Slogging along in the paths of righteousness: Psalms 13-24Dale Ralph DavisChristian Focus Publications, 192 pages, £8.99ISBN: 978-1-78191-304-8Star rating : 3 As a convinced ‘DRD’ fan, I was always going to enjoy this book. Its twelve short chapters (each taking about 15-20 minutes to read) comment on Psalms 13-24. The book would be suitable for…
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Nearly 1000 people have died as a result of the deadly Ebola virus, an outbreak which has spread across Africa and into Saudi Arabia. According to charity Compassion, many cases have been confirmed in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Compassion works in three countries in Western Africa: Togo, Ghana and Burkina…
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The Keswick Convention ran for three weeks over the summer and was centred on the theme of ‘Really? Searching for reality in a confusing world’. Vaughan Roberts, Jonathan Lamb and Chris Sinkinson were the Bible reading speakers. During the second week, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, who lives in Costa Rica, gave her testimony. She spoke…
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A nun took action to remove a black flag, reportedly bearing the ISIS symbol, after it was put up by some local youths in Tower Hamlets, London. The flag, which had been put up on the gates of an East London housing estate, above the Palestinian flag, had sparked outrage, with one passer-by complaining…
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In the first six months of this year, more than 100 secondary and junior school-children passed through the Christian Heritage Centre’s exhibition on the history of God’s Word in the UK. This is a small number in proportion to the number of schools in our area, but as all who have so far attended…
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It was a daring plan. The spearhead of the D-day landings was to capture two bridges intact. Who should be in charge of the German forces but Field Marshal Rommel? And he had reinforced German defences all along the Normandy beaches. The single most vulnerable point of the allied invasion lay on its eastern…
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The terrible ordeal facing Meriam Ibrahim and her husband is finally over, despite a last-ditch legal challenge from her Muslim family to prevent her leaving the country with her children. Although her husband — and therefore her children — are US citizens, Ms Ibrahim’s Muslim family, who had initially had her arrested on charges…
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Christianity is in danger of being stamped out in Iraq and Syria by civil war and Islamic militancy. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Canon Andrew White warned that centuries of Christianity in the region is under threat. Canon White, who works at St George’s, the only Anglican church in Iraq, said that…
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Our country, and particularly eastern Ukraine, as you will know, is in turmoil. There is an endless stream of hatred, grief, despair, casualties and destruction. People are in fear and without any means of subsistence. Houses of Prayer and the offices of Christian organisations have been occupied by militia and are often used to…
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Over recent years, there has been a growing ignorance in Scotland of the facts about and significance of Reformation thought and practice, and their continuing implications. Notably, there has been a growing antipathy to John Knox, not least in his native land. This can be gauged by some subtle — and less subtle —…
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The Israeli ambassador has written to Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat party and deputy Prime Minister, after a LibDem politician claimed he would be tempted to fire at Israel. In an open letter, seen by Evangelical Times, Daniel Taub, the Israeli ambassador, called on Mr Clegg to take action, after comments made…
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Nearly 400,000 children in England and Wales have two home addresses, as a result of separation and divorce, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have shown. According to the data, taken from the most recent census (2011), 386,000 under-16-year-olds split their time between two homes. The breakdown in family life is most…
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The Christianity Explored (CE) course is to form a key part of PFI’s strategy of taking the gospel to prisoners throughout the world. PFI (https//pfi.org) was founded in 1979. It currently undertakes monthly prison ministry in 3700 prisons, in 127 countries. The prisoner’s journey, PFI’s three-strand evangelism programme — of which CE is the…
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Uganda has started to witness Islamist attacks on churches and Christian homes. In one of the most recent, an 18-year-old Christian woman was hacked to death and a one-year-old baby injured after Muslims burst into an overnight prayer meeting at a church at Chali Born Victory Church in Kyegegwa. According to reports from advocacy…
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Artillery Street Evangelical Church, in Colchester, Essex, is set to celebrate 175 years of gospel witness in the town on 20 September. The guest speaker for the occasion is Stuart Olyott, board member of ET, former lecturer at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales and author. The chapel was originally the Central Primitive Methodist…
