Scottish Covenanters remembered in video series
The Edinburgh-based Banner of Truth Trust has released a new video series focusing on a neglected chapter in the history of the British church. The Covenanter Story narrates the lives and deaths of four men who took their place in a vast company of Scottish Christians killed for their faith in the 17th century.
The rise of the Stuart kings, and their insistence that they had a “divine right” to rule over the state and church (the Kirk) in Scotland, put tremendous pressure on Christians who prized the gospel freedoms recovered at the Reformation. As Charles I installed bishops to rule the church in his name and introduced a Prayer Book which many felt was far too “Roman” in character, many in the Scottish Kirk openly objected.
The educational pincer movement
The freedom to educate our children is being eroded. Are Christians ready to offer resistance? Joshua Kellard explores this question.
Christians understand that freedom is not ornamental, but necessary for us to flourish as God intends. We see this in the gospel itself, which calls us out of spiritual bondage and into the freedom of knowing and loving the living God. In the Exodus narrative, spiritual liberation is also worked out in the civil sphere, as the children of Israel are delivered from excessive external control (tyranny). Pharaoh’s claim on the children of Israel is exposed as legally illegitimate because the Lord Himself has already laid claim to their lives. They are His.
Banner conferences flying high
‘Next to communion with God’, wrote John
Trapp,
‘is the communion of saints’. This
year’s Banner of Truth Youth and Ministers’
Conferences, the first to be held in person since
Covid struck, provided a wonderful context to
focus on these two kinds of communion.
The Youth Conference drew around 270
young people aged 16 to 25. As they left, some 220 ministers gathered for three days
of
fellowship, Bible exposition and
sung
worship. Taking up the theme of communion
with God, there was teaching on prayer and
repentance (Jeff Kingswood), God’s electing
grace
(David Campbell),
true
spirituality
(Conrad Mbewe), ministerial
rest
(Andy
Hambleton) and a two-part meditation from Mark 6 on the example and experience of
communion with God found in that chapter,
with Christ allowing His disciples to ‘make
headway painfully’ (Robert McCollum Jr.).
In his closing
sermon, Meirion Thomas
directed hearers to the centrality of the Lord’s
Supper in the life of the church.
