The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples: Making Church Discipline Edifying. James Durham. Reformation Heritage Books, 2022. 165 pp. Softcover. $14. The dying words of Rev. James Durham (1622-1658) [1] was his major writing on the vital need for proper ecclesiastical disciplinary procedures in, A...

Psalm 147:7 commands, “Sing unto the LORD with thanksgiving…” for providing us everything as individuals, the church, and a country. Verse 20 speaks of gratitude for God’s special care of Israel as a nation . Though not a Theocracy, yet we His people should appreciate our nation’s history and...

This Church Discipline series focused on guiding members in need of repentance by formal levels of rebuke. But the hopeful prayer of elders at each point of censure along the way is that it need never go further, especially not to the final act of excommunication. Proverbs 25:11-12 reads, A word...

Reformed, confessional theologians often point out that discipline is one of three signs of a true church. [1] Highlighting this distinguishing mark, my seminary professor once rhetorically asked our class, “How many true churches are out there?” The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) chapter 30...

When the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions began over a year ago, our church Session carefully searched the Bible and developed a position which we have continued to practice in our State of California. We published our church presentation in article form for reformation21, “Submit to the Government...

To understand anger and its peaceful Biblical therapies, we make use of the Puritan John Downame’s book, The Cure of Unjust Anger . [1] Downame focuses on Ephesians 4:26 to frame his discussion: Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Downame describes anger as, “…an...

Cory Griess, Preparing for Dating and Marriage: A 31-Day Family Devotional (Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2020), 112 pp. When my eldest daughter entered her senior year of high school last Fall, we had a Daddy-daughter brunch date to plan her future together. We enjoyed navigating through...

[Originally submitted in December of 2019, but retracted; see footnote number six.] Two weeks ago my wife went to Urgent Care during our morning Sabbath service to get important treatment. When she returned while I was leading our singing of the closing Psalm, she jubilantly waved at me through the...

When we study one of the Lord’s attributes we focus on a characteristic that is attributed to His essence or being to tell us what He is like and Who He is. Some attributes are exclusive to God and so referred to as incommunicable. [1] But God shares other of His characteristics with His redeemed...

Recently I had been thinking about how to minister to several members of our congregation because of what God is calling them to go through again which will surely tax their energy and emotions. I had also been pondering what we are all going through in the present state of pandemic uncertainty. So...

During this uncertain coronavirus pandemic confining most of us to our homes, I hear of people complaining about being bored with all the extra time on their hands. But how often have they previously complained, “I just don’t have the time!” Well now you do. How will you make good use of it?...

Every year a late night talk show host encourages parents to prank their kids with a faux profession that they devoured all their little pumpkins’ Halloween candy. [1] The show features videos sent in of children throwing monstrous fits of rage and heartache until the parents reveal they are “just...

When I see the Ten Commandments summarized artistically and framed for purchase to hang on the walls of a Christian home, I often wonder if the Fourth Commandment, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8), ought not to be chiseled out. Christians will for the most part acknowledge...

What season did we recently enter? Spring. What comes next? Summer. Then what? Fall. Then what? Winter. And then? Spring. And so on until Christ’s Second Coming. The year’s seasons are cyclical—and somewhat predictable. So the seasons of our years should not surprise us but rather inspire our...

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 are authentic churches to...

We often pray the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer after sinning. We should learn to pray the sixth petition before similarly sinning again, remembering, ye have not because ye ask not (James 4:2). The essence of the sixth petition, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (...

In her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert , [1] Dr. Rosaria Butterfield compares her Christian conversion experience to "an alien abduction or a train wreck." As she shares about her very public Christian "coming out" while a tenured university English professor specializing in "Queer...

Jennifer Marie, my dear wife, died on the fourteenth of September last year. [1] She was thirty-eight. We had barely made it to our eighteenth wedding celebration the month before. Our four young covenant children prepared and served us a special meal that she could eat. We dined together beneath...

Let us meditate on what Jesus said to the thief next to Him on the cross, as recorded in Luke 23:43: “Verily … Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise”. [1] In union with Christ by faith, we will go immediately to a blissful place upon our death. We will leave this world of sin and misery behind us...

Several people have told me they were first truly converted Christians upon becoming Calvinists. Finally, the Bible made sense when the Spirit enlightened them to see, caress, and smell TULIP’s five lovely petals of God’s sovereign embrace from regeneration to glorification. [1] Thus, as the...

Just as bottles of distilled water offer drink that is free of poisonous chemicals and clogging minerals, so the Church’s confessions provide boiled-down, condensed, purified orthodoxy for healthy Body life systems. For instance, a seminary student being examined on the floor of Presbytery with...

In the context of conforming more consistently to the Westminster Confession of Faith , our Session revisited re-baptism while studying sections 27:3 and 28:6-7, especially pondering these closing words: “The sacrament of baptism is but once to be administered unto any person.” This led us to...

Just as it revives the Body of Christ when schooled in the classic theology and pious character of the good old Puritans, so we may be renewed by “going old school” with The Log College. Considering that the prominent eighteenth century evangelist George Whitfield referred to what would later be...

I once saw a sobering reminder of our mortality and need for the Son of David. A missionary shared his video of a dead Jamaican man lying in a simple wooden box in a walk-in freezer. Another man hammered nails into the box’s top as casually as one might prepare freight for shipping. The dead man...