A book commended by Rev. J. P. MacQueen.
There has just been published a new up-to-date history of the noble Waldensians, by their life-long admirer, Captain R. M. Stephens, a cultured and refined English gentleman, and a retired naval officer. He is certainly not the first English Christian gentleman to interest himself in this Christian community in the Waldensian valleys, among the Cottian Alps, on the North-West Italian border with France. The late worthy Mr. J. Forbes Moncrieff, C.A., Edinburgh, a writer of annual evangelical pamphlets and booklets for the young, and a contributor of excellent articles to the Free Presbyterian Magazine, also wrote a history of the Waldensians, after living weeks, if not months, among them, but that history, like many others, has been long since out of print. The title of this book is “Never Failing Light: Waldensian History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day.”
The price of this history, from apostolic days to the present, is 15/- (by post 16/5) and, however disappointing the rather flimsy cover, I can assure the reader who seeks the glory of God in all things, and the spiritual welfare of precious immortal souls that, when he or she lays down the book, he or she has had a real historical, mental, moral, and spiritual feast and tonic. As the mind and soul need moral and spiritual nourishment and establishment, just as the body needs literal food for its sustenance and physical well-being, it is well worth a good deal of economic and financial self-denial and self-sacrifice to obtain and possess
this book. It is to be had from the author, Captain R. M. Stephens, at 190 Cooden Drive, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England. This history of the keeping pure of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its original, pristine, primitive, Scriptural apostolic simplicity and plainness amidst inhuman, ruthless torture, persecutions and decimating massacres by the satanically intolerant Papal system, from apostolic times till the Reformation, is unique and unparalleled in the history of the Church in the world, the history of Israel alone excepted. While the Covenanters in Scotland endured unspeakably terrible tortures for “the faith once delivered to the saints,” it was only for a few generations, whereas the Waldensians suffered periodically and frequently from the times of the Apostles till the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, peremptorily commanded the Pope of Rome to cease this abominably inhuman conduct relative to the Waldensians. Only the Great Day will reveal what the Reformation in Europe owes to the itinerant preachers of the Waldensian valleys, who translated and propagated the Word of God at the risk of their lives, all over Europe. Their history has a lesson to teach the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland today, as showing that the maintaining of the infallible, immutable teaching of the Word of God uncompromisingly for centuries, made it unnecessary for them to alter one jot or tittle at the Reformation. If, therefore, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland will adhere uncompromisingly to the same immutable, infallible, and eternal truths of the Bible, it will carry our church into the blessed Church of the Millennium, for it appears that we are in the midst of its terrible birth-throes already. Then, “He shall reign (or judge) among many people and nations (by His Word and Spirit, not by a visible physical reign), and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Those blessed and glorious days will be brought about, not by the tortuous intrigues of carnally-minded worldly politicians, diplomats, and statesmen, through Leagues of Nations or United Nations Organisations, but by the God of Peace and the Prince of Peace, through the Gospel of peace, love, truth, holiness, justice and mercy. The Jesuit-Modernist World Council of Churches will by then have vanished into well-deserved oblivion.
Captain Stephens has put his readers in his debt by putting in small compass the results of years of painstaking research, and annual tours to the Italian haunts of the Waldensians. These tours strictly forbid Sabbath travelling and, at least, some Free Presbyterians have taken advantage of them. There are various emigrant colonies and communities of the Waldensians now to be found both in North and South America. However, my advice to all readers is get and read this book for yourselves; its large print making it easy to read for the elderly people. Let the young
especially read it. It has 20 illustrations and five maps. The Word of God—and it only—was the rule of the Waldensian in all things. This history illustrates the truth that God will have a people to serve Him somewhere in the world, even when darkness is covering other parts of the earth and gross darkness the people, while sun and moon endure. It also illustrates the truth that the seed of the Serpent will ever persecute the seed of the woman with all the combined diabolical ingenuity of Satan and his human slaves and dupes, while the true Church of Christ will forever, while this world lasts, prove that its appropriate emblem is “the bush burning, but not consumed.”