At the meeting of Synod on 28th October 2020, a Day of Humiliation and Prayer was appointed throughout the Church on Wednesday, 9th December 2020, as follows:
“The Synod appoints a Day of Humiliation and Prayer to be observed throughout the Church on Wednesday, 9th December 2020 because of the deepening moral and spiritual darkness that is relentlessly descending on Church and State. Never since Reformation times has our nation stooped so low in the basest of sins, and increasingly the commandments of men are displacing the commandments of God. Among our heaven-provoking sins are false worship, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, the cruel abortion of millions of defenceless unborn babes, and the Sabbath utterly given over to secularism. Sin, we are assured from the Word of God, will inevitably bring God’s judgments on sinners. The coronavirus pandemic is one such judgment, bringing with it deprivation to the whole of society, and the church itself deprived for a time of the precious privilege of public worship, which even now is not fully restored. We need to ponder the judgments of God recorded in the Scriptures as solemn warnings to all nations. The judgment upon our own nation must inevitably continue and perhaps worsen, unless we return to God in repentance and gospel obedience. Israel in the time of the Judges and in later times fell away from serving God and consequently judgment came upon them. Wonderfully, this caused them to plead earnestly in prayer with the Lord for deliverance; and the Lord in His great mercy heard their cry and turned their time of bondage, affliction and mourning to times of prosperity, spiritually and otherwise. We therefore encourage our people likewise to pray for mercy and to make this day of humiliation and prayer a total day of humble pleadings to God for Church and State and for all nations, that we be given to mourn our ungodliness and turn to Him in repentance and new obedience. Let us pray also that Christ Jesus the King of kings be given His rightful place – otherwise we can expect worse judgment to come, as is evident from Psalm 2:9-12,
‘Thou shalt, as with a weighty rod of iron, break them all;
And, as a potter’s sherd, Thou shalt them dash in pieces small.
Now therefore, kings, be wise; be taught, ye judges of the earth:
Serve God in fear, and see that ye join trembling with your mirth.
Kiss ye the Son, lest in His ire ye perish from the way,
If once His wrath begin to burn: bless’d all that on Him stay.”
Rev Keith M Watkins, Clerk of Synod