The Aberystwyth Conference: The Evening Preachers.

The Aberystwyth Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales always occurs in the second week of August. It is the primary preaching week for the church in Wales and daunting enough for the five men who preach each evening in the lonely centre of the stage of the Great Hall of the University to 1200 people. It has been held in that location for a decade because no church building in town is large enough to contain the visitors who come not only from Wales and England but Scotland, the continent, Canada and even India. The Conference mushroomed particularly after Douglas MacMillan gave his four addresses on Psalm 23. The sustained blessing on those messages had a ripple effect on churches far and near and attendances increased to the plateau they have reached in the past ten years. The Great Hall is full and the services are also televised to a relay room. Stuart Olyott was the main speaker this year giving four addresses during the mornings on Romans 6 through 8.

A fertile Missions Exhibition has been held for the last fifteen years with men from 30 societies at their stands giving out literature and answering questions. More than 30 videos produced by these societies are shown in an adjacent room during the week. There were excellent Open Air meetings held on the promenade in this rain-free week with gospel preaching, hymn-singing and testimonies; these were attended by hundreds of people. The mornings began with well-attended prayer meetings in three different locations. During the Conference addresses children’s meetings for the 5-11s are held, and for those in the 15-25 age bracket there are many activities under the title “Extratimeâ€Â, the main meetings being held around 9.30p.m. This is a typical ‘studenty’ ethos with contemporary worship songs and a group leading the singing. The main Conference speakers are interviewed or they give an address and then answer questions. The programme of these sessions has expanded over the years with afternoon seminars on subjects like personal devotions and also an hour long paper on who were the Puritans and their lessons for today given by Martin Downes. This was attended by 60 teenagers. Extratime now has its own brochure. There is some discrepancy between the ethos of the main Conference sessions – which has changed little in fifty years – and the Extratime gatherings focused upon this narrow age-group. It is questionably suggested that this approach ‘communicates’ to people of 15-25. There is the informality, the first names, the hints of ‘personalities’ with dispositions to triumphs and humiliations. The line between enjoyable feelings and the transmission of discoverable truth must be maintained. Truth-telling will always consist of lucid assertion and the exercise of authority.

The baptism of the new version of Christian Hymns in the Great Hall went smoothly enough. Some felt there were slightly too many Graham Kendrick hymns – 4 of the 50 hymns sung? not bad, and the Conference sessions were big enough to put the few new hymns into perspective. No one raved over new songs; the great hymns were sung with more enthusiasm and certainly more volume. It was the morning addresses and the five evening sermons which were the subject of the discussion.

The first preacher at 7.30 p.m. was Jim Downie, a speaker at the Banner of Truth Youth Conference, who is leaving his work with SASRA this month and taking up the pastorate of Trinity Church in Liphook, Hampshire, the church connected with the work of the English L’Abri. Jim was converted while a soldier in Lesotho. He served in the army for over 22 years. He raised three questions, the first being, Where am I going? He answered this from the Great Commission of Matthew 28, the Saviour is saying to us to go into all the world and make disciples. Our commission is not to develop programmes because they can often become a barrier between us and bringing people to know Christ. Religious courses are taking people away from the responsibility of telling others about the gospel. We have to take a “Bible†with us everywhere we go, even when we play a round of golf it has to be there in our minds and on our lips. The second question was, Why am I going on this journey? The answer to that was given from Ephesians 2:1-10 in the plight of man and the provision of divine grace. The third question was, When am I going to go on this journey? The answer to that was found in I Peter 3:15 in being always ready to give a reason for your hope to anyone who inquires. Live this life at all times, and take this word into your heart.

The Tuesday night speaker was Owen Griffiths the church planter in his first pastorate in Carmel Chapel, Blaenllechau in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. His text was from Isaiah 9 that the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. How uncomfortable we are with darkness and so it is used in the Bible as a metaphor of man’s alienation from God. People today do not have God as their light and they guess what God is like. “I think of God like this . . .†they say confidently. “It does my head in,†Owen said, quoting a colloquialism of the South Wales Valleys. It is like a man going into a room of blackness, and guessing where the chair is and guessing that he is reading a book. Favoured people living in darkness are illuminated by the word and Spirit of Jesus Christ; they are drawn to a great light. What is this light? A Son has been born and a child given to us by God. A Saviour came from heaven to an alienated world and he announces that he is the light of the world. My darkness is taken by him and his light becomes mine. My alienation becomes his and his reconciliation is mine. From the dark grave he rose the third day. Won’t you follow him? You will have the light of life if you do. Why try to seek for God elsewhere? Nothing else is needed. There are no alternatives. Why stumble along in the dark? “I was asked by a dying man’s friends to visit him, but he kept saying to them that he was all right for the moment. There was no need for me to call. The months went by and he got weaker until finally he had just two days to live. ‘Not just yet,’ he said, but then he died never having spoken to me about God.†Let us go to the cross together and now. There is such glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

