The following notice appeared in the latest edition of the Free Presbyterian Church magazine, F P Vision.
What is referred to here by this oblique statement is an article by Jonathan Storey, minister of Mt Merrion Free Presbyterian Church, in which he recommends that we adopt the prayer of the Romanist ‘saint’ Thomas Aquinas, an Italian Dominican friar and priest.
I challenged the publishing of this article in an article entitled:
‘I consider this a most serious and unacceptable breach in our denomination’s adherence to the Word of God and to the Reformed Faith and it is time to call a halt to such violations of our God-ordained stand and witness and deal with those guilty of such.
If the sentiments of this article are not the official position of the Free Presbyterian Church, then how was it sanctioned for publication in an official magazine?’
In a response to my protest at the article, I was told the matter would be addressed in the next edition of the Free Presbyterian Vision.(more…)
“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” Lamentations 1:1.
As Matthew Poole in his commentary says: ‘This book . . . hath its name from the subject matter of it, which is lamentation.’ It was written by Jeremiah, who afresh earns the title of ‘the weeping prophet’.
These questions in the opening verse denote the astonishing consequences of God’s judgment on an erring, stubborn, self-willed people! Their miseries can be dated I believe to after the defeat of the city by the Babylonians in BC 588.
We may see that the conquest of Jerusalem has passed from these words.
“The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up. The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress. For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed,” Lamentations 1:14-16.
‘The whole book lets us see from what a height of dignity to what a depth of misery sin may bring nations, how much soever interested in God; and likewise directs us to our duty in such states of affliction and misery if we would obtain mercy,’ Matthew Poole (1624–1679).
In this first verse the prophet stands and speaks in awe and amazement at what has happened to the city of Jerusalem.
Three times the word “how” is uttered by Jeremiah
I. NO MATTER HOW SECURE OUR POSITION MAY BE, THE LORD CAN BRING US DOWN!
1. Jerusalem the city sat ‘solitary’. The word carries the meaning of ‘isolation’. The word first appears in Leviticus 13:43-46 and it refers to the imposed isolation of the many suspected of being a leper.
“Then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the rising of the sore be white reddish in his bald head, or in his bald forehead, as the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh; he is a leprous man, he is unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his plague is in his head. And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”
The city once ‘full of people’ has been reduced to that loneliness and friendlessness of the leper forced without the camp! As Jeremiah looked upon Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Babylonian siege and conquest of the city, he marvelled that she that had been so secure, so prosperous and enjoyed such divine protection could be reduced to rubble!
This is what backsliding and sin will bring upon any people, irrespective of the privileges they rejoiced in and the enjoyment of God’s blessing they may have experienced in the past.
“For the wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23. (more…)
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“But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away,” 1 Corinthians 7:29-31.
