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Yearly Archives: 2015

A review by Bob Thomas of You Must Read: Books that have shaped our lives.1 Thirty-five luminaries of evangelical Christianity have each contributed an essay to this book in which they reveal which particular Christian book (apart from the Bible, of course) has been especially helpful in moulding their life, faith and ministry. The common […]

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Category Book Reviews
Date August 5, 2015
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Most of us in our allotted span live through two generations. We note that in some stages of history little changed in two generations. But not so in our situation, for there has been a great acceleration in some sixty years. We have seen major changes. We can think of it in terms of a […]

Category Articles
Date August 3, 2015
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A review article by Gervase Charmley of Kevin DeYoung’s What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?1 and Ed Shaw’s The Plausibility Problem.2 Homosexuality is the hot topic of the day and age in which we live. After the recent Irish referendum on so-called same-sex marriage, the Roman Catholic church in that nation spoke about […]

Category Book Reviews
Date July 27, 2015
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. . . and this city I will make a curse to all the nations of the earth (Jeremiah 26:6). Early on Tuesday morning, August 19, 1561 Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived at Leith and made her way later that day to the Palace at Holyrood in Edinburgh. This occurred in the midst of the […]

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Category Articles
Date July 24, 2015
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A review by Martin Williams of Robert White’s translation of the 1541 edition of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.1 C. S. Lewis once wrote: There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the […]

Category Book Reviews
Date July 22, 2015
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The Reformation of the Church stands out in our minds as having started on 31 October, 1517. On that day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the chapel door at Wittenberg in Germany. That will be 500 years ago in two years’ time. However, the roots of the Reformation were already alive and well […]

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Category Articles
Date July 20, 2015
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Almost four days of ‘warm weather and even warmer fellowship, delicious food, and rich ministry.’ This is one man’s way of describing this year’s Leicester Banner of Truth Conference held at the University of Leicester, 13-16 April. Approximately three hundred and fifty men were in attendance. There were delegates from the USA, South Africa, Nigeria, […]

Category Articles
Date July 17, 2015
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How Scotland Lost Its Hold of the Bible1 was first published in The Banner of Truth magazine, No. 623-624 (Aug-Sep 2015). The article can be downloaded as a 28-page print-ready pdf here, and may be freely printed and distributed. Man is now thinking out a Bible for himself; framing a religion in harmony with the […]

Category Articles
Date July 16, 2015
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‘A most enjoyable new book about old authors and their continuing influence.’ – Fred G. Zaspel on You Must Read: Books That Have Shaped Our Lives. In the Notes below are links to selected online reviews of Banner titles, mostly posted May/June 2015. The views expressed are of course those of the respective bloggers/reviewers. For […]

Category Book Reviews
Date July 15, 2015
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Although the tendency to self-congratulation is no new phenomenon, the outlets for it have increased enormously. News of the so-called success of a congregation or a Church can speed round the world in minutes. The growth of the megachurches in the USA or the spread of the ‘New Calvinism’ is constantly to the fore. The […]

Category Articles
Date July 13, 2015
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Election It might be supposed that the doctrine of election could not properly be incorporated into an evangelistic message, or, at least, could not properly be the topic of an evangelistic message. This is a grievous mistake. It is true that only believers have any right to regard themselves as elect of God and only […]

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Category Articles
Date July 10, 2015
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A review by Jeremy Marshall of J. C. Ryle’s Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots.1 If there was one book any Christian could have – in addition to the Bible, obviously – various candidates would be advanced. Historically, it would have been, in English-speaking countries anyway, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.2 Other books might […]

Category Book Reviews
Date July 8, 2015
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God gave them over (Romans 1:28). The recent Supreme Court decision in Obergefell vs. Hodges, which redefines 3500 hundred years of legal and biblical precedent, and which mandates that all fifty states must uphold same sex unions, is a shock to the sensibilities of most Christians. Forty-eight percent of Americans now approve of same sex […]

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Category Articles
Date July 6, 2015
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A Response to the Supreme Court Decision on Gay Marriage Peter said in the passage just before this one (i. e. verses 11, 12) that the good lives of believers help to win over the unbelieving world. Then he shows us exactly how this works as we do our duty to the civil government. 1 […]

Category Articles
Date July 3, 2015
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James Bannerman was a son of the manse, his father being minister of the Cargill, Church of Scotland, congregation in Perthshire. James Bannerman was ordained and installed as the minister of the Ormiston, Church of Scotland parish in 1833 and in 1843, the year of the Great Disruption, he left the Church of Scotland for […]

Category Book Reviews
Date July 1, 2015
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The Christian church on earth is always, in a sense, in exile. Whatever the incidental identities of her members may be — whether of nationality, race, class, or gender — their ultimate identity is that they are in Christ and belong to him. Compared to the ephemeral categories that human cultures have created for distinguishing […]

Category Articles
Date June 29, 2015
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On October 28, 1949, twenty-two year old Jim Elliot, then completing his studies at Wheaton College, Illinois, wrote in his journal: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. In less than seven years he had given his life as a missionary in Ecuador, attempting to […]

Category Articles
Date June 26, 2015
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During the 2015 Inerrancy Summit, three Banner Trustees (Ian Hamilton, Iain Murray and Sinclair Ferguson) addressed a gathering of seminary students on the topic of ‘Books to Read in the Ministry’. Steven Lawson, a professor of expository preaching at The Masters’ Seminary, introduced the students to the Trustees present and to the ongoing work of the […]

Category Articles
Date June 22, 2015
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The United States is in big trouble. Our foreign policy is in shambles. There is geo-political instability all over the globe – China, Russia, the Middle East, Isis, Al Queda. Things on the home front continue to go from bad to worse – racial unrest, the embrace of same sex marriage and the disenfranchisement of […]

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Category Articles
Date June 22, 2015
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John Murray, the great 20th-century theologian, once spoke to the children in his Sunday School on the surpassing value of The Shorter Catechsim,1, 2, 3 saying, Now everyone of you children should know The Shorter Catechism from the beginning to the end without a mistake by this age. Now that’s without joking at all. At […]

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Category Articles
Date June 19, 2015
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A review by Peter Barnes of J. C. Ryle’s Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots.1 No one has written more simply, more graciously, and more helpfully than J. C. Ryle, and the 21 chapters which constitute the full edition of Holiness (the enlarged 1879 edition which expanded the 1877 edition) reveal Ryle at his […]

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Category Book Reviews
Date June 17, 2015
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:17). Elvis Presley was already a huge rock and roll star when he sauntered into the Sun Records studio in Memphis in December, 1956. Jerry Lee Lewis was gaining fast on Elvis’ […]

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Category Articles
Date June 15, 2015
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A review by Mignon Goswell of Iain H. Murray’s Amy Carmichael: ‘Beauty for Ashes’ – A Biography.1 Iain Murray has written yet another compelling biography, this time about Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, whom Murray believes is ‘not known as she used to be’. As Murray read more of Amy Carmichael’s writings he became convinced […]

Category Book Reviews
Date June 10, 2015
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. . . there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and freeman, but Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11). The so-called Charles Spurgeon of America, John Lafayette Girardeau, was born in 1825 on James Island, South Carolina into a French Huguenot family. He was reared in […]

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Category Articles
Date June 8, 2015
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Many people have asked me about the effect of the recent events in France1 upon our ministry amongst the ethnic minorities. The answer is that our Muslim friends are more open than ever to the gospel. Most Muslim are embarrassed by what had happened, not only in France, but also the horrible beheading of Christians. […]

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Category Articles
Date June 5, 2015
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