“Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth”. Psalm 60:4.
The title of the Psalm is “a lily of witness” — the meaning of the Hebrew words, Shusan-eduth. The lily is the symbol of purity. Christ’s banner is a witness on the side of the purity of the Word of God, as we find the Psalmist elsewhere confessing,
“Thy word’s most pure, therefore on it
thy servant’s love is set.
Small, and despis’d I am, yet I
thy precepts not forget”.
What is of the Lord is pure and undefiled. Where Christ has His Cause there you will find a banner displayed in defence of the Truth, and against all that is contrary to the Truth.
The Purity of the Text of Scripture
Those to whom Christ has given this banner, seek to display it in defence of the purity of the text on which the Authorised Version, and all the Versions of the Churches of the Reformation is based. It is the text concerning which the Westminster Confession of Faith says: “The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek being immediately inspired by God and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical”. The Greek Text, which had been providentially preserved in the Greek Church is known as the Tactus Receptus or the Received Text. Westcott and Hort, professors in Trinity College, Cambridge, believers in the Theory of Evolution and destructive critics of the Word of God claimed that the Greek manuscripts discovered about the year 1860, usually known as Codex Aleph and Codex B, contained the genuine Greek Text of the New Testament and not the Tactus Receptus. They accordingly produced a new Greek Text which they based on Codex Aleph and Codex B, and devised an elaborate theory, elevating these two manuscripts and one or two others of a later date, to the heights of almost infallible authority. “They used these Codexes despite the fact that they disagree with 95% of the extant manuscripts, papyri and Scripture portions of the early Church fathers, which on the other hand, do agree with the authorised Greek text on which the King James and other Reformation translations are based. In fact, the Westcott and Hort text represents a radical revision introducing as many as 5337 changes in the Greek, and more than 3600 changes in the Revised English Version of 1881.” “I insist and am prepared to prove” wrote the learned Dean Burgon, “that the text of these two Codexes (Aleph and B) is very nearly the foulest in existence.”
In Defence of the New Testament Majority Greek Text
the author Donald A. Waite, Th.D, Ph.D states that Dean Burgon made an exhaustive examination of citations of Scriptures quoted by the Church fathers of antiquity which runs into “sixteen thick manuscript volumes, to be found in the British Museum, and contains 86,489 quotations.” Dr Waite supports the claim of Professor Zane Hodges that from the standpoint of sheer numbers of existing manuscripts that have survived, the Majority Text upon which the King James Version is based, has in reality the strongest claim possible to be regarded as an authentic representation of the original text.
Purity of Doctrine
The banner is displayed as a witness in defence of the purity of the Truth, as these are clearly and Scripturally set forth in the Confession of Faith. The stand made in 1893 by the Rev Donald MacFarlane was in defence of these doctrines, and against the false and unscriptural doctrines of Voluntaryism and Arminianism ratified by the Declaratory Act. It has been claimed that the Declaratory Act was but a dead letter and therefore inoperative. The fact that the General Assembly of 1893 declared protests entered on Presbytery Records against the Declaratory Act null and void proves the contrary. The stand made was of the Lord, and in His goodness and mercy it has been preserved intact for the long period of over eighty years.
The Sacraments
The banner is displayed as a witness in defence of the ancient and honoured mode of dispensing the sacraments, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. With regard to the former the Church acts on the principle which at one time was almost universal among the Churches of the Reformation, the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Churches on the Continent of Europe, the Presbyterian Churches of America, and most Protestant Churches, as the Church of England and the Congregationalist Churches, that every baptised person not excommunicated being a member of the visible Church has a right to have his child baptised. “Infants of such as are members of the visible church are to be baptised.” (Cat. Q. 95).
