Yearly Archives: 2008

The Banner of Truth has published Love Rules: The Ten Commandments for the 21st Century1. Originally published in 2004 by the Church and Nation Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, Australia, this volume was written by Australian Presbyterian ministers and professors. The Introduction explains that this book on the law of God was written […]

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. […]

The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World By David F. Wells Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008 267 pp, clothbound ISBN: 978 0 80284 007 3 David Wells is an evangelical, and he is concerned with the state of evangelicalism. This is nothing new; he has written […]

Be filled with the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18) In July, 1997 my wife and I had the privilege of taking tea with Lord and Lady Catherwood in Cambridge, England. Lady Catherwood is the daughter of my favourite preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who so ably preached the doctrines of grace, beginning in Aberavon, Wales in 1927 and […]

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 […]

For the past year or so I have been making my way slowly through the reading of a series of sermons preached on Hebrews 11 by the Puritan, Thomas Manton. The book containing these sermons is titled By Faith and it is published by The Banner of Truth Trust1. Most recently I have been reading […]

VOLUME 1 This1 is a fascinating book which we found hard to put down. Really it tells the wonderful story of the Evangelical Revival in Wales in the eighteenth century. What amazing gatherings there were and what blessing! Originally written in Welsh in 1895 by John Morgan Jones, assisted by William Morgan, this is the […]

Until the age of twenty-six I knew nothing of vital religion, although I lived an outwardly religious, moral and respectable life . . . Brought up under sacramental teaching, I was totally in the dark concerning the grace of God, although . . . I realize that he was leading me all the time. To […]

It is sometimes profitable to trace the use of one word in the Bible – there is much to learn from this method of study, it often brings new thoughts to light. Let us consider the word ‘Exceeding’. When one begins to trace the word in Scripture we soon realise that there is nothing sparing […]

A member of our congregation put to me a question in the light of some teaching on Luke 8:21, where Jesus dealt with a messenger who had come from his own relatives. These relatives wanted to speak to Jesus. ‘But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of […]

I just don’t get it! Perhaps someone can explain it to me: how can we act so contrary to what we believe? How can there be such a yawning gap between what we know is true and what we do in the name of the truth we know? You don’t get it either, do you? […]

‘The book is valuable because it is honest about the agony of losing a child . . . And yet this book also powerfully testifies to the comfort of God, of his redemption in Christ, of victory over the grave, of sufficient promises to sustain his people in their sorrows.’ [Martin Downes on James W […]

Be imitators of God . . . walk in love. (Ephesians 5:1) Forty-five per cent of people living in America claim to have had a born again experience, but the born again people have virtually the same levels of divorce, adultery, fornication and use of pornography as the rest of the population. Evangelicals are those […]

Christianity is the religion of the Gospel. The Gospel was defined by William Tyndale, the Bible translator, as ‘good merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him to dance and sing and leap for joy’. ‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing’, we might add. But as time […]

I was converted some years after the death of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, so I never heard the great man preach. But his published sermons and life story have had a profound impact on my life and ministry. As a relatively new believer, I devoured his sermons on Romans[2] and Ephesians[3]. ‘The Doctor’s’ emphasis on Reformed doctrine […]

Even in the midst of temporal troubles, there is always something to be thankful for. Thanks-giving isn’t easy. Two things make it difficult. (1) Our sinful natures act like a ship’s anchor let down at sea. When we try to stir ourselves to give thanks, we find our souls are ‘dragging anchor.’ In the Bible, […]

‘Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.’ (Samuel Rutherford) ‘You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, – a rock rising above the […]

I have been a missionary doctor in Mozambique for many years, and an unusual way to spread the knowledge of the Christian faith has developed here, that of a Scripture memory catechism class. There are 21 men from various churches and backgrounds who meet together on Saturdays to check out on Scripture memory they have […]

Masab, son of Palestinian West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates. It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: the son of […]

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in Jonathan Edwards, the New England preacher-theologian. For many a long year his great treatises lay neglected. The Age of the Enlightenment had little time for a hell-fire preacher who taught that mankind is enslaved to sin. But the evils of the 20th century made […]

The Christian life is to be a life of constant, unhindered joy – or at least, so says the apostle Paul: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!’ According to Paul, joy is not to be an occasional feature in the believer’s life, it is to be a constant reality, a […]

Jeremy Brooks is the recently appointed Director of Ministries at the Protestant Truth Society, for whom I work on a part-time basis. We discuss his new role and matters of Protestant interest. GD: Hello Jeremy Brooks and welcome to ‘Exiled Preacher’. Please tell us a little about yourself. JB: Hi Guy, and thank you for […]

The following are links to selected blogs where comments on or reviews of Banner of Truth titles have been posted during October, 2008. The views expressed are of course those of the respective bloggers. For each title mentioned, a link is also provided to the appropriate page of the Banner online Bookstore, where orders can […]

‘All have sinned’, Paul reminds us (Rom. 6:23). Because of our fall in Adam, we are all coming short of the glory of God; there is never a moment in our lives when we meet God’s demands for perfect obedience to his law. While we remain in a state of nature, our sin leaves us […]

I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) Charles Hodge and Henry Ward Beecher were 19th century contemporaries and both were leaders in the church of Christ at the time. Both also were reared in God-centred, Christ-exalting homes. One remained faithful to his biblical heritage and the […]