The Pope as Peacemaker.
—In the Glasgow Herald for 10th September we read that “the Pope has informed President Roosevelt that the Vatican is doing its utmost to halt the war and establish a just and enduring world peace.” This is by no means the first time that the Man of Sin has posed as an apostle of peace, but none should be deceived by his pretensions when the Daily Telegraph for 5th September publishes a report of his address to a committee of cardinals and church officials on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Italian Catholic Action, in which he says that “all members of the Italian Catholic Action should loyally collaborate with the Church, but should at the same time obey and respect the authorities and laws of the land, and give their lives for their country should the national interest require of them this supreme sacrifice.” Thus the Pope plainly reveals that he considers the opening of hostilities by Italy against Britain a just war, and one that is carried on under his blessing. His idea, therefore, of “a just and enduring world peace” is one by which Protestant nations would be again in the grip of Papal darkness and ignorance. With this kind of peace there would be no witness raised on the side of Christ and no testimony against the heresies of Rome. If the Pope really wanted a just and enduring world peace one step in that way would be to recall his army of Jesuits who are at the bottom of most of the troubles in the world to-day. Another step, and a very important one, would be to allow his followers to read the Word of God, which when accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit would bring a real and lasting blessing to individuals and nations.
Dancing Mad.
—In connection with the report of one of the numerous air raids in London we read the following statement in the Glasgow Herald—”In spite of the salvo of bombs, guests below a block of flats in Berkeley Square continued with their dancing.” We read in history of “Nero fiddling while Rome was burning,” but surely it is a worse madness than that which afflicted Nero that has overtaken men and women in London and other parts of Britain when they would go on with their dancing while there are such manifest tokens of the Divine displeasure against us as a nation. “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” When will we as a nation realise that God has a controversy with us? And that by such indifference to His judgments we are simply prolonging this terrible struggle, and provoking the Most High to leave us altogether. We are fully convinced that the surest and speediest way to end the war is to humble ourselves before the Lord, for we read that “When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.” Apart, however, from higher considerations it seems to us extraordinary that men and women should pursue such carnal pleasures as dancing when many of the cream of our manhood are losing their lives in a life and death struggle against a cruel foe. There was a day in Britain when even common decency would cause men to refrain from such excesses at such a time.
Royal Altar and Candles.
—While the whole civilized world was shocked and horrified at the alarming news of the deliberate attempt, by the murderous Nazi bombers, to assassinate our beloved King and Queen, and while gratitude to God for their marvellous preservation must be the feeling uppermost in the hearts of all His Majesty’s loyal Christian subjects, nevertheless it must have been a grievous revelation to all loyal Protestants that the Royal Chapel, where Their Majesties daily worship, had an idolatrous altar with two large candles on it, which have been shattered to smithereens by the bomb which wrecked the Royal Chapel. Let it be remembered that at his coronation His Majesty declared, before God and man, “I am a faithful Protestant.” Where then is the consistency in having an idolatrous Anglo-Catholic altar and candles in the Royal Chapel of the Protestant King of a Protestant nation? God is not mocked. We sincerely believe that the shattering of the altar and candles in the Royal Chapel was an act of Divine displeasure, while the preservation of Their Majesties’ lives is an instance of Divine mixing of judgment with mercy. Let His Majesties loyal Protestant subjects pray earnestly and importunately everywhere that our beloved Royal family would be delivered from the idolatrous and superstitious influences of the cunning, treacherous, and hypocritical Anglo-Catholics. The fact that it was a mark of Divine displeasure at the extent to which superstitious idolatry has gone in this professedly Protestant nation, does not minimise the murderous satanic criminality of this act on the part of the blood-thirsty Nazis, who are Satan’s agents. It is a fact worthy of attention that though these symbols of Popish superstition were utterly destroyed, the large Bible in use in the chapel stood unharmed. Whether this war will bring it about or not, there is a day coming when all the superstitions of the proud daughter of Babylon shall be utterly destroyed as these symbols were, but God’s Word shall endure forever.
Denominational Inconsistency.
—It is not a sufficient explanation of the present prevailing righteous judgment of war to state, complacently, that God is working out His eternal purposes relative to the history of time. It does not lessen the guilt of unfaithful ministers and inconsistent denominations, in any nation or generation, that God is working out His irresistible purposes, any more than did the fact that “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts ii. 23) minimise, in the least degree, the criminality of the Jews, who “by wicked hands crucified and slew” the Lord of glory. The prevailing national back-sliding, which provoked God, in righteousness, to bring the present terrible judgment on our nation and Empire, is due, in the main, to unfaithfulness on the part of ministers, who vow, before God and man, to uphold one type of Christian doctrines, while tolerating and encouraging doctrines diametrically opposite to these, and also to inconsistency on the part of denominations that do not exercise discipline relative to this lamentable state of affairs. The heaven-provoking down-grade movement is the result. For instance, Rev. Dr. John A. Mackay, M.A., President of the now back-slidden Princeton Theological Seminary, is permitted to give addresses in Free Church congregations, despite the fact that he is filling the professorial chairs in that seminary with Barthian theological professors. While Barthianism does not, like Modernism, deny that there is a single element of the supernatural in the Bible, it nevertheless regards it as its own special task and mission, self-imposed, to eliminate what it deems myth, legend, tradition, and oriental fables from the sacred volume—thus recovering the precious gems of Divine truth from the mythological accumulations of ages. Thus Barthianism blasphemously insults the Word of God as surely as does Modernism. Where, then, is Free Church consistency and loyalty in thus honouring the patron of Barthianism?
