Articles

An edited transcript of Pastor Edward Donnelly’s message at the 2005 Banner of Truth USA Ministers’ Conference in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Many men approach preaching Christ from the Old Testament with a sense that it is difficult, unnatural, complicated, and a matter of learning and applying very rigid, technical rules. The results are predictably disappointing. But […]

Scripture and history tell us that the destruction of men’s best interests is brought about by the reception of error. When churches embrace a lie rather than God’s truth there is an inevitable spiritual and moral decline. R. L. Dabney wrote towards the end of the 19th century: ‘While German scholarship has been busy with […]

An address given at Bethel Chapel, Luton, on Lord’s Day afternoon, 8th June, 2014, on the occasion of the Sunday School Anniversary. Usually on these occasions I try to speak of something that is topical, but something that will be profitable and for the honour and glory of God. For a long time, my thoughts […]

Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a pastoral tour de force. It is of course richly theological. Nowhere does Paul more deeply and beautifully open up to us the gospel of God’s saving grace in Christ. But Paul’s theology of grace is not an abstract exposition of doctrine. He is concerned to explain to the […]

Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel (Zechariah 3:3). An estimated one in four women, and one in six men were sexually assaulted before the age of eighteen.1 Perhaps you were sexually molested as a child. If so, then the chances are pretty good that you battle with a […]

Tim Challies interviews Dr. Joel Beeke 1. When the Puritans spoke of zeal, what were they referring to? By zeal they meant the fruit of the Spirit, especially love, exercised to a high level in the soul and activity of life. Thomas Manton said that godly zeal is ‘a higher degree of love,’ indeed the […]

As one who owes a debt of gratitude to the ministry of the Rev Kenneth A MacRae (1883-1964) it would not be right to let the 50th anniversary of his death (5th May) pass without a short tribute to his memory. He exercised a powerful ministry over 50 years in the Free Church of Scotland […]

A highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, but it will be for him who walks that way (Isaiah 35:8). Jehovah spoke the word through Jeremiah the prophet (Jer. 7:12), giving Judah a history lesson, that they might remember what […]

An extract from Al Martin’s What’s Wrong with Preaching Today?, published as a booklet by the Trust.1 Originally an address given to the Ministers’ Conference of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church at Westminster Theological Seminary in September 1967, the transcript was revised for publication by the author, who sought to retain the sermonic style. Preaching has […]

Go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I made My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel (Jeremiah 7:12). Thirty-seven year old Asahel Nettleton, the powerful Presbyterian evangelist, was exhausted. He had been preaching several times daily in […]

An address by John J Murray to the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) on Tuesday 20 May 2014. We are commemorating this evening the quincentenary of the birth of John Knox. We are doing it in a nation that has airbrushed him out of history. We are doing it in a […]

A transcript of the sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Dr David Samuel at the 125th Anniversary Service of the Protestant Truth Society. The service was held in Kensit Evangelical Church, Finchley, North London, on Saturday 24 May 2014. May I say first of all it is a great privilege to be asked to preach […]

Malachi 3:6 ‘I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.’ Whatever troubles we have today, and whatever buckets of regrets that burden us, they must shrink into thimblefuls as we begin to consider God. Whatever are the achievements that make us proud, they will grow less and less […]

An extract from Chapter 5, ‘The Hope and Puritan Piety’ in Iain Murray’s The Puritan Hope,1 due to be reprinted (2014) in a new, larger format. At the outset it has to be admitted that an interest in unfulfilled prophecy is not always conducive to Christian piety. The Christians at Thessalonica were only the first […]

An extract from the sermon ‘Saints should not be discouraged whatever their condition be’ in William Bridge’s A Lifting Up for the Downcast,1 published by the Trust in the Puritan Paperbacks series. If my very resting on God doth make Him mine, I may have comfort in Him too. Now the saints and people of […]

An interview with Tim Challies by Joel Beeke 1. What is casuistry and why did the Puritans focus on it? Casuistry is teaching people how to know what God wants them to do in specific situations, and how to live with peace of conscience before God. It addresses particular ‘cases of conscience’ or ethical and […]

An extract from chapter 4 – ‘Our Hope’ – in J. C. Ryle’s Old Paths.1 I entreat all who feel they have no hope, and desire to have it, to seek ‘a good hope’ while it can be found. A good hope is within the reach of any man, if he is only willing to […]

One of the abilities that we have as human beings (and it’s one that distinguishes us from all the other creatures), is our ability to ponder the future – to wonder, to imagine, to look forward to, to fear what lies before us. And we all do it! Our minds are often turning to the […]

. . . propitiation in His blood (Romans 3:25). Our God is a consuming fire. He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In his just wrath he casts sinners into a Christless hell where they remain in conscious torment until the day they appear before the judgment seat of Christ and give account […]

Every one of the Lord’s people can echo the testimony of King David in Psalm 40:1-3: I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established […]

The Christian life is a life of faith. More accurately, the Christian life is a life of faith in God. It is the object of faith that gives faith its lustre, and nothing more enriches, ennobles, and establishes faith than the God who made the heavens and the earth, who reigns in unrivalled splendour over […]

When your child learns to write, he is ready to begin taking sermon notes. Say, what? Let’s say that little George is 4 or 5 or 6 years old and he knows how to write his name and how to write all of his letters. Now he can get started! All you need is a […]

William Booth (1829-1912) is best known as the founder of the Salvation Army, an organization devoted to feeding and clothing the destitute. Beginning as a Christian mission in London’s East End, it was renamed in 1878, and waged war on two fronts – against the biting pinch of poverty, and the degrading power of sin, […]

‘And he went outside and wept bitterly’. It is Matthew’s final word about Peter. He has faithfully recorded the details of Peter’s sin – the warning that preceded it, the pride in which it originated, the sin itself in all its aggravating features – and now he speaks of the effect on Peter when the […]

People were amazed and critical then and they would be exactly the same today. Here was a star of the British Olympic team, one of the favourites to win the gold medal in the 100 metres, declining to run in the heats because they were being held on a Sunday. The reason? His Christian convictions. […]