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By J. Ligon Duncan
Alliance President
A Transcript of a paper given in Jackson, Mississippi and Glasgow, Scotland
Many intelligent Christians are puzzling today over what is being called "the new perspective on Paul." Seminary students run across it in their New Testament course reading and class lectures. Pastors hear about it from fledgling theologues wanting to impress them with their newfound knowledge of the latest in Pauline studies. Laypeople find it being peddled ubiquitously on websites, in various online discussion groups, and in numerous books on the Christian market, even from conservative evangelical publishing houses. By J. Ligon Duncan. 
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By Richard Phillips
Bible Teacher, God's Living Word
There is a fine line between the use and the overuse of a word. The same is true with public figures. When someone is getting exposure, we are excited for them. But when they are over-exposed we are embarrassed for them. In my view, the word covenant has crossed that line in Christian circles. As such, one often hears it applied in dubious ways...
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By Derek Thomas
Alliance Council Member
This time of year, we might be forgiven the thought that the reference to the "king of terrors" in Job is to the IRS, but in fact it something much worse--death (Job 18:14)! It is Dr. Johnson who is credited with the remark that when a man knows he is going to be hanged in a fortnight,
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By Albert Mohler
Alliance Council Member
The scale of suffering and the magnitude of the disaster in Southeast Asia defy the imagination. Sitting comfortably in our own homes and offices, we can look at the images, video segments, and computer simulations, knowing all the while that, in the nations that encircle the Indian Ocean, the death toll continues to mount.
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By Richard Phillips
Bible Teacher, God's Living Word
Because so many Americans watch sports events, some Christians attempt to present a gospel witness in stadiums and arenas. Perhaps you have seen the signs, held up in the crowd or posted on a wall. Most commonly, the signs have this short message: 3:16. The idea is that people will know or find out that JN is shorthand for the Gospel of John and that 3:16 means chapter 3, verse 16. The hope is that great things will happen if people will merely pick up a Bible and read this one verse.
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By J. Ligon Duncan
Alliance President
I never thought a movie would ever do justice to Tolkien, but this one did, and that is high praise from a Tolkien fanatic. I should say, as a whole, the movie is incredibly intense (definitely not fare for younger children -- in that regard, the PG-13 rating needs to be taken seriously: there is no sexual content or foul language, but the violence, while not gratuitous, is realistic).
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By Derek Thomas
Alliance Council Member
I have been listening to Dimitri Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in E Minor, op. 67. It is a vivid depiction of the Nazi death camps.
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By J. Ligon Duncan, Mark Talbot
The Alliance's refutation of Harold Camping's view of the church is here. This paper, written by Council Members J. Ligon Duncan and Mark Talbot, points out on several levels, using Scripture, why Harold Camping's view on the church is wrong.
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By J. Ligon Duncan
Alliance President
In the wake of the Terrorist Attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
These remarks were given during the Wednesday Evening Special Prayer Service, September 12, 2001 at First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi
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By Mark Dever
Alliance Council Member
A transcript of remarks delivered at Capitol Hill Baptist Church on September 16, 2001
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A Book Review by Derek Thomas
 I never tire of hearing a Beethoven symphony even though I must have listened to all nine (ten, if you count an unfinished one) hundreds of times. The same is true of all great literature—particularly those that feed our souls and draw us nearer to God. And the best literature of that kind comes from the Puritan era.
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A Book Review by Mark Talbot on The Prayer of Jabez
This little book, its website reports, has been a runaway best-seller, appearing on both the New York Times and the USA Today Top 10 Lists and winning Nonfiction Book of the Year, Retailers Choice Awards. Over six million copies are in print. Time magazine has chronicled its extraordinary success. The New York Times ran a front-page article on it.
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By Sinclair Ferguson
Alliance Council Member
How successfully do you handle the sins of others? Observation suggests that the Christian family too often reacts with either hot indignation or cold indifference, without a proper sense of biblical responsibility. Sometimes we seem as bad at handling others’ failures as we are at overcoming our own. No doubt these two things are related. Yet, given the nature of the gospel, would we not expect that the church should be vastly different from the world on this point?
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By Sinclair Ferguson
One of the very first “Christian” possessions I ever had, apart from a Bible, was a “Promise Box”—a box containing hundreds of biblical promises printed on small cards, one for each day of the year. I cannot now remember whether it was a gift or a personal purchase. Perhaps my forgetfulness is a personal convenience.