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The worst of the blitz of Malta was over by the time we arrived in December 1942, but the evidence of it was to be seen everywhere. Twenty-third Squadron was to operate from Luqa, and we, the ground crew, found ourselves housed in a former Roman Catholic building with all its windows blown out.…
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The Wales Evangelical School of Theology (WEST) has seen its church planting project start to bear fruit, after the appointment of Paul Blackham as church planter at Soul Church, Neath. Mr Blackham was minister of a church plant in Preston and, previously, associate minister at All Souls, Langham Place. He holds a PhD in systematic theology…
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Is church membership really necessary? Can’t a Christian have perpetual fellowship with a particular congregation while still remaining a ‘visitor’? To answer this, we first need to understand what the true church is. The universal church or Body of Christ (Romans 12:5) is composed only and entirely of elect and true believers in Christ.…
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Almost every book in the Bible mentions trees, whether actual or symbolic. We only have to think of the tree of life in Genesis and Revelation or the centrality of Christ crucified on a wooden cross. When we think of trees in the Bible, we can confidently identify about one-third of named trees, make…
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Grace Baptist Partnership (GBP), Scotland, has created a ‘webinar’ (web-based seminar) to help encourage churches and men feeling a call to the ministry. The webinar, called ‘A Noble Task’, will take place on 25 September, and is free to join by sending an email to [email protected] and asking for a password to join.…
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Barnabas Fund is calling on churches and individual Christians to set aside Suffering Church Action Week to focus on our brothers and sisters who suffer for their faith. The theme, ‘Living in Babylon — faithful to Christ in a hostile world’, provides an opportunity, not only to consider how Christians need to remain faithful…
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Dr R. Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, brings a wider perspective to this vexed subject. The author A. N. Wilson once tried to explain to modern secular readers that there had been a time when bishops of the Church of England were titanic figures of conviction,…
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Here, in Belarus, we continue to promote academic theology among evangelical churches. This year we had the privilege of Dr Paul Helm teaching us Calvin’s theology. Professor Helm is, of course, well known as a Christian philosopher and Calvin scholar. Our expectations had been high and they were fully met. Calvin Dr Helm effortlessly…
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Within the UK, we have a large number of vocal and influential people who want to exclude all expressions of biblical Christianity from education, whether state-funded or independent. Their first target is to banish the concept of creation and replace it with the exclusive teaching of evolutionary theory. These crusaders present themselves as speaking…
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The Christian Institute (CI) has launched legal action against the Scottish government’s implementation of the Named Person regime, which is being rolled out across the country. Together with other concerned organisations, the CI has challenged the plans, which mean a state guardian will be appointed to every child between birth and 18 years old.…
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Living in Babylon — faithful to Christ in a hostile world The fires of anti-Christian persecution rage on around the world. Through most of the Middle East, and in large parts of Africa and Asia, our brothers and sisters continue to suffer discrimination, ill-treatment and violence because of their love for Christ. Research has…
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From Sunday 22-29 June, Dewsbury Evangelical Church (DEC) held a week of special outreach work called Quench, a project directed by one of DEC’s elders, Ian Goodson, in their local area. Quench was started four years ago, to connect with local people and provide an opportunity to talk about Jesus. The name ‘Quench’ was…
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‘Old’ Hartlepool is a small port situated five miles north of the River Tees. Here, three hundred years ago, on 25 September 1714, William Romaine was born. He was to become a man of great intellectual and spiritual distinction. His grandfather, Robert, had fled France in 1681, taking advantage of the relaxation of immigration…
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The official opening of the Amazing Grace Experience, at Sandy Point in St Kitts, has been scheduled for 31 October. The centre has been created to represent an accurate portrayal of the way that the Caribbean islands and St Kitts would have looked at the time when the slave trade was in full flourish,…
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Christians in Sri Lanka have been subjected to a four-day campaign by a hard-line Buddhist group, reports from Barnabas Fund have claimed. According to a recent newsletter, Christians in the country have been facing increasingly vicious attacks as part of a campaign to stop the activities of Christian fundamentalists. The campaign started in Polonnaruwa…
