Scripture

If you could recommend just one book, in addition to the Bible, for believers to read, what would it be? It’s a hard question to answer when you love to read and there are so many great books out there. But the book I find myself recommending most often is Christina Fox ’s A Heart Set Free: A...

Johannes Bogerman and His Powdering Speech “ Dimittimini exiteI ” (“You are dismissed, get out!”) With these imperious words, Johannes Bogerman (1576-1637), president of the Synod of Dordt, expressed what many of the delegates were had been painfully thinking. The Remonstrants had to leave...

It is not surprising that a book addressing the presence, nature, and function of the Old and New Testament should have a profound impact on us. Yet, much of what has been written about the Bible has been an attack on it. Wonderful are those books that helps us understand the power, authority and...

There seems to be a never-ending market in Christian circles for books on guidance. The reason for this, of course, is that we as Christians (like all other human beings) want to make right decisions and choices in life. We want to avoid mistakes – especially when they often run the risk of major...

Pastoral Visitation Chad Vegas, founding pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Bakersfield, CA, visits with Jonathan and James to talk about his journey from pragmatism to conviction. Chad gives us his background, and tells us who the Lord has used to change his ministry, and how God did so! Chad...

The story of the man born blind in John 9 is well known. It’s one of those stories that take work to read because we have to disabuse ourselves of contemporary concern for those with disabilities. For example, there were no Seeing Eye dogs, Braille books or reading machines. This man was a beggar...

How can we be salt and light in our world, so that—instead of being “trodden under foot” or “hidden under a bushel” (vv. 13, 15)—we can resist evil, do good, and move unbelievers to glorify God as our Father in heaven? To answer that question, let’s listen to the wisdom of the English Puritans. T...

Considering what I would preach if I could only preach one sermon is an interesting and probing question, and yet, I think it would be fair to say that many pastors often do preach just one sermon. You know who they are, the pastor whose particular hobby horse always and inevitably arises in any...

Kata Bethlen – A Faith Preserved Kata Bethlen (1700-1752) started her autobiography with her most painful memory: her forced marriage, at age 17, to her Roman Catholic half-brother. Her family – one of the wealthiest and most influential in Transylvania – had firmly adhered, for generations, to the...

The triplet of sin-related requests embedded in the Lord’s Prayer ends with the shortest, but in many ways the most potent of them all: ‘Deliver us from evil’. As many commentators point out, there is a measure of ambiguity over whether it should be rendered ‘…from evil’ or ‘…from the evil one’...