Cancelling what should have been cancelled!

So, 'Edinburgh Council pays damages for cancelling religious speaker' - tax payers' money, that is! So what?! A mighty triumph for the cause of Christendom? Surely not! 

The last people who should be rejoicing at having Larry Stockstill are the Scottish Presbyterians who adhere to the Establishment Principle as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith [XXIII.3 Of the Civil Magistrate]: "The civil magistrate ... hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed".

Edinburgh Council has failed the Church, yet again. And the same could be said of the Church!

Let's get together and feel all right. (B Marley)

I note, with unfeigned interest, of course, that the Free Church of Scotland has drawn attention to this (or herself?), 'National Leaders Urge the Nation to Pray'. The nation that is, and not the Church!

Judging by the impressive list we, well, anyone, I would imagine, can join in together and hopefully feel all right, by repeating a simple mantra in parrot-fashion, and presumably God will then hear us somehow and be appeased. That seems to be the general idea if I have understood this correctly. 

I was never consulted, of course, which is just as well, since bland diplomacy is not a talent that I have been blessed with in great measures, though I am restraining myself even now! The humanists will be trembling in their foxholes, God’s arm will be twisted, and once COVID-19 is gone it will the Church back to her non-praying default position, off her knees and back onto her feet! 

Unlike my Roman Catholic friends, I do not call on Mary or departed saints, let alone angels, even though I could easily pray in tongues, being a multi-linguist (okay, I am showing off!), and one day, perhaps even in Gaelic, the language of heaven, I am told! The day is drawing closer, for sure! I hope that tongue-speakers will appreciate my remarks!

I do, of course, apologise to all who choose to be offended, especially any befuddled ecumeniacs, who have so nicely dreamt it all up in the first place! Those filled with grace and humility will leave me alone, I am sure, and I count it as a great blessing to have such friends who will just forgive me! And if not, I dare say, that God has beaten them already to it, anyway, without their prayers that I do not need. One must not be too unkind, and occasionally it is necessary to cultivate the art of cowering or flattering to please our cold-hearted and hot-headed ecclesiasts! One of these days I will be needing their services, a grave undertaking it will prove to be! Then everyone one will hear that I have been good after all! 

The call to national ‘prayer’ is not without precedent, for sure, but very un-Knoxish in some respects! Just imagine that greatest of all Scotsmen praying with a priestess, or alongside a papist, or some ‘Schwaermer’! You never know how Knox’s God may have responded, or John Knox himself, for that matter! 

Well, this is the 21^st century, and Calvinism has been driven out of Scotland, and one sees very little of it in the national Kirk, or in the Free Church. Anything will do now, and there is no longer any need to stand on Gospel ground! Pelagius will do, indeed, will have to be invoked, as we are now dealing with a shrinking God who is being edged out of His own Church, though He may choose to stay on for a little longer! 

So then, does the Free Church believe that there is sanity, strength, or safety in all this? Presumably so! Dietrich Bonhoeffer once famously asked, ‘Are we still of any use?’ At the moment it does not seem like it, except for hatches, matches and dispatches! 

Under the current circumstances I have greater faith in the medical experts than in the pagan pragmatism of the spiritual oversight of the wider church who will sacrifice the truth on the altar of expediency. Indeed, I have no faith in prayer at all, let alone in the wider Church. I have come off age, to quote Bonhoeffer again! My faith, of course, is in God who answers prayer!

I will finish with Daniel's prayer: 'O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.' (Daniel 9:8). May it "unconfuse" our leaders! May God forgive all those who do not know what they are doing! 

---

Sad, bad, mad!

• Mention 'Trump', and I will jump! But the term 'American evangelicalism' will affect my BP which is not necessarily good for my health! Let me explain!
• 
  Watching the first part of this disturbing documentary, viz. 2020 The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Year For The Prophets, has not been an enjoyable experience. My spiritual alarm bells, which are ringing in my ears a lot these days, have been sending some hellish shivers down my sensitive spine, leaving me somewhat disturbed!
• Some charismaniacs do, indeed, have a gift (pardon the pun) for making the Montanists and Irvingites look entirely sane. Even academics like Dr. R T Kendall, who has endorsed the so-called Toronto blessing (see here) looks normal after all!
• I'll leave it to the experts to decide on who is sane and who is not!
• I hope that president J Biden, unlike his predecessor, will keep deranged fantasists away from the White House! I would certainly not invite them into my own home!
  
• Indeed, a case can be made for building asylums for those who are somehow unhinged, and there is plenty of money to be found among them to pay for their grievous misdeeds!
• I also hope that Mark Zuckerberg will take note: A strong case for censorship can be made!
• I guess, notwithstanding, that genuine Christianity alone is worth counterfeiting. As a Bible-believing Christian, I am feeling reassured again.
• Trump is gone, Biden has come, I am still here. There is hope, after all!

PREPOSITIONAL PREACHING

Here is an adapted extract from John Kennedy’s The Days of The Fathers in Ross-shire, posing a challenge to preacher and hearer alike.

1. There are some who preach BEFORE their people, like actors on the stage,  to display themselves and to please their audience.

