Death

John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is a polemical work, designed to show, among other things, that the doctrine of universal redemption is unscriptural and destructive of the Gospel. There are many, therefore, to whom it is not likely to be of interest. Those who see no need for...

Introduction I n the movie The Princess Bride , Westley has to leave his fiancé Buttercup in order to make his fortune. Buttercup is worried that she will never see him again. Westley reassures her: “This is true love-you think this happens every day.” True love is the reason they will always be...

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast." So wrote the eighteenth century poet, Alexander Pope. Platitude? Yes, but true for all that. I have to confess the lines (from An Essay on Man ) come to mind frequently at dinner when my dog lies at my feet, his gaze fixed on every morsel entering my...

If it’s true, as the ancient Tertullian said, that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” much seed has been sown on Turkish soil, from the 2 nd -century martyrdom of Polycarp to the massacre of Christian Armenians in 1915 (where 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives). And these are...

Dropping into church on Good Friday you’d think we were celebrating the death of God. Of course, God cannot die. Of course God cannot die, but there is a sense in which you’d be on to something. Why is a cross central to Christianity? Why was it constantly on the mind of the Lord Jesus Himself...

I have always taken comfort from the fact that if Peter could find some of Paul’s saying as hard (2 Peter 3:15-16), so can I. One hard saying in the Apostle Paul’s writing is his remark in 1 Cor. 15:29 regarding the baptism of the dead: 1Cor. 15:29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized...

The pivot of history is the life of Jesus Christ; the capstone is His resurrection. To take His resurrection seriously we need good witnesses to His death. Some opponents claim that Jesus’ followers fabricated the resurrection out of wishful thinking. Others claim that Jesus didn’t really die,...

1773 didn’t start well for William Cowper. In spite of seemingly comfortable circumstances, he felt pressured by both hurtful local gossip and well-meaning friendly advice into making a decision he was just not able to make. He had been lodging with a pious family, the Unwins, for almost ten years...

A great blind spot which afflicts anyone who limits their reading of Calvin to The Institutes is how thoroughly engrossed the Reformer was in missions work across Europe. Calvin was no austere academic always at his desk with his nose in a book. Rather, we could say, he spent much time at the...

I love photography and, although I’m not a great photographer, I have learned some of the secrets of capturing a scene or portrait effectively: the most important being to choose angles that allow the details to stand out clearly. When it comes to understanding the cross of Christ, the Gospel...