Foundations 72

The new edition of the theological journal Foundations is now availabe online. See here. It contains five articles (mostly on the theme of church planting) adn 10 bokk revviews including this one by yours truly.

I shall not die, but live: facing death with gospel hope

Douglas Taylor, Banner of Truth, 2017, HB, 360pp, £13.00

We live in the age of the blog (or weblog). A popular form of website, all sorts of things, good and bad, get blogged on the worldwide web. When Douglas Taylor was told in 2011 that he had incurable cancer he began a blog. You can still access it today (http://worksworthdeclaring.blogspot.co.uk).

Douglas worked as an assistant editor for the Banner of Truth Trust from 1997 until 2011. Following his death in June 2014 his Banner colleagues felt it worth disseminating Douglas’s blogs in printed form and so have assembled a large number of them (about 250) with a brief foreword by Walter Chantry and a short autobiographical entry penned by Douglas himself in 2013.

This beautifully-produced hardback book would make an excellent present for any Christian, especially one facing something similar to the author. Each entry has a heading and date and is somewhere between 300 and 600 words. It is especially useful for someone unable to read for long.

You may get the flavour from these quotes. One entry begins with a reference to the “Diary of Kenneth MacRae”:

Mr MacRae is described, during his last illness, as dreading the night, with its sleeplessness and loneliness. “Oh, the night, the night”, he said wearily on one occasion. His wife Cathie tried to comfort him: “There are songs for the night, too, my dear. He will compass you about with songs of deliverance”. I can very much identify with this. During sleepless periods lately, I have dreaded the night too. I think Mrs MacRae must have had in mind such scriptures as Psalm 42:8: “In the night his song shall be with me.” Or perhaps Psalm 77:6, or Job 35:10…

He goes on to recommend songs of gratitude, confidence and praise for salvation for those in such a position.

Elsewhere he writes,

It would be interesting to know when the expression, “the intermediate state”, was introduced, and by whom. It certainly seems inadequate to express the ideas of paradise (Luke 23:43), of being with Christ, which is far better (Philippians 1:23), of being absent from the body and present [or, “at home”] with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6), or of being received to glory (Psalm 73:25). Not to mention the very clear testimony of Calvin, of the Reformed confessions and the Shorter Catechism, and of some of the best Reformed writers, like Rutherford and Boston, which are far removed from the concept we are considering.

Gary Brady
Pastor, Childs Hill Baptist Church, London