Topic Archives: Christian Living

There was a memorial service of the 25th anniversary of the death of Thomas Benjamin Tuitt held in his former church, the London Evangelical Reformed Church in Lauriston Road, Hackney, on Saturday 23rd April 2016 at 4 p.m.. About 250 to 300 people filled the lovely building, the downstairs was full and also the gallery […]

‘Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor’ (1 Peter 2:17). Most reading this will have some idea what it means to honour everyone, to love the brotherhood and to honour the emperor. But how many know what it means to ‘Fear God’? This is not an abstract or arcane question. We need […]

This is a new translation by Robert-White of four sermons by John Calvin (JC). First published in 1552, the original title (in English) was ‘Four sermons of Master John Calvin, entreating of matters very profitable for our time, with a brief Exposition of Psalm 87.’ Included here are three letters by JC, one of the […]

Clear and concise, encouraging and exhilarating, reliable and readable are six words that quickly come to mind. They help explain why the writings of J C Ryle have such an enduring value. But they are not the main reason why I, and so many others, find his books so beneficial. Ryle tackles controversial issues in some of articles and tracts. He […]

Elizabeth Prentiss lived in a different century, but the challenges she faced, and the way she responded to those challenges, speak powerfully to us today. Early in their married life, Elizabeth and her husband, George suffered the loss of two of their six children. Eddie died aged five and Bessie died when just a few […]

Australian missionaries Jocelyn and Ken Elliott, both in their 80s, had been running a hospital for some four decades in the town of Djibo in the West African country of Birkina Faso when they were captured by an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group over a month ago and are believed to have been held in neighbouring […]

The following is an excerpt from Why Read Church History1 by J. Philip Arthur It is fatally easy to develop an uncritical admiration for our heroes, but no one is beyond criticism. One of the most refreshing things about the Bible is that it never conceals the faults of God’s servants. There are numerous examples […]

The Bible, at times, makes for very uncomfortable reading. Consider these opening verses of 1 Kings 11:1-8: ‘Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter […]

2015 marked the two-hundredth anniversary of a change of pastorate for the Rev. Thomas Chalmers. On Sunday 9th July 1815, after a ministry of twelve years, Chalmers preached a farewell sermon to his congregation in Kilmany (Kilmany is a village in the Fife region of Scotland). Later that month he was inducted to the pastorate […]

‘I am His’. Every believer in Jesus may say it. And with full assurance. ‘I am the Lord’s’. Humblingly and astonishingly we may also say that he is ours. To the Christian, God is not just the Lord but my Lord. But it is of the bond by which we have become his of which […]

Do you remember the resolutions you made at this time last year? I would guess that many of us resolved at the beginning of 2015 that every day we would have a ‘quiet time’. We told ourselves that this would be the year when we at last would establish a pattern of daily Bible-reading and […]

Psalm 106 makes for salutary reading. It celebrates the Lord’s remarkable rescuing kindnesses to his covenant people Israel and details his people’s disdain of his great mercies to them. It is hard to take in the persistent cavalier behaviour of Israel in the glowing light of God’s repeated mercies in delivering them from their enemies […]

A man had two sons (Luke 15:11). Some of our leading preachers today regularly equate the ‘middle America church’ with Pharisees and the elder brother in Luke 15. They say that we in conservative, traditional churches are self-righteous, legalistic, and consequently unwelcoming to the younger brother types -atheists, agnostics, homosexuals, the ‘broken people’ in our […]

You might, having read the title of this, wonder what is about to follow. Those of you who know even a little about a remarkable eighteenth century Scottish minister called Thomas Boston, will, however, have immediately recognised the source of my title. Boston’s Works run to twelve volumes and contain some lengthy theological treatises.1 When […]

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands (2 Timothy 1:6). Paul begins his second letter to Timothy by reminding Timothy of the blessings that are his in Christ. Timothy is reading a personal letter to him from […]