I see (letter 25 Nov) that Mr Garry Otton, the secretary of SSS, is once again restless about the powers of the Church and agitatedly quibbles about the level of power it can wield within its courts in relation to the rightness and wrongness of human sexuality. He also rants and raves about the secularisation of Scotland which he boldly claims “respects freedom for and freedom from religion.”
Respect for God is certainly not something the SSS have and neither is it something they have for the Christian church: their wish would be to have them both silenced and got rid of, if it were possible.
I have news for Mr Otton. It is not possible and it will never happen. God still rules, reigns and lives an endless life in an endless world.
Psalm 47 reminds us that God reigns over the nations of the earth and that He sits upon the throne of his holiness. He is in sovereign control, and not ‘redundant’ as SSS would have Him to be.
Yes, there are many folk here on earth who laugh, scoff and scorn and ridicule any thought of His existence.
Yet these very people, including the SSS, forget that it is this very God who will ultimately have, one day, the last laugh: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision” (Psalm 2v4).
Mr Otton would have us think that declining numbers in the church has been brought
about by “a slow and painful suicide executed by the church itself as it remains
stubbornly intransigent and resolute against a changing and enlightened world in
the sphere of human sexuality.” Do I somehow detect that he is in favour of so-
In 2014 we do not live, as Mr Otton would somehow imagine us to believe, in an ‘enlightened world’ but rather in a very disenchanted society that needs the truth and light of God’s word to enlighten the benighted minds of the masses, both in church and nation.
It is certainly not the fictitious and empty ‘faith’ of secularists, humanists or atheists that we need, but rather that resolute faith that is able to change the destiny of a nation, and transform the lives of people both spiritually and morally. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD…blessed is the people whose God is the LORD” Pslam 33v12 and Pslam 144v15.
The Bible reminds us in Colossians 2v8 to be wary of those who have ungodly and secular agendas and who disregard the greatest gift ever given to mankind: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
When Mr Otton does his end of year shopping in the busy thoroughfares of Edinburgh, maybe he can pause for a few moments, under the annual Christmas Day banner, in the markets of our capital city. Although we don’t agree with the date, we thank God for that ‘special day’ when He gave the best and greatest gift of all: “For God so loved the world...” (John 3v16). Mark it carefully, the world. Filled with violence, terrorism, discrimination, greed, poverty, religion, atheism, secularism, humanism…such a world of people God loved.
This is not just a sentimental emotion; it is true love, demonstrated by the fact “that He gave His only begotten Son...” (John 3v16) The reason God gave His Son is “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3v16).
Mr Donald J Morrison
85 Old Edinburgh Road
Inverness.
Vain deceit of man
29 November 2014