Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 9 (Evening 5)

There was no official Friday evening meeting last year but it was back with a bang this year. A packed Great Hall listened to Dyfan Williams give the final address of the 2024 conference looking at scenes from the life of Jacob. For me, this meeting (including Alun Ebenezer leading in prayer) was the highlight of the week. Clearly, warmly and with rhetorical power Dyfan expounded the Scriptures very practically and helpfully and ended with a powerful evangelistic call. Judicious use of powerpoint helped rather than hindered the message. 

He closed saying,

Now let me ask you this as we come to a close, will you hear Jesus's word tonight? Will you believe the God who sent him? Robert Frost, the American poet, wrote a poem The Road Not Taken and he says "I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference."

I want to suggest to you this evening, the final day of Aber, two roads are converging for you this evening, two roads, Jesus talked about them didn't he? He talked about the broad road and the narrow road. He talked about the broad road - there are many on it. The broad road leads to destruction. The narrow road, the narrow road they're not on it, so many. The narrow road leads to life, eternal life. And I want to ask you which road are you on? Which road are you on? Will you believe in the Lord Jesus? Will you put your faith in him? Will you get off the broad road and will you trust in this Saviour who promises you eternal life? Will you do it? Paul talks in in 2 Corinthians 5, he says we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were making his appeal through us - be reconciled to God. Well, I want to be that voice this this evening to you. I want to say, God is making an appeal to you through me, through his word this evening - be reconciled to God, come to this God. He is appealing to you this evening. He's saying, come on, come on. Trust in my son. Get off the broad road, get onto the narrow road that leads to life. The consequences are eternal. Robert Frost says that it's made all the difference. It's made all the difference, the road which I took and it's going to make all the difference for us, for you. Get on the narrow road, follow this

Lord Jesus, put your trust in him. There are young people that were with me in Aber at the conference, years and years ago ... there are people who were with me and in our friendship group. They are nowhere now. They are nowhere. They're not following the Lord; they're on the broad road and I don't want that to happen to you. I don't want it to happen to you.

God is appealing. God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. You can be righteous. You can be right with God this evening through faith in Jesus. You've crossed over from death to life. Take the road less travelled by and that will make all the difference.

Maybe this evening, maybe this evening, this will be the first stage of God's grace for you here. May we all know God's grace through the various stages of life and may we be strong to the finish. Amen, amen.

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 8 (Morning 4)

David Meredith preached on the final morning from Acts 4, a bold move. One of the last things he said was to remind us of that time when there was a Party Conference of the Liberal party and the Liberals had won a couple of seats. They were really excited and the leader of the party said "Let us go back to the country and prepare for government". And they were annihilated at the next general election. We are going to be leaving Aber, he said. He was not saying, "Let us go go back and prepare for government" but that we should proclaim the word of God boldly and as we proclaim that word make it a matter of prayer. ray that the room will shake through seriousness in prayer.

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 6 (Evening 4)

Stephen Clark spoke again last night, carrying on with Colossians, mostly Chapter 3. It was different to the previous message and with lots of illustrations.

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 5 (Morning 3)

David Meredith preached this morning on Jonah, focusing on the revival in Nineveh, which he took as a genuine one.

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 5 (Evening 3)

On our third evening we had a third retired man in his sixties. This time, Stephen Clark, formerly at Abersychan, Llandrindod and Bridgend. He now lves in Cyprus. He took us through Colossians 2:6-23 and was helpfully evangelistic. Near the end he used this well known illustration, which Stephen had heard a friends give at a Senior Camp. He said this "It is an imperfect illustration. If you push it all the way you will end up with a monstrously distorted doctrine of the atonement but it was meant to illustrate just one thing, the love of God in Christ Jesus ... it's a true story of a little girl whose mother had horribly deformed hands and this little girl had friends in school. They'd ask her to go to her friends' houses for tea but she never asked any of her friends to come for tea and she didn't ask them because she was ashamed of her mother's hands. This went on for quite some time and then the mother felt she had to deal with it. She said, "You never ask anyone to come here for tea. Why is that?" The girl didn't want to come out with it. She teased it out of her in the end. She said, "yes it's your hands Mum, I don't want my friends to see the awful scarring and shape on your hands. So she said, "I'll tell you why my hands are like this. I wasn't born like it" she said "I had lovely hands but one day the chip pan was on and you were in the kitchen. You came to the chip pan, your hand went up and if that pan had been pulled down you would have been marred for life and I rushed over and put my hands in the way so that you wouldn't be scarred. And that's why my hands are like this. He to rescue us from danger interposed his precious blood. And that's why you and I can go on in the Christian life. Because we've been rooted in Christ, we've been renewed in Christ and most of all we've been redeemed by the blood of the lamb and that is so immense that that will be the theme of Praise forever and ever. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 4 (Morning 2)

