Topic Archives: Christian Living

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 […]

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 […]

In the opinion of many, next to the Bible itself, the very best tool for family worship is The Child’s Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos. It is now back in print. Banner of Truth has republished it in cloth binding, beautiful paper and print with a marker to use as the pages are turned […]

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 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 […]

‘Friends have told me that they have discovered books written by some of the Puritans that have been a tremendous help to them! Could you recommend a few classics to me?’ Many Christians ask that question today. Nor are we the first to feel we need someone to guide us. Already in the Puritan period […]

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 […]

In the video below, Geoff Thomas explains how he was first introduced to the ministry of the Banner of Truth through a gift from a friend. That friend gave him a copy of the Banner Magazine, which in turn led to Geoff’s introduction to Banner books. Geoff eventually became a pastor in Wales and for a time he was an editor of […]

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 […]

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 […]

Ol’ Man River — a song from the Kern and Hammerstein musical Show Boat — has suggested both our title and subject. Listen on YouTube to Paul Robeson singing it in the 1936 film version or to William Warfield in the 1951 re-make and enjoy the treat. It movingly expresses the hardships and struggles of […]

Habakkuk asked God to remove wickedness and injustice from a nation that professed to believe in the High and Holy One who inhabits eternity. He was told of God’s purpose to chastise severely this wayward people. The rod with which the Lord would correct them would be a violent invasion by a cruel and bloodthirsty […]

Conrad Mbewe talks about building up his library as a young seminarian and how he would find the ‘good books’. With many of us living under stay-at-home orders, we find ourselves, in the Lord’s good providence, cut off from society and the regular flow of life. Although this can be challenging, it also presents a […]

The following are Professor Murray’s notes of a sermon which he preached not long before his illness and death. They constitute only an outline, the material being expanded in delivery.  * * * Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the […]