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By J. I. Packer
I expect that when you hear the phrase “living by faith,” you think only of Christians trying to exist without guaranteed financial support and that when you hear the word “fundamentalism” you think only of a version of Evangelicalism that seems to you coarse, crass, combative, crude, and best avoided.
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By R. C. Sproul
Alliance Council Member
Evangelical Christianity now offers heaven on the installment plan. Through a magical kind of faith we can take advantage of a spiritual lay-away plan. We can sell the gospel on a 90-day payment system. The future can be ours, now. How does this legerdemain work? With the proper formula, the new magic brings the rabbit out of the hat without the use of mirrors. It is the “name it and claim it” gambit, a ploy that even Houdini failed to grasp.
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By R. C. Sproul
Alliance Council Member
Perhaps no individual has done more to shape modern interpretation of the Bible than the late Marburg professor, Rudolf Bultmann. Known for his radical program of demythologizing the New Testament, he argued that an objective grammatico-historical method of biblical interpretation is neither possible nor desirable.
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By J. I. Packer
The question of whether particular people are saved, or are converted, or are believers, is often heard in evangelical circles. We recognize it in some form a necessary question, because it points to the momentous passage from spiritual death to spiritual life that everyone needs, and does so in away that excludes the sacramentalist fancy that merely being baptized makes you safe forever.
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By J. I. Packer
How does one measure spiritual growth? The question assumes that we do grow spiritually, that there is something to be measured. But can I take that for granted? Scripture tells us to grow—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Peter. But I suspect that, with all our passion for bodybuilding and personal development, very few of us are seeking to grow in the way that Peter tells us to. So very few of us are actually doing so.
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By Sinclair Ferguson
Someone I knew recently expressed an opinion that surprised and in some ways disappointed me. I said to myself, “I thought he would have more discernment than that."
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By R. C. Sproul
Alliance Council Member
Recently a Christian educator remarked to me, “The modern student faces the alternatives of a Christian education or a good education.” Though on the surface the remark seems bathed in cynicism, it was actually delivered in a tone of profound alarm. The speaker is committed to the enterprise of Christian education, but is concerned that in an effort to maintain a spiritual purity unblemished by the world, much of Christian education may be compromising the goal of academic excellence.
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By J. I. Packer
To begin at the beginning, taking nothing for granted, is always the wise way. So the first thing to do is face up to the basic question: Does “right living” matter anyway? Is the moral quality of a Christian’s personal life important? To this question you would, of course, expect all believers to reply “yes,” for any other answer would sound shocking. But if our “yes” were motivated only by a desire not to shock nor lose face
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By Sinclair Ferguson
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was one of the most remarkable men of his time—a mathematician, evangelical theologian, economist, ecclesiastical, political, and social reformer all in one. His most famous sermon was published under the unlikely title: “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” In it he expounded an insight of permanent importance for Christian living: you cannot destroy love for the world merely by showing its emptiness.
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By James Montgomery Boice
It has always been difficult for Christians to think in harmony about the state. This is due to two ambiguities. One ambiguity is that the church, although it should be sacred in the sense of being devoted wholly to God and his kingdom, is often quite secular and thus, to the embarrassment of many believers, frequently takes its authority, theology, agenda, and methods from the world. It is not noticeably unique.
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By Elisabeth Elliot
Four more days until she would be 17. It would be her father’s birthday, too, but there would be no celebration this year. It was the depth of the Great Depression and her father was dying. The children knelt around the bed while their mother prayed, but the girl wondered whether anyone was listening. Was God near enough to hear a prayer? Did he take any notice of their situation?
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By J. I. Packer
It is generally felt that guidance is a tricky subject, and most of us have had first-hand experience of what we would call guidance problems, either our own or those of others whom we have tried to help.
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By James Boice
Something about Easter cuts through mere religious profession. At other times of the year and on other subjects the outwardly religious person can mask an empty spiritual life without words. Not on Easter. At Easter we proclaim the resurrection, which is difficult to do if we have not had a personal encounter with the One who rose form the dead 2,000 years ago.
