Presbytery Statement read out in all of our Free Presbyterian Churches on Lord’s Day 11th September, 2022 and which was followed by our congregations standing for a minute’s silence, and concluded by a brief word of prayer.
It was with the deepest sadness on Thursday evening 8th September 2022 that the ministers and ruling elders and members of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster learned of the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
As a Church we lament the passing of a monarch who ruled for over seventy years with dignity, wisdom, and diligence. We thank God for her exemplary, personal, public, conduct as a monarch, and for the stability that she brought to our nation over the seven decades of her illustrious reign.
As a denomination, we express to the Royal Household our sincerest sympathy. Scripture, in 1 Timothy chapter 2, commands the Christian Church to pray “ . . . . for kings and for all that are in authority.” Therefore, we will be interceding for Her Majesty’s family, praying that the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort will impart to their hearts the true consolation of the grace of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
At her coronation service on June 2nd 1953, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, presented the new Queen with a copy of the Scriptures and said, ‘Our gracious Queen: to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the Law and the Gospel of God as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.’
It is still the Holy Bible that carries the infallible message of God for the Royal family, our nation, and the entire Commonwealth. True comfort in life and in death, is found in Christ Jesus alone. The gospel declares, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish but have everlasting life.’
Her Majesty on her Coronation Day, June 3rd 1953, as my generation will ever affectionately remember her.
THE DEATH OF HER MAJESTY, QUEEN ELIZABETH II
The news was announced at about 6.35 pm, Thursday 8th September 2022.
She had reigned for 70 years over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
My heart, and that of my wife, Ann, were chilled when the announcement was made by Buckingham Palace at lunchtime on September 8th, that there had been a downturn in the Queen’s health.
I was in my tenth year when Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, was crowned Queen on 3rd June 1953. She was a lovely young woman of 25 years of age. She has been a very real personage of honour and regard to me all my days since then.
We, as a typical loyal Ulster Protestant family, when I was young, would have held her in high and solemn regard. I can recall when the National Anthem was played on the radio on the occasion of the Queen’s birthday or some such event, our family in our home in Keenaghy, Lisnaskea, would stand to attention in the front of the radio.
Of course, no such regard is to be found abroad today, indeed such actions would be deemed anachronistic!
Since my own conversion to Christ on April 5th, 1964, I have earnestly prayed many times:
‘GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’.
I fear that her passing will accelerate the sad decline in the morals of the nation. As my good friend, Mr Stephen Toms of Chelmsford, said to me when we communicated recently on the state of Her Majesty’s health: “Whatever her faults she has been a steadying influence amongst many mad men.”
I have mourned on innumerable occasions the fact that in a long succession of Church of England leaders who would have had close contact with her, I have no reason to believe that one of them would have shared with her the warning and the joyful, the solemn and the merciful truths of such scriptures as John 3:16.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” John 3:16.
Instead they would have pressed upon her the errors of Popery, hence her three visits to the Vatican!
I cling in hope to the fact that she has on occasions indicated in her speeches that she has some knowledge of the Bible. I earnestly hope that she died in that faith spoken of by the Saviour in the verse we have just quoted.
The new monarch will undoubtedly represent the ’new religion’ that passes for ‘Christianity’ today.
Gone will be the exclusiveness of the message of Christ as set forth by Him in John 14:6. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” John 14:6. This was the message of the apostles to the world. Peter said: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” Acts 4:12.
Of course, the Church of which the Queen has been titular head, has long ago abandoned such truths and replaced them with the follies and myths of liberal and ecumenical apostasy.
It is that path that the new Monarch will tread, leading the nation further down the road of disobedience and defiance of God, toward inevitable ruin.
As was said of a king in ancient Israel: “But Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the LORD, and did worse than all that were before him,” I Kings 16:25, so I fear it will be said of the next crowned head of state for there is little, indeed no sign, of evangelical truth within the circle of the Royal Family.
A little knowledge of the Bible will inform us where such trends will end.
“Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols: therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down. And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies; because they have done that which was evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day,” 2 Kings 21:11-15.
The United Kingdom will yet learn that there is a price to pay for turning the back upon God’s truth and casting aside the gospel of His dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ and replacing it with the multi-faithism, the syncretism promoted by church and parliament and Royalty and widely embraced by the blind populace today.
There is every sign, in the world of politics, economics, geographical and environmental affairs, that a crisis of unprecedented proportions is bearing down upon this world.
How few are aware of it or in the least prepared for the climax of this age, which is the return in judgment upon the gospel-favoured nations of this earth, by the Lord Jesus Christ.
“And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day,” 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10.
Presbytery Statement read out in all of our Free Presbyterian Churches on Lord’s Day 11th September, 2022 and which was followed by our congregations standing for a minute’s silence, and concluded by a brief word of prayer.