A series of sermons titled “CAN WE EXPECT A BREATH OF REVIVAL AMIDST THE APOSTASY OF THESE LAST DAYS? “, preached at Kilskeery Free Presbyterian Church beginning on Sunday morning, July 19, 2026 by Rev. Ivan Foster (Rtd).
View a video of this sermon below:
Some photographs from that time of contending for the Gospel
The protest took place at the installation of Richard Hanson as Bishop of Clogher, on March 17th, 1970.
The protest brought about the ejecting of us from of a local Orange Hall, Andrews Wood hall, where I was conducting a Gospel mission. The mission continued however, and by the end of April a Free Presbyterian hall had been erected and some months later that year, Clogher valley Free Presbyterian Church was constituted in the hall.
Despite the efforts of local ecumenists and their roping in of some Tyrone County Council officials to aid them, their demand that the hall be taken down and removed, failed.
It can be seen that a hall had been erected and was in use for regular services by June. Many years ago, the hall was replaced by a beautiful permanent building.
The Gospel outreach in the Spring of 1970 in Clogher Valley was the first of a number of missions undertaken by Lisbellaw Free Presbyterian Church that resulted in a permanent Gospel witness in the area.
AN ANSWER TO FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED IN ENNISKILLEN CATHEDRAL BY THE BISHOP OF CLOGHER RICHARD HANSON
by
REV. IVAN FOSTER
Minister of Lisbellaw Free Presbyterian Church
Published as a booklet in 1970
The rage of the Bishop against the rock of Holy Scripture
Chapter VII (Final Part)
Ecumenism … or … What is the Choice?
‘But there is really no alternative to the Ecumenical Movement, nothing else that has power to gather all the scattered, fragmented and dispirited forces of Christianity into a shape which gives us hope for the future, nothing that has the same chance of winning the allegiance of what is best in all forms of Christianity, nothing that can so well appeal to or so well use whatever there is of Christian intellect today. To oppose the Ecumenical Movement seems to me to opt for suicide.’ (Bishop’s Lecture 3.)
The Bishop claims that only ecumenism can unite the ‘best in all forms of Christianity’. I want to give you a look at what the Bishop calls the best of Christianity. We shall look at the statements of some of the world’s leading ecumenists. We will allow the reader to gauge for himself whether or not Ecumenism is Christianity at its best.
Mary a prostitute. . . Jesus an illegitimate
Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, former President of the Methodist Conference, in his book, The Christian Agnostic, suggests that the Virgin Mary became a prostitute of the priests and the pregnancy that resulted is described in the Gospels as the Virgin Birth. Dr. Weatherhead goes as far as to suggest that Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, fathered Jesus Christ, while Mary was a temple prostitute. We quote: ‘We are told that, though old, Zacharias was not impotent, for he made his wife Elisabeth pregnant though she was past the normal time of childbearing… We are then told that Mary entered the house of Zacharias (Luke 1:39-40), stayed there three months, and then returned to her own house (Luke 1:56). In such a ‘sacred marriage’ as I have described, a stay of three months was required in the house of the priest, or in the sacred precincts, to make sure that pregnancy was established’. (See pages 61-63.)
Jesus of German blood
Dr. Nels Ferre, an American ecumenist, vies with Weatherhead in his depraved lunacies. He puts forward the following lecherous suggestion: ‘Mary, we remember, was found pregnant before her engagement to mild Joseph. Nazareth was held by a Roman garrison where the soldiers were German mercenaries. Jesus is also reported throughout a continuous part of the history of art, it is claimed, to have been a blonde. This is supposedly unnatural for the Mediterranean countries where this same tradition started and was continued. Hence Jesus must have been the child of a German soldier’!
Telling lies to God
Dr. Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, is quoted in the Daily Mail, 2-10-61, as saying: ‘I believe it is quite in order for a person to stand up in church and recite the Creed, even if he has scruples about the Virgin Birth, provided he believes in the Pattern of Faith as a whole’. (more…)
“And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” Jeremiah 11:9.
The old adage, ‘Birds of a feather flock together’, came back to me as I read the above verse on Wednesday, 15th July.
The meaning is simple for those that perhaps have never heard this saying.
The idiom simply means that people who are similar in their interests, beliefs and ambitions, tend to associate and spend time with one another in order to promote that which they have in common.
There was just such a gathering in the days in which Jeremiah ministered to a disobedient and defiant Judah.
1. The meaning of the word ‘conspiracy’. It is the word that the Lord uses of this union of enemies! The word means ‘a treasonable, unlawful alliance’. That is how the Lord saw this amalgam, who were gathered together to oppose Him, His laws and His servant, Jeremiah.
2. The cause that united them. “They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words; and they went after other gods to serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers,” verse 10.
They wanted to return to the ways of sin from which the Lord had delivered the nation!
What they were pursuing was “the imagination of their evil heart,” verse 6.
Such desires have ever surfaced in opposition to ‘continuing on’ in obedience to God on “the old paths, where is the good way,” Jeremiah 6:16.
The reaction to such a revealing of God’s purpose for His people in that day and a calling on these men to obey, was to respond most defiantly, “We will not walk therein.” (more…)