AMERICA!

Hearken to these timely warnings!

IN the Lord’s Day Observance Society Year Book for 1941, there appears the following reference to the un-Christian Heaven-provoking Sabbath-day activities of the British Broadcasting Corporation: “The B. B. C, we regret to report, has become, since the outbreak of war, one of the most powerful forces at work in our midst for promoting the Modern Sunday.” The non-stop Services Programmes inaugurated on New Year’s ‘Sunday,’ 1940, is the most downgrade radio innovation since broadcasting was introduced into this country. These new Sunday Programmes have included Murder Trials, Detective Stories, Novel Reading, Tangos, Waltzes, Stage Plays, Musical Comedies, Variety Turns, Football Match Reports and so on. [And think of this, dear child of God, as well as all who profess godliness, through the radio you now are guilty of bringing all of these things into your home and thus tempting your dear children and training them up in such things. “Shall I not visit for these things?”]

To us it seems pathetic that men face to face with the realities of Eternity should be regaled with Dance Music, Variety, Cabaret, Sporting Items and other inanities during the hallowed hours of each Lord’s Day.“Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”

The most lamentable aspect of this wholesale desecration of the Sabbath Day by one of our national institutions is that professing orthodox and evangelical Christians have now settled down to following the line of least resistance, in this connection, and have begun to take it as a matter of course. Surely judicial blindness, even among Christians in this nation [and in our own] must have reached its nadir when such an unspeakably deplorable attitude is possible. Apart altogether from the glory of God involved, which is, by far, the most important and the most solemn aspect of the question, does it not indicate clearly a nation given up to brutal hard-heartedness and callous insane indifference when the very cause of the prolonged slaughtering of our fellow-men can be treated, even by Christians, as a matter of course? Has the spirit of martyrdom utterly died out in Britain when such a heathenish state of affairs could be tolerated in a professedly Christian land even for an hour? Evangelical and orthodox ministers, evidently overcome with the spirit of the times, seem to avoid everything that would make them unpopular with the godless multitude for a wicked rebellious generation, let the Cause of Christ suffer as it may. Yet people wonder that there is a war on; that there are no signs of peace, and that Britain [and we may now add to this also our own dearly beloved country] is meeting with so many rebuffs, reverses and frustrations. When are the Christians of this nation [and of our beloved nation] going to arise like one man to demand that the Sabbath Day in Britain [and in America] shall be restored to its pristine Christian Protestant character, according to the Moral Law and the national law, and an end put to the dominance of Eire Romanists on the B.B.C. staff?

[My dear readers and fellow-countrymen, hearken unto the voice of the Lord who reigneth and ruleth on high in the armies of heaven and here below among the inhabitants of the earth. The one only true and living God in heaven declares unto all men in His Holy Word, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.” Proverbs 28:13, 14. “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, [Jesus Christ] lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. And surely it is now kindled and burning, yea, it is now being poured down upon the nations of the earth in His fury. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”] Psalm 2; 10-12.—P. P. M.

PROFANATION OF THE SABBATH

Observe also these warnings which are yet being sounded throughout the earth by the trumpet of the Lord. [Ed.]

The Northern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland met at Halkirk on October 31st, and issued the following statement: The Northern Presbytery of the F. P. C. of Scotland would remind all concerned that the Sabbath law is of Divine authority and perpetual obligation, and that it was designed by an all-wise and beneficent Creator for man’s highest good. It is therefore with deep regret that the Presbytery note the following instances of disregard of this law, and they would solemnly warn against the evil of Sabbath desecration and the inevitable spiritual and temporal injury and loss it brings.

1. Sabbath Harvesting.—Contrary to the Divine commandment, the Board of Agriculture, supported by the R. C. Cardinal Hinsley, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others, recommended that harvesting be conducted on the Lord’s Day, which recommendation some farmers have followed. While works of necessity and mercy are allowed, unfavorable weather conditions do not justify this recommendation, but, in the Presbytery’s view are a call to repentance. “In earingtime and in harvest thou shalt rest” (Exod. 34:21) is the Divine command, in face of which harvesting [as also working in any kind of factories, and the like—Ed.] on the Lord’s Day is virtually a denial of God’s goodness at a time when the Divine bounty in providing the fruits of the earth and in preserving to us liberty to gather them should be humbly and thankfully acknowledged by observing the Sabbath rest.

2. Sabbath Football [Baseball and Sports.]— “The Sabbath was made for man.” It is stamped on his constitution. He needs its holy rest. Yet in several Highland towns and villages its sacred hours have been profaned by football playing [and various sports] by the troops, to the grief of many. The nation is presently engaged in a supreme struggle for liberty. True liberty is freedom under law, and “the royal law of liberty,” which alone binds men authoritatively and richly rewards the obedient, says: “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath from doing thy pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight … I will cause thee to ride on the high places of the earth …” (Isaiah 58.13). Promotors of football matches [baseball games and all kinds of sports] on the Lord’s Day are not the friends but the enemies, however, unwittingly, of liberty and of the young men for whose supposed benefit but real detriment these facilities have been provided. The Presbytery [and we too as Netherland Reformed Churches in America] would respectfully urge the military authorities [and all who are concerned] to reconsider their attitude in the matter and stop this flouting of the Divine commandment and the feelings of the Christian community.

3. Sabbath Town Council Meeting.—The Presbytery observe with sorrow that a meeting of the Town Council of Wick was convened and held on the Lord’s Day, October 19th, when business was transacted by the Council which ought to have been done on a week-day. [Alas, when shall the churches bitterly mourn over such sins and protest against them in our own beloved country?] God is the Law-Giver, the Fountain of truth, justice and mercy to all men. He is the Great Bond of Society. From Him Magistrates derive authority to be used, not to trample and discredit His law to the weakening of the bonds of the community, but to advance His glory and the public good (Rom. 13:4). Evils inherent in and lofty ends defeated by the said action of the Wick Town Council have involved the community in the Council’s guilt.

Today, in a manner more awful than ever before, men are being taught the lesson that God is not mocked: communities and nations reap as they sow, and this is eminently true of their attitude to the Sabbath. The wise will lay it to heart.

NATIONAL SERVICE

Here is another clear and audible sound of the trumpet which has been received in the form of a letter from across the great waters, dated December 29, 1941. Dear friend, almost the whole world is at war, and the crying need of the hour is munitions and man-power. Yet no one in authority seems to discern that the supreme need in the present sin-produced chaos is “God-power.” Men go on rejecting the Source of all strength and even provoke the Divine Majesty to greater wrath by spurning His Word, and His Day. The latest crime is the broadcasting of the blasphemous parody of the Life of our Blessed Lord in modern slang, a national iniquity against which the Committee most vigorously protests, and urges every member to send to the B. B. C. their own individual protest.

But where is the remedy? It is only to be found in a revival of God-given, heart-searching religion, such as swept the country at the time of the glorious Reformation and of the Puritan Revival. And as surely as the nation lowers its standard of religion and compromises the fundamental doctrines of the Protestant Reformed Faith, history witnesses that national calamity follows in its train. “Shall I not visit for these things” saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”

“Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts.”

Therefore, the Committee feels that [the] work of the “proclamation and defense of the doctrines of free and sovereign grace” is an urgent national service, and requests the full support, by prayers etc. of all who have felt the power, through grace, of those doctrines.

Wishing you God’s richest blessing, signed ....

[May the Spirit of God lay these solemn warnings to our hearts.—Editor.]

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