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’.
Jesus a Sodomite
Rev. H. Mountifore, in a sermon widely reported in the Press, put forward the suggestion that the Lord Jesus Christ was a homosexual. This conclusion was based upon His having only male disciples.
God a bully
Dr. G. Bromley Oxnam, a Methodist Bishop, says that if we believe the Old Testament to be literal, then God is a ‘dirty bully’ who is to be loathed.
Jesus a little insane
Henry F. Cadbury, one of the translators of the Revised Standard Version, the version which the Bishop thinks should replace the Authorised Version, in his book Jesus, What Manner of Man? seems to feel that our Lord was a little conceited and perhaps a little mad.
Supernatural Jesus denied
Professor C. T. Chao, formerly W.C.C. President in South-East Asia: ‘The Gospel and Apostolic letters are unreliable. Jesus is the natural son of Joseph. The supernatural element must be excluded. He did not walk on the water. He did not multiply the loaves, was not transfigured on the Mount; He did not raise Lazarus from the dead.’
Having looked at some of ecumenism’s ‘prize specimens’, we can realise how drastic the situation is, if the Bishop is right in saying that there is no message for mankind other than Ferrer’s depraved ravings, the lecherous myths of Weatherhead or the blatant lying of Ramsey?
The secretary of the World Council of Churches, the ecumenical church organisation, gives us a description of the movement to which Dr. Hanson says there is no alternative. Please bear his statement in mind as you read the description of the W.C.C.
‘The symbol of the World Council of Churches is a ship. It is a new type of craft. Never before have Christians of so wide a range of beliefs come together — given their pledge together — said in effect, they are all together in the same boat.
‘This ship is on its maiden voyage. We do not know how seaworthy the craft is, whether it will hold the cargo of hope put into it by Christians all over the world. It may be too heavily burdened.
’The ship has an inexperienced crew. For it is true of all of us what a great theologian said in Amsterdam, ‘We are ecumenical babies!’
‘The members of the crew speak different languages. We do not agree on the meaning of the Church in the Lord’s Supper. It is almost as if our crew could not agree on which is the bow and which is the stern.
‘And we begin this perilous experiment in the midst of the worst storms in history.’
The Bishop may say that there is no alternative to this ’ship’ but I would rather sail the Atlantic in a Lough Erne cot than place my trust in an untried ship, launched in the midst of terrible storms, crewed by a lot of babies, who do not know the bow from the stern, and who all speak different languages, and sailing for an unknown destination. Praise God there is an alternative. God’s truth is always the alternative to Satan’s lie.
‘When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him (Isaiah 59:19).
Ecumenism is like a flood, destroying, drowning flood of evil and satanic teaching. God has promised to raise up a standard of truth in defiance of Satan’s onslaught. He has proved faithful in the past. Chapter eleven of Hebrews gives a list of many of God’s men who led the alternative movement to Satan’s; men of faith, men who believed God, men who conquered their enemies by believing God’s Word. Men . . .
‘Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect,’ (Hebrews 11:33-40, AV)
Free Presbyterian Church born
God has raised an alternative to ecumenism in Ulster. In 1951, God challenged a number of men in Crossgar Presbyterian Church, when their Presbytery refused them permission to have Dr Ian Paisley conduct a Gospel campaign in the church hall. God challenged these men to obey Him rather than men. They did not fail their Lord, but stood for Him, left the Church and formed the Free Presbyterian Church in Ulster. Since that day the flag of Bible separation has been flying in our Province. Many of God’s people have found an alternative to the dark and dismal worship which is conducted in the ecumenical churches. Sinners by the thousand have found a message which satisfies their needs spiritually and intellectually. They have heard of the good ship ‘Free Grace’. How seaworthy is she compared to the ecumenical death-trap mentioned previously.
‘This ship was planned in the Everlasting Councils of the Triune Jehovah. Its timbers are incorruptible and unbreakable. Built in the slipway of Everlasting Love, it was launched in the Red River of the Redeemers’s Blood at Calvary. At its stern is the wheel of God’s sovereignty by which the great ship is turned whithersoever the Governor listeth, and on the prows the sinner’s sheet anchor, ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out’.The charthouse is the Word, and the compass is the Spirit, and there are well-plenished store-rooms, and spacious saloons, and never-to-be-forgotten chambers wherein He has given His beloved precious things in sleep, and outlooks where they have His wonders in the deep. Through the stress of storm and through dreary doldrums, through leagues of entangling weeds, and past many a chilling and perilous arctic iceberg, with varying speed and zig-zag course, and changing clime, FREE GRACE has brought us hitherto. We may even stand off and on a while, near the harbour mouth, but, please God, we shall have abundant entrance at the last. We have circled the ship, and I call on every passenger to bless her in the name of the Lord, and to shout the praise of Him Who owns and navigates her. All honour and blessing be unto the God of Grace, and unto the Grace of God! Ten thousand, thousand thanks to Jesus! and to the blessed Spirit equal praise!’ —THOMAS SPURGEON
Having spent many years wandering in a modernistic and ritualistic wilderness, attempting to feed their souls upon the stones carved out by false shepherds, the sweet manna of God’s Word was to them as honey out of the honeycomb.
Psalm 107:4–8 is the history of people in similar circumstances to those in Ulster.
“They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation. Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!”
WANDERING (v. 4). Politically and spiritually today Ulster wanders leaderless; no one to guide; no one in authority with the knowledge of the path. Many have attempted to lead us, but we still remain wanderers. We, like Israel, wander because we have disobeyed God and rebelled against His Word. Ecumenism seeks to separate us further from the Bible. It can but increase our lost and wandering condition.
