Vision

“Project Bible”

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:37:27 +0100

What a wonderful thing it is to have our own Bibles! How often we have thumbed through our favourite Bibles and smiled inside as special texts or favourite books pass by. What a privilege to have had a Bible since we could read! What a great influence on our culture the King James version of the Bible has been. Here is my vision.

If the Lord spares this world for another 200 years, I see a people, a country or a tribe who relate to their Bible the way we do to our English Bible. Just now they don’t even have a single book of the Bible in their language but in two centuries time I see them with not only a Bible, but also with a Bible-based culture and society. Common phrases from the Bible have passed into their every day language. The speak about escaping by the ‘skin of their teeth’ and of being ‘in the lion’s den’. They nick-name scoundrels as ‘Judas’, and know well what you mean when you say ‘doubting Thomas’.
Their justice and government is Bible based. Their society submits to the authority of the Bible, and it goes unquestioned in their schools, universities and parliaments. They are outstanding in the 23rd century as a people who live by the Bible. They are known as the country of the Book.

And they have a special place in their heart from Scotland. They love Christians whom they have never met and who are long dead. You see 200 years earlier, in Scotland, a small church felt burdened to bring the gift of the Bible to their nation. They prayed about it and thought about it, and committed to it. They knew most of them would probably never see it completed. They knew that it would be costly. But with the support and guidance of a Bible-believing Bible Society they began funding the “FCC Bible Translation Project”. Their translators took time out from their work to give lectures on the principles of Bible translation. They learnt far more about God’s amazing preservation of his Word, about why we use translations that are faithful, accurate and readable. They rejoiced and felt that the Bible Translation Project was already an enormous blessing to themselves long before it was ready to be a blessing in its own language.
At other times, when the translators spent time telling of the ignorance of those with no Bible, and of the conditions of the people it was destined for, their prayer lives were enriched with pleadings for a tribe they had never met, that they might become a true nation of the book, and that they would one day meet them with all the Israel of God at the Last Day. And when, after decades of struggles and even frustration, it was finally finished and printed, they wept tears of joy and thankfulness, and sent it off for its homeland with earnest prayers for blessing.

That is my Vision. For an FCC Bible Project.

Rev G MacDonald

I have a dream, Rev JW Keddie

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:27:32 +0000

“I HAVE A DREAM”

These words were made famous by Dr Martin Luther King, American civil rights campaigner in a speech in Washington, DC, in 1963. He ended the speech with the words: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! By any measure this was a stirring speech. You find it in many albums of ‘best speeches.’

It’s not my purpose to comment on the merit or meaning of that speech. The words, however, ‘I have a dream’, and, ‘Free at last!’, resonate down the years. And for sure they have an application or challenge for the Christian and the Christian Church. The Bible says that “where there is no vision the people perish.” The verse goes on: “but happy is he who keeps the law” (Proverbs 29:18), that is to say of course, the law of God.

This presents a challenge to any body of professing Christians; a challenge timely for a New Year: What is our vision for the Church and its work? What is your earnest desire for the cause? What should it be? Let me suggest a few things as we reflect on entering a New Year. What is our ‘dream,’ or vision?

• that God should come in power and revive true Christian faith in our Churches in this land
• that the preaching of the Word might by the Lord’s blessing be used in the saving of souls
• that many people might be reached for Jesus and that we would see the attendances at public worship multiplying, and many professing faith in Christ
• that prayer meetings might flourish, with every member making conscience of being present
• that the lives of professing Christians would show forth Christ in exemplary spiritual and moral strength
• that this nation would once again come to respect the Lord, His Word and His day
• that the Lord Jesus should come again and that those who profess Him have longing for His coming to judge the world in righteousness

As far as ‘freedom’ is concerned, the important freedom for mankind is freedom experienced through the gospel: freedom from the grip and power and consequences of sin. Such freedom is not achieved by marches or speeches. It is achieved through God’s grace experienced in the life; through a transformation of a person’s life by the Holy Spirit within.

We need a recovery of such spiritual religion - of a Christianity that is strong and robust and confident in the Sovereign Lord. Through His work alone there is real freedom possible for men and women, not necessarily from the oppression of false religions or oppressive secular governments, but freedom from the dire consequences of sin and a lost eternity. To have that freedom a soul must be saved. That is the greatest desire anyone could have for their own lives. Indeed apart from that there can only be a ‘fearful expectation of judgement’ (Hebrews 10:27).
May Christ come in His saving power among us, and in all the Churches, this year. May the Lord bless you all, and all your families, in this New Year.

