Heritage

The Lights Are Turned On

BJU_Lights_matrix_2014

An Annual Event We’ve Grown to Love

The first Friday of each December marks an event in Greenville, SC, that my family and I have grown to love. It was one of the first things we experienced after we moved into the area in 2010.

“You must get to see the turning on of the lights,” said our friend, Derek. “It’s a great celebration!” He was referring to a half-hour of singing of carols open-air on the campus of Bob Jones University.

It’s generally a week or so after Thanksgiving each year that it takes place. Organized as a special event to which everyone is welcome, regardless of their association or otherwise with the school, at the event members of the University Choir sing,  a few soloists perform, and many of the old favorite Christmas carols are sung by the one or two thousand bystanders. Large overhead screens prompt the words (with some images to tie in with the theme of the songs), and amplified piano music helps the music along.

On the Twelve Days of Christmas

A favorite for our son, Matthew, is “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” This is always carefully managed, with various people-types in the audience assigned the different verses–such as the freshmen, seniors, juniors, the choir, men only and women only, andthose standing on the bridge or other locations each taking a part.

As well as there being a short address from the President of the University each year, there is always the turning on of the lights. There has been intensive preparation for this–there are 100,000 light bulbs clustered around the campus, involving 3,000 feet of garland–these are turned on at a point during the singing of “O Holy Night.” Especially prominent is a column of light that shines up from near a nativity scene at the campus main gate.

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Posted by Jim Holmes in Heritage, Spirituality, 1 comment

Thinking About Thanksgiving

Credit_luke_kapustka_www.flickr.com-photos-lukekapustka-6688446127

From the Green Fields of England to the Greenville of South Carolina

Counting back from late November 2014, a little short of 1,500 days ago from the time of writing, a small family set foot on US soil in Wayne County Airport, Detroit, Michigan. This was not for the first time, but it marked a major new chapter in their lives. As they boarded their connecting flight to GSP—Greenville Spartanburg Airport, South Carolina—their minds were filled with what had been, and what was yet to be.

What had been: A settled life in the United Kingdom… What was yet to be? The challenge of relocating to a new way of life in the USA. New living and working conditions; new school; new friends; new church; new currency; and new ways of driving an automobile—on the wrong side of the road, to start with.

That family? The Holmeses—that’s us. And the first major event in the USA? Thanksgiving 2010!

We have much for which to give thanks, and the season of Thanksgiving is always a time to stimulate these thoughts. On a previous Thanksgiving, I was asked to share some truths from the Bible at a family gathering of friends, and my mind turned to the account of ten lepers who encountered Jesus. In a remarkable display of His power, Jesus healed them completely—yet only one of them acknowledged it. See Luke 17:11-19.

Thankfulness

Here are some of the things I shared along the lines of giving thanks and glory to God:

Living in the twenty-first century here in the sophisticated United States, we may find it hard to imagine what it was like to have an incurable and defacing disease. We will easily go to the doctor’s office or the pharmacy and get a cream or lotion to help with a skin infection or irritation (or plastic surgery if needs be). But here were ten men with a horrible leprous condition, one which was (humanly speaking) incurable.

Imagine You Are a Leper

Imagine your fingers rotting away; the presence of a bacterium that won’t go away until it has feasted on your body, flesh and bones.

Smell the stench of flesh as it pulls away from bone; you would fear to see yourself in a mirror.

Perhaps your nose eroded so that you only see a cavity into your skull; your larynx affected so your voice is weak and reedy

Your nerve endings have been destroyed so you have no feeling of hot, cold or pain; you can burn yourself picking up a hot item from the fire and yet feel no pain!

You are visibly deformed; you are ritually defiled; you have no place in company with the people of God.

It is, as it were, the end of the line for you. You are destined to die, separated from friends and family, excluded from pleasures and enjoyments, and would have people run away from you. Perhaps you would carry a bell, and you would call out, “Unclean, Unclean!” to warn others of your approach. No sports; no social life; no close friendships, no embraces from loved ones. You are an outcast, the lowest of the low.

In the Bible, sin is sometimes described in metaphorical terms as leprosy. So I think it is easy for you, in your mind’s eye, see the picture of how sin is like leprosy, defiling us, separating us from a Holy God, marring our image, causing us to be unclean, unacceptable in His sight and presence. Sin has taken us away from God.  “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (Isaiah 64:6).

But God…

But God, in His wonderful purpose, had so worked the situation that Jesus was going to meet them. It was on His calendar for these ten men to meet the Savior.

Jesus was the only hope for these ten men. Jesus is the only hope for sinners today!

