In the Lord’s Prayer, Christ tells us to pray that we will not be led into temptation. Temptation is something we have all experienced and will experience. It comes from outside us in the person of the devil and in the allurements of the world; and it comes from inside …
In July-August 1944, while in Tegel prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer outlined a proposal for a book, and made the comment that ‘the air is not quite fresh, even in the Confessing Church.’ Yet in 1933 as the Confessing Church had been forced to split from the German Christians who supported Hitler, …
The Westminster Confession, written in the 1640s, declares emphatically that ‘God alone is Lord of the conscience’ (XX.II). In so doing, it is merely reflecting what is stated in the Word of God. Each Christian is to be fully convinced in his own mind (Rom.14:5), knowing that each of us …
George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was written as a warning against the dangers of totalitarianism such as occurred in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. It was said of the ubiquitous Dictator: ‘Big Brother is watching you.’ It is rather sobering that Orwell derived some of his ideas from a …
Written by Rev Dr Peter Barnes
I was visiting one of our older saints a while back, and he told me a story which he had told before, and which had obviously made a deep impression on him. During World War II, he was serving in Papua New Guinea when …
People often marvelled at the words of Jesus. On one occasion the Jews said: ‘How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?’ (John 7:15) Even the officers had to report to the chief priests and Pharisees that they could not arrest Him because ‘No man …
In the Old Testament, God made provision for Israel to celebrate the Passover as an annual memorial for her redemption from slavery in Egypt (see Exodus 12). In the New Testament, Jesus took the Passover, and turned it into the Lord’s Supper (cf. Matt.26:17-19). What, then, is the meaning of …
The gospel turns everything upside down – it is the first who are last and the last who are first; the humble are exalted and those who exalt themselves are humbled; and we die to self in order to find our life. It is not what we would expect, and …
At first sight, this may seem strange because the baby does not understand what is going on. He or she is too young to repent and believe the gospel. But there are good reasons for baptizing the children of at least one parent with saving faith in Christ.
John Wenham once wrote that ‘Evil constitutes the biggest single argument against the existence of an almighty, loving God.’ The problem is not only the existence of evil but the origin of evil. How is it that God who is perfectly good made a world which He declared to be …
