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Covid-19:
A Secular Nation’s Inability To Cope

By: Rev Peter Simpson
(Penn Free Methodist Church, CW Committee Member)

(This article is written in the knowledge that there is a broad range of opinion amongst evangelical Christians on the coronavirus and on how society should react to it. It is therefore offered for consideration in a humble and deferential manner – and in a spirit of brotherly love).

Britain is in desperate need of spiritual direction. Liberal secularism has fashioned the national mindset in such a way that responses to national crises are now totally different in character to, say, those which prevailed during World War Two.

Let us examine the current response to the coronavirus in the light of how the nation once dealt with the affliction of war. Covid-19 has, in fact, exposed the deep spiritual void in our contemporary national life; whereas during the Second World War, although the nation’s spiritual condition was far from thriving, there was still a general acceptance of the concept of God’s providence overruling in the affairs of men.

So, faced with a powerful enemy in the form of Nazi Germany, society understood that military might and strategy were not the only answers, but that there was also a need to seek the aid of the Almighty, He who determined the outcome of wars. Even the politicians publicly acknowledged this. As a result, the war witnessed no less than 12 national days of prayer, all widely supported throughout the land – and this revealed that society still broadly appreciated the words of Psalm 20:7 – “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God”.

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Written by Christian Watch on . Posted in Articles

31st December 2020

“My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” Isaiah 46:10

There is one grand idea running through the whole of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation; and this one grand idea runs through every part of the sacred page, and, like a golden band, unites the whole together. What is this one grand thought? God has many thoughts as well as we, for he tells us that “the thoughts of his heart stand to all generations.” But we read also in the same verse of “the counsel of the Lord, which standeth for ever;” and elsewhere of his “working all things after the counsel of his own will” (Psalm 33:11; Ephes. 1:11). Thus in the mind of God, as well as in the mode of his subsistence, there is unity and variety. There is his one thought, and his many thoughts; for though his thoughts are many, his counsel is but one; and this counsel is the exaltation and glorification of his dear Son. It may be as well briefly to trace this unity of thought and the variety of its expression. We see it, then, first expressed in the creation of the first man, when God made him “in his own image, after his own likeness.” There was the expression of God’s one thought; for Adam the first was a type of Adam the second, and as Christ was by lineal descent “the son of Adam,” there was a foreview in the creation of the first man of the incarnation of God’s dear Son, who is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his Person. Now next observe how all things were put under Adam’s feet, and he thus made the visible head of creation. Read this exaltation of Adam in the light of Psalm 8, and you will see how the inspired Psalmist, as interpreted by the Apostle (Heb: 2:7-9), viewed Adam, in having all things put under his feet, as a type of Jesus, whom God has crowned with glory and honour, set him over the works of his hands, and put all things in subjection under his feet. Look next at the first promise given after the fall, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. There we have God’s one thought again expressed, his dominant counsel in the incarnation of his dear Son, as the seed of the woman, to bruise Satan’s head. Look at Noah preserved in the ark with his family when the rest of the world was swept away by the deluge, that from the loins of Adam might come the promised seed. Take the case of Abraham, called by a special calling, that in him and his seed all the nations of the earth might be blessed. Here we have again God’s one thought. Take, again, the whole of the Levitical dispensation. Every rite, every sacrifice, every type, every ordinance, all still bear the same stamp of God’s one thought, and indeed every part of Scripture is but an exposition of this one thought of God’s heart, of this one counsel of his eternal will. The word of God is a perfect mystery to us, and we see no beauty or harmony in the various books of either the Old Testament or the New until we see the mind of God in it, gather up God’s thoughts, and especially that grand thought which I have spoken of as binding the whole together, viz. the exaltation of his dear Son to his own right hand as the promised reward of his sufferings and death, and the glorious result of his resurrection and ascension up to the courts of bliss.

J. C. Philpot 1802-1869

 

Written by Christian Watch on . Posted in Devotionals

30th December 2020

“A living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious.” 1 Peter 2:4

Though “disallowed of men,” the Lord Jesus Christ is “chosen of God;” and God, I speak it with reverence, cannot make an unwise choice. To think that, would be to attribute folly to the Most High. He is “chosen of God,” because he alone was fitted for the work. It would have crushed an archangel to bear what Jesus bore. No bright angel, nor glorious seraph, no created being, however exalted, could have borne the load of sin; and therefore none but God’s own Son, not by office, but by eternal generation, the Son of the Father in truth and love, could bear the weight of imputed sin and guilt. As Hart says,

“Such loads of guilt were on Him put,
He could but just sustain the weight.”

But he was “chosen of God” that he might be Zion’s Representative, Zion’s Sin-bearer, and Zion’s glorious Head; that there might be a foundation for the Church to rest upon with all her miseries, all her sins, all her sorrows, all her base backslidings and idolatries, all her weight of woe and depths of guilt. It need be a strong foundation to bear this Church, so loaded with degradation, ignominy, and shame! God’s own Son, and none else in heaven or in earth, could bear all this. “Look unto me, and be ye saved, for I am God, and there is none else.”

He was “chosen of God” in eternity, in the divine councils, that he might be a Mediator. He was “chosen” to become man; chosen to become the Rock of Ages, Zion’s resting-place, harbour, anchorage, and home. Jesus was ever, therefore, and ever will be, unspeakably “precious” to the Father’s heart. Man despises him, but God honours him; man disallows him, but God values him as his co-equal Son. God, therefore, not only values him as his “fellow,” and has chosen him to be the Mediator, but he is in his eyes unspeakably “precious;” precious in his Deity, precious in his humanity, precious in his blood, precious in his obedience, precious in his sufferings, precious in his death, precious in his resurrection, precious in his ascension to God’s right hand, precious in the eyes of God as the Great High Priest over the house of God, and the only Mediator between God and man. Is he not worthy of all your trust, all your confidence, all your hope, and all your acceptance? Look where we will, he is our only hope. Look at the world, what can you reap from that but a harvest of sorrow? Look at everything men call good and great; all that man highly values, good perhaps for time, but valueless for eternity. Perhaps no one could put a higher value than I upon what man naturally regards as good and great, especially upon human learning, and attainments in knowledge and science. Yet I have seen them as compared with eternity, to be but breath and smoke—a vapour that passeth away and is no more seen. But the things of eternity, the peace of God in the heart, the work of the Spirit upon the soul, with all the blessed realities of salvation— these are not like the airy mists of time, the vapours that spring out of earth and return to earth again, but are enduring and eternal, “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.

J. C. Philpot 1802-1869

Written by Christian Watch on . Posted in Devotionals