The Birth And Early History Of The Free Presbyterian Church
This video was made in 1987 by ‘Let The Bible Speak’ and its narrator is the late Dr Alan Cairns, the founder of LTBS.
It contains interviews with devoted servants of God who have gone to glory, including some of those from the earliest days of the Free Presbyterian Church.
I commend it to the readers of the Burning Bush because I believe it presents one of the best accounts of our early history and has about it a strong ambiance and ‘flavour’ of true Free Presbyterianism, which our younger generation need to know and embrace!
Mrs E A Foster BA
On a personal level, it contains an interview with Ann, my dear wife who went into the presence of the Saviour some 2 years ago, interviewed outside the school she pioneered.
I also caught a glimpse of some of my own children, now parents and grand parents, playing outside Kilskeery Independent Christian school on that day.
I trust it will prompt you all to pray:
“Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved,” Psalm 80:19.
The Prophet Isaiah, by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino (1591-1666); Oil on canvas
“In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden,” Isaiah 14:28.
Today (15th May, 2026) I read this chapter 14 of Isaiah’s prophecy, rejoicing at how wonderfully the Lord shares His purpose with regards Israel and the whole world, with His people in a day of Judah’s sin and rebellion in high places.
The word “burden” is simply a reference to the Word of God which lay heavy upon the heart of the prophet. There are few sermons today that are preached from a ‘burdened’ heart!
The Internet and not the Bible
Sadly, all too often the source of sermons in today’s pulpits, even those which pass as evangelical and fundamentalist, is something ‘filched’ from the internet and which, no matter how sound in doctrine it may be, becomes just a meaningless, frivolous recitation of powerless words, for they are NOT given of the Holy Ghost!
In this case, Isaiah was a “burdened” man! It is little wonder the servant of the Lord was distressed in his soul! We are told that this message was preached “in the year that king Ahaz died.”
King Ahaz was a most wicked king. The Lord summed up his life in these words.
“Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD his God, like David his father. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree,” 2 Kings 16:2-4.
Despite having witnessed the overthrow of the ten northern tribes, the kingdom of Israel, Ahaz “walked in the way of the kings of Israel.” That is how blind, stubborn and stupidly wicked men can be!
We are told in 2 Kings 17, “In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes,” Verses 1-6.
A Witness That Did Not Deter
Ahaz witnessed the consequences of Hoshea’s rebellion against the Lord. The ten tribes of Israel were taken into captivity by the king of Assyria but he learned nothing from it! Judah would have seen the sad procession of enslaved captives passing her ‘door’ as it were, on their way into Assyrian bondage.
Present Generation
In the lifetime of the present generation there has been abundant evidence of the price paid by the ecumenical churches for their rebellion against the Lord. They are riddled with the ‘leprosy’ of liberalism and the soul-damning doctrines of this Gospel-denying age!
Have we not also witnessed here in Northern Ireland the downfall of the Democratic Unionist Party, once the ‘behemoth’ of Unionism, following its shameful and reprehensible decision to cast overboard all it professed to stand for and hold dear for the ‘mess of pottage’ of entering government as the partner of Sinn Fein/IRA?
From this act of betrayal, hailed by ecumenists and republicans alike, it has descended into embracing lesbianism, sodomy and being guilty of many deceitful betrayals of all that our fathers were prepared to die in order to maintain!
Across The Water
The same picture of the terrible harvest of trampling underfoot the Laws of God has been witnessed across the Irish Sea in mainland Britain. Who can aptly describe the chaos and confusion, the downright absurdity, of British politics at this present time?
These things are but the inevitable harvest of defiance and contempt for God and His Word. We are warned of such an outcome of defiance of God in Galatians 6:7-8.
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
Here in Ulster there is the same blind folly to be seen amongst Christians who choose to ignore the clear warning signs all around — and that includes Free Presbyterian ministers! (more…)
A Free Presbyterian minister affirms submission to the follow questions at his ordination.
Will you maintain with all the strength God shall give you the position on Biblical separation from apostasy as taken by the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in 1951 at the time of its secession from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland?
As God helps you will you expose and resist the continued apostasy from Christ manifested within Irish Presbyterianism, Methodism, Episcopalianism and other visible church bodies; exhorting God’s people to obey the teaching and commandment of 1 Timothy 6: 3-5?
The following Facebook advert was sent to me . . . .
Moyrourkan True Blues Flute Band
Moyrourkan True Blues JLOL 144
Mark your calendars for Sunday 24th May.
The parade will leave Moyrourkan Orange Hall at 2:30pm, making its way to Clare Presbyterian Church for a service at 3:00pm.
The dedication service will be conducted by the Grand Chaplain of the Junior Grand Lodge, Deputy County Grand Chaplain, and Chaplain of Tandragee District, Wor. Bro. Rev. David McLaughlin.
How many more Free Presbyterian ministers are ready to stand in the pulpits of the apostate denomination and by their actions endorse ecumenism, liberal theology and encourage people to continue defying God by their support of denominations in rebellion against God’s Word?
I am convinced that when they are in such pulpits there is never a word spoken against ecumenism and apostasy!
Here is God’s command to all of His people.
“Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty,”
2 Corinthians 6:17-18.
Entering the pulpit of a denomination in rebellion against God is much more than a TOUCH!
Will men not learn from the shaming debacle Rev Paul Thompson got himself into by such folly?
Such public articles as this is a doing of that which our Presbytery leadership is failing to do!
The present spirit of disobedience within our ranks have not gone unnoticed by the the Lord but rather it has “entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth,” James 5:4.
Even an ‘ass’ can see and understand the Lord’s opposition to what foolish men insist on engaging in!
Numbers 22:22-34.
“Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear,” 1 Timothy 5:20.
