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Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary have recently produced over forty 10-minute videos by Ian Hamilton on key people and events in the history of the church, covering the period from the early church up to the 1800s.
The videos that are particular relevant to Scottish church history are listed below, and are well worth watching:
In our morning services, we’re currently working our way through Christ’s letters to the seven churches in Revelation. One of the classic commentaries on Revelation was written by the Scottish Covenanter James Durham and first published shortly after his death at the age of 36.
Of all the seven letters, Durham said that the letter to the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) was the one that was most relevant to the Covenanted Church in Scotland, and called on his readers to ‘look upon this epistle as if Christ were writing a letter to Scotland’.
He says that Christ’s problem with the Reformed Church in Scotland in his day wouldn’t have been because of their lack of orthodoxy or zeal or outward worship - but a lack of love for God manifested in a lack of love for one another:
‘Wonder not why God quarrels with Scotland; we need not say it is for corruption in doctrine or discipline, nor for our zealous going about it; that was not his quarrel with Ephesus…Neither is it his quarrel with us, but as it was his quarrel with Ephesus, that she was fallen from her first love, so it is with us.
…Our Lord Jesus would never have quarrelled [with] Ephesus nor us for zeal and faithfulness. But…there is a declining love, especially love to God and love to one another, which may be seen in our walking uncharitably and untenderly. A defection in the manner of performing duties; our fasts have not been from a right principle, our censures not in love to the souls of the people; much roughness and untenderness in drawing them forth.
…Therefore look upon this epistle as if Christ were writing a letter to Scotland; and in his letter saying, “for as much purity and zeal as you have, yet you are fallen from your first love; much of your love, warmness and tenderness is away”’.
He says elsewhere that the church in Ephesus was zealous for the external worship of God, but had failed to live out the ‘one anothers’:
‘Though there was zeal in the external Worship of God: yet there was great defect of that love, sympathy and affection of one of them, with and to another, that should be; this being ordinary, that love inflamed toward God, and love one to another, go together: and therefore as it importeth they had fallen from their former warm impressions of love to God, so also from their kindly affection one to another, and had fallen in part to be more in sacrifice, and externals of Worship, than in Mercy and love one to another’.
Durham comments later on that it was likely that the outward state of their church was admired because of purity of their outward worship and the vigour of their discipline, as it is ‘too ordinary for men to think too much of external forms’.
He concludes: ‘Nothing has more influence in procuring judgement than coldness in love to God and others’.
In Sunday evening’s sermon, Stephen mentioned a panel discussion held in London on Saturday about the state of the church in the UK. It was a helpful discussion by men who are at the coalface of gospel work here and you can watch it below:
