Letters From Alistair Begg

Dear Friend,

Happy New Year!

It feels strange for me to greet you in this way, since I am writing in December. I must admit that I have very strong traditional views when it comes to the passage of one year into the next. It is customary here in Ohio for people to say “Happy New Year” at any point in time leading up to the first day of January. Instinctively, I refrain from returning the greeting. I should explain.

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Dear Friend,

“Jesus is a real problem,” I said to a man I had just met in a hotel lobby. He was sitting with his wife and two very attractive children. When I learned that he was from India, I told him how much I had enjoyed my visits to his homeland.

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Dear Friend,

Jonathan Edwards was born on October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. Regarded as the greatest theologian and philosopher of British American Puritanism and a forerunner of the Great Awakening, he is best known for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which he preached in 1741 following George Whitefield’s tour of the Thirteen Colonies.

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Dear Friend,

It never once occurred to me when I was a boy that I would one day be called to pastoral ministry. My ordination in October of 1976 established me on a course from which, by God’s grace, I have never thought to change. The two years spent in the company and under the tutelage of pastor Derek J. Prime laid the foundation for all that has transpired. To this day, the example he provided continues to challenge and inspire me. For thirty-eight years, the Parkside family has displayed a long-suffering affection for me, and the privilege and responsibility of doing what I do keeps me alert and hopefully growing in grace.

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Dear Friend,

At Parkside, we baptize individuals upon their profession of faith, and we join our young families as they dedicate their children to the Lord, as well as themselves to the sacred privilege of parenting.

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Dear Friend,

Recently, I’ve been thinking about why I was never able to memorize the periodic table of the elements. Our science teacher would unroll a canvas screen that contained them all—top left was hydrogen, and top right was helium. That is about as far as I got! But why was that? After all, I have at least an average memory.

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Dear Friend,

Is there humor in the Bible? I suppose it depends on what we mean. It is safe to say that the Scriptures do not contain funny stories. However, certain occurrences are recorded in such a way that they strike us as funny, or at least ironic.

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Dear Friend,

It is long past time for those of us who by grace through faith have trusted in Christ to acknowledge that we are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11) living in a secular culture. At the same time, we face the fact that we are involved in a continual and irreconcilable spiritual war against the Evil One. Ironically, just as we become increasingly aware of these challenges, it is no longer fashionable to sing hymns about “Christian soldiers marching as to war.” What has happened? Are we to excuse cowardice by calling it humility?

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Dear Friend,

Ilkley Grammar School is situated on Cowpasture Road at a vantage point providing wonderful views of the valley which contains the River Wharfe. The area has been continuously settled since at least the early Bronze Age, and the remains of a Roman fort occupy a site near the town center. Christian worship there dates to AD 627. Living there, it was difficult to bypass the lessons of history. Imagine, if you can, my history teacher, Norman Salmon, sitting perched on a window ledge with his students in rows, his gaze drifting out over the valley. The only fact I remember is the one he told us we must never forget: Bradford City won the FA Cup in 1911!

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Dear Friend,

I have recently been rereading Surprised by Joy, which records the shape of C. S. Lewis’s early life. The front cover of my edition has a subtitle: A remarkably frank and beguiling account of a conversion.

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