Reports have appeared in two of our local newspapers today (19.12.25) of the special General Assembly, called by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland over the police investigation into failures to properly safeguard its young people from perverts within its perimeters.
Former Presbyterian moderator Rev Trevor Gribben resigned last month after an internal review found “serious and significant failings” in central safeguarding functions for children and vulnerable adults from 2009 to 2022.
The previous moderator, Rev Richard Murray, stepped in when Rev Trevor Gribben resigned.
The PSNI and Charity Commission have launched investigations into the matter.
Rev Richard Murray called a special General Assembly, which met yesterday. The Belfast Newsletter reported on this gathering.
“Hundreds of Presbyterian clerics and elders from across the island of Ireland have come together to discuss the fall out of the safeguarding scandal.”
The Moderator is reported as saying at the beginning of the special meeting:
“So we are turning to God today to repent of our sin, to grieve and to lament before him, to pray that he would have mercy upon us, and guide us in how we might rectify our behaviour so that these things might not happen again.
Delegates were chided that despite an invitation going to them to come to a prayer meeting before proceedings began, only around 50 turned up.”
The Belfast Telegraph reported:
“The Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) must show it is “wearing sackcloth and ashes” over a safeguarding scandal that has highlighted “significant failings” in its processes and procedures, the Acting Clerk of its General Assembly has told members.”
Doubtless this has shaken the denomination which embraced error and honoured apostates nearly a 100 years ago and is now beginning to fully reap the consequences of its defiance of God and His Word.
However, it must be noted that only about 50 (and that may be an exaggeration) turned up, out of the many hundreds that were urged to attend, a pre-assembly prayer meeting!
That suggests that the church may be embarrassed and alarmed but not truly repentant!
Problems
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland faces a great number of problems, moral, spiritual, financial and social as a result of the long standing sin breaking into public view!
In the light of that, there is much that stuns and embarrasses the office-bearers and members. But while there is talk of ‘sackcloth and ashes’, we must watch events through the lens of God’s Word.
These circumstances that have over taken the Presbyterian Church in Ireland are undoubtedly the judgment of God catching up with a body that has long defied His Word.
True Repentance
Will true repentance be shown. I personally do not believe it will. I believe this because TRUE REPENTANCE is a gift from God.
“Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins,” Acts 5:31.
Repentance is not a self-generated remorse. It is wrought in the soul by the Holy Spirit. I therefore do not expect that to happen within a denomination that has long ago rejected the cardinal doctrines of the Bible and permitted the penetration of itself by errors of every kind!
There may indeed be true believers within its ranks who are genuinely grieved by these events, but genuine repentance ALWAYS follows BUT ONE PATH!
Solomon prayed that the Lord might have mercy on His people should they, at anytime, disobey Him. He sets out the terms in which mercy will be granted.
“If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near; yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; and so return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee,” 1 Kings 8:46-50.
But it is clear from Holy Scripture that there were times when great sorrow and earnestness is shown by those suffering God’s judgment BUT because of their utter defiance of God, that has brought about their judgment, NO MERCY IS GRANTED AND NO ANSWER IS GIVEN!
“How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: they would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil,” Proverbs 1:22-33.
I believe that the harvest of its folly is catching up with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland
Previously
In a previous article on the topic I called upon the Free Presbyterian Church to tremble before what is happening to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
It will happen to us if there is not a checking of the inroads of compromise and disobedience seen in our ranks, and a returning to the position of separation from ecumenism and worldliness to which the Lord called us in 1951.
Whispers!
Our Presbytery needs to face up to that which is acknowledged in whispers by the majority of ministers and elders to be very wrong. However, NOTHING IS BEING DONE TO OPENLY AND PUBLICLY CHALLENGE THESE THINGS IN THE MANNER IN WHICH THE LORD REQUIRES IT TO BE DONE!
There is a need for the example of Paul and Jude to be followed.
“But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Galatians 2:11-14.
“Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called: Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities,” Jude 1:1-8.
These are but two examples. I could have quoted Matthew 23, where the Lord Jesus openly and most unmistakably, rebukes the false prophets of His day and warns against their deceptions.
I could have quoted from the Old Testament Scriptures again and again, substantiating what I believe to be a failure within our church at present and the setting forth of the action that must be taken, and that most urgently for there has been too much delay and ignoring of the wrong-doing within our ranks, if we are to be saved from the fate of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
19th December 2025