God Sent Forth His Son.

God has shown remarkable patience with the world.  In His patience, He has given the human race more than sufficient time to prove that it cannot save itself.  The world had all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but this could not save the world.  The Persian and Assyrian empires were also given time to prove what they could do to change man, but they too failed.  Then we had the Grecian and Roman empires with all their great philosophy and debating skills, and all their legal and administrative expertise, but still no improvement came to the world.  In fact, the longer man tried to improve the world, the more it nose-dived into moral and spiritual corruption. All these purely human attempts to save humanity from itself, let alone from the coming wrath of God, failed lamentably. 

But God!  Here are Paul's great words.  But God.  When the fulness of the time had come, when men had more than sufficient time to prove themselves, and failed, God stepped in and did what man could not do and never can do - save the world.  All man's solutions were but treating the symptoms and did nothing to resolve man's estranged relationship with God, his Creator and Judge.  If the world were ever going to be saved, God must do it. And he did.  He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, born of a woman, the virgin Mary, and born under the law, that He might redeem those under the law.

You see, man's greatest need was for redemption.  He needed to be redeemed; and everything he did throughout the whole of history was woefully inadequate.  But God's action was adequate, adequate to save the entire human race, on condition of faith. If man would but believe in the only Saviour of the world, he would be saved.  God would redeem him and bring him into fellowship with Himself.  He would deliver him from this present evil world/age. 

But man still thinks he knows best, better than God.  Man is still trying to work his own salvation, but he is destined to fail, and face divine judgement. Man still needs Christ.  And the Christ he needs was sent on the first Christmas to redeem mankind.  This is what Christmas is all about.  It is about God's way of salvation.  The Son of the Virgin is our only hope for time and for eternity.  His mother cannot do anything for you, so don't be deceived by those religious people who tell you she can.  That blessed woman was a saved sinner like me and many others; she too needed a Saviour.  So she cannot help you.  But the fruit of her womb can and will do for you what no one else, including yourself, can do - he can save you the moment you trust in Him alone for salvation.

Unbiblical Authoritarianism Within the Churches.

The sad reality amongst some of the churches in Northern Ireland is that some of God's dear servants are being opposed by professing evangelical and reformed ministers.  It is strange, but true.  These are reformed evangelicals who have elevated the church denomination way above the Gospel.  For them, being a 'good servant of the church' equates with being a 'good servant of the Gospel.' These ought to be synonymous realities, but the truth is that this is not the case. It is so sad that Gospel preachers within these denominations are being harried and 'monitored' and 'watched' by the "eyes and ears" of the establishment bodies, namely, their colleagues in the ministry and their 'agents' in the pews.

Now there are also ministers who are being - at this very time - opposed and persecuted by non-believers who have been accepted as Christians by the church's elders and therefore as church members.  This is what Gospel ministers must expect in what are imperfect churches.  But the servants of Satan masquerading as Christians is another matter altogether.  Even within the ministry there are those who not only do not preach a clear Gospel message but even undermine and deny it.

My heart yearns for these brethren, knowing, as I do, what this means in experience, not only for the minister, but for his wife and children as well.  That's why, I believe, the important place of the Christian minister within the churches and his teaching role there, must be reinforced robustly because they are people within the churches that are determined to silence the preaching of the gospel, and therefore the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God.  There is too much at stake in our province to allow this to happen.  Irish writer James Joyce once said, "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing."  I do not intend this to happen in my country without a passionate effort on my part to maintain the centrality of the preaching ministry within the churches.

We often hear of the persecution of ministers in foreign lands, and we pray for these brothers who are facing death every day.  But we are allowing the devil to proceed uninhibitedly in Ulster when we believe that this is still a Gospel preaching land, and that the churches here are faithful to the Gospel.  I only wish this were the case, and pray that ere long, this will be a Gospel preaching and Gospel believing land once again.

The church in Ulster is in a sorry mess.  So deep are the spiritual problems that it defies understanding to know what way to move in order to form a biblical church.  These churches belong to high orthodoxy, so for anyone to question their adherence, say, to the WCF, would be tantamount to heresy.  These churches have been paralysed to an alarming degree by their official acceptance of Owenism, that it is difficult to see how such churches can be reformed according to the Scriptures, and to live under the Lordship of Christ.  Have you ever heard of an Owenite church being reformed?  " They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." These are righteous churches that "need no repentance." Only God by His Spirit can bring such dead orthodox churches to see the need to seek Christ to revive and reform them.  In addition, clericalism is becoming a real problem, if not a nuisance, with reformed evangelical churches in Ulster.  Thankfully there are some who are prepared to confront and challenge this unbiblical authoritarianism. 

Amyraldian Unorthodoxy?

Reflecting on the view of some concerning the orthodoxy of Amyraldianism, I reckon that those same men would not have DMLJ, J. C. Ryle, Thomas Chalmers, R. M.McCheyne, John or Chas Wesley, Philip Doddridge, J. Edwards, Joseph Bellamy, Richard Baxter, Jean Daille, Moise Amyraut, or even the great John Calvin himself, to preach in their pulpits. How sad!  But, I trust that those who hold such views will come to see that my theological position, according to Macleod and Muller, is an integral part of our cherished reformed tradition; more importantly it is biblical because it takes the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture with utmost seriousness.  How Owen can exegete "world" in John 3:16 to mean "the world of the elect" defies comprehension!  This is to prostitute Scripture. 

