Resources

God continues to shine on us at the Grace and Truth Church with favour. A local, secular endeavour to meet the needs of the homeless in our city has invited Alex, our senior evangelist, to hold a weekly meeting on the premises in order to address the homeless with the Gospel. Surprised, we made sure […]

The two sisters from Tennessee injured in the London bombings earlier this month say that the Lord carried them through the ordeal. Emily and Katie Benton, college students from Knoxville, told reporters last week that they have yet to harbour hatred for the terrorists who blew up three London underground carriages and a double-decker bus […]

A brief spotlight was turned on Africa at the beginning of July. The G8 leaders (of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia) assembled in Gleneagles to discuss Africa, climate change and that sort of thing. The Live 8 concert for 200,000 in Hyde Park, intended to attract attention to poverty […]

The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, and its significance for today. This book has featured in the evangelical world for a while now. Hardly a Christian magazine, newspaper organisation, online discussion forum, preacher or individual Christian has not had something to say about it – for, against, or on the […]

We are familiar with our Lord’s teaching concerning the speck we can so readily see in our brother’s eye and the log in our own eye to which we remain oblivious. Though the word is not used in that illustrative teaching, the concept of control is clearly at the heart of our Lord’s message. Jesus […]

The apostle Paul writes, “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore […]

Biblical, God-fearing theologians divide sin into two branches, original and actual. These two branches are further subdivided. Original sin consists of imputed guilt and inherent pollution, while actual sin comprises sins of thought, word and deed. In a sermon based on the apostle Peter’s words to Simon Magus: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou […]

A letter in the Times, July18 Sir, The British Medical Association’s recent votes on assisted dying and abortion (report July 1) reflect in my view a growing contempt within the medical profession for human life, the reduction of doctors to instruments of social engineering, and an increase in moral relativism and nihilism in their ranks. […]

In eighteenth century England, the market town of Olney in Buckinghamshire was noteworthy as the home of three evangelical Christian leaders, John Newton, converted slave-trader turned minister and hymn writer, who held the curacy of the parish church between 1764 and 1779, William Cowper, poet, who assisted Newton in the compilation of the Olney Hymns, […]

A Definition On the topic of Puritan meditation, James Packer writes, “Knowing themselves to be creatures of thought, affection, and will, and knowing that God’s way to the human heart (the will) is via the human head (the mind), the Puritans practiced meditation, discursive and systematic, on the whole range of biblical truth as they […]

In 1894 a book appeared called ‘Letters and Sketches from the New Hebrides.’ It was a collection of personal letters written by Margaret, wife of Scottish missionary John Paton, to family and friends and thus never intended for publication. The book contained twenty letters written between 1865 and 1894. It has now been reprinted by […]

It may seem strange to learn that the Bible has very little teaching regarding the maintenance of bodily health. Some understand the Levitical food laws as given to instruct us in proper nutrition and hygiene. However, those laws were given with moral and spiritual considerations in mind, the hygienic benefit there from being merely a […]

In the furore that has followed the London suicide bombings there have been affirmations from all our politicians and Muslim leaders that Islam is a religion of love and that the suicide bombers are aberrant misguided criminals and not true Muslims at all. However the suicide bombers would claim that they are the true Muslims […]

Martin Luther was born on November 10th, 1483. He was a young man of great abilities so his poor father put him to the study of law, intending him to be a lawyer. And he might very well have been a lawyer were it not that on July 2 in the year 1505 he was […]

I had the privilege of being brought up on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland in a Christian home where family worship was held morning and evening. I attended church twice every Lord’s day and was fortunate enough to hear some of the greatest Christian men in deep discussion and debate […]

In an article in the Daily Telegraph (July 6 2004, p.18) some facts were given on the growth of bureaucracy in the UK today, including the following: 1. The Civil Service is now the size of Sheffield.2. Whitehall bureaucracy costs every household £850.5. Just one department – Work and Pensions – employs more people than […]

If you walked behind the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town to the old cemetery any lunch time in the 1970s and 80s you would come across a fascinating gathering. A group of poor unemployed Africans, some of them alcoholics, and other HIV positive, were listening intently to another African reading to them from the […]

What must I do to be saved? Saved from what? What is it you wish to be saved from? Hell? That proves nothing. Nobody wants to go there. The issue between God and man is sin. Do you wish to be saved from it? What is sin? Sin is a species of rebellion against God. […]

With the collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union in 1989 there began a brief period of religious freedom coupled with a popular interest in all things Western. The old Soviet order was thoroughly discredited and the Russian people hoped that the coming of democracy and private enterprise would usher in a new dawn […]

1. The Christian Gospel Is for Bad People The Bible says “Christ died for the ungodly, Christ died for sinners, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” (ROMANS 5:6; I TIMOTHY 1:15) 2. Some Men Think They Are So Good They Have No Need of Jesus Christ “There is a generation that is […]

It is a remarkable thing to note that after all of the centuries mankind has had to sin, the way men deal with their sins has never changed. The first man, Adam, foolishly tried to conceal his shame, his sin, and even himself from the Lord. His fig-leaf covering was first applied in a feeble […]

What’s Wrong with Same-Sex Marriage? by James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, Crossway Books, (Wheaton, Illinois, 2004, pb, 143 pp, $7.99) covers a topic which is presently under much debate both in Europe and the United States. Authors Kennedy and Newcombe offer an easy-to-read Christian response to the moral issue of same-sex marriage. As such, I […]

Somewhere in the personal library of the new Pope, Benedict XVI, is a leather-bound copy of Calvin’s Institutes, and (surprisingly) a copy of my article, “1 Corinthians 15:8: Paul, the Last Apostle.” In the hundreds of stories that will appear about the new pope, this trivial fact will not appear. In 1988, representatives from the […]

In one of his books, R. C. Sproul discusses the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. In the course of his discussion, he states that this relationship is a mystery but not a contradiction. That is, it is a mystery to us but not a contradiction in itself. This is bound to be so; […]

The great mission of our Saviour’s church is evangelical – we are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Too often the church has strayed from its God-given mission and drifted into a “social gospel,” behaving as […]