The Church accordingly holds that the two sacraments are in general seals of the covenant of grace, and that as such they are equally valid, but that they do not seal the same measure of privilege, that the qualification, therefore for baptism and for full communion are not identical, that many may be properly admitted to the former, who are not prepared for the latter. Dr Kennedy, Dingwall, states that most desirable results were secured by this mode of dispensing sealing ordinances, which go far to prove that it was the mind of the Lord, and crowned with His blessing. To quote but two of his arguments — (1) The Church is preserved from the extreme of exclusiveness on the one hand, and from that of laxity, on the other. The door of admission was open to all to whom piety, charity and prudence would admit, and the inner circle was guarded from the profane rush of the crowd. (2) It marked and preserved a distinction, so far as this can be legitimately done, between the approved followers of Christ and all others. This distinction, as an ecclesiastical one, is quite blotted out, when both sacraments are administered on the same footing. (The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, Chap. 4.)
Church Privileges
While the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland does not hold the doctrine of Close Communion, it exercises the greatest care in granting Church privileges. All who engage in Sabbath work (except works of necessity and mercy), or who travel by trains or cars run in systematic disregard of the Lord’s Day, and all who are members of secret societies as Freemasonry, etc., are denied Church privileges.
The Common Market
The banner was displayed as a witness against the Common Market at the Synod in May, 1975, in its Recommendation regarding the Common Market Referendum. The Synod taking into consideration the serious dangers to our civil and religious liberties through our alliance with the predominantly Roman Catholic nations of Europe, recommended to our people that they vote against continued membership of the European Economic Community. The Synod in May, 1962 endorsed the view expressed in the Religious and Morals Report — “It would be well to realise that the ultimate outcome of the Common Market will be a United States of Europe with the Pope, the ‘Man of Sin’, at its head.” The English Churchman in its editorial shortly before the Referendum expressed the same view, as the following quotation from it makes clear: “Lord Craven said, some ten years ago, after speaking of the beauty of the Roman Catholic Church’s unity under the Pope: ‘The European Common Market would be an ideal way in which to bring England into the traditions of Christian unity which she once held in the past, and which I hope most sincerely she will hold again in the future’. That these were the views of the Vatican there can be no doubt. ‘Not since the days of the Roman Empire’ said an article in Topic ‘has the Holy See been offered a Catholic rallying point like the Common Market’. Small wonder that the Roman Church is smiling benignly over the formation of what one Vatican official has defined as ‘the greatest Catholic super-state the world has ever known’. The Holy See has now set aside one day a year in honour of the Common Market, where prayers are said and candles lit in the churches for the intervention and protection by the Virgin Mary in what is, after all, the greatest Catholic business deal in history. We can be sure that if there is much in it for the Roman Church, there is little in it for Protestants on every count, but especially the religious side, it is for them a bad bargain. The time has come to decide, and in the light of the true nature of EEC there is a clear and overwhelming case for saying NO! (English Churchman, May 23rd 1975). We should be thankful that the trumpet of our Church gave no uncertain sound against the nefarious sell-out of our blood-bought liberties for a mess of popish pottage.
The Testimony Maintained
In connection with the Billy Graham campaign in Scotland in 1955 the Synod passed a unanimous Resolution, a part of which states: “The Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland convened this day the 17th May 1955 resolved to inform our people at home and abroad and all concerned that our Church took no part whatever in the recent so-called “All Scotland Crusade” by Billy Graham and his ‘team’ from the United States of America. It seems to us that the preaching was similar to the Wesleyan and D. L. Moody’s Arminianism, which conservative divines rejected and condemned as being contrary to the doctrines of free and sovereign grace. We accept the trenchant exposure and condemnation of Arminianism preached by Moody and others, by such eminent divines as the Rev. Augustus Toplady and Dr John Kennedy, Dingwall. We believe that the doctrines preached were from the same school as Wesley and Moody. We rejected the soul-destroying teaching of Arminianism”.