I believe it is on God’s calendar for you to meet the Savior of sinners. He is still calling sinners to Himself today, even though they are at a distance from Him (v 12). What will you do when He calls you? He calls you to cleanse you, not to leave you festering in your sinful condition. He calls you to repentance; He calls you to saving faith; He calls you to more than just an acknowledgement of His existence in general terms. He calls you to a personal relationship. He calls you to be a disciple, one who follows Him and learns from Him.

When the ten are healed, only one is serious in his response. People are happy to enjoy the kind providence of God, but do not want Him too near to them. They prefer a God-at-arm’s-length.

But let’s see what the one leprous man—this ex-leper—did:

He came personally to Jesus (v 15: He turned back)

He glorified God with a loud voice (v 15)

He fell on his face at Jesus’ feet and gave thanks (v 16)

He, a foreigner, gave glory to God (v 18)

Let’s now try and connect this matter of glorifying God and giving thanks to God to our lives today. What are we taught in the Westminster Larger Catechism?

Question 1: What is the chief and highest end of man?

Answer: Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.

What is the connection between glorifying and thanking God? I believe the answer is in Romans 1. Romans 1 (Romans is the manual that shows how people and God have become separated and how they can be reconciled, brought back into a right relationship) makes its starting point as follows:

For even though they knew God, they did not honor (Lit glorify) Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1:21

But if we know the gospel, and if we are trusting in Jesus alone for our salvation, how will we intend to thank and glorify God? I believe there are three areas in which we may specifically cultivate glorifying and thanking God—words that theologians like to use, and words which we should ourselves love:

For His work of creation, for this reveals to us the wonderful, wise and powerful person that God is who could speak worlds and universes into being! Romans 1:20 makes it abundantly clear to us that “… since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made , so that they are without excuse.”

For His work in providence; consider how He preserves us in life, giving us life and breath and all things—health, strength, power to gain wealth, to labor and see results, to sow and to reap; to become well after we have been sick; to learn; to grow in experience. Consider the bounty and the beauty of what we enjoy. The lines have fallen for us in pleasant places. Who would not want to live in a place such as the upstate of South Carolina?

For His work, most especially, in redemption. He has appointed Jesus, a Prince and Savior, to save His people from their sins. Read about it in the Gospels, in Romans, in the New Testament, in the whole Bible. It’s all about Jesus. The apostle Paul said that there should be the giving of thanks (Ephesians 5:4); let us be giving thanks for Him who is God’s most wonderful gift (John 3:16)

2 Corinthians 9:15 urges us in these words “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” His indescribable gift is the person of Jesus.

A Call to Faith

Are you in a right relationship with the One of whom the Bible speaks? Is your heart drawn out in thankfulness to the Son of God who planted His feet on this planet? Consider how He became a real man—but without sin—and lived an ordinary life for over thirty years in order that by His living a life of active obedience to God’s law and requirements, and then by dying a death as if being punished as a sinner—for the sins of His people were imputed to Him in His sacrificial death—sinners like you and I can be brought back to a right relationship with God by turning from sin and unrighteousness, and by trusting in Him alone!

 

Image Credit: Luke Kapustka www.flickr.com/photos/lukekapustka/6688446127
Posted by Jim Holmes in Heritage, Reflections, Travel, Worldview, 1 comment

Remembering Ulster’s Gentle Giant

Ian Paisley

A Big Man

It was in the late 1980s that the name Ian R K Paisley came on my radar. The media at the time presented him as something of a political buffoon, a ranter and raver, a disturber of the political peace. However, one afternoon I was in a bookstore in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and came upon a book titled “Christian Foundations” by the same Ian Paisley. It engaged me immediately. As I read, I found my spirit concurring with the author’s words. He ably asserted and illustrated truth after truth from the Bible.

Around the same time, surfing the radio waves one evening, I came across a weekly program from the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, going by name “Let the Bible speak.” Presented by a man with a strong, lilting Northern Irish accent, Leslie Curran, I was hooked. Short devotional thoughts, great gospel music, the Word read with clarity and grace, and a short but punchy exposition filled a half hour with good and edifying listening. It even occasionally referenced Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. At that time, I would not even have been able to point to a blank map of North America and guessed where South Carolina was!

While I never heard Dr. Paisley on the radio, I followed with interest and appreciation his ministry movements, especially once I relocated to the UK. I appreciated his stance for truth, righteousness, and the godliness born of the gospel of grace.

It was with sadness that I learned of Dr. Paisley’s death in September. Psalm 116:15 articulates it well: “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”

Earlier today, thanks to Dr. Samuel Lowry, I came upon some notes originating from the The Ian R.K. Paisley Library book series published by Ambassador International in Belfast, and introduced along the following lines (I have added the headings for summary navigation):

 

In His Own Words: Remembering Dr. Ian Paisley

If you don’t know anything else about Dr. Ian Paisley, you should know that he was a fiery Presbyterian preacher and Irish politician with great devotion to his faith and to the unionist people of Northern Ireland. In fact, he was known as the “Big Man” of politics, and even co-founded the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. Before he passed away on September 12, 2014, his strong convictions led him to speak on platforms and in pulpits all over the world.

Alive and Singing

If you read in the press or hear on TV Ian Paisley is dead, don’t believe a word of it. I’ll be more alive than ever. . . . I’ll be singing as never before.

An Anchor

I want to take you to the text where I first cast anchor. In 1932, my father was minister of Hill St. Baptist Church in Ballymena. That church was born out of the 1859 revival. It had an unusual parentage. A Covenanting minister of The Reformed Presbyterian Church preceded my dad. In the basement of that Church, my mother held a children’s meeting and gently spoke from John 10:11 on the Good Shepherd. When the other children had gone out, I slipped up to her side. “Mummy,” I said, “I don’t want to be a lost sheep, I want to be a saved lamb.” When that Church was renovated I asked the Pastor for the old pew where I had knelt in prayer beside my mother. Now, I do not believe in relics, but I believe in precious memories. We placed it in the Lecture Hall at our Whitefield College, and in a recent students’ early-morning prayer meeting I knelt at that pew and repeated those lines: “High Heaven that heard that solemn vow, that vow renewed shall daily hear”.

Woe Is Me if I Preach Not the Gospel

If I am called to preach the gospel, and thank God I am, nothing will stop me. You could as soon stop the Niagara torrent with a teaspoon, or the rising sun with a lollipop stick, as stop a Holy Ghost preacher when God has commissioned him. Close him out of the house and he’ll preach it on the doorstep. Ridicule him, refuse him, sneer at him, slander him, seek to bury him, [and] he’ll rise again with the gospel upon his lips.

Shamrock

I studied in Wales under an old revival preacher of the 1904 Welsh Revival and practiced my preaching skills in the open-air. Once when preaching in a town center, a bystander, who was a little under the influence, on hearing my Northern Irish accent shouted out, “Tell us about the Shamrock.” I replied, “On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other rocks are sham rocks!” I also preached in those little chapels spotted over the Welsh valleys. Some congregations received me graciously. Others didn’t. I was an Ulsterman and lacked the richness of the wonderful Welsh tongue. In due course I returned home and entered the Theological Hall of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland.

A Tongue Like a File

In 1946, when twenty years of age, I was ordained as minister of Ravenhill Church, Belfast. The following Sunday Morning the renowned Reverend W. P. Nicholson was in the service. Just after I had finished preaching, Mr. Nicholson came forward to the front of the church, rapped the communion table sharply with his knuckles, and asked gruffly, “Young man, have you ever seen a cow’s tongue?” Being a country lad I said, “Yes, sir.” “Well, what is it like?” the famous preacher persisted. I said, “It is like a file.” Then lifting his hands to heaven he offered an unusual prayer. “Lord, give this young man a tongue like an old cow.”

Preaching Moving Sermons!

We had a small church; we had 346 seats and a congregation of sixty, including children. For six months I preached the most moving sermons of my life, because half the congregation left. So I thought I had better do something about it and went out on the door knockers. I started on a good street, Shamrock Street, and I knocked on my first door. A little lady opened the door, and I said as politely as I could, “Good morning.” Then she looked me up and down and snapped, “Are you the new preacher from around the corner?” I said, “I am.” She replied, “God Almighty help you among that bunch!” and she slammed the door in my face.

Are They Growing?

When I was a young preacher, I was like the little boy who was given a tulip bulb. He planted it in his mother’s garden, and he dug it up every day to see if it was growing! I was like that with young converts.

Ministry of Defense

We had trouble in the church over song-leaders, so I decided that I would become the song-leader. By the way, we had a choir in those days; it was the war department of the church, so I sacked them and told the congregation to sing, “No, not one! No, not one!” We have never had a choir since.

How to Grow Your Church from Prison

[I had] a couple of terms in prison for our uncompromising stand and each time our church grew. The first Sunday after I was released, we received 200 new members who had been saved or separated from apostasy during the time I was inside. So my elders said, “If we get 200 new members after three months’ imprisonment, you should have stayed for six.” I said, “You can do the other three months, gentlemen; I’ll stay out for now.”