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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint brought by the Evangelical Alliance over a betting advert shown in the City A. M. free newspaper. During the World Cup, gambling shop Sporting Index took out advertisements showing the Christ the Redeemer statue — the iconic figure that overlooks Rio de Janeiro in Brazil…
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Our country, and particularly eastern Ukraine, as you will know, is in turmoil. There is an endless stream of hatred, grief, despair, casualties and destruction. People are in fear and without any means of subsistence. Houses of Prayer and the offices of Christian organisations have been occupied by militia and are often…
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Growth is always a wonderful problem and provides opportunities to stretch the wings of faith. To that end, Outreach UK (OUK) has appointed two men to help with the mobilising of ‘the troops’ to spread the gospel more effectively: Duncan Hunter in Manchester, who will be responsible for the North West of England, and…
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Pre-school children should be taught to celebrate homosexuality, and all infant schools should carry books about being gay, the new head of Stonewall has said. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Ruth Hunt, the new chief executive of gay lobby group Stonewall, said that infants needed to be educated to prevent future homophobia.…
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Evangelical churches would do well to upgrade their thinking about and use of biblical doctrines. How is doctrine-building possible? I think of it as something like making a Lego model, fitting the bits together when reading Scripture or listening to biblical preaching. And the big thing is that, unlike merely human ideas, this brings…
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More than 4000 languages still have no complete Bible in their own tongue, a report from the United Bible Societies (UBS) has found. In its Global Scripture Access Report for 2013, the global translation charity and its partners said that, although translation work was progressing, there were still thousands of people groups who do…
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There were positive reports from Evangelical Movement of Wales summer camps. In Woodcroft, led by Tim Morrison, Beth Lewis and Ed Collier, there had been many young campers who had never been before, and arrived ‘looking scared’. However, according to Tim Morrison, all of them settled in ‘really well’ and there was a ‘good…
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Some Bible stories are a bit too indelicate to read to children, lest they ask awkward and embarrassing questions. One such concerns ‘Rahab the harlot’ in the Old Testament book of Joshua. There is no easy way of saying it, but, Rahab was a prostitute who lived in a house on the city walls…
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A pro-Christian minister has been appointed to become secretary for communities and local government after Muslim MP Baroness Warsi stepped down in a protest about Britain’s policy towards Israel. Eric Pickles was made the new government minister for faith in August, a move that, according to the New Statesman, has ‘frustrated many secularists’ due…
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A baby was aborted at 39 weeks, just days before it was due to be born, under what MPs have termed Britain’s ‘medieval and cruel’ abortion laws. National Health Service guidelines consider a baby is full-term at 37 weeks. In a report from The Sun newspaper, the abortion was allowed under guidelines that allow…
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During August the UK remembered the outbreak of the First World War and recalled words attributed to Sir Edward Grey on the eve of that crisis: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life’. In a very different war 100 years on, the…
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The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) has called for an ‘immediate end’ to the violence in the Holy Land, asking Christians to pray that both Israel and Palestine will return to good faith negotiations. In a statement, the WEA quoted from evangelical leaders in Israel and Palestine, reminding the international Christian community that suffering, grief…
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This year’s Lewis Christian Conference took place from Friday 27 June to Monday 30 June in Stornoway. The speaker was Dr Sinclair B. Ferguson, who retired last year as senior minister of First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina. He addressed the conference on the theme ‘In Christ Alone’ and helped focus our attention on…
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Primitive Methodist magazine entries from 1830–1850 reveal a powerful revival movement in the Welsh borders at that time. For example, writing about the events of December 1849, the 1850 magazine cites John Waplington’s report on Talwrn Green: ‘On 30 December 1849, I conducted a lovefeast here; and while the assembly — before commencing a…
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We arrived back home at Niš, in Serbia, after deputation in the UK, to find it had been raining heavily for many weeks. 15 May was the day Serbia suffered most. We had to postpone lectures at the Balkan Theological Seminary (BTS), as all of us were involved in the flood disaster response. As…
