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An exhortation to Christians or ‘Progressing for God by Standing Still’
Kilskeery Conference – Morning Meeting, September 15th 2024
Preacher: Rev. Ivan Foster
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 15:58.
This chapter begins with a glorious definition and exposition of the heart of the gospel message, verses 1-4. It ends with an exhortation to us all how it is we ought to live out our days because of the victory given us by Christ and revealed in the gospel. The word “therefore”, which begins the verse, links what is said to the verse 57.
This exhortation is all the more applicable to us today for, as a generation, we are living nearer the return of Christ and all that will mean for believers, than has any other generation! If time was ‘short’ in Paul’s day (1 Cors 7:29), it is much shorter today! The word ‘short’ carries the meaning of ‘winding up’! I recall from my days in Ulster television that the studio floor manager, if he wished an interview to come to an end as the time for the programme was nearly up, he could use one of two gestures. He could draw his finger across his throat meaning ‘cut the interview off’ or a winding motion with his hand meaning, ‘wind the interview up, bring it to a close.’
The latter is basically what Paul was indicating. The word translated ‘short’ appears in only one other place. “And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him,” Acts 5:6. Here it is linked with the end of the life of Ananias.
The Lord is ‘winding up His purpose’ amongst men in this age!
We surely understand therefore what Paul was indicating. The last days of this age were approaching back then, nearly 2000 years ago! How much closer the end is today.
In the light of the ever nearing return of Christ our duty is set down here.
I. A SETTLED ADHERENCE TO THE TRUTHS OF THE GOSPEL IS EXPECTED OF US
1. The words “stedfast, unmoveable” tell us what is expected of us. The essence of the meaning of the words may be seen in one of the other places where the word translated “stedfast” appears. “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister,” Colossians 1:23. There is what is meant by being “stedfast”. We are to be “grounded” and not “moving away from the hope of the gospel”! Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-16 a 6:00 am
Lessons from the Book of Lamentations - Part 3
Jeremiah conducts a spiritual post-mortem on the ‘Ways of Zion’!
“The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer” Lamentations 1:4-6.
Such shop windows signs are often seen when recession hits the economy and depression sets in.
Such may take place as a result of incompetence on the part of a nation’s political leaders, though I believe that there is always an element of God’s judgement against the sins of His people involved in such downturns!
I read on the day I wrote this, in the book of Ezekiel, the following: “The word of the LORD came again to me, saying, Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it: Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord GOD,” Ezekiel 14:12-14.
But God’s judgment against a people who desert His Word and embrace error, despite the repeated warnings the Lord sends them via His prophets, can be more extensive than economic hardship.
Our study verses speak of:
(1) The dreadful decline of true worship and the despair that such caused.
(2) The dominance of the enemy.
(3) The ‘beauty of holiness’ has departed from Zion.
These features still mark a people under God’s judgment and I say that they may be seen here in Ulster today. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-14 a 6:00 am
“Pat Finucane murder inquiry - Labour Party prostrates itself before Sinn Fein, the party of IRA terrorism”
It must ever be remembered that the man whose murder is at the centre of this controversy, Pat Finucane, was a man who was alleged to be a member of the IRA by former members of that terrorist organisation. He represented terrorists and murderers as a solicitor and his three brothers, John, Dermot and Seamus – were connected with republican activities. The first was an IRA man killed in a car crash, the second was one of the Maze 1983 escapees, and the third was a former prisoner, who was arrested alongside Bobby Sands after an IRA bombing and gunfight (Belfast Newsletter 30/10/20).
No matter how the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, dresses up his decision to grant that which is utterly denied to the thousands of other victims of terrorism, he cannot hide his shameful subservience to murderous Irish Republicanism behind a cloak of legal gobbledygook!
Jim Allister MP told the News Letter:
“The double standards here are appalling. As I pointed out to the Secretary of State yesterday, not only are the Finucane family being treated differently from everyone else they are again being offered something which they had previously rejected.
“It is a gross insult to the thousands of innocent victims in Northern Ireland that Mr Benn should describe this murder and this one alone as ‘unique’.
“That the new government should do this at such an early stage sends entirely the wrong message to innocent victims.