Twenty years later in May 1975 the Synod passed a unanimous Resolution re-affirming the separate position from other denominations in this land taken up in 1893 by the Church. Without quoting it in full it reads: “The Synod desires to state in terms of its constitution, that this Church has taken up a separate position from other Churches in Scotland in order to maintain a testimony to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures as the Word of God and in order to adhere in its practice to that Word as its supreme standard and the Westminster Confession of Faith which is based on the Scripture, as its subordinate standard. This separate position is justified because, and only as long as, it is necessary. Accordingly conduct giving the impression that there is no obstacle to association with other churches, undermines the necessity for a separate position and is therefore inconsistent with loyal adherence to the Free Presbyterian Church, and is consequently disapproved of by this Church. The Synod would accordingly call upon our people everywhere to remain loyally and firmly attached to the full-orbed testimony of Divine Truth among us, and to wait patiently and prayerfully upon the Lord, who will yet arise to plead the Cause which is His Own”.
These Resolutions show the unbroken continuity of the witness of the Church.
Words Fitly Spoken
How we should value, prize, uphold and defend such a witness on the side of the Truth in this dark day of appalling apostacy! It is the continued testimony of the historic Church of Scotland. “We have not stepped aside” said the Rev. Donald MacFarlane “from the position of the Church of Scotland for centuries”. (Memoir p.55). The Scottish Establishment was universally regarded as the fairest flower of the Reformation Churches. The Protest of 1843 preserved the Establishment from the ravages of Patronage: the Protest of 1893 from Voluntaryism — the boar from the forest that would have trampled this fair flower, watered by the blood of the martyrs, underfoot, and from the heretical doctrines of Arminiansim.
As a consequence of the Protest of 1843 eviction from churches and manses followed. The same pattern of eviction followed the Protest of 1893, but on both occasions the servants of the Lord took joyfully the spoiling of their goods in order to preserve whole and entire the fair flower of our Establishment for generations yet unborn.
In a series of Gaelic articles which appeared in the magazine in the year 1899 from the pen of the Rev. Neil Cameron, Glasgow, on “The Fall of the Reformed Church in Scotland”, Mr Cameron says in one article, “when the witness was raised in 1893 we took with us every pin and cord and pillar belonging to the Reformed Church of Scotland”.
The late Rev. D. N. Macleod, Ullapool, in his address to the Synod in 1948 said “There is a great forsaking of the true faith in the land, as well as throughout the world in this sad day or ours. It is indeed a cloudy and dark day — so dark and cloudy that whoever will get through safely and be accounted worthy of the Lord will have reason to praise God throughout eternity. But this I say to the rising generation. They have been left a goodly heritage, a heritage of which they have every reason to be proud, and it is their duty to value that heritage and leave it to those who will come after them unimpaired as others left it to them. Let them make conscience of that before God, to be faithful to what was left by those who went before them. It was not the work of men and women at all. It was the Lord’s work. Well, they are duty bound to serve Him. If not, I pity them when they will meet the Lord at the last day. I pity them from the bottom of my heart who will be unfaithful and will not do their utmost to preserve that heritage for the generations coming after them”.
“There are many who maintain” wrote the Rev. Neil Cameron, “that we are perpetuating unnecessary contention. Woe to that man who without cause makes divisions in the Church of God. But a double woe is on the man who will not stand for the Truth. We are not against union, but are whole-heartedly for it, but let it be based on the Word of God and the Confession of Faith. At the same time we cannot admit the claim, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord” when the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen are in our ears. Were it possible for us, our desire is that neither the sad divisions nor the contentions among our fellow-countrymen would continue, and that not only the people of Scotland, but all peoples under the sun would be united in one on the foundation of the Reformed Church of Scotland. We would open our heart to all the people of the world, were they to come together on the basis of the Truth and in the name of Christ”. (Extract from Gaelic sermon on Rev. 3:20. F.P. Magazine Vol. VI).
It has been publicly affirmed by Church historians not belonging to our Church that they had to confess that the cream of the godly in Scotland rallied to the standard raised in 1893. Several of these eminent in godliness and who had the mind of the Lord above many, made it known that they were fully persuaded that the witness raised in 1893 was of the Lord and that He would preserve it until the latter-day glory.
What reason we have at the end of 83 years to set up our Ebenezer and say, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”! and to give heed to the exhortation — “Destroy it not; for there is a blessing in it”; “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life”, and “Let them return unto thee, but return not thou unto them”.
W.M.