Resources by Baker, Al

to proclaim … the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3:8 Recently four teenagers, three of whom were entering their last year at high school, were killed in a car accident. I cannot imagine the grief and heartache of the parents of these young people, knowing that their children’s lives were snuffed out at such a […]

Horace Bushnell, the 19th-century Congregational minister from Hartford, along with Universalist Hosea Ballou, and Unitarian William Ellery Channing altered the way many people thought about Christ’s atonement. Until that time, the conventional view in the church of Christ was God-centred and objective. That is, the sovereign Triune God who created man requires obedience from mankind. […]

…by revelation there was made known to me the mystery. (Ephesians 3:3) Pearl S. Buck, the great novelist, who won the Pulitzer prize in 1932 and the Nobel prize for literature in 1938, grew up on the mission field. In her memoirs, she took up the question, ‘Do we need missionaries to go to foreign […]

I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 3:1) Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, military and naval hero of 16th century France, who had converted to the Protestant faith during the awakening in France in the 1550s, was in Paris in August, 1572 for the wedding of Henry of Navarre, a Protestant, to Marguerite de Valois, […]

Be sober in all things. (2 Timothy 4:5) Paul, in his last epistle, written shortly before his martyrdom in Rome, gives several exhortations to his son in the faith, Timothy; and this one in particular needs our attention today. Paul’s exhortation to be sober is a present imperative, not referring to freedom from drunkenness but […]

Mark writes about the three women who were at the tomb of the Lord Jesus; ‘And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,’ (Mark 16:8). The women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning showed […]

He was born in 1712 and reared a Calvinist in Geneva. He came from a well-to-do family and his mother died when he was an infant. He had one sibling, a brother seven years his senior. His father loved his brother but despised him. He gave us cold baths, weekend cottages, and the notion that […]

… among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Ephesians 2:3. Ernest Hemingway, an American icon of the 20th century, one who, perhaps more than any other writer, changed […]

Most church denominations today ordain women as pastors, elders, and deacons. The Presbyterian Church in America, the denomination to which I belong, is not one of them, and for this reason we, and a few other like minded ones, are increasingly held in disdain by people both within and without the professing church. Those denominations […]

Paul says, “An overseer must be above reproach,” (1 Timothy 3:2) and yet we hear of pastors falling into sin all too frequently. How should such pastors (and I would add Ruling Elders and Deacons) be viewed by the church and how should they be disciplined? Surely most evangelicals believe these pastors ought to be […]

By the mid 1960’s George and Patti Harrison were deeply into Eastern mysticism, evidenced in a number of George’s songs he had written for the Beatles during that time. But on Thursday, August 24, 1967 their involvement in Eastern mysticism went to a whole new level. Patti heard that the Maharishi Yogi was lecturing in […]

Aaron Burr, Jr. was less than two years old when his father, the President of Princeton, died suddenly and unexpectedly in September, 1758. A few months later Aaron’s grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, who had been elected President of Princeton to succeed his son-in-law, died from complications due to a small pox inoculation. A few months after […]

Perpetua, a young, well to do woman, lived in Carthage in 200 A.D. Carthage, modern day Tunis in north Africa, had a vibrant Christian community living amongst a pagan people, and Perpetua had come to believe in Jesus as the Christ. She was attending a Catechism class to prepare her for public profession and baptism, […]

Most of you know the story about Eric Liddell, the gold medallist in the 400 meters in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, how he refused to run on Sunday and forfeited his place in the 100 meters, opting to run a race which was not his speciality. What you may not know is that Eric […]

In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, Ephesians 1:11. John Owen, the greatest of the Puritan theologians, was born in 1616, the year William Shakespeare died and four years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. He was […]

During the London smog of 1952 my family had a remarkable experience the memory of which has remained with me ever since it happened. This happening shows the truth of that text in Romans 8:28 – ‘And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are […]

In the book of Proverbs we read that, A righteous man does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend, Psalm 15:3. Two middle school girls are standing at their bus stop and one says to the other, “I don’t like Alice. I don’t […]

“But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; therefore He turned Himself to become their enemy, He fought against them.” Isaiah 63:10. Power Would you agree with me that the church of Jesus Christ in the west is in a sad and woeful state? We have our church programs, activities, seminars, master plans, publishing houses, […]

You may say to your children: – when an unwillingness to receive godly counsel, instruction, or rebuke, or when acting like a fool: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction, Proverbs 1:7. My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord, or loathe His reproof, for […]

What are your recurring, chronic temptations? I know you have them. We all do. I classify them as the fearsome foursome: sensuality, food, possessions and speech. There is not a man alive who does not face sensual temptation. It is everywhere he looks. Some battle food, either gorging or purging. All are tempted to want […]