The initial agreement with the Jewish and Foreign Missions Committee was for a stay of three years. When the three years expired at the end of 1962, he came home on furlough for the first time. During this time, he received an approach from the Gairloch congregation. This he decided to decline and agreed to return to Africa for a further three years. By 14 August 1963 he was back in Ingwenya to begin his second spell in Africa. On his arrival he wrote home expressing his desire that the people of the Church would “be instant in prayer for the Mission in these troublous days”. In the providence of God, it was during this second period on the Mission that he met his future wife, Miss Mary MacInnes, a native of Skye, who joined the Teacher Training Centre at Zenka in January 1964.
Relatively little is known about these final years in Africa, but one prominent aspect was his meeting with a young man who was studying at the Ingwenya Boarding School, Zarorai Mazvabo to name. He was from Mashonaland, a part of southern Zimbabwe where the Church then had no presence. Under Mr MacDonald’s preaching he came to be awakened to a concern for the salvation of his soul. A strong bond was then formed between Zarorai and his minister, to whom the young man felt able to unbosom himself about his spiritual concerns. It seems that he was for some time under a severe law work, and was kept in bondage at Mount Sinai amidst its darkness, tempest and trumpet for some time. In writing to his minister, he revealed that he felt nothing but condemnation and could not then lay hold of the gospel, and rather felt that this guilt was only increased by God having sent a Saviour into the world whom he had rejected.
However, the time of his deliverance was drawing nigh, and the year of Christ’s redeemed had come. Just before finishing his studies at Ingwenya, he heard a sermon preached by Mr MacDonald on John 2:7, “Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim”. He would later write to him from his family home in Mashonaland to say that he went away from Ingwenya with these words, “Fill the waterpots with water”, ringing in his ears, but not long afterwards the Lord turned the water (of head knowledge) to the wine (of grace). The precise means of his coming to the liberty of the gospel was an occasion of family worship which he held with his parents. On one such occasion he was reading Matthew 5:20: “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven”. His experience was that these words brought light to his soul and that he got, as it were, a whole sermon on the righteousness of Christ in a flash. He rose from his knees, after the final prayer of that worship, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Bonds of brotherly love now bound the two together, and they kept up a correspondence for many years.
Writing to Mr MacDonald in October 1966, Zarorai said, “I am so very thankful that I have been with you [for] some time and that you have told me about Christ. I also thank you that you gave me books to read. They preach wonderful sermons to me and so continually. Besides, God is using them to warn me of possible pitfalls. . . . The Lord is allowing me some good health – far from what I deserve and from what I expect at His hand. I also feel the continual war against Satan and the world. Somehow I would that I were assured about the safety of my soul. I sometimes doubt myself. At times I wonder at my deeds. Would a true child of God do this and that? I may be asking too much but I can’t deny the fact that my heart desires it.”
Part of his experience during this second spell in Africa was the conflict which he felt for the whole of these three years about turning down the approach from Gairloch. So much was this impressed on his mind that he became convinced that it was there that he ought to have been labouring. He began to pray that if it was the Lord’s will for him yet to go to Gairloch, He would be pleased to open up the way. During that time, he was aware that the Gairloch Congregation approached numerous ministers, with none of them encouraging the approach. Eventually, they returned to the object of their earlier desire, and approached Mr MacDonald again asking him to be their minister. This call he now readily accepted. He returned to Scotland, and was inducted to the Gairloch congregation on 17 November 1965. The call had been signed by 24 members and 223 adherents, and Rev John Colquhoun, the Western Presbytery Clerk, observed that “the settlement was very harmonious”. A new and long chapter had now begun in Mr MacDonald’s ministry, which was to see him standing faithfully at his appointed post on Zion’s walls for over 55 years. Not long after this, on 19 January 1966, he was married to Miss Mary MacInnes and the newly married couple set up home in the Gairloch manse as the new ministry was just beginning.
Mr MacDonald was given a true pastor’s heart and showed the highest dedication to his flock over the years as an assiduous visitor in season and out of season. This zeal manifested his love to the people placed under his care and it continued unabated to the end of his life. As his age advanced it was not uncommon to hear of him making long car journeys across the country to visit those connected with his own congregation who were in hospital or care homes. One such course of visitation opened up a door of access to a care home in the Dingwall area where he would give addresses attended by the staff as well as the residents, many of whom were younger than himself.
His preaching was of the highest quality, and reflected the intense, careful and, we believe, prayerful hours of preparation in the study beforehand each week. The unction of heaven rested upon his preaching in no common degree, and often he came forth to the services of the sanctuary in fear and trembling but anointed with fresh oil. The experience of many of the Lord’s people throughout the borders of the Church, and indeed beyond, was that they often found a rare power and blessing in his preaching, which under God, was used to refresh their weary souls. His preaching was not one-sided, though some may have the impression that the preaching of the law predominated. It is true that he did not neglect this aspect of the divine truth, and few could preach the awful solemnities of the avenging justice of God in a lost eternity as Mr MacDonald. His sermons were a breaking up of the Word of God as he found it in each text, and there was therefore a freshness and a variety in them.
