Jan | 22 | The Irreconcilables

Dream Word – SEE

Revelation 6:9-12 When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed. NKJV

The Irreconcilables

One of the many places our text for tonight can be found is on an original memorial plaque erected in 1706 to commemorate the death of ‘Covenanter Irreconcilables’ held in a section of Grey Friars Churchyard in Edinburgh. It is true that their chief persecutor, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, or ‘Bloody Mackenzie’ as his epitaph exclaims, is interred in a fine mausoleum not too far away from those he most horribly persecuted. However, in these long fought over bloody islands, it is not strange to find it so.

Not many years ago, for the first time in over a century, charges of ‘Disturbing a Sepulchre’ were brought against some miscreant youths, who broke into this same ‘Bloody Mackenzie’s’ tomb, stole his skull and at the very least, used it as a glove puppet! The law of disturbing a sepulchre had its original intent in trying to deter the actions of the ‘Resurrectionists,’ the body snatchers, the ‘Burke and Hares’ of the day, from removing freshly planted corpses and selling their bodies to medical science. No wonder then, that this particular portion of grey Friars, noted for human violation and so much un-sacred disturbance, is reported to be fraught with paranormal activity even today.

Mackenzie was no fool. A learned man, a man of writing and letters, a legal whizz of his day, he became the willing glove puppet of the law of Prerogative, or the law of the ‘Divine Right of Kings,’ which allowed Royalty to do what they will, with who they will, when they will, and all within the boundaries historically set for them by their nobles and the church of Rome. Scotland, in the complicated reformation malaise of the day, almost as one man, had entered into what I would call the national covenant of the ‘Divine Right of the Church,’ as expressed especially in Presbyterian government, to express the outworking of the Word of God as directed by its appointed preachers. A bloody clash of national proportions was inevitable.

Essentially, this Scottish and National Covenant was a rejection of all independent Protestant and non-conforming preaching and especially that form of Episcopal government, so neatly arrived at by Elizabeth I, which not only brought some peace to England, but allowed monarchical government to be expressed through the Bishops of the Church of England. Scotland would have no intrusion of any hint of Papish power as they saw expressed in Episcopalian Governement and the order of service in the Book of Common Prayer, NO! It was Presbyterianism or death!

After the Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy it was James Stuart who tried to fully unite the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, first by pleading and politics and when that failed, by violent coercion. Fines imposed of dissenting Covenanter meetings and the giving of their livings back to once disenfranchised Covenanter preachers, was a great political pincer movement which left none but the irreconcilable hardliners left to stand by the great Scottish National Covenant. These same irreconcilables were eventually rounded up and imprisoned. Some dying there, some deported from there and some martyred there.

Mackenzie, swayed and ruled, moved and made, by the old law of Prerogative, had the opportunity not only to line his deep pockets, but also to be used as the glove puppet of Satan, against the people of God. For if we remove the political ranting and nationalistic rabble rousing, which some would call rebellion, so forcibly made by the Covenant preachers against the government of day, then we are left with the terrible slaughter of the people of God during this killing time.

Politics is always a complicated affair, and has always been streaked with red when played out amongst the people of these often cold, grey islands. Even so, whenever we see the deaths head skull, so gleefully displayed toward and applied against the people of God, then we can be assured that the mover of this open mouth of death, is none but Satan himself.

Christian, a battle is going on around you and amidst all the clamour and dreadful shrieks, through the blinding gun smoke of the front line, know this one thing, that the devil is out to kill you! Indeed, is out to slaughter all the people of God. You are the cause of such confusion, you are the point of it and your death is the purpose of it. On every continent and in every time, it has always been like that and always will be.
 If you were the only Christian alive on planet earth, then the whole of the cosmos, indeed the whole multidimensional space time continuum, the whole of heaven earth and hell, would revolve around you, your prayers, your power in Jesus and your actions in, for and through Him. Get a good night sleep tonight then will you? For tomorrow, in this killing time, it is time to start living out of your enormous importance to this world and the world to come.

Listen: - Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21NKJV
 
Pray:- We the irreconcilable to this world, do for the rest of our days, covenant ourselves to the great ministry of the reconciliation of the world to God the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.