Called home 13th February 2025. Beloved husband of Sally and the late Bertha, loving father of Phillip, Louise and the late Samuel, father in law of Margaret and William, dearly loved Granda of Noah, Samuel, Kezia and Abigail.
Funeral Service will take place in Martyrs’ Memorial Free Presbyterian Church at 1:00pm on Wednesday 19th February 2025 following a family burial in Lisburn New Cemetery at 11:00am.
Wake on Friday at his daughter Louise’s house 42 Ballymoughan Road Magherafelt BT45 6HN from 3.00 – 10.00 and at his son Phillip’s house 5 Glebe Hill Road Tandragee BT62 2DP on Saturday from 3.00-10.00.
Family flowers only please. Donations in lieu, if desired, to Edgard Traboulsi, Lebanon Baptist Church Trust c/o Melville Morgan Funeral Directors 257 Lisburn Road Belfast BT9 7EN.
Will be greatly missed by his loving wife and family.
At home with the Lord, “with Christ which is far better,” Philippians 1 v 23.
We would wish to convey our sympathies to his wife Sally, and his son Phillip and his daughter Louise and their respective spouses and children.
“Absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord,” 2 Corinthians 5:8.
“For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” Hebrews 11:10.
“And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like?They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil.
The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!But wisdom is justified of all her children,” Luke 7:31-35.
Matthew Henry’s comment on these words of the Saviour is as follows:
‘By this it appears that the ministers of Christ may be of very different tempers and dispositions, very different ways of preaching and living, and yet all good and useful; diversity of gifts, but each given to profit withal.
Therefore none must make themselves a standard to all others, nor judge hardly of those that do not do just as they do.
John Baptist bore witness to Christ, and Christ applauded John Baptist, though they were the reverse of each other in their way of living.
But the common enemies of them both reproached them both. The very same men that had represented John as crazed in his intellects, because he came neither eating nor drinking, represented our Lord Jesus as corrupt in his morals, because he came eating and drinking; he is a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber.
Ill-will never speaks well. See . . . how they put the worst construction upon every thing they meet with in the gospel, and in the preachers and professors of it; and hereby they think to depreciate them, but really destroy themselves.’
John the Baptist differed from the Saviour and vice versa though not in core spirituality and holiness. They differed in demeanour and bearing. But their enemies found grounds for criticising them to the extent that what was present in one was deemed a fault but its absence in the other was likewise deemed a fault.
There is something of that spirit abroad today in that the bold protests in past decades are hailed as most praiseworthy but such actions carried out today are considered sinful and to be condemned!
That may be so because the protests of the past were aimed at those OUTSIDE the Free Presbyterian Church who were guilty of transgressing the Word of God. Now, however, protests of a similar nature are deemed wrong and worthy of sanction when they are directed against some WITHIN the Free Presbyterian Church who are in transgression of God’s Word. There ought to be no distinction drawn. Both protests are proper and warranted by Scripture.
I would have every Free Presbyterian know and understand that Rev David DiCanio, who has been deposed from the ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, in essence, if truth be told, for exposing the sin of ‘Contemporary Christian Music’ within the Free Presbyterian Church, acted in total concord with Holy Scripture and in agreement with the FPCNA’s own statement on the sinfulness of such music. (more…)
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God,” Isaiah 35:1-2.
I was prompted to consider this subject by the foolish boasting of the recently inaugurated president of the United States, Mr Donald Trump. He is a man renowned for his swank and swagger and vain-glorious self-promotion. But even he ‘outstrips’ himself when he claims that his election is an indication that America’s ‘Golden Age’ has begun.
Screenshot from a YouTube video
Time will tell the truth or otherwise of this assertion which is a mere repeating of what presumptuous and imperious politicians have promised the gullible since the fall of man! It is a fictitious myth, a ‘pipe dream’, an ‘El Dorado’ comprised of the empty imaginings of what man considers to be the answer to all his needs.
Men will cling to this empty hope, proffered by a man whose lifestyle comprehensively demonstrates his total unreliability, rather than heed the promise of the God, “ that cannot lie,” (Titus 1:2) and who has “the words of eternal life,” (John 6:68).
We grieve for those whose folly causes them to embrace this end-time ‘political flim-flam’. No good can come of any administration built upon such a dubious foundation! (more…)