David Meredith continued his series on revival, looking very helpfully at Psalm 126. He referred to Alexander Fraser of Tain and his interesting comment following a revival when he was a visiting student in a church in Argyllshire, in a little place called Drumlemble. He was asked how he coped preaching night after night for many weeks given he only had a few sermons. He wrote "I told him that when fishermen come up from England in the south to fish in their northern rivers for trout and salmon, they bring their fine rods and their newest flies, their gear and their gaffes and all the rest. They flail away and flog our rivers and catch little enough. Then the rain comes. And a wee fellow from a village with a rod that's little more than a stick and a line that he has found somewhere, a hook if he is fortunate and a pin if he is not, comes along and does as well as any of them. The truth is, you can do an awful lot with very little when the spate comes."

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 3 (Evening 2)

Our third session, the second evening one, again featured a retired pastor (and once again a London Welshman). Mostyn Roberts has recently retired as the pastor of Welwyn Evangelical Church and is now living in Herefordshire. He preached from Luke 4 on Believing in the real Jesus. The service can be accessed here.

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 2 (Morning 1)

The main speaker at Aber tbis year is David Meredith from Scotland. He has chosen to speak on the important subject of revival. He began this morning by taking us through the first 14 verses of the famous chapter, Ezekiel 37. A recording can be found at the EMW YouTube Website here.  

Aberystwyth Conference 2024 Session 1 (Evening 1)

It was good to be at the official opening session of this year's Aber Conference last night. Our speaker was Paul Williams, recently retired from ministry in Swindon and now living on Swansea. He preached from the heart from Romans 8:32, with the mainaim of assuring any lacking assurance. It was good to be there. A recording can be found at the EMW YouTube Website here.

Proc Trust EMA 2024 Second Afternoon

It was good to hear Conrad Mbewe again giving his first address on the second day of the conference. He spoke form 2 Corinthians 2 on God's power in preaching. Sadly, I wasn't abe to stay for the last session of the day - Nigel Styles 1 Thessalonians 2:1-3:8 - as I had to get home to travel to Aberystwyth. I also missed the third andd final day of Kevin DeYoung (on the daughters Zelophehad) Conrad Mbewe (on preaching, from 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20) a second round table (with different participants) and Nigel Styles (on 1 Thessalonians 5). Needs must, however, as my fourth son is getting married.

Proc Trust EMA 2024 Second Morning

Our second morning followed the pattern of the first, with Kevin DeYoung and Mike Reeves speaking in the two sessions. This second time Kevin DeYoung took us to Leviticus 8, another difficult chapter that he was again able to highlight in very helpful way. Mike Reeves carried on with what he had to say about evangelicalism, this time warning us against the dangers of the revelation, redemption, regeneration paradigm. I guess this is the meat of his book Evangelical Pharisees just as yesterday was (I think) bsed on his book Gospel People.

Proc Trust EMA 2024 First Afternoon

 

Our afternoon was taken up with a round table duiscussion featuring our morning speakers and Cnrad Mbewe who is slated to speak tomorrow. The chair was Liz Cox, a PT Trustee. Questions discussed included preaching and prayer, chief elements in the Christian ministry.A very pleasant post-prandial hour.  (There was an alternative seminar with Andrew Sach  on preaching 1 and 2 Kings which some attended). The day finished with an exposition of the opening chapter of 1 Thessalonians from Nigel Styles, who for the last eight years has been Director of the Proclamation Trust and Director of the Cornhill Training Course. He begins work this summer with Cross Connections an international work that has grown out of the Proclamation Trust work and now has twenty ‘International Hubs’ training expository preachers. His expositon was typically Proc Trust - careful exposition of the text. Good to chat with people again (Ken Brownell, Dan Jarvis, Adrian Tribe, Phil Venables, Chris Hawthorne, etc, and my father-in-law). Good day then. Hot but okay.

Proc Trust EMA 2024 First Morning

It was good to be for the first time in a long time at the 41st Evangelical Ministry Assembly organised by The Proclamation Trust. The EMA has been in the Emmanuel Centre for a while now but it was my first time  here. We began with an excellent expositon of Genesis 38 by Kevin DeYoung. It was very thorough, helpful and well executed. It was a privilege to be here.  In the second half of the morning Mike Reeve spoke of evangelicalism, remindng us of the central matters of the faith in his usual clear tones. Loads here, some of whom I know. Had a nice chat with Dave Gobbett who I had enjoyed listening to on catch up on Sunday. See here.

