Topic Archives: History & Biography

In this video, Pastor Alistair Begg (Parkside Church, Truth For Life) tells us why the 2 Volume Set D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Iain Murray is his favorite Banner of Truth work, and how it continues to be impactful in his life and ministry today. This set and other 2 Volume Sets and Gift Sets are […]

It is the centenary of the end of the First World War. Let us remind ourselves of that fearful period in British history of valiant courage, self-sacrifice, unimaginable suffering and death. What can we learn from it? Five of the Causes that Triggered the War 1. Mutual Defence Alliances Countries throughout Europe made mutual defence agreements […]

Jacques Lefevre has been variously called ‘The Pioneer of the Reformation in France’, ‘The Patriarch of the Reformers in France’ and ‘The Founder of the French Reformation’. Why then is so little written and known about a man to whom such titles are given by historians? There are two probable reasons. Firstly, the dreadful persecutions […]

The arrival of the Autumn season, with the month of October in particular, ushers in a host of events, decorations, recipes—even scents—for occupants in the Northern hemisphere. Many prepare their homes both outside and in, eager for what the season will entail, while reflecting on what past Autumns have brought. This is especially true for […]

Augustine, the son of a Roman official, was born at Tagaste in North Africa in A.D. 354. Endowed with brilliant talents, strongly motivated by vain glory and the desire of praise, he was by the age of nineteen studying and teaching rhetoric in the ancient city of Carthage. Here, with his mind bent on the […]

I met Dick  in September 1961 when he took part in the opening exercises in Philadelphia of Westminster Theological Seminary’s academic year.  He prayed for the almost 300 students who were  the sum total of the student body at that time. He had driven there from his first congregation, Sixth Reformed Church in Paterson New […]

At last ‘Banner’ have published an edition of this greatly valued Christian classic, and have done so in a format worthy of the lasting spiritual value of the work. John Bunyan (1628-1688) wrote voluminously, his collected making three portly volumes in the definitive nineteenth-century edition (available in facsimile reprint from the Banner of Truth Trust). […]

In the video below, Pastor Mark Johnston details why the writings of the Puritans are so impactful even today. ‘Part of the genius of Puritan literature is that they were so taken up with God, and his grace, and the provision that was made for sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ, that they opened not […]

It’s impossible to measure the influence of Richard Baxter over four centuries. His works remain in print and are widely read, which shouldn’t surprise us. J. I. Packer considers him ‘the most outstanding pastor, evangelist, and writer on practical and devotional themes that Puritanism produced,’ listing Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor (1656) as one of the top five books that have influenced him […]

For many years before entering vocational ministry, I worked as a journalist in the dog-eat-dog world of secular media. While working as a reporter for a metropolitan daily newspaper in Georgia, one of my more progressive colleagues teased me good-naturedly about being a ‘conservative boy’ from a small town in the sticks of North Georgia. […]

‘I will build my church,’ Jesus declared (Matthew 16:18). And what a magnificent and agonizing process has unfolded for two millennia. Essential to this work is the formation of living stones — men and women drawn from the quarry of sin, whose lives now testify to gospel grace. But how does Christ construct his church? […]

Today, July 10, 2018, is the 509th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. He was a French theologian and pastor of Geneva, as well as one of the principal 16th-century Reformers. * * * Let us notice three things about the Genevan Reformer particularly today, July 10, the anniversary of his birth. First, Calvin was a humble […]

During my first seven years in the pastoral ministry (1980-1987), I felt very green — inexperienced, and in some ways unprepared. Before coming to Bethlehem Baptist Church at the age of 34, I had never been a pastor. I was in school full time till I was 28 and then taught college Bible courses until […]

After nearly three decades, John Bolt is approaching his impending retirement from Calvin Theological Seminary with admitted ambivalence, grateful to be liberated from long faculty meetings and other academic tedium but wistful about closing a long and lively chapter of engaging students with a bracing seminars on Reformed dogmatics. ‘I feel incredibly privileged when I […]

In John 10:17–18, Jesus teaches the relation between God’s eternal decree to save and Christ’s work on earth: ‘For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay […]

Audio Transcript Parents ask me, ‘What was the idea behind biographies for toddlers?’ It’s a different concept, and there aren’t many out there — but there are dozens of little people in my family. One day a brother-in-law commented, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to have something for small kids that introduced them to church history; […]

Around 245 years ago, something significant happened in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. A large granite stone marks the spot where the event took place. Sad to say, people walk by this historical marker every day without knowing its significance. They do not know that God did something special in their town on September 29, 1770: […]

Among the ‘Notes’ in C. H. Spurgeon’s periodical, The Sword and the Trowel, for July 1890, is an item about the state of the Free Church of Scotland at that time. It looks back to the General Assembly of that year, when two divinity professors, Marcus Dods of New College, Edinburgh, and A.B. Bruce of the […]

I returned to the countryside of Shropshire on Sunday, January 7. Just as a year earlier, I was to preach for the congregation at Lordshill Baptist Church near Minsterly, at Snailbeah, pastored by my friend Stephen Ford. We were hoping that we could use the old building but the heavy rain had turned the pathway […]

There was always my dear cousin Bobi. Being an only child, my cousins were important to me and none more so than Bobi who was nine years older than me. He would become my best man on my wedding day in 1964 and we would live more than five decades together in the same small […]

Many of us can recall the intense light and surprising warmth conveyed to our hearts when we first read the exemplary history of the Reformers and the Reformation Martyrs, along with their expositions of Scripture. Their brave and strong standing fast in the faith (1 Cor. 16:13) reached across the centuries and led us to new heights in serving […]

In the mid-twentieth century, those Christians who were willing to call themselves ‘Reformed’ or ‘Calvinistic’ were relatively few in number. Liberalism had done its work in the large  mainline denominations to discredit ‘Reformation’ doctrine. Evangelicalism had fallen so low that many dismissed theology altogether by saying that doctrine only divides. ‘Calvinist’ was a slur to denigrate a Christian and to advise […]

In 2012, a new five volume edition of the minutes and papers of the Westminster Assembly (1643-52) was published (Oxford University Press). This was the fruit of years of work by Rev. Chad Van Dixhoorn. This monumental work will probably form the basis for study o the Westminster Assembly for the remainder of this century […]

Robert Cecil Rayner, a beloved deacon and member at Salem Chapel, Braintree, Essex, for twenty-six years, passed peacefully away on February 9th, 2017, aged 73 years. After a severe illness he wrote the following, dated November 2014. The heading was this: ‘Toiling with Rowing on the Sea of Life’. * * * My first recollections […]

I finally paid my first visit to the new location of the London Evangelical Library. It used to be in Chiltern Street, above the original location of the Banner of Truth but now it is to be found on a little industrial estate in the north of the city, just off the north circular road. […]