The Succession to the Throne
Following some correspondence in the English Churchman about the succession to the British throne, the Clerk of the Northern Presbytery, Rev D M Boyd, wrote as follows. The Presbytery asked that the letter, which was printed in the English Churchman of December 8 & 15, be sent to The Free Presbyterian Magazine.
Following the discussion in your columns about the eligibility of the Prince of Wales to succeed to the throne on account of his adultery, it is more relevant to speak about his fraternising with Roman Catholicism.
Whatever precedents there may be for adulterers to succeed to the throne, the Bill of Rights is quite clear about the subject of fraternising with Rome. The Bill of Rights states:
“… all and every person and persons that is, are, or shall be reconciled to, or shall hold communion with the see or Church of Rome, … shall be excluded and be for ever incapable to inherit, possess or enjoy the crown and government of this realm … or to have, use, or exercise any regal power, authority or jurisdiction within the same”.
A recent statement from Buckingham Palace stated: “The Queen does not attend Catholic Mass for constitutional reasons.” Yet we know that Prince Charles attended a Roman mass at Kirkby Stephen some years ago, and that he wishes to be reconciled to Rome.
We also hear that the Princess of Wales is thinking of being reconciled to Rome. Although the Prime Minister stated in the House of Commons that the marital situation of the Prince and Princess of Wales did not bar the Princess of Wales becoming Queen, yet there has been no comment on her constitutional position if she becomes a Roman Catholic. However, the Bill of Rights is quite clear on the matter.
Further, the Bill of Rights is a contract with the whole people of the realm, not easily overthrown by the unilateral wishes of the Prince or Princess of Wales. The Bill of Rights goes on to say:
“… and in all and every such case or cases the people of these realms shall be and are hereby absolved of their allegiance; and the said crown and government shall from time to time descend to and be enjoyed by such person or persons being Protestants as should have inherited and enjoyed the same in case the said person or persons so reconciled … were naturally dead”.
The Royal Family
The Queen’s request to the Princess of Wales that she begin divorce proceedings highlights again the sad position of the British royal family. Given the confessed adultery of both parties, we do not object to the divorce, though it would be unscriptural for either of them to remarry. But we are left with serious questions. First, is someone who has broken his marriage vows suitable for the office of king? For Prince Charles has demonstrated that he cannot be relied on to keep solemn commitments: those he made to his wife in the presence, not only of thousands of human witnesses, but of God Himself.
Can we then expect Prince Charles to keep his vows as king, and to respect, in particular, the vow to uphold the Protestant religion? In any case, will he be willing even to take the Coronation Oath as it presently stands? It was not for nothing that the oath was framed in its present form. A generation that forgets its history deserves to fall into disasters that could be avoided by heeding the lessons painfully learned in the past. However, another question presses itself on us: Does a nation where adultery is so widespread, and so much condoned, deserve a better king?
It is perfectly obvious that the reputation of the Royal Family has declined over the past few years. It still holds true: “Them that honour Me I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed”. God has been conspicuously dishonoured even by the Queen herself, especially in attending multi-faith services, which deny the uniqueness of God, and most recently in attending a service in the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral. To have Cardinal Hume thank the Queen during that service for receiving “Pope John Paul II into your London home” in 1982 was to add insult to injury for her truly Protestant subjects. Sadly, the Queen herself has not been faithful to her vow to maintain the Protestant religion.
At the same time as the Queen has shown herself less and less faithful to the Protestant religion, the Royal Family and the institution of the monarchy have been steadily losing public esteem. The threads of providence are closely intertwined, and all are held in the hand of Him who is “a God that judgeth in the earth”. Yet, however much the Queen, her family and most of her subjects have departed from the rather higher standards of the time of her coronation, just over 40 years ago, we have every reason to plead with a merciful God that He would return to the United Kingdom and bring both rulers and ruled to His footstool in repentance. How desperately we need it!
