraged to come as clowns, red noses and all, while the choir and clergy all wore clown outfits with oversized shoes and painted faces. The whole service was done in […]

Dr. Lloyd-Jones would preach every two years in Aberystwyth, and after one occasion I went to see him for morning coffee. It was a great treat for me to be with him alone. These occasions did not happen often. He always stayed in the home of a local doctor who, when he was a medical […]

Roy Saunders is an elder at Grace Baptist Church, Ottawa, and he has recently read J. I. Packer’s Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God, published by the Inter-Varsity Press. This is his response: This book has a long track record; it was first published in 1961 and is now in its 15th printing, so the […]

Does it matter how we worship God? Why was Abel’s offering accepted by God, and Cain’s rejected? Geoff Thomas comments on the beginning of Genesis Chapter 4… Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a […]

Obadiah, Ahab’s chief civil servant (not the minor prophet), was a remarkable man. We know very little about him, but what we know is deeply instructive and hopefully deeply humbling. Obadiah lived at a time of wholesale national apostasy. Ahab, beguiled by his heathen, Baal-worshipping wife Jezebel, had sought systematically to destroy the Lord’s prophets. […]

By the mid 1960’s George and Patti Harrison were deeply into Eastern mysticism, evidenced in a number of George’s songs he had written for the Beatles during that time. But on Thursday, August 24, 1967 their involvement in Eastern mysticism went to a whole new level. Patti heard that the Maharishi Yogi was lecturing in […]

A review by Christine Farenhorst of Through the Bible – Through the Year, written by John Stott, and published by Baker Books of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in July 2006 (cloth $24.99, 432 pages). A resource for daily private devotion, this rather large volume strives to guide the Christian reader through the Bible in the course […]

A review by Jonathan Watson of Wayne Grudem’s Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? (Crossway), 272 pp, paperback, £5.99 / $15.99. This is an important book that every pastor and church officer ought to read! Let not Wayne Grudem’s well-known and controversial views on the prophetic gift prejudice any reader against purchasing this well-written […]

The Christian staff of the Aberystwyth University arranged a meeting at that college for Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach to speak on “A Christian Perspective on Globalisation.” Brian Griffiths is three years younger than me. He was raised in the bi-lingual gospel hall in Fforestfach, in Swansea, where his father Winston was a leader (though his […]

A review by John Halsey Wood, Jr of The Letters of Geerhardus Vos, edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (P & R Publishing, 2006), 274pp, hardback, $29.99, ISBN: 978-0-87552-187-9. We owe a great debt to James Dennison for his work of excavating, publishing, and providing translations of hard-to-find Vos writings. Dennison now brings us a […]

A review by Edward Donnelly of James M. Garretson’s Princeton and Preaching: Archibald Alexander and the Christian Ministry.1 Bible colleges, seminaries, conferences and correspondence courses. Doctorates in ministry and professional advice from every point of the theological compass. Ministerial training has become, in our day, an expanding and profitable industry – of varying usefulness. Yet […]

This article is a response to a book by Marcus Honeysett, Finding Joy – a Radical Rediscovery of Grace, published by IVP in 2005. The author worked for ten years with UCCF among students in London. The book arose out of what he believed to be a lack of joy amongst Christians, which he attributed […]

Caroline Hand writes on how reading John Gwyn-Thomas’s Rejoice Always1 helped her. Why is it we do not always see the fulfilment of God’s promises in our own personal circumstances? Romans chapter 5 tells us that tribulation produces perseverance, character and hope, with the end result that God’s love is poured into our hearts. But […]

David declares that our Lord is a God of deliverances, to whom belong escapes from death (Psa. 68:20). Some of those escapes can be quite narrow, as David himself experienced. At one time only a mountain stood between a murderous Saul with his army and a fleeing David and his company (1 Sam. 23:26). At […]

And there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 The sum and substance of the great charge which the Reformers adduced against the Church of Rome was that . . […]

John Shiles, the beloved deacon at Old Baptist Chapel, Chippenham, Wiltshire for fifty-nine years passed peacefully to his eternal rest on September 12th, 2006, aged 94. John Shiles was born at Allington, near Chippenham, on June 9th, 1912. His grandfather, his great-grandparents and three sisters of his father had moved from Devon to Wiltshire on […]

Aaron Burr, Jr. was less than two years old when his father, the President of Princeton, died suddenly and unexpectedly in September, 1758. A few months later Aaron’s grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, who had been elected President of Princeton to succeed his son-in-law, died from complications due to a small pox inoculation. A few months after […]

We can scarcely have too many books on prayer, though sadly it is often easier to read books about prayer than to get down and pray. We all need stirring up to pray and this book helps to do that. As the title with its subtitle indicates, it is primarily about private or personal prayer, […]

The situation that we find ourselves in, historically, is not a happy one. Let me begin by saying I hope that you are well convinced that freedom is founded upon Christianity. Our Saviour tells us very plainly: it is only if the Son shall make you free that you shall be free indeed. There has […]

Robert Oliver has served up a treat for his readers. Developed with additional chapters from his PhD. thesis, the book is very readable, containing fifteen concise chapters, which are both stimulating and fascinating. The author has divided his material into three parts: ‘The Eighteenth-Century Heritage,’ ‘When Good Men Differ,’ and ‘Re-Alignment.’ It is not a […]

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the death of John Newton. Geoff Thomas here tells the story of the man who “God didn’t give up on.” The promise Lord, and Thy command, Have brought us here today; And now we humbly waiting stand To hear what Thou wilt say. Meet us, we pray, with […]

Today there is a widespread cry for relevance in preaching. But, generally, relevance is measured by the subjective feelings of those who sit, or might sit, in the pews of a particular church. Latching on to such feelings, a community church in Arizona advertised: “Stronger family relationships … greater satisfaction at work … and you […]

The previous article in this series summarised Edwards’ teaching on revival.1 One day in May 1747 David Brainerd, who for the previous four years had laboured with some success among the American Indians, arrived at the Edwards’ home. Brainerd was ill from tuberculosis and was to spend in the Northampton parsonage most of the brief […]

A review by Kenneth J. Stewart of Princeton and Preaching: Archibald Alexander and the Christian Ministry by James M. Garretson.1 Seminarians do not often reflect upon the question of what has been the theological discipline standing behind their required courses in practical or pastoral theology. That the lecturer has a basic theological education plus accumulated […]

1. THE PURITAN DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. Garry Williams, a lecturer of Oak Hill Theological College, addressed this subject with Robert Oliver as the chairman. Amongst the Puritans there was a majority doctrine of the atonement and that was the teaching summarized in the Westminster Confession’s eighth chapter: He was made under the law, and […]