Rev John W Keddie

Confidence in her Calling, Rev JJ Murray

Mon, 7 May 2007 22:20:36 +0100

THE CHURCH AS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT

The Church today is passing through a crisis of confidence. We in the Reformed heritage seem to have lost our nerve and confidence in our message. We have been affected by the tendency of our day to reduce the faith to a minimum as well as by the trend to preach the Gospel to felt needs. But what the sinner wants is not what the Gospel offers. Due to a minimising approach to the teaching of Christian truth many churches are filled with professing Christians without knowledge of doctrine and therefore lacking in spiritual discernment. We have a generation growing up devoid of the knowledge of basic Scripture truth.

There has to be a radical re-assessment of the situation and a pressing forward for reformation that goes deep and is lasting. In striving for such a change I would to see three things in particular.

1 I want to see a Church with a full-orbed endorsement of the Reformed Faith.
Writing a few years ago David Wells said: 'The stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now damned by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents itself.'. It is the duty of all churches to bear witness to the whole counsel of God. We build on the revelation that God has already given to our forefathers. As Professor John Murray said: 'To go back on this development and resort to a more attenuated creedal affirmation is to discard the work of the Holy Spirit in the generations of Christian history.'

There should be no dichotomy between love for Christ and love for truth. Not to care about truth is not to care about God. Declaring the full-orbed Gospel is glorifying to God and honouring to Christ. This alone will build up the church. This is the only ultimate guarantee of success and victory. B B Warfield waxed eloquent on Calvinism as the hope of the world. He said 'Only the Calvinist is the consistent supernaturalist, and only consistent supernaturalism can save supernatural religion for the world'. He saw that the ultimate fight will be between 'a stiff thorough-going orthodoxy and a stiff thorough-going infidelity' (H. Boynton Smith). Defective theological systems will be crushed like rotten wood between two icebergs.

2 I want to see a Church with a profound God-consciousness.
The Church is God's dwelling place on earth. God is the glory in the midst of the Church. We agree with David Wells that 'the fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church'. A change is desperately needed: 'The Reformation represents a move to place God as he has revealed himself in Christ at the centre of the Church's life and thought' (Carl Truman). Although God is always present through his Holy Spirit there are times when the church enjoys more fullness of his presence. God is said to 'come down'. There is deep conviction of sin, hearts full of love to Christ and a sense of eternal realities.

The Gospel preached in all its fullness should be authenticated by the evident presence of God in a community of people. The church is not a a place where people are merely to listen to sermons. This has been a weakness of the Reformed Churches in our land. As Dr Lloyd-Jones declared: 'In the New Testament church one sees life and vigour and activity; one sees a living community, conscious of its glory and of its responsibility, with the whole church, as it were, an evangelistic force'.

3 I want to see a Church that grows through the practice of family religion.
We profess to believe in covenant theology. God's covenant of grace takes into account the solidarity of the family. The created order of the family is not ignored in God's redemptive provision. The Puritans (in England, Scotland, Holland and New England) crusaded for a high view of the family, proclaiming it both as the basic unit of society and a little church in itself, with the head of the house as its minister and his wife as his assistant. One of the early Puritans, Richard Greenham, declared: 'If ever we would have the Church of God to continue among us we must bring it into our households and nourish it in our families'. Richard Baxter, whose methods of instruction transformed the town of Kidderminster, said 'holy families must be the chief preservers of religion in the world.'

It has been largely through the abandonment of such an outlook that the churches in Scotland have lost a generation of young people. While we are thankful for conversions from the world there is no way that we can recover stable church life, numerical growth and make an impact on society except through the restoration of family religion. The 'designer' Gospel may attract the numbers but what lasting impact is there on society? Thomas Manton in his 'Epistle to the Reader' in The Westminster Confession of Faith said 'A family is the seminary of Church and State; and if children be not well-principled there, all miscarrieth: a fault in the first concoction is not mended in the second; if youth be bred ill in the family, they prove ill in Church and Commonwealth'.

JOHN J MURRAY

A Vision of Covenant Renewal, Rev D Blunt

Tue, 3 Apr 2007 19:18:03 +0100

The Covenants

“The Covenants, the Covenants, shall yet be Scotland’s reviving!” So said James Guthrie on June 1st 1661 when on the scaffold at the Cross of Edinburgh. Guthrie was described by Oliver Cromwell as “the little man who refused to kneel.”