The Wednesday night speaker was Steve Levy of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea. He is taking his congregation through the letter to the Romans and so it was not a surprise to hear him announce as his text Romans 1:14 and 15. Imagine sitting in Rome and a letter from the apostle arrives in which he begins by saying that he longs to come to Rome to speak to everyone there. It is the most important city in the world and that is where Paul desires to preach the gospel. He had that spirit because he knew the gospel was the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Paul did not dismiss the many urban problems of the vast city, but he did know what the gospel could do. The Kingdom of Christ will still be standing whenever every other kingdom collapses. Neil Armstrong stood on the moon and gazed up at planet earth. He lifted his hand and with one finger could blot out the earth from his sight. He said, “I felt so small because everything I considered to be great was blotted out by my finger.†But Christ’s kingdom will never be blotted out. This salvation of God is for the Jews and also for the Greek; we are to live and preach it because the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness, and constant little previews of judgment are coming upon us all. Our consciences remind us about our sin. In hell it will be always around us and in us. So God commands you to repent and come to him. If you are not a Christian then you are defying God. You should plead, “Please Jesus, only your blood can save me. Please take over my life and accept me for Christ’s sake.â€Â

On Thursday night Gerard Hemmings the pastor of Amyard Park Baptist Church in London was the preacher. Twenty miles from Aberystwyth and 28 years ago he came into an assurance of faith that God was his Saviour. He preached on the words of Christ from Mark 8 on taking up one’s cross and denying oneself and following him. Gerard had two points; the first was that becoming a Christian means there we will be much we’ll have to lose. Either Christ is the love of your life or he is nothing. A Christian is no longer his own man. For him to live is Christ. The cross must be taken up and borne to the place of execution. Then Christ is set on the throne of a new life. The Saviour then becomes the centre of everything; we eat, drink and live Christ. We have to do this daily because self opposes Christ and daily we need to challenge it. How can I most please my Lord? We follow him until his words and works become ours. We look up at the star filled canopy of heaven and see all the host of them, but when the sun rises they all disappear. They are all still there, but because of the greater light we lost sight of lesser lights. So Jesus Christ floods my world with light and warmth. I still love my family, but Christ most of all. There is only one version of Christianity and that is to be out and out for Jesus. There are lots of reproductions of Christianity today, much less costly than the real thing. So count the cost if you are prepared to see it through. The second point of Gerard’s was that becoming a Christian means this will be too much to lose. What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? You have something very precious, and you cannot see it or touch it. It is the real you, the person you are when you are alone and God will summon you to give account. What will you say if your life has been spent saving your own self and Christ has meant nothing to you? What have you done with Jesus? You are like a man tossing a diamond – bought with his life savings – into the air on the deck of a ship. The boats lurches and the diamond falls into the depths of the ocean. Lost! Not to have Jesus Christ is to lose everything. Some of you are happy to take – instead of Jesus – far less than the whole world. Why lose eternity for trinkets? How many Christians do you know about whom you think, “Christ must be wonderful is his followers are like thisâ€Â? Survey his wondrous cross and see him dying your death and enduring what you deserve. Christians will happily lose all to gain Christ. Won’t you come to Christ? You have heard the gospel. You will give up many things if you become a Christian, but you will gain Jesus Christ. Come to him now.

The final night saw Ian Parry from the new Cardiff Bay church preaching on Christ’s words from Matthew 16 that he would build his church. First the church is utterly relevant to today’s society. It has been given the keys of the kingdom of God. By the salvation message entrusted unto us we open the kingdom of God to all who receive it and close it to those who reject it. Men and women will find redemption though the gospel we preach. Secondly the church is something supernatural. People confess that Jesus Christ is God by a revelation from the Father. No one becomes a believer by will power alone, and certainly not by accident. God works in our lives. He is the initiator who brings us into contact with himself. There is no merely human explanation for a Christian congregation. It is the handiwork of God. Every member of your church is a miracle. Thirdly, the church is part of something massive, a new humanity and a global movement. God has big plans for the church and world and universe. From the promise made to Abraham and his seed God is making a new community from every nation. This is beyond human attainment. To accomplish it God will become a man and become the foundation of this new society. Our congregations must see themselves in this context, and when they do everything changes. All the rest of the world is on the fringes and out of step with the purpose of the creation, but we are the people of something massive. Fourthly, the church is part of something unstoppable. It is a living growing building and before it hell closes its gates in fear; hell cowers before the church. Satan with all his cunning and power cannot prevail against a little Christian girl. Neither the devil, materialism, Islam, communism, or the West will win. God wins; Christ wins, and we who are joined to him also win. Satan does not stand a chance; he is on the run. This Jesus has not changed since this day in Caesarea Philippi. He looks at the cowering fearful Christian and at the power of the opposition and he yet says, I will build my church. He is on his way to the cross and yet says that he will build his church. He has everything that God has. He is the one that the demons fear and submit to, and from the right hand of God today he controls everything that happens. Let us fix our eyes on him. He knows what he has done; he is confident of the outcome. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of his glory. God give us grace to follow him.