A lot of the Puritans described themselves as the chief of sinners: John Bunyan and Oliver Cromwell for example. They were employing the well-known phrase from 1 Timothy. From an objective standpoint they could not all have been right. In fact, Richard Wurmband (1909–2001), the Romanian pastor, thought Paul was
Read more"Though we stood in the snow, the sun shone upon us": The Particular Baptists and the Great Persecution
A few days ago, I had the immense privilege of speaking to a group of expatriate believers whose home churches were experiencing state-initiated persecution. The experience of their friends and fellow-believers in their homeland is the latest attack on the Church in a long history that stretches back to the days of Christ.
Read moreOverlooking Scottish Christianity
Given my Scottish wife and my own Scottish roots through my great-grandmother, I have had more than a passing interest in Scotland and her history. A few years ago, for example, I picked up a copy of T.M. Devine’s Scotland’s Empire: The Origins of the Global Diaspora (Penguin, 2004). It is an excellent study of the way in
Read more“Hot houses, not ice houses”: Walter Hughes and the preaching of the Gospel at Forward Baptist Church, Toronto
Celebrating her centennial this year, Forward Baptist Church in Toronto has had a succession of remarkable pastors. Consider her second pastor, Walter Hughes, who was called to the church in December of 1924. A veteran of what was then called the Great War and a graduate of McMaster University, he was a natural-born
Read moreRetrieving Andrew Fuller’s model of pastoral ministry
Evangelical pastoral ministry is in crisis. Since the Sixties various pastoral models have been tried and found wanting, and none more so than the celebrity mega-church pastor, which has recently been at the heart of serious questions being raised about the integrity of Evangelicalism in North America. A key part of the
Read moreOn reading John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps
I have long been a fan of the books of John Buchan (1875–1940), the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister, and Governor-General of Canada from 1935 until his death in 1940. He was a remarkable man in many ways, not the least being his awesomely prolific pen.
Read moreChristina Rossetti, “Good Friday”
My two favourite poets of the Victorian era are Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Both wrote poems that offer tremendous devotional avenues. Here is Rossetti’s “Good Friday,” which was published in her 1866 collection The Prince’s Progress and Other
Read moreLa pudeur and our sexualized culture
A good sign of the fact that we live in a hyper-sexualized culture is the way the term “sexy”—which used to have a distinct meaning of sexually alluring—has morphed over into a variety of spheres where the adjective has no business being used: course descriptions, cars, and cameras, for example, are all sexy—or not, as the
Read moreIdentifying heresy
The recent charge filed against Dr Scott Oliphint re his teaching about divine immutability in the OPC has raised for me the important question, “What is heresy?” Dr Oliphint has not been accused of teaching heresy but the charges do specify that he is teaching contrary to the Scriptures and the Westminster Standards.
Read moreThanking God for the conversion of Andrew Fuller
Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) grew up in a Baptist church in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The pastor, John Eve, was a hyper-Calvinist or, as Fuller once put it, a preacher who was “tinged with false Calvinism.” Many years later Fuller remembered how hyper-Calvinism had prevented Eve from freely urging the unconverted to repent
Read moreHaykin Interview: The Bible and friendship in the life of Samuel Pearce
Listen here to Dr. Michael Haykin being interviewed by Dave Jenkins at Servants of Grace on the Bible and friendship in the life of Samuel Pearce.
Read moreA new edition of Kiffen, Knollys, and Keach
One of the first books that I ever wrote was a study of Baptist origins in the seventeenth century. Entitled Kiffin, Knollys and Keach: Rediscovering Our English Baptist Heritage, it was published in 1996 by Reformation Today Trust, then under the direction of a dear friend and mentor in some ways, Erroll Hulse. The book has
Read moreThey hymns of Ann Griffiths
One of the great literary and spiritual treasures of Wales is the hymnody of Ann Griffiths (1776–1805). Born Ann Thomas on a farm called Dolwar Fach near the market town of Llanfyllin in north-east Wales, she was 17 when her mother died and she became the mistress of the farm. Three years later, after having undergone intense
Read moreConfessing the Holy Spirit
It has been many years—37 to be precise—since I graduated with my doctorate in church history from the University of Toronto and Wycliffe College, a constituent college of the Toronto School of Theology. The focus of my thesis was the battle for the deity of the Holy Spirit during the Pneumatomachian controversy of the late
Read moreIsaac Watts as hymnwriter-mentor
The great pioneer hymn-writer of the eighteenth century is undoubtedly Isaac Watts (1674–1748). During his life, Watts penned over 600 hymns, and through them has powerfully shaped the way English-speaking Evangelicals worship God—even today.
Read moreThe Fathers: Our Mentors
Do the Fathers lead logically to the full-blown theology of the Roman Catholic Church or Eastern Orthodoxy? Not at all: Epiphanius of Salamis condemned the use of icons and pictures; Cyprian described Stephen, the bishop of Rome, as the Antichrist; Augustine’s view of the presence of Christ is much closer to Luther than
Read moreThe intolerance of some Puritans and their view of the Irish
Many of us love the works of the Puritans for many things, but hopefully this love does not blind us to their faults. It was Oliver Cromwell who once noted that every sect in his day cries for toleration, but once they have it, they will not give it to any other body of believers. He knew the heart of all too many of his fellow
Read moreHaykin Interview on "Augustine: His Life & Legacy"
Listen to the August 5, 2019 show of Iron Sharpens Iron with Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin on “Augustine: His Life & Legacy (& Why 21st Century Protestants Should Never Ignore Or Forget this 4th & 5th Century Bishop of Hippo, North Africa)”
Read moreThe ideal home
Of modern 20th-century novelists, J.R.R. Tolkien is, in my opinion, undoubtedly the best. And I agree wholeheartedly with those surveys done in the UK at the turn of this century that placed him way out in front of modernist novelists. Now, in The Hobbit, there is a great description of the elf-lord Elrond’s house in
Read more“Remembering H. M. Gwatkin”
The name of Henry Melvill Gwatkin (1844–1916) has long been a familiar one through his standard examination of the Arian heresy, Studies of Arianism (1882), which remains a classical study of this ancient heresy and which I used extensively while doing doctoral studies. What follows in the next few paragraphs is based on a
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