The premiere issue of The Barley Cake (Jan. 1881), the first North American assembly magazine, announced the fifth Hamilton, ON, conference. By inference the first was held in 1877. Assessment of the conference, in the direct style of the editor, Donald Ross, followed in the February issue: “A considerable number of Christians from the province […]
The importance and value of biblical preaching is illustrated in the experience of Ezra: “Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). These three activities are most important, and so is the sequence in which they occur. […]
It’s easy to be a destroyer, but much more effort is required to be a builder. One of the tools used by builders is encouragement. The word used in the New Testament is sometimes translated comfort, consolation, exhortation or entreaty. If you want to be an encouragement to your assembly here are at least ten […]
Obviously time is a relative commodity: a half hour in a hammock on a Saturday afternoon is hardly the same as a half hour in the dentist’s chair. We call someone in Europe late on a Saturday night; they are already into the new week. Or we stand under the stars and watch them as […]
Unless we’re careful about who’s in the room at the time, the mere mention of New Testament church truth can spark instant and hostile retaliation. “That’s divisive!” “Isn’t it arrogant to think that we’re right and everyone else is wrong?” “Aren’t there more important things to worry about?” In spite of the attitude behind them, […]
In September of 1978, I was nineteen but it seemed I was going on forty. I had lived my young life in debauchery. No sin was too great to attempt. Yet God had divine intentions for me, intentions of grace and love. I went to a local Baptist church on September 2, 1978, where I […]
As Paul contemplated the unity of all true believers, he burst into a sevenfold exclamation: “One body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one, faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph. […]
Over two years ago, I began a Bible study in our home with some of our closest friends. I was the music director in a large denominational church at the time, of which I was one of six founding members some ten years earlier. Growing from six members to eight hundred was no small feat. […]
During the summer of 1995, I began to have a desire to get closer to the Lord because I realized that, being 43 years old, my time was running out. I also realized that I was probably living in the last days, and that the Lord could come back anytime, so I really wanted my […]