I Shall Not Die but Live, Facing Death with Gospel Hope, by Douglas Taylor, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 360 pages, £13.00, obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
Douglas Taylor was Assistant Editor with the Banner of Truth for 14 years until he retired through ill-health in 2011. One morning after leaving work, the words of Psalm 118:17, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord”, came strongly to his mind. Before long he began writing short messages and posting them on the Internet. This continued till shortly before his death, in May 2014. He stressed that his only ambition for his blog was “that it should exalt Christ”.
About a third of these messages have been collected in this book. Conscious that he did not have long to live, many of these pieces are written with the closeness of death before the mind’s eye of the writer. In a piece entitled, “The Houses of Mourning and Mirth”, in which he quotes the words of Ecclesiastes 7:2-4, he writes, “Deep seriousness is not at all an enemy to joy, only to folly. The thoughtful consideration of the end of all men is also likely to produce sobriety, a quality in which the professing Church today seems lacking, despite the importance the New Testament attaches to it.”
Many of these messages contain a quotation from some Reformed writer; at other times he makes use of poetry and sometimes a verse or two from a
metrical Psalm. One quotation comes from John Calvin; it includes the words: “Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves”. Taylor seems to have had a particular fondness for Thomas Watson, from whom he often quotes. One of these quotations is as follows: “We should be content to live, but willing to die. Is it not a blessed thing to be free from sin and to lie for ever in the bosom of divine love?”
Taylor emphasises, “If there is an atom of co-operation required from me which the Lord does not Himself give, everything falls to the ground, and I am lost. Some will think this an exaggeration, but those who feel as weak as I do will understand me very well.”
In these messages, Taylor consistently quotes from the Authorised Version. At one point he quotes Isaiah 32:2 and complains: “This ‘man’ [in the verse] can be none other than the Saviour. (Just in passing . . . some of the commentators and most of the modern versions make this ‘man’ to be Hezekiah . . . I want to protest at this nonsense on behalf of ordinary believers who are thereby robbed of the comfort they should gain from this verse. How long will the ‘critics’ dare to take the children’s bread? I suppose till the Lord arises to plead His own cause against them.)” Just at a couple of points is there anything to which one would react negatively.
Most of these messages cover around a (small) page and a half; others are longer but, as Taylor was getting weaker, some barely fill a single page. Those who are becoming weak themselves, among others, should find it profitable to read one of these messages from time to time; those who are short of time might pick up this book and read a page or two between other activities; others again could usefully read a few pages before settling down to sleep.
Protestant View
Fatima and Rome
The Pope has recently “canonised” two young Portuguese children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who died aged 11 and nine respectively in the Spanish influenza epidemic at the end of the First World War. According to the Vatican, they were credited with having received a number of special messages from Mary in the year 1917, in visions they allegedly saw at Fatima, north of Lisbon. These visions are regarded as amongst the most important events in the history of modern Roman Catholicism. Needless to say, the apparitions have been sedulously exploited by the papal propaganda machine over the years and credulously accepted by multitudes of poor Romanist
devotees. The present incumbent of St Peter’s is reported to be “devoted to the Madonna”, as was the late John Paul II, who actually attributed his survival from an assassination attempt in 1981 to “Our Lady of Fatima”.
The adoration of Mary – Mariolatry – is by no means the least of Romanism’s sinful errors. It intrudes on the exclusive honour to be paid to God in worship and it derogates from the glory of the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). Rome has always traded in superstition and downright deception, and our readers need little reminder that visions such as these, purporting to be from Mary, come not from a heavenly source but, ultimately, from the one who “is a liar and the father of it” (Jn 8:44).
The Episcopalian bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, Mark Strange, when recently attending an inter-faith conference in Rome, was chosen to meet the Pope personally and receive a blessing from him. He described this interview as “truly wonderful”, adding, “I cannot deny that this is a man who is in direct line to Peter. He is sitting on the throne of Peter and I find that is quite awe-inspiring.” While we feel sorry that any professed Protestant minister would enthuse about such a meeting and concede so much to the absurd, unscriptural claims of the papacy to primacy over the universal Church, we sadly cannot expect much better from the leaders of the Scottish Episcopal Church. As a body, it has lamentably failed, over many years, to adhere to the truths of the Word of God and has, in general, been closer to Romanism than to the Scriptural doctrines of the Reformation. “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast” (Rev 13:3). AWM