Rev. Angus Stewart
When a church member in Corinth committed incest, the apostle Paul was indignant that the congregation tolerated this sin (I Cor. 5:1-2). He rebuked them sharply and called upon the church to excommunicate the offender (vv. 1-8).
Yet the Church of Scotland’s 2009 General Assembly officially decided to uphold the installation of a homosexual minister. What flagrant disobedience to the Lord Jesus Christ! The General Assembly (not just one erring congregation) tolerated (and did not excommunicate) a homosexual (not merely an incestuous person) minister (not just a member)!
The church at Corinth heeded the apostolic rebuke and its loving discipline was used by God to bring the incestuous man to repentance (II Cor. 2; 7). Will June’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) admonish its mother church according to the Word of God? Or will the Church of Scotland’s Irish daughter follow (in due time) its mother’s footsteps? So many churches (like the Church of England and the Church of Scotland) are descending into world-conformity: higher criticism of the Bible, theistic evolutionism, free-willism, false ecumenism, women missionaries, deaconesses, women elders, women ministers, accepting impenitent homosexual members and tolerating homosexual ministers. The PCI (and the Church of Ireland and Methodist Church in Ireland) is already well down this pathway. “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” (I Cor. 5:6). It is due time that PCI members wake up, protest its apostasy and join a church that preaches the Scriptures, administers the sacraments, exercises church discipline and worships God according to His Word and not according to political correctness.
