FOR the last fifty years the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has been witnessing against the declensions in the Protestant Churches of Britain, and we should be truly thankful to God and praise His holy name that in His finite mercy a small remnant has been left in the land to bear public testimony against evildoers.
We have often warned our people against the destructive, and ruinous tendency of the present Church of Scotland to obliterate from the memory of the young the glorious attainments of the Reformation in Scotland. It is evidently a Jesuitical policy, a policy which will ultimately bring grief, pain, and maybe bloodshed to this land.
You would have read in the press that the Corporation of Glasgow have been engaged and preparing to open on the Lord’s day places of amusement to entertain the young! We have not the least hesitation in saying that that is a pernicious falsehood and pharisaical hypocrisy. It is purely a moneymaking concern for these places of amusement, music halls, theatres, picture houses, etc., pay huge interest to the shareholders. I happened to notice on one occasion in reading the paper that a certain picture house paid 35 per cent. on the capital invested to the shareholders, in one year. It is of course the working classes that pay, for few, if any, of the really rich frequent the crowded picture house at any time.
It is all the time a question of money. I have in my possession a letter from the highest legal authority of the nation which bears out the above
statement to the hilt, and is my own personal observation as well. It is all for money.
It will be readily admitted by all right-thinking men and women that if a nation or individuals have no regard to moral principles that nation or individual must inevitably suffer the consequences. The trained, and experienced physician knows very well if the patient will not take his advice that there is absolutely no hope for a cure. He may have to give up in despair because the patient would not take his advice nor act according to his instructions. God, who has declared, “As I live I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth” may give us up because He has prescribed laws, rules, and guidance for us to follow. It’s clear to all that if we deliberately, and knowingly, reject and ignore the law of God we must suffer the awful consequences thereof. There can be no alternative!
No ecclesiastical court on earth can legislate rules, nor regulations contrary to the Word of God that will stand at last. The Reformers in the 16th Century understood that, and worked hard to have the people freed from man-made laws. They restored to millions of human beings what is, and should be, the birth-right of every child born into this world, “liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment.”
It is nonsense to hold the view that it is “liberty of conscience” to act contrary to the Word of God. The inalienable “right of private judgment,” can only be a “right” if the judgment is in accordance with the revealed will of God in His Word. If we deny in part or in whole that the Moral Law of God is not binding, and a rule of life, we deny the Christian faith, and revert to human philosophy, paganism, and ideological experiment which must end in disaster! It will correspond to what Eliaphaz the Temanite said:—”For he stretched out his hand against God, and strengtheneth himself against the Almighty. He runneth upon him, even on his neck, upon the thick bosses of his bucklers: because he covereth his face with his fatness and maketh callops of fat on his flanks” (Job. 15. 25, 26, 27).
As reported in the Glasgow Herald, February 7th, the Glasgow Presbytery of the Church of Scotland met, inter alia, “The intention of Glasgow Corporation to provide concerts in city halls on Sunday evenings was discussed yesterday by the Presbytery of Glasgow.” Rev. Dr. A. Nevile Davidson who submitted the resolution on behalf of Social Problems Committee, said, “that, except in very limited circles, the old puritanical Sabbath was dead—”dead as the dodo”—and very few of them would wish to bring it back. They wanted not a puritanical Sabbath, but a Christian Sunday, a day on which the first and most important activity was the worship of God. Anything which was likely, to frustrate or discourage that must be viewed by convinced Christians with disquiet and alarm.”
The Presbytery accepted the resolution of Rev. Dr. Davidson and his Committee. It is lamentable to read such a report from a Protestant Presbytery claiming, or rather arrogating for itself to speak in the name of the Glasgow Protestant citizens of the City of Glasgow. The B.B.C.
was giving, a report of what Dr. Davidson said at the Presbytery. “How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophecy lies? Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart; which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal” (Jer. 23, 26-27).
The Church of Scotland is leading the people who listen, uphold, and countenance this corrupt organisation to eternal ruin. We hope that there are men and women in this Church, who are grieved at heart with the graceless tendency of many, if not the most of their pastors. They are in danger for eternity if they will not separate from that Church. It is sinful to be supporting with their presence and means a Church which would tolerate a body of men within the Church, who would daringly and presumptuously declare in public that the Puritan view Lord’s day was as “dead as the dodo.”
Our advice and considered opinion is that all who love the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ should separate from the “Church of Scotland.” It was a different thing coming out of Egypt, from seeking to go back into Egypt.
If the Lord’s day is cast away so easily and willingly as indicated by the Glasgow Presbytery of the so-called Church of Scotland, the civil and religious liberties of the people can be as easily bartered for Romanism, Communism, or Paganism. The Free Presbyterian people have been seeing this coming on Scotland for fifty years, and far worse to follow, if repentance, and genuine turning to the Word of God will not prevent it. Millions of people are longing for the war in Europe and Asia to come to an end! What is to come after the war? Peace, harmony, goodwill among men, prosperity, unity, morality and respect to moral codes? No, and a thousand “no’s,” but chaos, ruin, destruction, famine, cleanness of teeth, disease, irreligion, and immorality on a scale which will cause the stoutest heart to shudder with terror!
The godless clergy are opening up every gate and avenue for the floods of inequity to prevail, and the civil magistrates are the caretakers to provide the godless mob to forget God, His Word, gospel, family ties, marriage ties, and instead of benefitting by the lessons of war we have become morally seven times worse as the divorce courts of Britain show as reported in the public press.
Rev. Dr. Davidson says with ease and evident delight that the puritanical Sabbath is as dead as the “dodo!” The seventh commandment is torn to shreds, and profaned to such an alarming extent that it too is as dead as the “dodo” in scores of thousands of cases. Was the seventh commandment a puritanical precept? The appalling conditions prevailing beggars description. Men in prison camps having to divorce their wives. Men in thousands fighting for civil and religious liberties will find on their return no home, no family, no place to receive them was this work of the “puritans” or the libertines who have abolished the Lord’s day from the land. Let me appeal with all my heart to all who have respect to themselves, to the Word of God, and their children to separate from the Church of Scotland, infinitely better to do so ere it be too late.
The Sabbath Day may be as dead to Dr. Davidson and his friends as the “dodo” but the God of the Sabbath is not dead, and the justice of God is not buried, which will yet speak in the heart and consciences of ungodly sinners. When the Church was in Babylon the godly had to hang their harps on the willow trees not because of their Jewishness, nor because they had forgotten Jerusalem but because they were in captivity. It is to be feared that the gospel and the precepts of God are as dead as the “dodo” to the Presbytery of the Church of Scotland in Glasgow. Is it any wonder then if there is such deplorable immorality, appalling iniquity going on in Glasgow! Dr. Davidson accepts and advocates for a “Christian Sunday” (whatever that may mean) going to church on “Sunday morning” (as reported) but let the rest of the sacred day be given up to the pleasures of sin, dancing, singing, and music. The next move will be a demand to open the public houses, drinking clubs, football pools, and football matches on “Sunday afternoon” as “the puritan Sabbath is as dead as the ‘dodo'” and the “Christian Sunday” introduced as a modern substitute for the Lord’s day.
We have warned our people, and strongly urge upon them never worship, nor associate with the religious hypocrites of the Church of Scotland. The curse and wrath of God is upon that Church—and she will yet persecute the godly as maliciously as the Episcopal Church did under the Stewart Kings, and the Church of Rome at Reformation times. Flee out of this modern Babylon if you value your souls and the good of the land.