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Together with our friends at Hillcrest Chapel and fellow members of Norwich Evangelical Free Church (NEFC), we ran the same three-morning children’s club that we had done at Needham Market in February. This was based on the theme, ‘The Sower, the Samaritan and the Son’, with songs, lessons, games, crafts and quizzes based on three of the Lord’s parables.…
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On 5 July, Pontesbury Baptist Church, a church in rural Shropshire, held an induction service confirming the call of Mike Wells to be its pastor. This was led by Adrian Argile, the regional Baptist representative. Chris Scott, one of the church leaders, explained how Pontesbury had come to call Mr Wells as pastor. The…
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From 27 June to 11 July, Daniel Grimwade, one of the pastors of Dewsbury Evangelical Church, spent two weeks in Ghana with Ivan Watson, from Cavan Baptist Church, Southern Ireland. They travelled to Ghana to attend a preaching conference organised by Pastor Training International (PTI). PTI is a UK registered charity, established in 2004,…
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Cowley Hill Free Church (Baptist), Borehamwood, held a weekend of special services in July. Dr Masters preached on the Saturday from Romans 1:16, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel’, laying emphasis upon the beauty of the gospel message. The most recent pastor, Mr Tom Hill, was preacher for the Lord’s Day. He encouraged the church to…
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Christianity is a thinking religion and thoughts are powerful things. The godly are often troubled by their thought-life and seek a greater degree of sanctification in this area. The Word of God has much to teach us about the mind. Jesus said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind’ (Matthew…
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‘Strangle the leadership and choke the churches!’ was a core element of Communist strategy to suppress and ultimately destroy evangelical churches in the Iron Curtain era. It was a plan which had deeply damaging consequences for the cause of the gospel, resulting in thousands of leaderless churches and countless communities throughout Eastern European countries…
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John HooperPete SullivanEP Books (Bitesize Biography)158 pages, £6.99ISBN: 9781783970094Star rating : 4 Pete Sullivan’s biography of John Hooper is a brief but excellent account of the last few years of Hooper’s life. This period, during which he received the bishoprics of Worcester and Gloucester and died a martyr’s death, demonstrated his character and theology…
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Pop culturedSteve TurnerIVP, 256 pages, £10.99ISBN: 978-1-84474-905-8Star rating : 3 Steve Turner is clearly an enthusiastic Christian with a wealth of experience in pop culture. He has contributed to rock music magazines, as well as written books on Johnny Cash and the Beatles. In Pop cultured he relates that he was once even contacted…
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William FarelJason ZuidemaEP Books (Bitesize Biography), 126 pages, £6.99ISBN: 978-0-85234-954-0Star rating : 4 If the name of William Farel is known at all, it is usually in connection with John Calvin. He is often remembered as the man who changed Calvin’s mind, turning him to his future work in Geneva. The suggestion is sometimes…
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From heaven he came and sought herEd. D. & J. GibsonCrossway Books, 704 pages, hardcover £27.19 (Kindle £10.99)ISBN: 978-1-4335-1276-6Star rating : 5 This book is a landmark contribution to the current debate surrounding particular redemption. Since the Synod of Dort, discussion regarding the extent and intent of the atonement has rumbled on. Each new…
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Captivated — beholding the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrectionThabiti M. AnyabwileReformation Heritage Books, 100 pages £5.45ISBN: 978-1601783004Star rating : 4 Short and easy to read, this is an excellent book. It is based on a series of sermons covering the period of Christ’s life from Gethsemane to the resurrection. There may be only…
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A bruised reed — one Christian’s journey through depressionPhil CottrellEP Books, 72 pages, £4.99ISBN: 978-0852349984Star rating : 3 The author of this booklet has suffered from depression and anxiety and so writes with real understanding of the symptoms and genuine sympathy for fellow-sufferers. So often ministers and other counsellors have to endeavour to help…
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Patrick of Ireland: his life and impactMichael A. G. HaykinChristian Focus Publications, 112 pages, £7.99ISBN: 978-1-78191-303-1Star rating : 4 Michael A.G. Haykin’s Patrick of Ireland: his life and impact is a brief but insightful biography of this Church Father. While other biographies canonise and romanticise Patrick, celebrating the myths surrounding his life and mission,…
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Several years ago, Geoffrey Thomas was invited by the Welsh Evangelical School of Theology to give a series of lectures on the Holy Spirit. He took up the invitation enthusiastically, also preparing a number of sermons on the subject which he delivered at Alfred Place Baptist Church, Aberystwyth, where he has been minister for…
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