Author Archives: botukadmin

Why bother coming to the prayer meeting? In the pecking order of many congregations, it is somewhere below the much-lamented evening service. In the priorities of too many Christians, it seems to have little value. It’s the one we can afford to miss. It’s the one to which we don’t, or maybe wouldn’t, take our […]

If you would strengthen your faith to suffer great and hard things, study much the book of the Revelation, which is a standing cordial for the relief of the saints, in anti-christian times; and study and read and commend to your children, the Book of Martyrs, where you have examples to the life of the […]

One of the most difficult things at present for the Reformed Christian is to strike a balance between yesterday and today. This is not perhaps surprising. The Reformed Christian believes that in the sixteenth century the Reformers recovered the biblical faith, and that no Protestant ministry has excelled that of the seventeenth century. Reformers and […]

While the metaphorical bucket of cold water may not be a distinctively British phenomenon, it certainly seems to be an outlook that many here have perfected, and doubtless others besides. Some cultures and societies seem easily enthused. In some places you could give people the chance to go out and hit themselves with wet sticks […]

The Psalmist sang, ‘All the ends of the world shall re­member and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee’ (Psalm 22:27). Another Messianic psalm foretold, ‘He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth: They that dwell […]

One consequence of the individualism that blights the modern evangelical is the loss of what the Puritans called the Christian man’s calling. This loss is partly a cause and partly a result of the present impotence, and derives from the idea that people are primarily non-material beings with non-material1 needs and throw-away bodies. Creation is […]

The following is an extract from Thomas Manton’s commentary on Jude. * * * Of all graces, love needs keeping. Why? (1) Because of all graces it is most decaying (Matt. 24:12, Rev. 2:4). Flame is soon spent, graces that act most strongly require most influence, as being most subject to abatement; we sooner lose […]

We realize that this year it has been difficult to travel long distances for conferences, and we understand that the term ‘livestream’ may have lost some of the interest it once held as we have all become more accustomed to watching live events through a computer screen. So, this year, instead of streaming our USA […]

According to an oft‑quoted saying of Francis Bacon, reading makes a full man, writing an exact man, and conversation a ready man. Experience shows the observant Christian that he was right. There is no ordinary way for a person to attain to fullness of knowledge in the things of God apart from a diligent application […]

There are several instances in Scripture when people make the wrong calculations or use the wrong measures. Samuel is in danger of doing so when he looks at David’s older brother, Eliab, while searching for the Lord’s anointed. He looks at his appearance and his stature, and is tempted to conclude that he has found […]

We can be creatures of extremes. Sometimes our reading of church history pushes us toward one or the other end of a certain spectrum. We absolutise the light or the darkness. It was never, to paraphrase Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times. To us, it was either the best or the […]

The following is the second chapter of Rhett P. Dodson’s newest title, With A Mighty Triumph! * * * Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not […]

The Bible tells us that God controls everything in our lives and in our world. The problem is, however, that our lives and our world often seem so out of control. We all have a year full of examples of that, don’t we? One of the most helpful places in Scripture to give us perspective on this […]

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in Kelvedon, a village in the county of Essex in the east of England, on 19 June, 1834. He went to be with Christ from Mentone, France, on the evening of Sunday 31 January, 1892. During his lifetime he became perhaps the greatest preacher in the English-speaking world, of his […]

This article is the contents of an address first given in February 2020 at the Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Newcastle, UK. * * * It is one of the glories of the gospel that it is universal in scope. There is nothing narrow or limited about the good news of salvation. It is, Matt. 28:19, […]

This article is the contents of an address first given in February 2020 at the Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Newcastle, UK. * * * LIVING in the world. How are Christians to live in the world? The question can be answered in many ways. The topic is potentially vast in scope — that becomes more […]

When coming to consider plagues throughout history and some Christian responses, it is appropriate to begin with this extract from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: O Almighty God, who in thy wrath did send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in […]

How would you answer these questions: How can we most glorify God on the earth? How can we experience most of his presence? How can we see him most clearly revealed? How can we get the maximum possible spiritual benefits from the Lord? How can we do the most good to our fellow believers? What […]

Church and danger. Up until recently it would not occur to British Christians to put these two words together. We associate church with many things, but not danger. Yes, there is the threat of child abuse by wicked clergymen, and there is always risk associated with listening to false doctrine, but in terms of simple […]

The Beginning Job’s three friends could not have been more wrong. They looked at this profoundly afflicted man and concluded that by his sin he had brought all this suffering upon himself. What other explanation could there be? But there was another explanation, one that lay at the opposite pole to the one these men […]

In 1661, Elizabeth Heywood, a godly wife and mother from Lancashire, lay dying, aged just twenty-seven.1 Her last prayers were for the Church of God, for the Jews to be converted, and for the gospel to reach to all nations.2 Her vision extended far beyond her own situation, her own family and church and nation. […]

I am very grateful to two very old and dear friends of my family. Firstly, to Iain Murray for agreeing to the publication of his address, which as far as I know has never been published before, though some elements of it are in his biography of the Doctor. Below is the transcription of a […]

We Christians are heaven-bound pilgrims. The question is, do we see ourselves that way? Have we fostered this kind of pilgrim mentality in our own lives? If not, impatience may be the culprit. In this respect, many of us have been shaped by our culture more than we care to admit. To put it mildly, […]

The fruitfulness of Brownlow North’s ministry led him to become known as the ‘John the Baptist of the great awakening of 1859’. But this largely forgotten evangelist of the nineteenth century has much to teach us still today. Though these rules were written to help young believers, they remain relevant to Christians of all ages […]

Readers will be interested to know that the Trust is soon to re-issue Robert Traill in two volumes. There are a number of reasons why Traill deserves to be reprinted. First, his long and active life spanned the period of the Puritan Age. Born in 1642, almost on the eve of the Westminster Assembly, he […]