Archaeology and the Bible
Archaeology has long proved useful in providing information which is of some help in understanding the background to the Bible. But how far can archaeology actually take us? Recently Time magazine ran a cover article with the title, Is the Bible Fact or Fiction? On the front cover was the further description, “Archaeologists in the Holy Land are shedding new light on tales of the Scriptures and what did — and didn’t — actually happen”. The writer of the article has been bold enough to set himself up as a judge of the truth of the narratives of Scripture.
He does have some interesting findings to report from recent archaeological digs. For instance: in 1979 an Israeli archaeologist found two tiny silver scrolls inside a tomb in Jerusalem. They are assumed to date from 600 BC. When they were unrolled, a benediction from Numbers was found etched into their surfaces. The writer concludes, “The discovery made it clear that parts of the Old Testament were being copied long before some sceptics had believed they were written”. Then in 1986 scholars identified an ancient seal that belonged to Baruch the son of Neriah, who was Jeremiah’s scribe. Another seal belonged to Jerahmeel, who was sent to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch. Therefore, scholars conclude, Baruch and Jerahmeel actually existed; they accept that the Bible has been proved true in these details. David too is accepted as a figure of history. In 1993 an inscription was found containing the phrases House of David and King of Israel. The writing describes the victory of a neighbouring king over the Israelites, and is thought to date from the ninth century BC, about a century after David’s reign. Time comments, “The sceptics’ claim that David never existed is now hard to defend”.
Quite so. But we must not fall into the trap of thinking that archaeology can ever prove the Bible true. All it can do is give some supporting evidence confirming the truth of the Bible. God is speaking in the Bible; for man to attempt to prove that what God says is true is even more ridiculous than a fly refusing to accept the truth of Pythagoras’ Theorem unless it could work it out for itself. What is the right attitude? It is to note that in the Bible “the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1:5).
One danger in relying on the findings of archaeology to prove the Bible true is that our assurance of the truth of the whole Bible is at once weakened if a particular finding from archaeological research later proves to have been in error. If we depend on archaeology we can only be sure of those parts of the Bible which have actually been confirmed by archaeology. But there is no such proof of the existence of other great men of faith like Abraham, Moses and Joshua. Time accordingly declares, “Years of searching have convinced all but the most conservative experts that Abraham and the rest of the Patriarchs were inventions of the Bible’s authors”. It would seem that the attitudes of the majority of experts are as much in touch with reality as someone who says about a present-day event, “It didn’t happen because I didn’t see it”.
Unbelieving experts give to archaeological data, and more significantly, to the interpretation of archaeological data, an authority which they do not have. It is through faith, the Bible tells us, that “we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God” (Heb 11:3) — by faith in the facts of divine revelation. It is by faith also that we are to believe in the existence of Abraham, Moses, Joshua and all the other Bible characters. If the archaeological data have been rightly interpreted — and, who knows, there might have been more than one Baruch, son of Neriah — there is external confirmation of the existence of Baruch, David and others. But, whatever archaeology can tell us, we still need a divine revelation so that we can know, for example, the purpose of Christ Jesus coming into the world. Much more might have been written, but the great purpose of revealing to us the great facts recorded in Scripture, and about the life of Christ in particular, is “that (we) might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing (we) might have life through His name” (John 20:31).
This is not to deny the uses of archaeology, just to try and show its limitations. If archaeology had been taken more seriously in some quarters, many of the wilder speculations of higher criticism in this century would never have been entertained. Certainly nobody today would think of stating, as was done with great authority during the last century, that Moses could not write!
Fundamentalism
Surely the most crass of comments on the tragic death of the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzak Rabin, was that of the Archbishop of Canterbury when he described the killing as a “reminder how demonic religion can become when it is perverted by hatred and fundamentalism”. Dr Carey knows perfectly well that he is lumping together Protestants who believe in the absolute authority of the Scriptures, with the most extreme terrorists, to the disparagement of the former. This is totally unworthy of someone who has subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and has his roots in some form of evangelicalism.