“As the excellent editorial in Thursday’s News Letter highlighted, Lord Trimble had previously made the point that any inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane should also involve a probe into the activities of Mr Finucane.
“Wicked and evil as this murder was, it was no more wicked and evil than the murders of Resident Magistrate William Staunton (who was shot by the IRA in front of his young daughter and her school friends), Judge Rory Conaghan (another judge shot in front of his daughter), Resident Magistrate Martin McBirney (shot again in his home in front of his family), Judge William Doyle (murdered as he left mass), Lord and Lady Gibson or law lecturer Edgar Graham. One also thinks of attack on the family of Judge Tom Travers in which young Mary Travers was murdered.
“For all the lectures about truth and justice, the truth is that the party John Finucane now represents not only defended and justified those wicked murders at the time but continues to do so right up to and including the present day.”
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
13th September 2024
Posted on 2024-09-13 a 5:56 pm
A further tribute to the labours of Mrs Ann Foster (27/10/1946 — 8/6/2024)
In this the beginning of the 46th year of Kilskeery Independent Christian School, we wish to mount some articles that will bear witness to the labours of the founding principal of the school.
Here is a recording of her giving her testimony in Newtownabbey Free Presbyterian Church, back in 2009, at the Soul Winner’s Conference. She had just retired from teaching the year before.
May you find a blessing as she “being dead yet speaketh,” Hebrews 11:4.
Posted on 2024-09-13 a 6:00 am
An Irishman exposes Rome’s crimes against children!
The following article appeared in ‘The Times’ newspaper and was shared with me by a friend.
The writer of the article is called ‘Gary Murphy’. One could be forgiven for believing him to have roots in Ireland!
That makes the article all the more compelling. I would sincerely and earnestly ask Irish Roman Catholics, indeed Roman Catholics everywhere, to consider the picture that is painted here of the Roman Catholic institution.
Any professing Christian may fall into sin. That is very obvious from the Bible’s record of David and Peter for example.
But if again and again it is reported that wickedness is uncovered within the life of an individual who claims to be a Christian, then it would be justifiable to say of that person that they are ‘false professors’ and not true believers!
Paul writes concerning the true Christian and what it is Christ has done for them: “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,” Titus 2:14.
When within the ranks of an organisation which professes to be the ‘church of Jesus Christ’, there are universal instances of repeated perversions of the most unspeakable kind and these are covered over and lied about again and again by those who hold the highest positions of authority within that organisation, what is one to think of it?
Reformers
There is only one conclusion that can be drawn. It is that of the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century whose eyes were opened by the grace and mercy of God — “We are in an organisation that is not what it claims to be and its teachings are entirely in opposition to the Holy Scriptures! We must immediately remove ourselves from it and seek to walk in obedience to God’s Holy Word.”
That has ever been the will of God for any who seek to obey Him. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-09 a 4:33 pm
An apology of an apology!
The following notice appeared in the latest edition of the Free Presbyterian Church magazine, F P Vision.
What is referred to here by this oblique statement is an article by Jonathan Storey, minister of Mt Merrion Free Presbyterian Church, in which he recommends that we adopt the prayer of the Romanist ‘saint’ Thomas Aquinas, an Italian Dominican friar and priest.
I challenged the publishing of this article in an article entitled:
Is encouraging the adoption of papist prayers official policy of the Free Presbyterian Church?
In the article I wrote:
‘I consider this a most serious and unacceptable breach in our denomination’s adherence to the Word of God and to the Reformed Faith and it is time to call a halt to such violations of our God-ordained stand and witness and deal with those guilty of such.
If the sentiments of this article are not the official position of the Free Presbyterian Church, then how was it sanctioned for publication in an official magazine?’
In a response to my protest at the article, I was told the matter would be addressed in the next edition of the Free Presbyterian Vision. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-09 a 6:00 am
Lessons from the Book of Lamentations - Part 2
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. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-07 a 6:00 am
A tribute to the labours of Mrs Ann Foster (27/10/1946 — 8/6/2024)
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.
“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. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-06 a 6:00 am
These articles will tell you about the true nature of Roman Catholicism!
Its utter depravity.
Its shameless deceit.