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By Sinclair Ferguson
Alliance Council Member
My first doctor was a man of great personal warmth and reassuring presence. As a child, I thought of him with deepest admiration and affection. However, there was one part of his examinations I always disliked—when he spoke the words “Stick out your tongue, and say ‘aah.’” Yet while always feeling terribly discomfited by this procedure, I was also always amazed that he could apparently tell so much about my health by this “tongue test”!
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By Sinclair Ferguson
An encounter with a friend from my teen-age years reminded me of the wise and pithy words of the Puritan writer John Flavel: “The providence of God is like Hebrew words—it can be read only backwards.” I was leaving a restaurant in my native town in Scotland one day and there was my friend being helped along by his elderly mother.
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By J. I. Packer
In two previous articles I urged that God ordinarily guides His children in their decision-making through Bible-based wisdom. I dismissed the idea that guidance is essentially an inner voice telling us facts otherwise unknown and prescribing action in light of them, and I criticized the way some Christians wait passively for guidance and “put out a fleece” when perplexed, rather than prayerfully following wisdom's lead. By now, I am sure, there are mutterings: readers are feeling that I have played down, and thereby dishonored, the guiding ministry of the Holy Spirit.
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By Edith Schaeffer
Screaming headlines spill out of the paper on our doorstep, shocking reports interrupt the music coming from the radio, shattering news from the TV is followed by weather reports and news of the latest strike. We get almost numb to the point of simply mashing the potatoes a little harder before beating them with hot milk and butter, turning our minds away from having to deal with the present history we are living in.
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By J. I. Packer
“It’s a grand life if you don’t weaken,” says the British platitude. It’s a good life only when you do weaken, says the Bible. Once more the wisdom of God upsets the conventional wisdom, the wisdom of this world. Christians must always be alert to points at which God’s thoughts cut across what society takes
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By Sinclair Ferguson
Alliance Council Member
You may have heard these words (or some variation on them) quoted before: “What a man is in secret, in these private duties, that he is in the eyes of God and no more. The most frequently quoted version is usually attributed to the young Scotsman, Robert Murray McCheyne. But other masters of the Christian way
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By J. I. Packer
One way in which evangelicals differ from most Roman Catholics and liberals is that they are constantly uptight about guidance. Does any concern command more interest or arouse more anxiety among modern Bible-believers than discovering the will of God for one's life? I do not think so.
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By F.F. Bruce In the wake of centuries of anti-Jewish prejudice, many Christian scholars and leaders are busy today mending fences. Spokesmen from the Pope to Billy Graham have explicitly relieved the Jewish people from the unique and blanket charge of deicide¯a real milestone in Jewish-Christian relations.
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By F. F. Bruce
Five years exactly after the publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the Revised Standard Version of the Apocrypha has appeared (September 30, 1957). The translation of the Apocrypha will probably not cause such heartburning as was aroused by the translation of the canonical books; for most of the severest critics of the R.S.V. hold, with the Westminster Confession of Faith, that the apocryphal books, not being of divine inspiration, are of no part of the Canon of the Scripture.
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By F.F. Bruce
Some of the most desirable things in life are obtained not as goals for which we chart a straight course but as by-products of other pursuits. This is true of Christian unity. There are movements which make Christian unity their sole or principal aim; there are others which exist for quite distinct purposes but find that in the course of fulfilling them they have achieved a remarkable degree of Christian unity. In this connection I think of the great Bible Societies.
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By F. F. Bruce
First of all, because the Christian faith, unlike other major religions, is not built merely on a set of religious or ethical ideals. Rather it is grounded in real historical events. The heart of the gospel is that Gods Son came into the world, suffered, died and rose again for our eternal salvation. If it can be shown that the New Testament was not compiled until several generations after Christ, the door would be left open for serious garbling of the facts or even outright manipulation.
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By Donald Barnhouse
"Dr. Barnhouse leads us through the assurance, the foundation of our holiness. He insightfully says "If the Word of God contained your name, you would always have the fear that the message was addressed to some one else of the same name." "But God has given His Word to us in such terms that every one who hears or reads may know that God is speaking directly to his own need, and I want that this should be in your consciousness as you follow the word that God has given me for you." He reminds that "The work of salvation has been done in our hearts and that it has been done for ever" And "The Word of God is the guarantee of our salvation and the ground of our assurance.""
