How To Face Hard Times

Difficult times are here for our country. That is no surprise. But, of course, what perhaps will come along with it are serious, hard times for the church. So, how is a Christian to respond to difficulty, persecution, and the like? Rev. Alexander Peden pastored in difficult times, and he related the following story:

"There was a poor widow woman in the countryside, as I came through, that was worth many of you. She was asked how she did in this evil time. 'I do very well,' she said. 'I got more of one verse of the Bible now than I did of all the Bible in times past. He hath cast me the keys to the pantry door, and bidden me take my fill.'"

Rev. John Livingstone

I have been reading the memoirs of Rev. John Livingstone, a Scottish Puritan of the 17th century. Rev. Livingstone was a member of the Westminster Assembly that met in the 1640's, while he pastored a church in Ireland. Within twenty years of the Assembly, some of the divines were thrown out of their churches due to the "Great Ejectment" of 1662. Let's listen to the words of Livingstone regarding this time:

He was brought before the ecclesiastical council in Edinburgh and "they required me to subseryve the oath which they called the Oath of Alleadgeance, wherin the king was to be acknowledged supream governour over all persons, and in all causes, both civill and ecclesiasticall. This I know was contrived . . . that it might import receding from the covenant for reformation, and the bringing in of the bishops. . . Therefore, I refused to take that oath. They desyred to know if I would take some time to advise anent the matter, as some who had been before them had done. . . I told I needed not take tyme, seeing I was abundantly clear that I could not lawfully take that oath."

The ecclesiastical council pronounced banishment . . . Livingstone had 48 hours to leave Edinburgh and two months to depart all the king's domains. He left his church and went to Rotterdam. Within a year, his wife came to him with two of their children, although five children remained in Scotland. Livingstone, a Scottish lion of the covenant, died in Rotterdam on August 9, 1672.

In my ordination examination for the PCA, the first question I was asked was, "Who is head of the church?" The answer is, "Jesus Christ alone." Livingstone and others paid a heavy price for that truth . . . and perhaps someday we will be called to stand our post as well.

The Believer's hope

Horatius Bonar gives us these wonderful words on the hope of the Christian:

"The hope of the Christian is a hope full of immortality; a hope which God himself gives, and of which no man can rob us. It is divine and everlasting. It brings with it the peace which passes all understanding; and it contains in it a joy unspeakable and full of glory. There is no disappointment in it ... It is sure and glorious, like Jesus Christ, from whom it comes. It is connected with a crown, with an inheritance, with a kingdom, with a glory that does not fade away, and with an eternity of joy. "

May we live each day in the light of this sure hope - a hope as sure as the savior on whom it rests!!

submitted by RSA

Abigail Townsend

Abigail Townsend was the daughter of a man who was great friends with George Muller, the Christian preacher who started numerous orphanages in England in the 19th century. She knew Muller quite well, and there is a short biographical sketch about her titled The Adventures of Sister Abigail. One story from it is worth mentioning:

One morning she was playing in the garden at one of the orphanages, and Rev. Muller came, took her hand, and said, "Come and see what our Father will do." He led her into the dining room where all the children were standing in line waiting for breakfast. But there was nothing but empty dishes on the tables. Lifting his hand, Muller prayed, "Dear Father, we thank thee for what Thou are going to give us to eat." Immediately there was a knock on the door, and a baker was standing there. He said, "Mr. Muller, I couldn't sleep last night. Somehow I felt you didn't have bread for breakfast, and the Lord wanted me to send you some. So I got up at two o'clock and baked some fresh bread, and have brought it." Almost immediately they heard a second knock, and this time it was a milkman. "Mr. Muller, my milk cart has broken down outside the orphanage. I would like to give the children the cans of fresh milk so that I can empty the waggon and repair it."

I heard someone recently say that he was tired of hearing these stories about Muller because things don't happen that way. Really?

David Dickson

Rev. David Dickson was a Scottish Puritan of the 17th century, and he was one who participated in many of the great events of that century in the Church of Scotland. He was pastor of a congregation at Irvine for 22 years, then became Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow in 1641, and then held the same title at Edinburgh University. He was one of the drafters of the Directory of Public Worship of the acts of the Assembly in 1643. He was turned out of the church during the "Great Ejection" of 1662.

In 1662, David Dickson lay on his death-bed. He was visited by Rev. John Livingston, another great worthy of the Scottish Puritans. Livingston asked the professor how he was doing . . . he answered, "I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and cast them through each other in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both, and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace." At the end, he called his family together, and spoke to each one in turn, and then he pronounced upon them all the apostolic blessing of 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." He immediately raised his hand, closed his eyes, and died in the arms of his son.

Welsh

Rev. John Welsh was a Scottish Puritan who, in the seventeenth century, was for a time prisoner in Edinburgh Castle before he was sent into exile in France. One evening as he was sitting at supper with a number of the prisoners as he usually did . . . and he would preach to the prisoners and have godly and edifying conversations about the gospel. His teachings in prison were well received, except for one young Catholic prisoner. He would laugh at Welsh, make faces at him, and mock his teachings. At this dinner, Welsh told his men to be silent and watch what the Lord was about to do to this profane mocker. Almost immediately the young man sank down beneath the table and died, and he did not return to life "to the great astonishment of all the company."

Doctrine Preached

Charles Spurgeon comments on why ministers ought to preach doctrine from the pulpit:

"My experience goes to show that there have been persons converted to God by doctrines that some might have thought altogether unlikely to produce that result. I have known the doctrine of the resurrection to bring sinners to Christ; I have heard of scores brought to the Savior by a discourse upon election, -- the very sort of people who, as far as I can see, would never have been reached if that truth had not happened to be an angular doctrine that just struck their heart in the right place, and fitted into the crevices of their nature. I have often preached a terrible sermon upon the law, and afterwards found that sinners had been comforted by it. God frequently blesses the Word in the very opposite manner to that in which I thought it would be blessed, and He brings very, very many, to know their state by nature by doctrines which I should have thought would rather have comforted believers than awakened the unconverted"