A List of Tops!
The New Year is a time for lists. Top ten lists of this and top one hundred lists of that! So, at Place for Truth we decided to make our own list of tops. The first is a list of…
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Charlotte Arbaleste Duplessis-Mornay – Faithful Chronicler, Devoted Wife, Loving Mother
Charlotte Arbaleste’s life changed drastically when a young man came to town. Native of Paris, she had found refuge in Sedan, in the French Ardennes, after the disastrous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. She had been a widow for five…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Sacraments, Grace on Display
As a Presbyterian, I often find myself in attendance at the examination of our Seminary students. Our denominational seminary lies is within the borders of our presbytery, so we have a good number of students on an ongoing basis. Like…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Preaching
During the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers came to the conclusion, in the face of defection and departure from biblical orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and doxology within the medieval Roman Catholic Church, that there needed to be a means whereby…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: The Offices of Christ
All that the church is can be found in her union with Christ. As John Calvin has so memorably put it, “we must remember that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him,…
The Sun of Righteousness will Rise
The closing chapters of the Old Testament are set against the looming ‘Dark Ages’ of Ancient Israel. God had spoken through his prophets and his people had persistently ignored his word and strayed from his ways – even after the…
Ralph Erskine and His Songs of the Bridegroom
Ralph Erskine (1685-1752) was born ten years after his mother Margaret was pronounced dead. The pronouncement had been mistaken, but she would have indeed been dead if a greedy sexton had not laid his eyes on her precious ring.…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Discipline, a Means & Sign of True Body Life
Discussing the three marks of a true church during a seminary class (preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, and disciplining members), our professor emphasized the third by rhetorically asking, “How many true churches are there today?” His implication was, where…
Love or Hype?
Several years ago I worked for a funeral director. On one occasion I travelled with him to another city in order to recover a body. The person, a younger person, had traveled and died while out of town. On the…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Discipline, a True Mark?
Not all the 16th century Protestant Reformers agreed that church discipline should be considered one of the marks of a true church. Calvin, for example, spoke only of the pure preaching of the word and the right administration of…