Catalyst Conference 2024 Day 1

Some 280 are booked in for this year's IPC Conference. It was good to be there once again. We followed the usual pattern of two messages before lunch and two after. Sinclair Ferguson started us off looking at Genesis 3 and seven aspects of Satan's rebellion (the first part of a three part triptych, as he described it). We had lots of wonderful things here - eg the importance of the atmosphere of a text of Scripture, the importance of the affections, the way the references to the LORD God disappear when Satan comes in (he never refers to the LORD) and the idea (drawing on Alfred North Whitehead's similar statement about Plato) that the whole of the Bible is really a footnote to Genesis 3:15. We then had a wonderfully flamboyant man called Dr David Filson, Pastor of Theology and Discipleship for Church and Academy at Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Nashville, Tennessee. He gave a wonderful introduction to Westminster Seminary style apologetics and the whole matter of our battle with the world that was gripping.

After lunch with my father-in-law, Geoff Thomas, and fellow Aber graduates Ed Collier and Emyr James, we had Matthew Mason from the Pastors Academy on the flesh and this whole matter of concupisence, which has come into our thinking again mainly due to the whole question of how to regard same sex attraction. Like Matthew Roberts he rejects the idea of John Stevens and some of the advocates of the view that to be same sex attracted is not wrong in itself. Very helpful. The final message was from R Kent Hughes, very well known by reputation but rarely seen this side of the Atlantic I believe. He took us to Paul and his thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan. A helpful exposition.

So a good day. I headed off after it to visit a member in hospital.

A quotation from day one

“But there are some people, nevertheless - and I am one of them - who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them” (G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, in The Complete Works of G. K. Chesterton, ed. David Dooley, vol. 1, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986, 41).

Still in Kenya

Preaching in Nakuru

At Nakuru with two delegates

Eating at a Java House in Nakuru with Eric 

Preaching Baricho with Alex

Another week in Kenya has passed by pretty much. We are now in Nairobi and I will fly home on Monday. On the previous Monday we left Eldoret after preaching there and headed for Nakuru. One bit of excitement on the way was that we corssed the equator, not something I've ever done by road. We were put up in a nice hotel in the town of Nakuru, which seemed a little cooler than Kisumu. On the Tuesday and Wednesday we held another APC on Romans in Crosspoint Bible Church, a small building with Bible texts everywhere. The pastor was away in Uganda and the assistant was dealing with a pastoral issue but were well looked after by Eric, a deacon, with aspirations to ministry. Numbers were lower than previously, down to around 30, but there was a good spirit and it was good to meet various people, including Erick, converted out of a hopeless life of drink and drugs.

On the Thursday, we drove to Baricho, the little town where our last conference took place. This time we crossed the equator twice and it had soon become old hat. We had some difficulty finding a hotel but managed to locate one in nearby Kerugoya. Not up to the last one, it was fine, however. The two days of meeting were held in The People's Church, Baricho, very efficiently organised by Mercy and Moses Chege. This time it was necessary to translate into Swahili and a young church planter called Alex did very well. The translation element truncated the length of our messages but hopefully we were able to get across some important truths. Numbers were lower again, down to about 25. We followed the usual format of five sessions on day one, four on day two and then a photograph, a Q&A and certifiate giving to close.

We then headed to Nairobi and within two hours were at a large shopping mall where we enjoyed icecream. Cetric is home and Joshua and I are sharing the church flate here in the church grouinds. I enjoyed the road trip, especially the latter part where we were in the Aberdare National Park area, but its good to be almost home.

In Kenya

Preaching in Kisumu

Lake Victoria

Last Monday (April 15) my wife kindly took me first thing to Heathrow where I caught a KLM 'plane to Amsterdam. From there I flew KLM to Nairobi. That took about eight and a half hours/ I was soon through customs and baggage and out into the Nairobi darkness. This is my seventh time on African soil and second time in Nairobi so the sights and sounds and smells were pretty familiar. I was met by Murungi Igweta, pastor at Trinity BC, with his son Asa. I was taken to the church, where I slept in one of the rooms they have on the compound.

Next morning I was driven to Kisumu in the truck by Cetric and two other young Kenyan men. We had to make an early stop for a tyre change and I enjoyed an Americano at a Java Cafe. Not a drop of coffee since then. I'm appreciating black tea anew. By pressing on without stopping we made Kisumu by nightfall. All three drove in turn. The Kenyan countryside is pretty much new to me and so it was fascinating at first to see kids herding small flocks of sheep and goats or cows. We spotted zebra in the distance at one point. Hawkers were selling a large variety of items at different points and several lorries laden with sugar cane were aso spotted. People everywhere walking or on bikes or in mutatas and carrying varied items. In the end it became a little tedious, however and then night fell.

In Kisumu, we called first at the house of the Baptist pastor Tonny Karwa and his wife, Olivia. They have a fascinating story. I stayed at the beautiful house of Ken Otiwa, his fellow elder, and his wife Elizabeth. Very nice. Ken kindly showed us Lake Victoria. We had two days of conference in the Kisumu church. I guess about sixty came each day. We looked at Romans over nine sessions with a Q&A to close. .There were about sixty there. I was joined for this by Joshua Bolaji, a Nigerian born Londoner who has ministered in South Africa for many ears and is very involved in the African Pastors Conferences (more here). Joshua joined us at the last moment having flown from the UK to RSA to Kisumu via Nairobi in less than 72 hours. It was great to meet him and we have been getting on well.

