Author Archives: botukadmin

Our latest Puritan Paperback volume is Thomas Watson’s Heaven Taken by Storm or The Christian Soldier, Showing the Holy Violence a Christian is to Put Forth in the Pursuit after Glory. It is an extended meditation on, and application of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 11:12: ‘The kingdom of heaven suffereth […]

The following is an abridgement of a sermon preached in Duane Street Church, New York on the third day of October 1844, at the installation of the pastor. It is taken from The Princeton Pulpit of 1852 and was featured in issues 383–4 of the Banner of Truth Magazine (August–September 1995). Study to show thyself […]

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), or ‘the Doctor’ of Westminster Chapel, was known for the clarity of his thought, the thoroughness of his exposition of Scripture, and the living vitality of his application of the Bible to the lives of his hearers. His treatment of Romans 13:1-7 exemplifies these qualities. To commend this teaching, which is […]

Life in Two Kingdoms, volume 13 of Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ series of expositions of Romans, covers Romans 13:1–7. This is, as Dr Lloyd-Jones notes, the locus classicus—the classic place—where the Holy Spirit, through Paul, addresses the question of the state: the ‘powers that be’. The following excerpt is taken from pages 51 to 53 of that […]

John Howie’s The Scots Worthies offers stirring mini-biographies of the great roll-call of the Christian heroes of Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The following excerpt is the first of these: a short sketch of the life, ministry and death of Scotland’s first Reformation martyr. PATRICK HAMILTON was born about the year of our Lord […]

The following article appeared in the August–September edition of the Banner of Truth Magazine. To receive a monthly selection of helpful articles on theology, church history, the Christian life, and contemporary issues, subscribe to the magazine in print or digital formats. Introduction The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council, was convened in AD 325 […]

The March 2006 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine (no. 510) was dedicated to the memory of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, on the 25th anniversary of his death. That issue included some fascinating detail about how Dr Lloyd-Jones (henceforth ML-J) assisted Arnold Dallimore in the writing of his two-volume biography of George Whitefield. The article […]

The following excerpt is from Frans Bakker’s Praying Always, truly one of the hidden gems of the Banner’s backlist. ‘And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.’ — Luke 18:13 After the Israelites had […]

This is about the person who has given his name to Christmas, Jesus Christ. It will only take you a few moments to read. A single word— special—sums up why you shouldn’t grudge the time. Special person Had you seen Jesus after he was born in Bethlehem special is not the word that would have […]

The following, which appeared in Issues 611–612 of the Banner of Truth Magazine (Aug–Sep 2014) is from John Angell James, The Anxious Inquirer After Salvation Directed and Encouraged*. We are grateful to Mr Martyn Jolly for bringing this extract to our attention and supplying the text. It may seem strange to some persons, that I […]

This is the text of an address delivered at the Leicester Ministers’ Conference, 28 April, 2012. It is included, along with four other addresses, in Iain H. Murray’s Evangelical Holiness and Other Addresses. J. Gresham Machen once wrote: ‘If we are going to avoid controversy, we might as well close our Bibles; for the New […]

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 2 of Archibald Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience. That conviction of sin is a necessary part of experimental religion, all will admit; but there is one question respecting this matter, concerning which there may be much doubt; and that is, whether a law-work, prior to regeneration, is necessary; […]

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 2 of Archibald Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience. It is an interesting question whether now there are any persons sanctified from the womb. If the communication of grace ever took place at so early a period of human existence, there is no reason why it should not now […]

There is a great lack of clarity on the subject of the place of God’s law in the life of the believer. One man who sought to address this topic was Ernest Kevan, whose biography the Trust publishes. The following excerpt from the book describes how Kevan brought a Reformed view of God’s law to […]

The following summary of Ernest Kevan’s book The Grace of Law: a Study in Puritan Theology is an appendix in Paul E. Brown’s Ernest Kevan: Leader in Twentieth Century. THE PUBLISHED VERSION OF Dr Kevan’s thesis is a volume of just under three hundred pages. With its many quotations and footnotes it appears quite formidable. […]

To assert that the message of the cross is wholly one of divine love (as some have done) is to destroy its meaning. For it is only in the recognition of the holiness of God that the sufferings of Christ, which brought forth the cry, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me,’ can […]

The following is the first part of Sibbes’s sermon The Tender Heart, which is published with three other sermons as Josiah’s Reformation in the Puritan Paperback series. “And as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, so shall ye say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel […]

The following post first appeared (on October 24, 2016) on www.reformation21.org, a blog run by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is posted here with their kind permission. After a cracking day at the Evangelical Library in London on “Reading John Owen” (opening, it has to be said, with Nigel Graham giving what may be […]

The following excerpt is from The Mysteries of Christianity: Revealed Truths Expounded and Defended, ‘Lecture 6: The Trinity’. This post is the second part of the chapter, and it is recommended that the reader begins with the first part, on the mystery of God’s unity. Having made these remarks on the unity of God in […]

The following excerpt is from The Mysteries of Christianity: Revealed Truths Expounded and Defended, ‘Lecture 6: The Trinity’. ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.’ —Deut. 6:4. ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ —Matt. […]

The following excerpt is the text of Chapter 5, ‘How to Meditate on Heavenly Things’ in Spiritual-Mindedness, a Puritan Paperback by John Owen which has been abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law. The unabridged text of this treatise, originally entitled The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded, is contained in […]

The following excerpt is from George Smeaton’s Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement (pp. 157–160). The third exclamation of the conscious sin-bearer was the cry, “My God, My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46.) It was like all His sayings, according to truth; and it becomes us carefully to investigate its import and significance. […]

The following is taken from Thomas Brooks, The Secret Key to Heaven: The Vital Importance of Private Prayer (Puritan Paperbacks). After detailing the great privilege of private prayer, and why it is of the essence of the true Christian life, he anticipates and answers several common objections to its practice: First Objection. But many will […]

Think about someone being selected and sent to do an especially difficult job. Some major crisis has arisen, or some massive problem needs to be tackled, and it requires the knowledge, the experience, the skill-set, the leadership that they so remarkably possess. It was like that with Jesus. Entrusted to him by God the Father […]

The following excerpt is Chapter 2, ‘The Spirit of God’, in The Holy Spirit by John Owen. This Puritan Paperback title is abridged and made easy to read from Owen’s Pneumatologia or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, which is 650 pages in the third volume of Owen’s Works. The Holy Spirit has many names […]