The cruel indifference to the sufferings of the victims of its criminal priests and nuns.
The repeated uncovering of its total ungodliness and denial of all things Christian!
I will leave readers of ‘The Burning Bush’ to check out these articles the ‘links’ to which are below.
Former Christian Brother accused of repeated sexual abuse by former pupil
‘Shocking’ abuse in Ireland’s religious schools
2,400 claims of historical sexual abuse at 308 schools run by religious orders
Ireland to set up inquiry into sexual abuse at schools run by religious orders
Whatever the outcome of the ‘inquiry’, we can be sure that Romanism, despite the numerous and repeated exposures of the evil that go on behind its walls, will be excused and whitewashed and the hypocritical bleatings of its ‘sheep in wolves clothing’ accepted by its people and the Irish government!
There is coming a day when its crimes will be justly and fully dealt with. That is the DAY when God will judge that system of iniquity of which Romanism is today its chief manifestation on the earth. The final manifestation of unclean and false religion, latter-day Babylonism, and its judgment is pictured for us in Revelation 17. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-05 a 5:00 am
The man who claims he ‘Kept the Faith’ while rejecting the Gospel!
Alf McCreary began as a journalist in the ‘Belfast Telegraph’ the same year as I was converted to Christ and became a Christian — 1964.
He was 24 years old while I was coming 21!
The very month he began his career in the ‘Belfast Telegraph’, September, I met my dear Ann, who was to become my wife in 1968 and who laboured alongside me in the gospel for 56 years.
Thankfully, the parallel ended in September 1964. McCreary became a chief spokesman for all that was ‘Ecumenical’ and anti-Bible and I laboured to do the very opposite!
He has been reported as being an elder in the apostate Presbyterian Church in Ireland. As such he may have signed the Westminster Confession of Faith as a profession of what he believed and would uphold. Irrespective of whether he did or did not, all that is stated in that Confession he set himself against.
O’Neillism
He was a prominent defender of the ecumenically inspired policies of the late, unlamented, Terence O’Neill, (1914-1990). O’Neill was the Ulster Unionist prime minister in Northern Ireland from 1963-1969.
It was during his premiership that the IRA terrorist campaign had its beginnings. Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-04 a 6:00 am
Another sign of the blind ignorance of many
A ‘Belfast Telegraph’ article (29/8/24) bore the headline:
‘Sign of the Cross should no longer be regarded as a purely Catholic gesture’
I do not have access to the article for I am not willing to pay to read drivel and balderdash! This article is but another example of the stupid ‘scribblers’ the ‘Belfast Telegraph’ is prepared to pay to pour out thoroughgoing nonsense to deceive and promote the errors of Romanism. The writer on this occasion is John Laverty.
The ‘sign of the cross’ was never the practice of true believers. Rather it was the invention of those ‘church fathers’ who ushered the professing church into ever-deepening apostasy from the latter part of the second century AD onward until the blessed awakening and return to primitive first century Bible Christianity in the days of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Of course, the error continued within the confines of Romanism and the apostatising, so-called Protestant denominations which are involved in the ecumenical movement!
Here is what one such false shepherd said on the matter as put forth in the defence of this practice by Rome.
“Basil (ca. 329 – 79 A.D) said that the Apostles ‘taught us to mark with the sign of the cross those who put their hope in the Lord, that is, those who presented themselves for baptism. Initially the Sign of the Cross was made with the thumb, usually on the forehead but sometimes on the lips and chest.’ ”
What ‘old Basil’ did NOT say was, JUST WHERE IN THE WRITINGS OF THE APOSTLES THIS WAS TAUGHT BY THEM!
Let us observe some truths about this heathen practice.
1. Making the sign of the of the cross is an essential part of popery’s religion.
We can also see here how important it is to them, in fact, as I understand it, ‘crossing’ takes place some fifty-one times in the Mass at the beginning and end prayers. That surely suggests that prayers would be incomplete and therefore would not be answered without a crossing of oneself!
What the sign of the cross is claimed to be is the person’s way of asking God to bless them, or more accurately, they are blessing themselves by making the sign of the cross.
No ‘crossing’, no blessing! Click to read more…
Posted on 2024-09-02 a 6:00 am