In doing a little research on William Wilberforce this week (in anticipation of this week's release of the film Amazing Grace , which marks the 200th anniversary of the slave trade in the British Empire), I stumbled across a quotation that confirms the truth of Carl's recent post on humility...

During Sunday evening (!) worship a few weeks ago, I was refreshed to hear again a hymn by Derek Thomas and Paul Jones. The hymn is entitled "Our Father Bless'd, To Us Bestows." I believe we may have posted it before, but Lord willing someone from the ref21 staff will make it magically appear on...

Readers who lament the undeserved popularity of Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion will be heartened by the sharp criticism the book receives in the January 11 issue of The New York Review of Books . While generally unsympathetic to biblical theism, the reviewer (H. Allen Orr) properly...

Lisa (full disclosure: a woman to whom I have been married for 19 years) received the following email this week from a distant friend: "Tell your husband that he is on my iPOD between the Doobie Brothers and Duran Duran (he's in the Ds -- Dr. Philip Ryken)." One can only hope that Professor Trueman...

From Makoto Fujimura's "Refractions" essay on a New York exhibit of letters from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here Fujimura is reflecting on the declaration of Jesus that wars will happen: "In Jesus' realism of 'these things must happen,' he was also reminding us that our sacrifice, either for...

From one of Makoto Fujimura's "Refractions" essays, writing in response to the Amish school girl who tried to offer her life for her classmates, with the implications for artists: "Here, in a miracle nobody noticed, is a bugle call also directed towards us artists. It begins in a belief that our...

A close friend and ministry colleague reported to me today that the well-known Beijing church activist Hua Huiqi and his 76-year-old mother were attacked and wounded by the police in the morning of January 26, 2007:

Especially since we have a feature on Charles Spurgeon in this month's issue of Reformation21, it seems like a good time to quote from that worthy London Baptist once again. As I have been preaching through Luke over the last several years I have tried to read all of the many sermons that Spurgeon...

Historians now generally regard the 1900's as "the American Century." What do you suppose they will call the twenty-first century? Possibly "the Biotech Century," as new scientific discoveries enable the radical re-engineering of the human body [see Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century: Harnessing...

I am grateful for Rick Phillips's latest post on feminism. There are errors on both sides of a biblical view of godly male leadership in the home and in the church. Authoritarian, domineering men who stifle the gifts of women -- or worse, who use their stength or their position to legitimate verbal...

You can't choose your family . . . or can you? Last week ABC News reported that 40-year old Jenna MacFarlane has adopted new parents. Feeling estranged from her own family, MacFarlane took out a personal ad that began "Single white female seeking family." She received nearly a hundred replies and...

I see that Rick Phillips has already written a full-length response to Susan Wise Bauer's Books & Culture review of Finally Feminist , a new book by John Stackhouse. I have not read the Stackhouse book, but based on the summary in the review, its arguments for egalitarianism are all too...

From Dave Shiflett, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity (New York: Sentinel, 2005): "As the mainline has moved closer to flatlining, churches that have maintained allegiance to traditional Christian belief, comparatively speaking, have experienced...

There is still time to register for the Workshop on Biblical Exposition at Tenth Presbyterian Church February 6-8. One of last year's participants wrote: "I want to thank you again for the Workshop on Biblical Exposition. It has changed my preparation and my preaching. My deacons and congregation...

Carl, can you tell us again where to get all these provocative quotes from P. T. Forsyth? With regard to the last quotation in your most recent post, may I infer that Mr. Forsyth had never been to Wales?

Belatedly, I write to reflect further on Carl Trueman's Counterpoint ("Close, but No Cigar"). There Carl writes about his recent visit to a synagogue and the rabbi's thoughtful homily on Genesis 22, which included everything except the gospel. As I read Carl's article -- and as I write this post...

If scoring is the criterion, then basketball is semi-Pelagian, at best. For a truly Pelagian sport, one would have to consider the quintessentially English sport of cricket, which is much higher scoring than basketball, and where even the bowlers can manage to score the occasional run or two. If...

Yesterday my father (Leland Ryken, Professor of English, Wheaton College) sent me a thought-provoking exchange from John Steinbeck's East of Eden : "If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule--a great and lasting story is about eveyrone or it will not last. The...

Tenth Presbyterian Church is hosting its second annual Workshop on Biblical Exposition, February 6-8. The workshop is put on by The Simeon Trust; the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is also sponsoring the event and assisting in various ways. The speakers include Kent Hughes (retired Senior...

From my morning's reading, in preparation to preach on Luke 23:32-38: "Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee, And at thy death giving such liberal dole, Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul ." -- John Donne, "Crucifying"

One of my most vivid memories of kindergarten is hearing Miss Killip talk to us about heaven, telling us that Jesus was preparing a place for us. This was back in the day when John 14 still said "many mansions" -- an evocative phrase. Recently I received a "Tribute to Beatrice K. Killip," written...

At Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church we end the old year and begin the new oneby celebrating the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Our worship service traditionally closes with the singing of "Jesus! What a Friend for Sinners!" This year I learned that the hymn's author, J. Wilbur Chapman,...

That London preacher, six months later, flew to do a convention for 5,000 Indian missionaries in a remote corner of northeastern India. And at the end, the Indian missionary in charge, a humble little man took him home to his humble little home for a simple meal. And he said, “How did you, as a...

Our own Derek Thomas and Dr. Paul Jones (an Alliance Council member who serves organist and music director at Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church) have collaborated on a new Christmas carol. The full text and music will be posted soon, but here is the opening stanza: Not in regal robes of...