WILDERNESS. The place of despair and death. Day by day our newspapers have testified to death. Riots, murders, executions by I.R.A. courts, bombs and bullets show an Ulster in the wilderness wastes of anarchy and lawlessness..
HUNGRY, THIRSTY, SOUL FAINTED. “What are we going to do?” is the question on despairing lips. Families speak of emigrating. Men speak of arming themselves to defend their homes. Government ministers, like wind-tossed pansies, speak of tolerance in the face of murdering mobs of Republicans in Belfast, who back even the last dregs of humanity, as is seen in the callous way in which they allow their children to roam the streets and partake in lawlessness during the riots. Has no one an answer? Has no one a solution that will lift our Province from its fallen state, that will revive its soul with hope and light? Praise God there is an answer.
THEN THEY CRIED UNTO THE LORD IN THEIR TROUBLES AND HE DELIVERED THEM OUT OF THEIR DISTRESSES.
Glory to the God of Heaven, there is salvation with Him. Our hearts cry for Ulster, for Ireland, is that there would arise a cry unto the Lord, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.
The Bishop’s path is downward and hellward. I beg you not to follow. Turn your eyes heavenward and Godward, for there lies your help.
O God our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home.
AND HE LED THEM FORTH BY THE RIGHT WAY, THAT THEY MIGHT GO TO A CITY OF HABITATION
Their prayers resulted in them finding the path to security and peace.
Ulster’s tomorrow is bright and full of peace if her today is but filled with rejection of ecumenism and obedience to God.
Episcopalian bondage
One cannot but feel sorrow for the Bishop, and the gaggle of ‘clerical old women’ who comprise his band, prancing and fawning, seeking further advancement in the ecumenical rat race.
There can be no doubt that he despises the message of salvation by the blood of Christ. He spurns and sneers at the Bible at every opportunity in his lectures, but despite that one feels sorrow.
This writer was born and bred an Episcopalian, and therefore knows the bondage which Episcopalian doctrine on baptism and confirmation brings.
Thousands feel secure before the wrath of God because of these two rituals. They know nothing of the teaching of the Lord Jesus, that a man MUST BE BORN AGAIN by the Holy Spirit — a new birth which manifests itself in a very clear way.
‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new,’ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
How many ‘baptised and confirmed’ smokers, gambles, boozers, blasphemes and adulterers think themselves on the way to heaven, unaware of the fact that the real NEW BIRTH means itself by old things passing away and by new things appearing?
‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God,” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
“In this the children of God are manifested, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God,” (I John 3:10).
We have been seeking to combat the evil teaching of Dr. Hanson by showing you what the Word of God says. But it is not enough to know the difference between right and wrong; there must be a whole-hearted obedience to the right. To know that Christ is the door is not sufficient. We must gain entrance by Him.
‘There is a way back to God
From the dark paths of sin.
There is a door that is open
And all may go in.
At Calvary’s cross is where we begin,
When we come as sinners to Jesus.’
“BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR, AND KNOCK: IF ANY MAN HEAR MY VOICE, AND OPEN THE DOOR, I WILL COME IN TO HIM, AND WILL SUP WITH HIM, AND HE WITH ME,” (Revelation 3:20).
We expound the verse in the following simple fashion:
I. Christ standing
The life of the Saviour was the life of an OUTSIDER. He is the rejected One. ‘No room at the inn’ characterises the world’s attitude to its glorious Lord and Master.
Reader, is it yours? Have you no room for Christ? Is He excluded from your life, your conversations, your thoughts, your home?
If He is, behold, He knocks and seeks entrance. The HAND and VOICE of Christ are constantly working to arouse sinners from their carelessness. The rejector of the voice of Christ often yields, as in the case of Jonah, to His hand. If the voice and the hand of Christ have striven with you., will you not yield even now?
II. Christ entering
The opening of the heart’s door brings the entrance of Christ.
In Luke 19:5 we read: “And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.” Zacchaeus had the key and he must open the door before the Lord could enter. Reader, I pray that your door will be closed against falsehoods and deceivers, but thrown open to the wall to welcome the Lord Jesus, the Saviour.
Hear His voice, open the door and welcome Him in.
III. Christ supping
It seems strange indeed that the first thing Christ promises to do when He comes into our life is EAT: ‘I will sup with him’. I think it symbolises that satisfaction that Christ receives when a sinner is saved. Isaiah 53:11 reads: “He (Christ) shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.’ Again we find the same thought in the New Testament: “Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:10). Note that the joy is in the presence of the angels. The Lord is the joyful One when sinners repent. He is seeing the results of His agony of soul upon the cross and He is glad. The agonies of birth are forgotten at the sound of the child’s cry. John 16:21. The regeneration of a sinner is as a feast to their Lord and a foretaste of the Great Marriage Supper we read of in Rev. 19. The question you must ask yourself is this: ‘Am I a source of joy or sorrow to Christ? He wept over unrepentant Jerusalem. Does the condition of your heart bring joy or sorrow to Christ?’
IV. Christ satisfying
‘And he with me.’ What a glorious Gospel! What a full salvation! Its results satisfy the Saviour and the saved. The man whom Christ saves becomes Christ’s guest at a table spread in the wilderness. He says, ‘I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10).
LIFE, ABUNDANT LIFE, LIFE MORE ABUNDANT.
Christ provides an overflowing CUP (Psalm 23:5). He provides an overflowing WELL (John 4:14), and, praise His name, He goes on to provide overflowing RIVERS (John 7:38).
LIFE, LIFE, abundant life,
Jesus alone is the giver.
Life, life, eternal life,
Glory to Jesus for ever.
My prayer to God for this publication is that many shall be turned from the way of death and shall find the all-sufficient Saviour, Who bears that name above every name—EVEN JESUS.
Such would be reward, yea rich reward indeed.
Saturday, 18th July 2026