We next travelled to Eldoret from where I write. Jpshua drove this time. The other two young men returned to Nairiobu. This city is somewhat cooler and there has been a lot of rain. It was a great joy to meet Naphtally Ogallo once again and his wife Helida. Naphtally worked with Keith Underhill in the planting of Trinity, Nairobi, a work I have known of since I as a student. It was the church in Aberystwyth where my son now pastors that sent Keith out. Joshua, Cetric and myself are sharing a three bedroom suite in the church grounds. We are being well fed on the local fare, though we sent out for pizza tonight.

The Eldoret conference is much bigger, the biggest APC I have done, with over 120 present. It is not easy to take in what I have to say, however, with my foreign accent and tendency to speak more rapidly as I warm to the subject. In both places we have left notes.

Tomorrow we will share the speaking at the three services. Looking forward.

Eldoret Ad

Speaking Eldoret

Banner of Truth Conference 2019 Final Session Ian Hamilton

The conference ended with a sermon from Ian Hamilton. A searching sermon on Watch and pray is worth listening to, which you can do here.

He quoted from John Owen (on mortification)

Bring thy lust to the gospel, not for relief, but for further conviction of its guilt; look on Him whom thou hast pierced, and be in bitterness. Say to thy soul, “What have I done? What love, what mercy what blood, what grace have I despised and trampled on! Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for his grace? Do I thus requite the Lord? Have I defiled the heart that Christ died to wash, that the blessed Spirit has chosen to dwell in? And can I keep myself out of the dust? What can I say to the dear Lord Jesus? How shall I hold up my head with any boldness before him? Do I account communion with him of so little value, that for this vile lust’s sake I have scarce left him any room in my heart? How shall I escape if I neglect so great a salvation? In the meantime, what shall I say to the Lord? Love, mercy, grace, goodness, peace, joy, consolation… I have despised them all and esteemed them as a thing of nought, that I might harbour a lust in my heart. Have I obtained a view of God’s fatherly countenance, that I might behold his face and provoke him to his face? Was my soul washed, that room might be made for new defilements? Shall I endeavour to disappoint the end of the death of Christ? Shall I daily grieve that Spirit whereby I am sealed to the day of redemption?” Entertain thy conscience daily with this treaty. See if it can stand before this aggravation of its guilt. If this make it not sink in some measure and melt, I fear thy case is dangerous.

*

Next year's conference will be March 23-26 on communion with God. Speakers will include Conrad Mbewe (Lusaka, Zambia), Andrew Randall (pastor of Grace Church Larbert, an IPC congregation), Robert McCollum (minister of Dromore Presbyterian, an RP church and a professor in their college), Christopher Ash (writer in residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge) and Meirion Thomas (pastor of Malpas Road, Newport).

Banner Conference 2019 Session 10 John Benton

Good stuff again from John Benton on the final morning in 2 Corinthians 4. You can find the video here.

Corrie Ten Boom
To me, a little story of a bird - a woodpecker - has helped in understanding this. A woodpecker pecked the trunk of a tree, like they do. At that very moment lightning struck the tree and destroyed it, and the woodpecker flew away saying, ‘I didn’t know that there was so much power in my beak.’ I ask you, do you have the Holy Spirit, or does the Holy Spirit have you?

Banner Conference 2019 Session 8 Ted Donnelly

This second session from Ted Donnelly on the second part of Romans was again a joy to hear. The groans of creation and of people and the groaning of the Spirit.  You can access it here.

Helpful quotations used
Ferguson

Much remains opaque. What is of interest is that the activity of the divine ruach is precisely that of extending God's presence into creation in such a way as to order and complete what has been planned in the mind of God. That is exactly the role the spirit characteristically fulfils elsewhere in Scripture.

Vos

Life here and now is not the main thing; it is only a preparation for eternity. This attitude, which permeates the New Testament through and through, is utterly foreign to the dominant spirit ....

Bunyan

Christians are like bells: The harder you hit them the better they sound!
Olyott
Big doors swing on small hinges, and even those small hinges are put in place by God’s invisible hand. Everything is included – red traffic lights, unwelcome delays, bitter disappointments, family quarrels, terminal illnesses, unspeakable joys, and golden moments. Nothing is left out. I think that Romans 8:28 is one of the most comforting verses in the whole Bible. I don’t know where I would be, or where you would be, if somebody took it out.

Banner Conference 2019 Session 6 Derek Thomas

Once again Derek Thomas walked us through a vital and demanding theological subject with skill and warmth. It was a superb presentation. Go listen. The video is here.