The rush by reformed men to squeeze the texts of Scripture into the WCF, or any other, mould, is a denial of the supremacy of Scripture in the life and witness of the Christian and of the church.  It is surely a cardinal aspect of Romanism that Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) is not enough, having to be supplemented by the church's magisterium. Is the WCF, in the minds of many reformed men, not their equivalent of the Roman magisterium?  How would they answer that?  It is no good their saying that it is a 'subordinate standard' when they elevate it in practice above Scripture!  Does it not smack of Rome's elevation of Mary above Christ?  I think so.  Oh, I hope wiser counsels prevail.

How dangerous a thing it is for men to defer in everything to any man-made document, however good it is deemed to be, while not granting to Scripture its rightful place!  What does God think of that, I wonder?  Is He pleased that a subordinate standard has been elevated over His infallible Word?  Has the church prospered when this has happened in the past?  I don't think so. 

John Calvin 500 Now Available.

I am so pleased to inform you that the book "John Calvin 500 - a reformation affirmation" has now come off the presses, and is available for you to read and study.  Published by Charenton Reformed Publishing, the book deals with Calvin and Christ, Calvin and Calvinism, Calvin and Church, Calvin and Covenant, Calvin and Comfort, and Calvin and Courage. £12.50 (postage extra).  The six lecturers provide us with a lot to think about and assess.  The author of this blog is privileged to be amongst them.

Get your copy NOW through this blogsite.  £12.50 plus p&p.

Have a Blessed Christmas!

May I take this opportunity to wish all my readers and followers a very blessed Christmas, the time of the year when we remember with thanksgiving the glorious and miraculous birth of the Saviour of the world. 

Thank you so much for following this website; I hope you are challenged and convicted by what you read, but also encouraged and built up in your faith.  When going through troubles times, it is an encouragement to know that there are others who are experiencing the same things in different places.  We are not on our own, as Satan would want us to believe. And he also wants us to believe that he is supreme! He's NOT!  Christ, by His coming, life, death and resurrection has defeated him totally, and what we are experiencing are merely the dying flings of a fatally wounded enemy.  Praise the Lord. 

This is the message of Christmas.  Our Saviour is victorious.  As Calvin maintained, GOD MUST WIN!

May God bless you all at this time, and give you a most blessed 2012.

The Right Question!

I think the one big question we have to ask ourselves in church work is this: What is the Lord actually doing here?  How easy it is to get our eyes off Him and see only the activity of Satan through his servants.  We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the whole range of the forces of darkness at every level.  When God removes the unbelievers from a church and replaces them with true Christians, then He is at work; and so is Satan!  Then He will start to draw other unbelievers in under the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom, the Gospel of God's sovereign rule and reign over all things.

 

I am just finishing DMLJ on The Christian Warfare, and hope to move on to The Christian Soldier very shortly.  What a read, and what ministry to my soul.  While there are church ministers whose decided purpose in life is to oppose the Gospel ministers amongst them, DMLJ was the very opposite.  He was the great encourager of Gospel preachers regardless of denominational alignment.  He wasn't too concerned about the accuracy of a man's theology so long as he gave him a sense of the presence of God.  Orthodoxy is important and we should always strive to be as orthodox as we can; but never at the expense of the Gospel.  I am also reading Francis Schaeffer's books, and what a taste of heaven these are.  His ability to dissect what passes for Christianity, especially within the evangelical world, is unsurpassed.

Perverted Pastors

When the Bible condemns the false prophets who preach error to their people, the danger is for us to see the reference to those other churches, the 'unfaithful' ones, but not ours, the 'faithful' ones.  Our church, our denomination, is faithful and true to the Gospel, but these others have 'sold the pass' and have apostasised.  In the northern kingdom of Israel, the church and her prophets were condemned by Jeremiah, and rightly so.  Now, the southern kingdom, Judah, would have breathed a sigh of relief because he condemned the northerners.  But now, he turns to the south and he says they are no better. Come right into the HQ of the Jewish church, and what do you see?  "I have seen ... evildoers," (Jer.23). He sees "a horrible thing," a thing that causes horror, terror, fear.  And He sees this "in the prophets of Jerusalem." 

Here, too, the preachers come under the searchlight of God's Word, and what is exposed is not impressive.  Jeremiah tells us plainly what he sees in the clergy class: "they commit adultery, and walk in lies." Adulterers in the church's ministry!  Ministers who walk in lies - in the church! Now what do these people do, what is their purpose and intent of their ministry?  "They strengthen also the hands of evildoers that no one returns from his wickedness."  In other words, no repentance is preached.  Why?  Because to do so might resurrect all these skeletons in the cupboard of the preachers' lives.  They have no moral authority to preach the truth.  Preachers who "walk in lies" have no authority to peach the truth.  If they say too much, their hearers might know secrets about them and expose them; so they preach a cosy message that keeps their people anesthetised , spiritually paralysed and inert.  That's a safe place fr such people and pastors - each admiring the other.

With this obtaining within the churches of today, is it any wonder that the situation in the nation is so bleak!  If the church is rotten inside, we cannot expect the society within which she lives to be any better.