Questions demanding an answer! — Part 1

“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…)

The following is an article printed in the Times Educational Supplement on 9th October 1998.

It is based upon an interview with the late Mrs Ann Foster BA, founding principal of Kilskeery Independent Christian School.

We reproduce it as a tribute to her many years of devoted labour within the school and her efforts to advance the cause of Christian education throughout the Free Presbyterian Church.

This week saw the commencement of the 46th year of our school’s existence.

Mrs Foster went into the presence of her Saviour and Lord in the earlier hours of June 8th, this year.

We would ask you to remember that the statements in the article which were purported to be made by Mrs Foster are what a female journalist wrote and would not really be a verbatim report! She obviously unsympathetic to the objectives of Christian education, as is seen in her derogatory description of the interior of the school.

Mrs Foster’s answers were not reported in full and they were not the complete answers she would have given. She was a woman who was very well acquainted with the Bible and would have readily included many quotations from it in her responses to any questions she was asked.

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“Battle to teach God’s own law”

Times Educational Supplement

9th October 1998

“WHEN we have a teacher recruitment crisis we don’t advertise, we get down on our knees and pray to God for help,” says Ann Foster, head of the 52-pupil Kilskeery Independent Christian school in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

She agrees most heads would find that rather an odd method of recruiting staff, but then she is looking for a very particular kind of teacher.

First, they have to be willing to take a 75 per cent salary cut; second — and most importantly — they must share the doctrines of the Free Presbyterian faith, that they alone are God’s true servants in an immoral world, that the theory of evolution is wrong and that all children are natural sinners who must be taught to conform to God’s law. (more…)