Book Reviews

This book consists of five recent addresses given by Iain Murray the veteran preacher and co-founder of Banner of Truth. The messages cover a wide range of issues: evangelical holiness, the Bible, apostasy, controversy and the fourth commandment. Mr Murray shows in each message how important the subject is and carefully and clearly teaches using […]

Book Review: God in the Whirlwind: How the holy-love of God reorients our world, David F. Wells [Nottingham: IVP, 2014], 272 pages, paperback. Starting with God in the Wasteland (1994), David Wells has written four influential books exposing and critiquing Evangelicalism’s compromise with modern Western cultural norms and trends. The focus of his new book […]

This interesting volume, Pleading for a Reformation Vision: The Life and Selected Writings of William Childs Robinson (1897-1982),1 is what a Christian biography should be; not just a laudatory ‘life’ (for we should guard against the tendency to a ‘Protestant hagiography’) but a work in two halves: firstly a detailed life of the subject, and […]

This companion volume1 to The Face of Jesus Christ,2 contains 20 sermons, in which Archibald G. Brown concentrates on the Bible’s teaching on God as Creator, Judge and Saviour. Mr Brown clearly had a most fertile imagination as the titles of some of those sermons suggest, such as: ‘Noah’s Telescope’, ‘A Rough Night at Sandown’, […]

To live by faith is surely the hardest thing in the world. As Calvin put it: Our circumstances are all in opposition to the promises of God. He promises us immortality: yet we are surrounded by mortality and corruption. He declares that He accounts us just: yet we are covered with sins. He testifies that […]

Book Review: Four Views on the Historical Adam, Matthew Barrett & Ardel B. Caneday (Eds.)[Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013], 288 pp., paperback. Few questions are more pressing among Evangelicals today than the time and the manner in which God created the world and all life within it. Did he create the world in six literal […]

Book Review: iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment, by D. Brent Laytham [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012], x + 220 pp. A generation ago, media theorist Neil Postman feared that modern men and women, enamoured with technology and entertainment, were losing the ability to think critically. He also believed that they were erring […]

Book Review: From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective; edited by David and Jonathan Gibson, with contributions by Sinclair Ferguson, Henri Blocher, Paul Helm, Robert Letham, John Piper, Thomas Schriener and others. [Crossway Books, hardback, 704pp, $50/£25-£33 (also available on Kindle).] Historically referred to as ‘limited […]

‘I would vigorously recommend Murray’s book, especially to pastors and preachers. Yes, it will convict and rebuke, but also it will instruct and encourage. If nothing else, it paints a sweet portrait of Christian humility, faithfulness, and endeavour which we would do well to emulate.’ – Jeremy Walker enjoyed Iain H. Murray’s Archibald G. Brown: […]

In his book The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax, the Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes provides a tenderhearted, Christ-exalting exposition and application of Isaiah 42:1-3. Since its initial publication in 1630, The Bruised Reed1 has been a source of encouragement to dejected sinners and struggling saints alike. Sibbes follows Matthew’s interpretation of this text, seeing it […]

Charles Spurgeon was not the only man of God to be labouring during the heyday of the gospel’s progress in Victorian London. On the other side of the river lived and worked that most excellent servant of Christ, Archibald Geikie Brown. He is the subject of Iain H. Murray’s fairly recent biography, Archibald G. Brown: […]

A review of R. T. Kendall, In Pursuit of His Glory: My 25 Years at Westminster Chapel (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002). In the past quarter-century, Westminster Chapel, London, has been through seismic change. Either from personal experience of what it was, or from the reading of Lloyd-Jones’ literature, there are many who know what […]

Finding Peace with God1 provides a brief overview of the biblical doctrine of justification. It is written in plain language which makes it accessible to all and affords not only a timely antidote to the false teaching of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy but it also helpfully refutes the erroneous New Perspective on Paul adopted […]

J C Ryle was an evangelical Church of England minister of the 19th century who eventually became the first Bishop of Liverpool. During his life he became best known for writing tracts on a range of subjects. This book, first published in 1873, is a collection of nineteen such booklets. The common theme is the […]

What is it that shapes our lives? Is it the all-pervasive influence and philosophy of this world? Is it our own fallen natures? Or is it our faith? What do we mean by faith? These are days when it can no longer be safely assumed that the language used for centuries will be understood, so […]

‘an excellent book, a brilliant series of studies . . . A great church history book but one that sets its sights radically on today’s church.’ – Melanie Carroll is one of the first to review Garry Williams’ Silent Witnesses. In the Notes below are links to selected online reviews of Banner titles, posted June-September […]

‘MAGISTERIAL’ is the word most often used to describe Iain Murray’s biography of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I remember how eagerly and impatiently we waited for the first and then the second volumes, and yet after devouring them both in turn, wondering if our intrepid author had struggled to tell the story of such greatness in […]

How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels By N.T.Wright New York: Harper Collins, 2012 304 pages, paperback ISBN: 978 0 06173 057 3 Wright has carved out a name for himself in his studies of the historical Jesus and Paul’s theology. He has consistently and convincingly challenged the liberal view of the […]

What an excellent book, a brilliant series of studies on theologians, witnesses, pastors and fathers of the church that both clearly and concisely tell us not only about the people themselves, their times and their beliefs but in so doing helps inform us about our own faith, theology and beliefs – especially if you are […]

John Charles Ryle (JR), was born in 1816 and after his conversion served as a minister of a number of Anglican parishes. He was appointed as the first bishop of Liverpool in 1880 and remained in this office until shortly before his death in 1900. He is probably best known for his Expository Thoughts on the […]

In 1662, Thomas Watson was ejected from the Church of England along with 2000 other ministers of the gospel. As a result he and they faced many difficulties, hardships and trials. However, it is noteworthy that in the following year Watson published the volume mentioned above under the original title, A Divine Cordial.1In it, he sought […]

The Act of Uniformity of 1662 prescribed that any minister in England who refused to conform to the Book of Common Prayer by 14th August 1662 would be ejected from the Church of England. Over 2,000 evangelical ministers left their livings rather than conform to what they saw as extra-biblical rules and regulations. It was […]

Iain Murray has done the rising generation of Christians a great service, in making available this ‘re-cast, condensed and in part re-written version’1 of the longer two-volume biography of 1982 and 1990.2 The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the main events and issues which faced English-speaking Christianity in […]

If you love biblical theology, if preaching in light of redemptive history is your jet fuel, if the gospel is life to you and not just a trendy buzzword, then you really need to read John Carrick’s book The Imperative of Preaching1. Hang on and I’ll tell you why. But first things first. MOODY PREACHING Carrick […]

‘The providence of God! What a glorious and precious doctrine this is when the good Lord opens our eyes to it! And how better to open our eyes to it than to lead us through the Scriptures and show us this merry little stream of biblical truth sometimes hidden beneath the surface but undergirding the […]