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By Donald Barnhouse
"Why are there four gospels? Some have looked upon the Bible as a human book and said, “That’s simple: men named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each sat down and said, ‘I’m going to write a biography.”’ I cannot take any such opinion. The Holy Spirit determined before the foundation of the world that there would be these four portraits of the Lord Jesus Christ. He took four men and prepared them to tell the story of Jesus’ life, each in his own way. By that means He fulfilled His purpose: to present to us the Lord Jesus Christ in His various aspects."
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By Donald Barnhouse
"Much of the difficulty of spiritually growing up is the shifting of gears that takes a child out of spiritual childhood into a spiritual maturity. When we are children, we live largely on our parents' faith. We say what they say; we have what they have, and we do what they do. But then comes the time when we have to shift gears, and we have to know God alone. For it is only when we know God that we begin to develop into the higher brackets, the higher attitudes of prayer."
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Excerpt from A Voyage of Discovery
By Derek Thomas
"Home is where the heart is. So the saying goes.
There is a Welsh word 'hiraeth', which is almost impossible to translate. It means an intense homesickness that can render the sufferer ill. There can exist a longing for familiar sights, sounds, and smells of what memory calls 'home' that is intense. Something of that 'longing for home' is apparent in this opening psalm of ascent."
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Excerpt from Puritan Reformed Spirituality
By Joel Beeke
"Spirituality is a subject much on the minds of people today. With its prevailing secularism and materialism, modern culture has failed to satisfy its consumers. Many are coming to realize the truth of what Moses said to the children of Israel, "Man doth not live by bread only" (Deut. 8:3). With Christ in His Sermon on the Mount, they ask, "Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" (Matt. 6:25). The result is a new interest in discovering and nurturing the inward, spiritual dimensions of human life."
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Excerpt from Psalm 119 For Life
By Hywel Jones
"There is something surprising about the first two lines of this section. It is the fact that they contain no reference to the Word of God. In that respect they are almost unique in the psalm, verse 84 being the only other exception. This omission is of course deliberate on the part of the psalmist because his purpose is to focus attention on deeds, and not on words. He begins by saying, 'I have done... ', and then refers to what his adversaries intend to do. Next he tells the Lord what he wants him to do and again repeats what his adversaries are likely to do (v. 122)."
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Excerpt from The Epistles of John
By Joel Beeke
"Jesus is 'that which was from the beginning'. John is not thinking here about the birth of Jesus or the beginning of his earthly ministry. He uses this expression to signify that Jesus existed before anything else. His words echo Genesis 1:1. When everything else began to have existence, Jesus the Word of life was already present. He did not have to come into being. He already was. He is the unmade, uncreated one. He is and was and ever will be the complete and perfect Word of life."
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Excerpted from God's Method for Holy Living
By Donald Barnhouse
"One of the great purposes of the redemption that Jesus Christ provided for us was that here and now on this earth we might have life. It was not merely that we might be saved for the future, and thus come some day to dwell in Heaven, but that we might know today what it is to live Christ. John brings his Gospel to a conclusion, saying: “These things have I written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. “He does not stop there, but completes the thought: “And that believing ye might have life through His Name.” So one of the principal purposes of faith is that we might know holiness in our lives today."
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Excerpt from The 24/7 Christian
By Anthony Selvaggio
"... Even though I went into that meeting prepared to hear about a trial, I was still overwhelmed by what this young woman shared with me. She shared a detailed account of her father’s debilitating heart illness and how many times he had been near death. She recounted to me the numerous surgeries and the vast array of medications which were necessary to preserve her father's life. She also explained to me the incredible stress and strains experienced by her family as a result of her father’s illness."
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Foreward and Introduction from Republocrat
By Carl Trueman
"So to be “suitably contemptuous,” let me consider the carefully selected adjective oxymoronic. I do like the fact that it concludes with the word moronic. I let the innuendo of that word speak for itself. But do note that the word begins with oxy, which has the sense of “sharp,” “acidulous,” or “caustic.” Thus the two words together connote a sharp contradiction. Words and phrases such as sophomore (wise-fool), deafening silence, exploding peace, and perhaps family vacation fall under this rubric. So does the title Liberal Conservative. Indeed, it takes an oxymoronic scholar to write an oxymoronic book. Let me illustrate."