2. There are others who preach OVER their people. Studying
for the highest, instead of doing so for the lowest, in intelligence, they elaborate learned treatises, which float like mist, when delivered over the heads of their hearers.

3. There are some who preach PAST their people. Directing their praise or their censure to intangible abstractions, they never take aim at the views and the conduct of the individuals before them. They step carefully aside, lest their hearers should be struck by their shafts, and aim them at phantoms beyond them.

4. There are others who preach AT their people, serving out in a sermon the gossip of the week, and seemingly possessed with the idea, that the transgressor can be scolded out of the ways of iniquity.

5. There are some who preach TOWARDS their people. They aim well, but they are weak. Their eye is along the arrow towards the hearts of their hearers, but their arm is too feeble for sending it on to the mark. Superficial in their experience and in their knowledge, they reach not the cases of God s people by their doctrine, and they strike with no vigour at the consciences of the ungodly.

6. There are others still, who preach ALONG their congregation. Instead of standing with their bow in front of the rank, these archers take it in line, and reducing their mark to an individual, never change the direction of their aim.

7. But there are a few who preach TO the people directly and seasonably the mind of God in His word, with authority, unction, wisdom, fervour, and love. 

The best Tories are dead now!

It's an open secret that I am STILL a big Maggie fan, which will, of course, infuriate my socialist friends. So for good measure here are some quotes from Sir Keith Joseph (19.10.1974), a conviction politician, the likes of which are no longer on the scene. His complete speech is worth a read. 

Here is a list of quotations: 

1. "We are opposed to using children as guinea pigs or spare parts for social engineers to experiment with" 

2. "...the family and to civilised values. They are the foundation on which the nation is built; they are being undermined. If we cannot restore them to health, our nation can be utterly ruined - whatever economic policies we might try to follow"

3. "We do not follow that interpretation of Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage that teaches that man, left to himself, is innocent and pure. We take the more traditional and still widely held view that men and women are born with a capacity for good and evil, to make the best use of their talents or to waste them; and that upon our early upbringing - the standards and the self-discipline to which we are brought up first at home and then at school - much of our whole future depends " 

4."Such words as good and evil, such stress on self-discipline and on standards have been out of favour since the war with the new establishment. They have preferred the permissive society, and, at the same time, the collectivised society" 

5. "The Socialist method would take away from the family and its members the responsibilities which give it cohesion. Parents are being divested of their duty to provide for their family economically, of their responsibility for education, health, upbringing, morality, advice and guidance, of saving for old age, for housing. When you take responsibility away from people you make them irresponsible. Hand in hand with this you break down traditional morals, the framework of behaviour, concepts of right and wrong; it is easier to subvert the social framework and replace it by their new monolithic edifice."

6. "Real incomes per head have risen beyond what anyone dreamed of a generation back; so have education budgets and welfare budgets, so also have delinquency, truancy, vandalism, hooliganism, illiteracy, decline in educational standards. Some secondary schools in our cities are dominated by gangs operating extortion rackets against small children. Teenage pregnancies are rising; so are drunkenness, sexual offences, and crimes of sadism. For the first time in a century and a half, since the great Tory reformer Robert Peel set up the metropolitan police, areas of our cities are becoming unsafe for peaceful citizens by night, and even some by day."

7. "We see how the demand for absolute equality turns into the new inequality"

8. "In the universities, which should be sanctuaries for the pursuit of truth, the bully-boys of the left have been giving us a foretaste of what leftwing dictatorship would endeavour to achieve, actively cheered on by the casuistry of some members of the university staffs, cuckoos in our democratic nest, and by the pusillanimity of others, by the apathy of many and, I must add, by moral cowardice in public life."

9. "If equality in education is sought at the expense of quality, how can the poisons created help but filter down?"

10. "If equality in education is sought at the expense of quality, how can the poisons created help but filter down?"

11."Some abuse their power and authority to urge or condone antisocial behaviour either on political grounds - against an ‘unjust society’, against ‘authority’ or as ‘liberation from the trammels of the outmoded family’... None of these phenomena is at all modern, or liberated; they are the very opposite of freedom which begins with self-discipline" 

12. "The facile rhetoric of absolute liberty has become a cover for irresponsibility; instant social protest an excuse for antisocial behaviour"

13. "The worship of instinct, of spontaneity, the rejection of self-discipline, is not progress - it is degeneration. It was Freud who argued that repression of instincts is the price we pay for civilisation. He considered the price well-paid"

West is no longer best; we have reached a new low, where Anythingism is the creed of the day. 

Some Ecclesiastical Nonsense!

 

When NOT to be silent!

The Free Church ain't what it used to be. Matters have surely come to a sorry pass judging by a recent advert. My criticism is not directed at the person in the pew, who has little say over church affairs (though money still talks, I see), which perhaps is just as well. Needless to say, diplomacy is not something I can brag about, but I am pleased that my concern has been listened to by the secular Press, both locally and nationally. I do not expect much to come from it, mind you! Who cares about Christian influence in high places? Will one obtain it by paying 30 pieces of silver? 

I am, of course, only speaking on my own behalf, and as the Free Church is now an increasingly broad church, she will be robust enough to handle a restrained outburst from one of its less distinguished members. 

I am grateful that the press (local and national) have published my comments (see below).