Certainly Fundamentalism would not be our preferred term to describe the position we hold, because of its associations with Arminianism. But what is most despised in Fundamentalism by the world outside is something we would wish unflinchingly to hold to — the absolute truth of what we believe. And we hold to it because we are bound to the perfectly reliable revelation God has given in the Bible, and only in the Bible. The (Protestant) Fundamentalist movement in America had its roots in the publication in 1910 of a series of 12 free booklets entitled The Fundamentals, which were intended to set out the orthodox position on a number of basic Scriptural doctrines in the face of modernism. The series also included material written to oppose Romanism, the cults and the theory of evolution. The image of Fundamentalism suffered from the way an unsympathetic press portrayed the famous Scopes trial in 1925 when the defeated Democratic Presidential candidate of the previous year, William Jennings Bryan, was involved in the prosecution of a John Scopes who was, contrary to the law of Tennessee, teaching the theory of evolution in a state school. More recently the meaning of the term Fundamentalism has been extended beyond Protestantism to cover any group who are definite in their beliefs — over against the fundamental belief of modern liberalism that no one can be sure of any system of values, though that belief is itself upheld with inconsistent determination. The Christian’s fundamental position must be that God has spoken with absolute authority and with total accuracy in the Bible, whatever unbelievers may say in opposition, and that he is under absolute obligation to believe what God has said and to obey with wholeheartedness.
Slipping Away
Almost 40 years ago, in 1958, J I Packer first published his excellent book Fundamentalism and the Word of God. His downward course since then has given extreme cause for concern. Alarm bells were perhaps first set ringing furiously when he wrote, along with another Church of England evangelical and two Anglo-Catholics, the book Growing into Union. More recently this magazine noted his part as a signatory of the ecumenical document Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Sadder still is to read that he was among a group of prominent evangelicals who had a two-hour meeting with the Pope. Described as “very warm”, the interview took place during the Pope’s recent visit to the United States. The pity is that Dr Packer does not apply to himself his own commendation of Nehemiah in his recent book on that godly leader of the Jews after the captivity. A reviewer quotes Packer as commending “Nehemiah’s zeal for truth and purity, and the consequent practice of discipline in the community”. A genuine zeal for truth and purity in the twentieth century is inconsistent with fraternising with the Man of sin.
How much we all need to be kept from slipping away from what is right!
Crusade Evangelism
After 50 years as a preacher, Billy Graham, now 77 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, has nominated his son Franklin as his successor as leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. This is a massive organisation with an income of $88 million dollars in 1994. Crusade evangelism requires enormous organisation and huge sums of money, especially when crusades are transmitted by satellite to audiences throughout the world. And there are results. Billy Graham’s most recent crusade, in the Californian capital of Sacramento, produced 11 483 “commitments”, 6.5% of those who attended over five days. But, even apart from the erroneous doctrine he preaches, the other goings-on do not inspire confidence in the quality of the results. “Musical and drama groups rotated different acts on each stage”, reports Christianity Today. “Sometimes groups on each stage performed simultaneous songs or skits.”
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is just one of a multitude of organisations proclaiming a false gospel by worldly means. And according to current trends no change of leadership is going to change the modern evangelistic scene. Billy Graham prides himself on his unwillingness to engage in controversy. “I would soon become so embroiled that the effectiveness of this ministry would cease. . . . I am reminded of Nehemiah’s answer to his critics, ‘I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down; why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?'” He may not wish to listen to his critics when they point out the danger of preaching a false doctrine of conversion, and of sending back to their own churches those who have made “commitments”, be they Roman Catholic or liberal Protestant, but he should listen to the Word of God. After all, he has said, “When God calls us, we are to remain faithful”. Today the evangelical world accepts that the Bible does have authority, but there is a conspicuous unwillingness to submit completely to the Bible – in doctrine and worship and practice. And it is a specially dangerous matter, not by any means confined to crusade evangelism, to give people the impression they are converted, although there has been no change of heart, and the change in the outward life is purely superficial.
KDM