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Excerpt from Thessalonians
By Donald Barnhouse
"The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, a letter to a missionary church only one year old, was the first book of the New Testament to be written. All scholars agree that 1 Thessalonians is older than Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and all other parts of the New Testament."
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By James Boice
"We are not loved because we are lovable, for we are not. It is true that some of us may be lovable to some others of us, but this is only when we look at the matter from a human perspective. From God's perspective there is nothing in us to make us even remotely desirable. He is holy; we are unholy. He is just; we are unjust. He is loving; we are filled with hatred and all forms of sin. In short, we are sinful and in willful rebellion against Him. Yet He loves us. In fact, so great a marvel is this that God even uses it to commend His love to us."
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Excerpt from So Pastor, What's Your Point?
By Dennis Prutow
"When God's people gather in His gracious presence, God commits Himself to apply His Word to their hearts: this is the divine dynamic. Preaching and teaching are vital parts of this divine dynamic out of which grows a proper definition of preaching. Phillips Brooks offers this well-known definition in his Yale Lectures of 1877: "Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men." 1 Brooks also puts it this way, "Truth through Personality is our description of real preaching." 2 The widely read twentieth century homiletician Andrew Blackwood expands this definition. "What do we understand by preaching? It means divine truth through personality or the truth of God voiced by chosen personality to meet human needs." 3 Both of these definitions emphasize God's truth and human instrumentality; Blackwood adds the purpose of meeting actual human needs."
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The Alliance's response to Evangelicals and Catholics Together Two, "The Gift of Salvation."
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By Peter Kemeny
Many Christians faithfully attend a church for years but never take vows of church membership. They view church membership as an option rather than as a Scriptural mandate. Does the Bible command Christians to join a church? Consider the scriptural case for church membership.
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By Robert Zerhusen
A hypothetical description of the kinds of questions and overlooked details that Columbo might contribute if he investigated the "other tongues" of Acts 2.
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By Horatius Bonar
Much of the present controversy is concerning the will of God. On this point many questions have arisen. The chief one is that which touches on the connection between the will of God and the will of man. What is the relation between these? What is the order in which they stand to each other? Which is first?
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By Horatius Bonar
It is with our sins that we go to God, for we have nothing else to go with that we can call our own. This is one of the lessons that we are so slow to learn; yet without learning this we cannot take one right step in that which we call a religious life.
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By Roy Blackwood
What is this Kingdom? Three questions must be answered. 1. What is the source and origin? Why did Jesus Christ “need” to be King and to have this Kingdom? What is THE PURPOSE? 2. What kind of Kingdom is it, the nature of it? 3. What is the extent of Christ’s Kingdom? When did it begin? When will it end? Where is it? Who all and what all are included in Christ’s Kingdom? And where will this Kingdom be?
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By Thomas Clothier
Leaders face many challenges. That is why they're leaders. However, the greatest test of leadership will occur in conflict. God has called me to pastoral ministry. God has also permitted conflict and trials to occur in my pastoral ministry. I neither sought nor desired these conflicts. However, God used these times of testing to make me the godly leader He desires. The same is true for you. I have come to believe that conflict is an indispensable tool God uses to develop godly leadership.
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By Robert Zerhusen
A linguistic approach to the understanding of the "other tongues" in Acts 2.
This article seeks to demonstrate that a socio-linguistic approach to the understanding of the "other tongues" of Acts 2 is more helpful than previously suggested approaches. The arricle proceeds in two patrs: after problems with existing interpretations are pointed out, an alternative is presented, which focuses on the function of the Hebrew language in first-century Judean culture.
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By Robert Zerhusen
A New Look At Tongues Part II
The essay presented here was first published in Biblical Theology Bulletin (© 1997, vol. 27) and is used by the permission of the author.
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By Terry Johnson
Terry Johnson, the Senior Minister of the historic Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia, has for many years produced an annual calendar of hymns and psalms for the use of his congregation on the Lord's Day. You will find a decade's worth of them here. By creating the calendar, Terry is trying to assure that his congregation gets a regular yearly diet of the very best hymns from the Reformed evangelical Protestant English-speaking tradition and is annually engaged widely and deeply by and with the whole of the Bible's songbook, the Psalms. This is a tremendous pastoral resource for ministers who want to improve the sung praise of their congregations, and to make sure that God's Word in the Psalter is not neglected in the weekly singing of the local church.
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