A New Year has dawned. In the Lord’s providence we have been spared to see the beginning of 1977. Let us praise the Lord that we are still on the ground of mercy and that He has not yet cast us off in His wrath. He who brought the world into being still keeps it in being in order that he may work out the purposes of His grace.
If the New Year has found us still without Christ, then let us seek Him earnestly for He is to be found of those that seek Him. If Christ is already ours then let us prize Him and let us resolve in the strength of divine grace to follow Him more closely than we have done hitherto. How much we lose by following Him at a distance!
The year has opened. We cannot tell who will see it close. But what matters most is that we should be able to say, each one for himself or herself, “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” If we can say this in truth, then whatever may lie before us, there is but a step between us and the realms of everlasting glory.
God-dishonouring Entertainments
In early December, and defying many strongly-worded protests from people in different parts of the Island of Lewis, the Playhouse Cinema at Stornoway screened the rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The Playhouse manager, Mr Duncan MacKinnon, refused to heed the protests and warnings sent in.
It is surely a sad day in the Island of Lewis, where so many eminently godly men and women lived in the past, and where the Lord has still a goodly number of His own people, that a film of this kind, so blasphemous in its character and blatantly derogatory to the claims of Zion’s King, and offensive to the people of the Island, should have been permitted to be screened.
The decision of Glasgow District Council to withdraw the licence of a theatre where a pop group, noted for its obscene language, was to conduct a concert, is to be welcomed. So is the warning by the E.M.I. recording combine to the same pop group that they might terminate their contract if they do not improve their conduct. We hope that the attempts by profane entertainers to debase the minds of young and old will utterly fail.
Christians Behind the Iron Curtain
While we in Britain enjoy full religious freedom to worship God and to propagate the doctrines of God’s Word, many in Communist countries have this freedom largely denied to them or severely curtailed. In Russia, Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania and East Germany, Christians are exposed to persecution or suffer disabilities of various kinds for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
At the beginning of a New Year it becomes us to remember those in bonds as bound with them, and those that suffer adversity as being ourselves also in the body. We are called, not only to rejoice with them that rejoice but also to weep with those that weep. Let us value our own privileges and seek to preserve them, while at the same time doing whatever we can to encourage and help those in less favoured lands who are persecuted for righteousness sake.
The Labour Party and Karl Marx
A recent survey conducted with the co-operation of 100 Labour MP’s established that the writings of Karl Marx had the greatest influence on their political beliefs. Twenty-seven of the MP’s questioned were not brought up in any religious denomination, forty-one said that religious belief had an influence on their politics but fifty-six said it had not. A Daily Telegraph editorial entitled “From Wesley to Marx” commented on the change that had taken place in the Labour Party. More recently documentary evidence has been produced to show that quite a number of Labour MP’s have been involved in one way or another with Communist and other ultra-Left wing organisations. It bodes ill for the future of our country that the atheistic philosophy of Karl Marx exerted a formative influence on so many of our MP’s. What a far cry from the days when MP’s could trace the greatest formative influence of their lives to the Bible, the Word of God!
“To live as others do, and to be free of open sins that the world crieth shame upon, will not bring you to heaven”.
Samuel Rutherford