He was far from being rigid in his preaching, and all the more so because it was his deliberate method to leave himself much open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in his discourses. It was largely for this reason that his custom was not to give out his heads in advance, though clear logical order abounded in his matter. Yet, if he found an opening with liberty in one part of the material he had prepared, he would dwell there as long as he felt the Spirit’s help in it. The Person and the work of Christ were to the fore, and he appears to have followed the advice given to him by his late father at the outset of his ministry, “to keep a crucified Christ before the people”. In this connection it is interesting to note that he made it a habit throughout his ministry to read the Scripture accounts of the sufferings of Christ in the Psalms, Isaiah and the Gospels every week.
He put a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God, and stressed the total depravity and inability of man, and the need for the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit as sent from a crucified Christ. It was his delight to call poor sinners to come to Christ without money and without price. His approach was to strip man of all fleshly religion, and then to open up the grace and freeness of the gospel in Christ. Few could separate the precious from the vile as Mr MacDonald did, so that there was a very searching note to his preaching.
Many there are in and without the Church in Scotland, England, Canada, and Zimbabwe who have given testimony to the blessings for eternity which the Lord bestowed upon them through his instrumentality. The Lord’s people often found their case opened and temptations broken under his preaching. His long and laborious ministry, though in a declining day when the gospel sun has been setting in Scotland, was thus not without fruit which has remained.
One particularly remarkable experience took place when on a trip to Canada as deputy. Having spent a number of weeks supplying the Chesley congregation without feeling his wonted liberty in preaching, he viewed an invitation to preach at a large Dutch Reformed congregation in Dundas, Ontario, with some trepidation. However, the words of truth were impressed upon his mind, “Now when he had left speaking, He said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto Him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net” (Lk 5:4,5). This he took to be an encouragement to act the part of the fisher of men once more in Canada and to cast the gospel net into the sea.
This truth was chosen as his text in Dundas, though his application was not to the preacher but to the seeking sinner discouraged after toiling in seeking Christ and not finding Him in the “deeps” of the means of grace. Unusual liberty was granted in preaching that night, and a number of souls in that congregation were to have their nets filled with the blessing of a salvation sought and now found. The preacher’s own net was filled in another way also, for the blessing of that night remained in his own spiritual experience for around nine months afterwards, so that day after day he found a special saviour and power in his soul – morning, afternoon and evening.
By divine grace, he was a bulwark against the prevailing spiritual declension of the age in which he lived. A deep sense of the divine majesty caused him to fear God above many, and he had no time for the light and shallow religion which was spreading over the visible Church. His character contained the rare combinations of vigorous intellect with deep humility, solemn gravity with tenderness of spirit, and a somewhat severe exterior with a warm, loyal and loving heart within. He was no stranger to the temptations and trials of the Lord’s people, and he knew what it is to go down to the depths as well as to mount to the heights of spiritual experience. It was therefore no surprise that he was able to enter deeply into the experiences of the tried and afflicted among the saints, and to sympathise with them.
He abhorred all deviousness and flattery in Church courts, and his own conduct was consistent with this over the years. Perfection is not claimed for Mr MacDonald, who had by nature a strong will and personality and, in common with all prior to the perfection of the work of sanctification at death, he had faults of which he was keenly aware and which caused no little grief to himself. His manner of speaking in Church Courts was ever forthright and fearless, and at times to a fault.
He was also the Church’s Systematic Theology tutor, first from 1986 to 1995, and then from 2000 to 2002. An indefatigable student of theology and the Word itself throughout his ministry, his rich theological grasp of the truth meant that the divinity students under his tuition received the finest of the wheat. He was an expert in the voluminous writings of John Owen and described the course he taught his students as a systematisation of Owen’s theology. It would be a mistake, however, to think he was a man of one author, because he read numerous other authors such as Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Goodwin, Stephen Charnock and Samuel Rutherford.
His ministry in Gairloch was to last for 56 years. His vigour of intellect and body, as well as his powers in the pulpit, continued unabated until beyond his ninetieth year. Like Caleb and Moses in old age, his eye was not dim and his natural force was not abated. A mellowing of his character told of an inner ripening for glory. He was kept poor and needy by certain trials and temptations during his latter years. His dear wife’s health broke down to such an extent that she was an invalid for a number of years towards the end of his ministry. The provision of local care, along with the self-denying support of his daughter Marwen, allowed his ministry to continue during this period. Those who provided the care locally admitted that they dreaded having to enter the home of the respected but stern Gairloch Free Presbyterian minister. But before long the report began to break out in the community that there was nothing in that home but love.
As his faculties began to weaken somewhat, he retired in May 2021 and moved to Inverness. The gradual decline in his mind and health accelerated, and he was obviously much weakened in the months after his retirement. He was able to carry out frequent visits to the elderly he knew in that congregation, and the night before his death, though the power of his legs was beginning to fail, he insisted on a visit to an old house-bound friend. He rapidly deteriorated, passing away to his eternal rest the next day, Tuesday, 4 October 2022.
The Church as a whole, has lost its most senior and accomplished minister with his passing. To his mourning family we extend our sympathy. “And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces” (2 Ki 2:12). Those who had the privilege of bonds of spiritual fellowship with him would say with the prophet, “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net” (Mic 7:1,2). (Rev) I D MacDonald
The first part, last month, gave an account of Mr MacDonald’s life up to the end of his first period of service in Africa. This final part covers the remainder of his life.
The Free Presbyterian Magazine*, vol 67, p 158.