Guthrie was small in stature but great in spirit. Sadly we must confess that we are ‘little men’ when it comes to the things of God. This is our weakness as Christians and as a Church. We do not lack for earthly comfort: we are rich in this world’s good. Neither do we lack for spiritual comfort: we have good preachers and good books. We are not lacking in labour either: there is evangelistic endeavour in our congregations.

However we need to face the humbling truth: God is not greatly blessing our efforts. Something surely is missing on our part. We lack real zeal for God – the sort which ‘ate up’ the Lord Jesus (John 2:17; Psa.69:9). We must cease to tremble before the face of man (worldly man, whether statesman or churchman) and tremble before God’s face. The Lord is our helper. He gives the blessed Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power, “to them that obey him” (Acts 5:32). What then is required of us? In short, we need to return to the covenants we have neglected for so long. This will be our reviving. Let me express the following hopes for the future.

I hope that we will renew our personal covenant. We have given ourselves to God (2Cor.8:5), promising “I am thine” (Psa.119:94). Scripture says, “Vow, and pay unto the Lord your God” (Psa.76:11). It warns us, “Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.” (Ecc.5:5) We need to confess to God that in all things which pertain to His glory we have been careless, timid, lukewarm and faithless. We need to repent and resolve with Jonah, “I will pay that that I have vowed.” (Jon.2:9) This will be the reviving of our souls.

I hope that we will rediscover God’s everlasting covenant. God promised to Abraham: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” (Gen.17:7) Under the New Testament God’s promise of grace remains “unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39). Yet so many Free Church children have departed from the Lord and our congregations decline. Why this devastation in the land? We have “forsaken the covenant” (Deut.29:24,25). We must acknowledge that in many ways today, especially in the schools, covenant children learn the way of the heathen rather than the way of Christ. The covenantal obligations of parents are clear: “provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Eph.6:4) This will be the reviving of our church.

I hope that we will remember the National Covenant of 1638. Its leading principle is simple in meaning but profound in significance: Jesus Christ is King. He is Head of the church (Col.1:18) and of the nations (Rev.15:3mg). As King Jesus Christ has ‘crown rights’. All men – popes and prelates, presbyters and politicians – must submit to His authority as expressed in His Word. Our Westminster Standards do not merely advocate a religious system agreeable to the Word of God but represent THE Scriptural system. Let us view our Reformed and Presbyterian heritage as such! This will be the reviving of our nation.

I hope that we will the recognise the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. Its aim was (and is) a noble one. God having revealed His will concerning the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of His church it is the duty of His people to put it into practice wherever they are. Our United Kingdom is untying itself as its constituent parts focus on what makes them different rather than on what they have in common. Uniformity in religion would help the unity of both church and nation. We must not abandon the ideal of this covenant. History has not witnessed it as providence has not yet permitted it. It may remain a dream in our lifetime. But we should pray and work towards it to the glory of God! This will be the reviving of our kingdom.

Lord, remember thy covenant and revive thy work!

A Vision of Personal Godliness, Rev DP Murray

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:37:14 +0000

Closets, courts and committees

My “vision” is that in ten years time we would be a church empowered by closets, rather than by courts and committees.

A Church can only be as good as the individuals in it. No amount of rules, courts, committees, reports, administration, strategies, etc., can compensate for a lack of personal godliness in the individual ministers and members of a Church. The strength and success of a Church is determined not by corporate activity, ecclesiastical efficiency, or slick marketing, but by the personal holiness of its ministers and members.

My “vision”, therefore, is that we all would return to our closets – to secret prayer and personal fellowship with God. And, though no one but our Father in heaven would see this, He promises that he will reward us “openly” (Matt.6:1-8).

So, what will be the obvious and open result of such closet activity? Partly, when we meet one another, we will discuss not the latest decisions of courts and committees, or the words and deeds of other denominations, but rather we will share the fruit of our personal fellowship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We will tell what God has done for our souls.

So many of our problems – on a personal, congregational, denominational, and inter-denominational level – would be solved, or greatly diminished, by a widespread return to our closets, and a consequent restoration of soul-fellowship with Christ.

But, if it takes ten years to accomplish this, we are doomed.

David P Murray (February 2007).