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The follow BBC news report, one of hundreds such reports over recent years, makes one exclaim in distress of heart:

HOW CAN POPERY HOLD UP ITS HEAD AND WHY DO ITS ADHERENTS CONTINUE IN THEIR SUPPORT AND HOW CAN OTHER CHURCHES, THE MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES CONTINUE TO TREAT THIS ABOMINABLE SYSTEM OF THE DEVIL WITH SUCH SUBSERVIENT REGARD?

The report reminds me of what I read in Bible on the Lord’s Day morning past.

“The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty,” Psalm 74:20.

But Rome’s blatant and brazen hypocrisy reminds me of the words of those against whom the Psalmist David prayed:

“They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.

The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him,” Psalm 12:2-5.

I take comfort in the truth that God has set a day when He will judge Popery and all her evil minions for the corruption and cruelty with which she has inflicted millions.

Pray Christian for your Roman Catholic neighbours that in these latter times there may yet be an awakening of them to the true character of the hateful system which lords it over them.

The purpose for which the Lord Jesus saved Paul and sent him forth to preach the gospel, is one that we might make the basis of our prayerful pleadings for our neighbours.

“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me,” Acts 26:18.

 

Sincerely in Christ’s name,

Ivan Foster

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Christian Brothers accused of engaging in ‘slave trade’

BBC News

A 74-year-old County Limerick victim of child sex abuse by Christian Brothers has accused the congregation of having been engaged in the “slave trade”.

Tom Wall was just three when he was sent by court order to an industrial school in the village of Glin after his unmarried mother left a mother-and-baby home in nearby Newcastle West.

Industrial schools were established in the mid-19th Century and often run by religious orders to care for neglected, orphaned or abandoned children.

The Christian Brothers opened their first school in 1802 to provide education and help the poor.

In 2009, they issued an apology, following a damning public inquiry into child abuse in Catholic-run institutions in the Republic of Ireland. (more…)

The article quotes one Satanist, Dex Desjardins, explaining that their “Opening ceremony did have the ripping up of a Bible as a symbol of oppression, especially oppression of LGBTQ folk and women, and also the BIPOC community, and pretty much anybody who’s grown up with religious trauma, which is a tremendous number of our members.”

When I read those words I couldn’t help but recall the incident in Jeremiah 36, when king Jehoiakim was sent a message from the Lord by Jeremiah the prophet and written out by Jeremiah’s friend, Baruch. The king’s reaction was but a precursor of today’s Satanist.

The Lord had instructed Jeremiah to “Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin,” verses 2-3.

Like the Bible in general, it was a message warning of God’s wrath against sin and the offer of mercy and forgiveness to the repentant. That is, in essence, the summary of the Bible’s contents.

Jeremiah, being in prison because of his faithful preaching of God’s Word, said to his fellow-labourer, Baruch, “Therefore go thou, and read in the roll, which thou hast written from my mouth, the words of the LORD in the ears of the people in the LORD’S house upon the fasting day: and also thou shalt read them in the ears of all Judah that come out of their cities. It may be they will present their supplication before the LORD, and will return every one from his evil way: for great is the anger and the fury that the LORD hath pronounced against this people,” verses 6-7.

It is clear that the desire of the prophet was the well-being of his nation by setting before them the warning of wrath and the merciful offer of the Lord.

The reading of God’s Word reaches the ears of the princes, verse 10-15, and eventually it came to the notice of the king, verses 19-22. What the king heard angered him greatly and he reacted to God’s word in a most evil fashion. “And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth,” Jeremiah 36:23.

It is to be noted that he did not listen to all of God’s message. Giving a fair hearing to God’s Word is not the habit of the worldling. Rather, they reject it with only a slight, if any, understanding of what it is they are rejecting! The BBC news story indicates that men and women today would still seek to destroy God’s Word, foolishly thinking that to rend it in pieces and to burn it to ashes, as did king Jehoiakim, effectively silences it and nullifies what God has said! (more…)

“Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me. Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty,” 2 Peter 1:12-16.

“This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation,” 2 Peter 3:1-4.

I read these verses this morning (Friday, May 19th) as part of my Bible reading and they came home to my heart with special power. They remind me of what the essential character of a minister of the gospel is ever to be. He is a ‘remembrancer’ to the people of God.

I. PLEASE NOTE WHAT IT IS HE IS EVER TO REMIND THE CHRISTIAN OF.

“These things”, that is the “exceeding great and precious promises” by which we “might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust,” verse 4. The preacher’s agenda is set down plainly for him to follow and never to deviate from.

1. God’s Word largely comprises ‘promises’. Among the very first words God spoke to Adam was the ‘implied promise of life’. “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” Genesis 2:15-17. It is clearly implied in these words that life was promised to Adam as long as he was obedient and did not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord again speaks in the gracious terms of a promise to fallen Adam. The promise is found in the words spoken directly to the devil but doubtlessly heard by Adam. “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” Genesis 3:15. (more…)