Author Archives: adminjohnshields

Some years ago I made the decision to work a little on Truth’s Victory over Error, David Dickson’s early commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. I had a copy of the Robert Wodrow edition, dated 1749, and with that I began. I did this in what time I could spare while minister of the […]

Alexander Whyte, an eminent Scottish minister in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, wrote of Christians who lived as if sanctification were by vinegar. I was reminded of this when preparing recently to preach on Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. As Luke concludes his account of this eunuch’s conversion, he […]

In this the third of three articles1 on the 2007 Annual Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales at Aberystwyth, Geoff Thomas summarizes the third and fourth addresses of Edward Donnelly. The Nature of Our Calling (1 Cor. 1:26-31) The world cultivates personality far more than character. Celebrities have replaced heroes in our culture. People […]

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. […]

This is the second of three articles1 reporting on the 2007 Annual Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales held in Aberystwyth in August. Edward Donnelly gave the four morning addresses on the opening two chapters of the First letter of Paul to the Corinthians. It was the third time he had spoken at the […]

This article is Chapter 2 of the author’s Pentecost – Today?: The Biblical Basis for Understanding Revival. ‘For a long time it was supposed by the Church that a revival was a miracle, an interposition of Divine power. It is only within a few years that ministers generally have supposed revivals were to be promoted […]

This is the first of three articles1 reporting on the 2007 Annual Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales held in Aberystwyth 11-18 August, which Guy Davies attended with his family. It is an edited version of the post on his blog (exiledpreacher.blogspot.com) on 20 August 2007, and is used with permission. The Evangelical Movement […]

On Monday July 2nd Iola and I drove out east from Grand Rapids twenty miles to a lovely house in the woods overlooking Murray Lake on Red Oak Drive, Lowell to visit Bob den Dulk. Bob and I had begun our studies at Westminster Seminary together in 1961 and we graduated three years later (along […]

…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 […]

This is how world-famous triple jumper and high profile ‘Christian’ Jonathan Edwards has described his (now abandoned) belief in God. In a tragic interview in the The Times on 27th June 2007, Edwards speaks openly and candidly of his renunciation of the Christian faith, and of his apparent naivety in following Christ for 37 years […]

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, […]

Audubon Press is an associate ministry of the Audubon Drive Bible Church in Laurel, South Mississippi. Its pastor and one of the directors of this press is Jerry Marcellino, one of the driving forces behind a network of Calvinistic churches in the USA, the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals (FIRE). A number of the recent […]

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 […]

All of us know the experience of reality not matching expectations. Sometimes the problem is with the reality. We buy a cruise on the internet. But, when we take the cruise we find that it falls far short of what was advertised. Other times the problem is with expectations. We get married expecting we are […]

Acts chapter 9 recounts two miracles performed by the Apostle Peter in regard to Aeneas and Dorcas of Joppa – Aeneas, a man who was paralyzed for eight years, and lay on a mat; the other Dorcas, who was very much alive, until she died suddenly in the midst of her labours. I thought of […]

‘Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain.’ (Jude 11) The deceitfulness of the human heart is a truth recorded in Scripture and borne out in daily life. Believers discover it increasingly in their own lives as well as around them. One of the ways this deceitfulness shows itself is the […]

Christ is our sufficiency. This statement is true on the highest and most vital level of our lives. Only Christ has regarded us in all of our unworthiness and unloveliness and has loved us to the uttermost, giving His life as a ransom for us. Only Christ can cleanse us of the guilt, heal us […]

As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ one of my chief concerns is the efficacy of the Gospel message. In fact, I am more and more convinced that the potency of the word is bound up with the character of the preacher. Keeping this in mind, it becomes needful for the Christian minister […]

The Bala conference of ministers takes place each June in a delightful little market town in North Wales, now enhanced in my eyes through having its gospel church under a new pastor, Gareth Williams. He changed his career last year from being one of the lecturers in Systematic Theology at the Welsh Evangelical School of […]

The Bible, God’s own Word, can be deeply disturbing to read. It has a ‘knack’ (being inspired by the Holy Spirit this should never surprise us) of unsettling us, and deeply humbling us. This has been the case with me these past few weeks in particular. Let me explain. I am trying (and trying is […]

Throughout my 63 years as an evangelical believer, the penal substitutionary understanding of the cross of Christ has been a flashpoint of controversy and division among Protestants. It was so before my time, in the bitter parting of ways between conservative and liberal evangelicals in the Church of England, and between the Inter-Varsity Fellowship (now […]

Letters of Samuel Rutherford1 is a compilation of 365 letters written by Samuel Rutherford in times of severe ecclesiastical trials in Scotland. They span a period from 1627 (possibly 1624) to 1661. This is the second reprint the Banner of Truth has produced of the 1891 edition, which was edited by Andrew Bonar. There are […]

We stood on the green grass sloping towards the deep-blue sea. Below us a burn meandered downwards until it became lost in the sand of the beach which skirts the ocean, while a huge bank of cloud dominated the horizon. It was a beautiful scene. But death cannot be kept out of even a beautiful […]

“Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.” So the Psalmist prayed, and we ourselves have much need of pleading for such help when the number of the Lord’s people in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland is so sadly diminished. How great is the blank […]

A review by Paul Helm, Professor Emeritus of the University of London, of John Calvin’s Sermons on the Beatitudes.1 Calvin’s sermons were delivered extempore, taken down by the remarkable Denis Raguenier, published by the diaconate of Geneva, and the proceeds used to support refugees. Initially, Calvin was not keen on them being published, but when […]