Encouraging and facilitating sympathy for a dead pope is not the act of one who fears God!

Councillor Paul Greenfield

The new year is but days old and already we see sad evidence of the ongoing defiance of God amongst the ranks of those from whom we could expect better.

Here is the latest illustration of the spirit that will destroy the Protestant cause in Ulster.

Sincere regards,

Ivan Foister


Encouraging and facilitating sympathy for a dead pope is not the act of one who fears God!

It was with profound shock and disappointment that I read the following statement, sent to me by an equally distressed Free Presbyterian, from the official FaceBook page of Armagh City, Banbridge, Craigavon Borough Council.

Councillor Paul Greenfield is a Democratic Unionist Party member of that Council. I do not know what his present church connections are and I am not anxious in the least to find out. I find the matter painful enough with learning of even greater cause for grief. I do know that he had strong Free Presbyterian links in his youth.

As a result, he would know that all ministers and elders of the Free Presbyterian Church swear an oath at their ordination and again at any later installation service with which they may be involved when called to another congregation.

So many have publicly sworn this oath on a number of occasions.

 

Part of that oath is a declaration that they sincerely believe and receive the Articles of Faith of the Free Presbyterian Church and the Westminster Standards as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.

One of the statements, one hated by modernists and apostates and Romanists alike, is this one describing all who hold the office of ‘Pope of Rome’.

Chapter XXV, section VI: “There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.”

This truth regarding the popes, including the one whose death Paul Greenfield encourages his constituents to mourn, must surely cause no true Christian to grieve and lament over.

Sympathy for those Roman Catholics who undoubtedly feel sorrow at the death of this man should not cause us to encourage such unjustified grief. If sorrow is to felt it is for the deceived souls who embraced and earnestly followed the teachings of one true Protestants have long called ‘an antichrist’!

How dreadfully wrong it is to encouraging a bewailing of one who has lived to oppose Christ and mislead millions, aye, uncounted millions for many centuries.

The Lord rebuked the prophet Samuel for his ‘unseemly’ sorrowing over the death of Saul. “And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?” 1 Samuel 16:1.

If the Lord was vexed with Samuel’s mourning for Saul, a man whose sins fell far short of those who are guilty of such wickedness as to be deservedly tagged, since the Reformation, as the “man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.”

What must the Lord not think of promoting and allying yourself with such mourning?

Of course, Paul Greenfield is acting as a faithful and subservient member of the DUP, a party that has long ago cast off all semblance of believing, honouring or obeying the Word of God. I have no doubt that he would have sought ‘party advice’ on this matter. Of course, if I am wrong, undoubtedly someone will declare that the DUP disapproves of Mr Greenfield’s action.

I will not hold my breath for that happening. Any party that openly condones and supports sodomy will see little wrong with seeking to win votes by actions supporting the bogus claims of Romanism and seeking a smile of approval from the poor souls blinded by its antichristian dogmas.

It is but another sad example of those within the DUP putting perceived political advancement before the truth of God.

It is a recipe for a terrible disaster!

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one,

and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon,”

Matthew 6:24.

 

Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)

5th January 2023