Law as well as Gospel.
—Britain’s deepest need at the present time is a sense and conviction of sin, as it is futile to speak of the need of evangelical repentance and reformation as long as the individual and the nation do not know what they are to repent of, and reform from. The supernatural application of the Moral Law of God, by the sovereign omnipotent power of the Holy Ghost, to the individual conscience, is the only way of producing a supernatural sense and conviction of sin. The Scriptural proofs of that statement are “By the Law is the knowledge of sin,” and “When He, the Spirit of truth, will come, He will convince the world of sin.” Conviction of sin precedes evangelical repentance, as evangelical repentance is the fruit of a supernatural faith’s view of the heinousness of sin in the light of the Moral Law and Calvary’s Cross. The proof of the genuineness of evangelical repentance is its practical fruit of evangelical reformation or new obedience. It is evident, therefore, that the British pulpit must return to the preaching of the Law as the school-master to bring sinners to Christ, if there is to be an individual and national sense of sin, repentance towards God, faith unfeigned in the Lord Jesus Christ, and national practical godliness. It is very evident that the preaching of the Law is a rare thing in British pulpits to-day—hence the utter lack of individual and national sense of sin, and the prevailing indifference to the universally and perpetually-binding obligation of the eternal claims of God, as manifested in the Moral Law, to our obedience, love, service, worship, and trust. The prevailing so-called gospel of love and mercy, without reference to the infinite holiness and justice of God, is merely another carnal gospel, which is of Satan.
Is Ecclesiastical Separation Justified?
—In view of the fact that since the Rev. John Calvin MacKay, M.A., has been inducted to the pastoral charge there, the Free Church pulpit of Kincardine, Ardgay, has been occupied by ministers and students of the modernistic Church of Scotland, the question arises as to the consistency of the Free Church of Scotland remaining any longer in ecclesiastical and denominational separation from that non-descript ecclesiastical organisation known as “The Church of Scotland.” The writer is not aware of any protest from any Free Church source relative to this ecclesiastical mixing of modernistic and professedly orthodox denominations. If it is proper and consistent for these two churches to unite in public worship on certain occasions, then it is proper and consistent for them to worship together always, and their present ecclesiastical and denominational separation is a clear case of schism—the causing and continuing of unnecessary rents in the professing Church of Christ. Where, however, is love and loyalty to Christ and His truth? For instance, in the Northern Chronicle for the 25th September, 1940, it is announced that the Rev. W. Erskine Blackburn, M.A., of St. Andrew’s Parish, Edinburgh, is to occupy the Kincardine Free Church pulpit. If it is argued that the Rev. W. Erskine Blackburn is a sound Calvinistic evangelical preacher, then where is his consistency in remaining, without protest, in a church in whose professorial chairs and pulpits infidel Modernism is taught and proclaimed without let or hindrance? It would appear that the Free Church, in its latitudinarian compromising and irresponsible broadmindedness, is qualifying fast for the description—a gigantic ecclesiastical sham. There appears, in view of the above, to be very little Calvinism about Rev. John Calvin MacKay. Undoubtedly, the Foreign Mission Field is apt, in one not supernaturally well-grounded in Calvinistic doctrines, to develop a tendency to a false and un-Scriptural cosmopolitan internationalism, and an unwarrantable Arminian, Antinomian, interdenominationalism and undenominationalism. In truth, however, this attitude of supposedly wider and superior charitableness is almost invariably due to lack of spiritual depth and discernment.
B.B.C. Programmes and “Sunday” Cinemas.
—If there were further proof needed of the spiritual madness that has seized British national life in our day, it would be amply afforded in the satanic programmes for the forces, issued by the Jesuitically-controlled British Broadcasting Corporation every Lord’s Day, as well as by the lamentable fact that cinemas were given full permission to be opened every Sabbath in London, during its most intense and terrific aerial bombardment, from 3 p.m. till 9 p.m. Yet people in their spiritual ignorance and brutal callousness wonder why the righteous judgments of God are abroad in the earth. We are, individually and nationally, wringing judgments from the hand of God. During the whole time our Expeditionary Force was in France football matches took place every Lord’s Day between it and the French Army, while the B.B.C. made running comments on the course of the match. Is it any wonder that the efforts of that Expeditionary Force ended in a disastrous retreat, saved only by a Divine miraculous intervention at Dunkirk, in answer to prayer? Can we expect our present Home Defence to fare better in the event of an invasion, while the B.B.C. still continues the same satanic programmes to our fighting forces every Lord’s Day, from early morning till late at night? Where is the voice of the professing Church heard in protest? Where is its loyalty to the Lord of the Sabbath? On the other hand, what need we expect when the B.B.C. (though Professor Ogilvie is its nominal head) is, for all practical purposes under the control of the Romanist, Captain Cecil Graves, while Mr. Patrick Ryan and Mr. Patrick Jubb, two Eire Romanists, are in charge of the home programmes, the latter being a son-in-law of Mr. Dulanty, the Eire Commissioner in London. It would simply amaze the British public to know that in a Protestant nation the national B.B.C. is almost a Romanist monopoly. Can we expect evangelical programmes from deluded human agents of Satan, as all Romanists undoubtedly are? Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan.