Meet the Puritans

Late in 1664 it was apparent the bubonic plague was making one of its unwelcome visitations of Europe by registering in London for an extended stay checking out early in 1666. It varied in the number of victims from month to month, but it survived through all four seasons. Over 80,000 people died...

Dear Timothy, The Puritans show us the need to be praying men of God. They were truly “men of the closet.” In their closets—their special, private place dedicated to prayer, be it in the bedroom, the attic, or the open field—they would lift up their voices and cry aloud to the God of heaven for...

God is slandered daily. Satan, who is a liar and the father of lies, makes sure of it. One of his favorite lies to spread about God is that he doesn’t love us, that he wants nothing more than for us to suffer and die. Satan wants us to think that God is more like the elder brother than the father...

Dear Timothy, The Puritans show us the importance of catechizing your own church people and your neighbors. Like the Reformers, the Puritans were catechists. They believed that pulpit messages should be reinforced by personalized ministry through catechesis —the instruction in the doctrines of...

Fear. It’s an emotion we all know well, and in recent weeks, it’s one that has asserted itself in our minds and hearts. We fear both ourselves and loved ones catching the virus. We fear what will happen to our finances because of lost wages. We fear how long our life will be put on hold. We fear...

Dear Timothy, As we've seen , when God’s Word is preached experientially, the Holy Spirit uses it to transform people and nations. And in this experiential preaching, the Puritans focused on Christ. As Scripture clearly shows, evangelism must bear witness to the record God has given of His only...

Dear Timothy, I've written to you about how the Puritans stressed the practice of a piety that flows out of sound doctrine. And yet they also promoted the experiential dimension of Reformed preaching. Puritan preaching explained how a Christian experiences biblical truth in his life. The term...

Editor's Note: Find previous entries in this series at the end of this article. The law/gospel hermeneutic wrongly separates the Bible's indicatives from its imperatives. That's the first problem that we addressed in our last article . But there's a second problem with this hermeneutic: It tends to...

Satan shows us the disappointments and difficulties that godly men face. Following the Lord Jesus Christ means that you will share (to some measure) in Christ's experience of hardship and difficulty. God's people are not immune to affliction. Some godly men are financially distressed, others are in...

Editor's Note: Find previous entries in this series at the end of this article. In this article, we will look at one key reason the law/gospel hermeneutic is problematic, and then another reason in a subsequent article. The law/gospel hermeneutic is problematic because it separates what Scripture...