Most of the early Protestant Reformers were actually Catholic priests or training for the Catholic priesthood, and in some cases initially did not wish to leave their church, but very soon came to the realisation that they had no choice, if they were to be biblical and truly Christ centred they had no option but to leave the Catholic Church and all that it stood for and oppose it, which is what they did.

John Hooper was the bishop of Gloucester in the reign of the Protestant boy king Edward VI, and was one of the famous Reformation era Protestant Anglican bishops, along with Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishops Ridley, Latimer and Ferrar.

He was rigorous in inspecting the parishes, requiring the gospel to be preached, the Scriptures read in English and applied, and that Catholic practices be stopped, and all clergy under him had to behave in a biblical fashion and worship was to be Christ centred and Bible centred.

When the fanatical Catholic Queen Mary I ascended to the throne in 1553, bishop Hooper, along with the above mentioned bishops, several evangelical Protestant clergy, and a large number of ordinary lay persons, was arrested, tried for “heresy”, deprived of his office, and in Bishop Hooper’s case, he was actually burned at the stake outside his own cathedral.

I seem to recall in the Bible that Queen Jezebel, the Syro-Phoenician wife of king Ahab of the northern kingdom of Israel, had an equally wicked daughter named Athaliah, who was married off in a dynastic marriage treaty to the southern king of Judah, and ended up influencing her husband and sons to gross idolatry and worship of Baal, before she finally murdered all her own grandchildren, and usurped the rule of Judah for 6 years, until the High Priest and his godly wife, who had hidden away the sole survivor of this massacre, were able to produce the boy king, and defeat and execute Athaliah, and set her surviving grandson Joash up as the rightful king of Judah.

In fact tragically, all these major “Ivy League” universities had been found and built as solid evangelical institutions and even theological colleges for Puritan and Gospel preachers, and as centres of Biblical Christian education.

The Communists never learn. The previous Maoist purge in the “Cultural Revolution” in the 1960’s and 1970’s didn’t destroy the church, 70 years of Soviet Communism, and some 40 years of hardline atheistic Stalinist Communism in Albania did not destroy the church, and over 70 years of the Kim Family’s dynastic Communist terror dictatorship in North Korea will not destroy the church.

If Xi Jinping thinks he will be any more successful in destroying the church, he is greatly mistaken.

2). God will never tell any person to do that which is contrary to His law and His Word.

3). This woman did not wish to have a Biblical marriage, as she did not wish to have children (no doubt because she wished to pursue the unbiblical profession for a lady to be a church minister). She also compromised her husband as she made a unilateral decision not to have children, that presumably he just went along with.

4). Artificial birth control is totally unbiblical, as Onan in the OT found out, and countless scriptures look on barrenness and lack of children as a disaster.

However, these are not remedied by a policy of violent revenge and theft destroying what is often the only productive economy of the countryside. This is the only answer that Marxism Communism has to offer, and it transformed Zimbabwe from the basket of Southern Africa to the bread and food basket case of Southern Africa, and now it threatens to do the same for South Africa itself.

Far far better it is to build up strong nuclear family units for black people in South Africa, to increase and improve cheap vocational and skills education in excellent schools, agricultural and horticultural colleges, and work cooperatively with white farmers to bring in skilled black supervisors and agricultural specialists, who can later on buy into joint ownership, or even to transition these farms over time into cooperatives based on the existing workers buying into shares of ownership in the farms.

Belgium as the hq country of the EU, has espoused all the vices of its nominally Protestant neighbour, the Netherlands, with “gay marriage”, abortion, (the then king refused to sign the law and had to technically abdicate for one day, so that it could be passed), and then euthanasia, including for children.

In a somewhat backslidden period some years ago, I actually saw this film on the television.

It concerns a fairly obviously Christian policeman who visits a remote Scottish island to investigate a mysterious disappearance.

He is shocked to the core, to find out that the whole island is given over to organised paganism, led by the local “laird” or squire.

The church is closed down, the small public elementary or primary school is brainwashing the children with pagan beliefs and practices, (sounds like a typical US public school!!). He protests vigorously, the islanders sabotage his plane, and he is finally offered up for sacrifice in a burning wicker man.

He even led the Lord’s Supper Commmunion services in this hall.

To his horror, he found out that a “spiritist” Church was also hiring the hall at a different time, so he and his congregation prayed.

After that the spiritist meetings declined and the leader of the spiritist group reported that they could not get any success in their meetings, and this was from the date of the Communion service that the pastor and his congregation prayed.

Churches should indeed have a plurality of elders to which not only is the pastor accountable, but they can rally round to support him in times of difficulty.

These elders should include one or two men who are able to preach during pastoral holidays (and yes, the pastor should be encouraged to take occasional holidays, and that’s with his wife and family as well), and the other elders should be very helpful and supportive and all should be men of prayer.

I was blessed the other Sunday when the pastor was away and an elder preached with great authority, and also led the singing of the hymns with a beautiful voice!!

Also pastors should have good friendships with other pastors of good strong biblical churches, who can swap pulpits on occasions and thereby encourage each other’s congregations.

I was in secondary (high) school in 1968, and had been in the school chapel choir, (though state financed, my school was an Anglican foundation, which is still possible in Britain today), and we sang in hospitals, and shopping malls.

Until about 10 years ago, there were carol singers and carols over the music in hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and public places.

This all seemed to disappear, and pretty well all shopping malls only play secular “Santa Claus” and “jingle bells” type music now, and carol services are usually completely banned.

They were fed up with the paedophile scandals, with corrupt priests and even bishops, and revelations from past times that have come to light about the infamous “Magdalena” laundries run by cruel and harsh nuns for unwed mothers, religious maternity homes also for unwed mothers where babies mysteriously died and were secretively buried, (though renounced now, there was an official RCC belief until the 1960’s, that unbaptised babies who died did not go to heaven, but a kind of outside place, not quite hell, that was called limbo).

This is also why many Irish got disenchanted with the RCC and voted eventually both for “gay marriage” and abortion.