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The Cleansing of the Temple by Cecco Caravaggio I want you to imagine that you are a member of the underclass in a politically oppressed nation. There is widespread feeling that the time is ripe for change. All it needs is the right leader to step forward. People are waiting for their own ‘Aragon’, a ‘Return of the King’ moment which will spell the end of the local ‘Sauron’ and his orcish forces. Now imagine that you wake up one morning and find that the crowd has recognised you  as ‘the one’ and you have been thrust to the front of the long expected popular uprising! What is the first thing you would do? Now jump in a time machine and travel back roughly 2000 years to this morning’s equivalent day in about 30 or 33AD. You are in Jerusalem. The Roman army is the occupying force. The oppressed Jewish people have a religious expectation that God will raise up a king like David and reinstate the kingdom as it was in the glory days. There is a prophecy that when this King comes He will...

It’s been a year since the first coronavirus lockdown began. The restrictions have been temporarily relaxed a few times allowing some aspects of normal life to resume. However, even at these times the influence of the pandemic has been felt as we tried, tentatively, to pick up where we left off with the spectre of a second (and now possibly a third) wave lurking ominously in the shadows. At a very mundane and superficial level, it is a year since I last sat down for a coffee in Starbucks, a year since I went out without a face mask, and a year since I entered a public building without going through the ritual of hand sanitising. What has it meant for you? 365 days of unemployment or wondering how to make ends meet. 365 days of loneliness, cut off from personal and meaningful relationships. More or less 365 days of full time child care. 365 days of putting off that visit to the doctor. 365 days of grief, having experienced bereavement early on. 365 days of domestic tension. 365 days ...

Was I right to say, in a previous blog , that the question of whether there is such a thing as ‘revival’ should not divide Christians who are experiencing the ‘extraordinary ordinariness’ of the Spirit’s presence and power? I hope that the rest of that blog, my expressed hesitancy, and sympathy for those who have sincere reservations, as well as my personal belief in revival, were enough to show that I intended that statement to be qualified. Let’s explore it a bit more. The strong, clear undercurrent in Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ (MLJ) exposition of the work of the Holy Spirit, was a concern to maintain the Reformed doctrine of regeneration as the only solution to the problem of sin and the state of fallen humanity as completely dead in trespasses and sins. When MLJ speaks about revival he assumes Calvinistic doctrines about the continual presence of the Holy Spirit in the church, and the Spirit’s work in overseeing the preaching of the gospel in terms of both general and effectual calls...

In this blog I want to do two things. First, summarise the main points from my previous (excessively lengthy) blog for anyone who didn’t feel like wading through it all. Secondly, try and set things up to come back and develop the topic a bit more at a later date. The main point buried beneath all the detail was this: you cannot understand Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s (MLJ) teaching on the Holy Spirit’s work inside revival, in isolation from his understanding of the Spirit’s work outside of revival. That is, when you look at what MLJ taught about Pentecost, and the general call and effectual call of the gospel, as well as the work of regeneration and conversion (and, union with Christ, we could also add) it is clear that he recognised the Spirit to be continuously present and active in the church. But he also saw that the Spirit works with different degrees of power, according to His sovereign plans and purposes, at different times and places, and in different people. The simple existen...

It is very hard to estimate the influence of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (MLJ) on non-conformist Christianity in Wales. Leaving a prominent London medical career to minister in a socially deprived locality among the working classes of Sandfields, Port Talbot, his early ministry stood out as tremendously fruitful at a time when many churches were becoming lifeless under the influence of liberal theologies. Later, as minister of Westminster Chapel in central London, he drew large congregations and many people were helped spiritually through his clear, doctrinal preaching. He became a ‘pastor of pastors’ for a generation of Welsh ministers, inspiring many to make a costly stand and leave denominations which had become increasingly hostile to plain, orthodox Bible teaching. In this sense, his impact was clearly substantial. Still I hesitate, and for this reason. MLJ died 40 years ago this March so I never met him or heard him preach ‘in the flesh’. Through close friendships with older ministers...