With Jesus

The Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster caught fire, [grew to] around sixty congregations in Northern Ireland, this Martyrs Memorial Church was built, [and so were] many others across the British Isles, in North America, and [in] Australia. I’ll tell you what we are: we are God’s laugh at the devil. John the Baptist was God’s laugh at the Pharisees. They had their Sanhedrin, but here comes a fiery preacher. The early apostles were called “unlearned and ignorant,” but they had been with Jesus.

Reformation Truth Preaching

Every true revival in church history was a revival of great preaching. The church of Jesus Christ has gone cold and formal. The pulpit and preacher are weak; the pulpit has been pushed to the side because preaching is only a side-line. In churches which preach Reformation truth, the pulpit has the pre-eminence, and upon the desk is the open Word of God, and behind the desk is someone who believes that God has one method divinely ordained for the salvation of souls, and that is the preaching of the cross.

Weeping

The preacher who never weeps never really works. The preacher who never sobs never really supplicates. The preacher who never sheds tears seldom ever triumphs. A tearless ministry is dry and passionless. We are called to serve with humility and many tears.

Give Me Rome and Dublin!

I heard a preacher the other day say you should not have your eye on rewards. Well Moses had respect for the recompense of the reward. I would serve Jesus if there was no reward at the end of it, for serving Him is reward enough, but there is going to be a reward. It says He is going to set us over cities. Some people will have ten. I have asked God for two cities, Rome and Dublin—that would do me!

Not Ashamed of the Gospel

It is common today for a minister, when he remains for some considerable time in the ministry, to talk about the progress he has made in his theology, his philosophy, [and] in his religious ideas. Let me unashamedly confess that in over fifty years I have not made any progress whatsoever. I believe the Bible—from the first “In” to the last “Amen.” . . . I am not ashamed of the Gospel; not ashamed of the cause of the Gospel; not ashamed of the cost of the Gospel; not ashamed of the constraint of the Gospel; not ashamed of the consequences of the Gospel. And I will not be ashamed at the coronation of the Gospel. The Gospel Ship has not had an easy voyage since it was launched by the Hand of Grace in the Red River of the Redeemer’s Blood. Its passage has been stormy, but the crowning day is coming.

Preaching Christ

When the sun goes down, as it shall, upon my ministry, and when the sands of time run out, there will be a blessed picture before me. That of a little boy of six on that day when I started my pilgrimage for heaven. It has been a zigzag path—twice in jail, a member of three parliaments, and holder of high office. I do not know what lies ahead, but this I know: Jesus has never failed. People have let me down. I have let the Lord down, and I say that with penitence of heart and repentance of soul. If I never see you again, remember that Jesus Christ, Ian Paisley’s Savior, has been preached up in this place tonight. Oh sinner, come to Him and be saved. Backslider, return to Him and be restored. Christian, renew your vows. May God send to Ulster an old-fashioned, heaven-sent revival so that this beloved land will be delivered from the wrath that is to come. May it be so, for Jesus’ sake! Amen and Amen.

Posted by Jim Holmes in Heritage, Reflections, Westminster Standards, 0 comments

Appreciating Our Veterans

Do You Appreciate Our Veterans?

Wartime Crosses MonochromeI shared these sentiments with a close veteran friend via email earlier today:

I deeply appreciate and esteem you. This being Vets Day made me think of people like you, and the debt that I (and others) owe you for your faithfulness in rendering military service, your involvement in the hot spots and other far-flung regions, whether in the direct defense of our interests as a nation, or in the maintenance of a military presence rendering good will to other countries.

The phrase, “The land of the free, because of the brave” comes to mind. I like to remind my eleven-year-old son of this.

My Dad, a Soldier…

My dad served in the army in Kenya and the regions of southern Africa, as well as a little more to the north of Kenya during WW2. He never saw active service (as in fighting), but I believe his involvement helped bring stability to the regions and perhaps kept potential German and Italian aggression at bay. And I am sure that our US presence in the regions where there is no direct conflict also represents a force to maintain peace, as well as being a more remote strategy in the defense of our local borders.

The Defense of Our Heritage

I treasure our Judeo-Christian heritage and the freedoms that we enjoy because of it. It must be defended! And so I like to think of the military and its role in parallel terms of application with the injunction of Paul to Timothy in 1 Tim. 2:1-2: “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.”

www.blogspot52.com, November 11th, 2014

If you agree with these sentiments, and you have a friend or family member in the military, hit the share button!

Posted by Jim Holmes in Current Issues, Heritage, Worldview, 0 comments