The sufferings described in Genesis 3 help us understand what Paul means when he says that creation was “subjected to futility.” Human sin brought God’s judgment upon the whole created order. Death was promised to Adam if he ate of the tree, but in mercy, God stayed the power of death and destruction and offered hope. Creation was subjected to futility “in hope” (Romans 8:20). God’s judgment was real, so also is hope of deliverance through Jesus.

First, suffering in life applies to all humanity without exception.

Suffering and sorrow in life are universal (Job 14:1: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.”

Second, suffering in life is temporary.

The suffering mentioned in Genesis 3 is physical, not eternal. God refers to the human body of the woman, and to Adam, of sweat and suffering that will culminate in dust.

Third, suffering in life should not automatically be attributed to Satan, a witch doctor or some particular curse. We know that Satan is still active (1 Peter 5:8; Revelation 20:10), but God is in control. God, not Satan, has pronounced this suffering on humanity.

Fourth, suffering in life is not fatal nor final.

In Genesis 3, God make a difference between Satan and humanity. Satan is condemned to destruction, but the earth is cursed “for man’s sake.” God, in mercy, has a plan to recover men, to save some and deliver them from the curse of death.

Fifth, suffering in life is part of the gospel purpose.

The pain and suffering of vss. 16-19 follow the gospel promise in vs 15. The sufferings of life then become tools for the work of the gospel in the individual’s life.

There is a way back to God; it is through Jesus Christ, and those who follow Jesus must follow the path he took, a path marked by pain and sorrow. The road to glory is paved with pain and suffering, just like Jesus: the cross before the crown (Luke 24). This is the way God planned it, so that every step would be an exercise of faith, as we look in hope to the final glory.

I learned today of the passing of Dr Ronald Cooke in America, at 93 years old. Dr Cooke was extremely well-read in theology and history, an excellent conversationalist with a tremendous sense of humour and didn’t take himself too seriously. He was also a staunch supporter of Ian Paisley. In December 1981, when Paisley was denied a visa to enter the US, Cooke began writing a series of biographical sketches in Paisley’s defence. The first issue, Ian Paisley: Protestant Protagonist Par Excellence, was a 48-page booklet, and as I understand it, that is as far as he got.

Dr Cooke was brought up in the Ravenhill Presbyterian Church, Belfast, along with his brother S.B. Cooke, who later became a Free Presbyterian minister. Shortly after the formation of the Free Presbyterian Church in 1951, the Cooke family began attending the Free Presbyterian Church, just down the road, where Paisley was the minister. He later went to study in the States and remained there the rest of his life, establishing a long career in theological education.

I met Dr Cooke a few times over the years in Toronto and in the States. He was a prolific writer, specialising in short essays, which he published in booklet form and, from the late 1980s, put out through his ministry, Truth International Ministries. He was also a missionary, travelling to Malawi many times to support the churches there.

I remember, at a conference in Maryland on one occasion, being seated with him in the congregation. He had a naturally loud voice, even in conversation, and it was amplified when singing. Dr Cooke was a strong Calvinist, and during the singing of a hymn, we came to a verse that was too Arminian for him. He stopped singing (this in itself was noticeable), leaned over to me and said with a smile, “Can’t sing that verse, brother.”

“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” Psalm 116:15

I’ve just received the first print copies of my book on J.B. Rowell.

Such a joy to finally see and hold the finished product.

This book will be available in November; it is being launched at the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada (FEB) National Convention in early November.

For decades, newspapers and commentators have identified Paisley as the “founder” of the Free Presbyterian Church. There is some truth to this description, and Paisley wore the title proudly, although others believed that he exaggerated his role and benefited from the prominence the Crossgar controversy afforded him. Yet the label of “founder” obscures the denomination’s complex origins. The first recorded mention of a new church came from George K. Gibson,^[1] and the five elders who left had formed a congregation more than a month before Paisley’s Ravenhill church joined them. The Free Presbyterian Church was not simply created by Paisley or formed around his existing Belfast congregation. Indeed, it was not initially assumed that the Ravenhill church would join the congregation in Crossgar.

Paisley quickly aligned with the Crossgar dissenters, but he was more than a mere supporter. He officiated at the inauguration of their new church, and the Ravenhill congregation subsequently joined the emerging denomination after a contested congregational decision. His preaching, public prominence, and organisational talent quickly made him a central figure. However, Paisley’s ascendancy depended on others, including a sympathetic Presbyterian minister, Rev. Ivor Lewis, and the suspended Crossgar elders. A young man, John Douglas, is credited with significantly influencing Ravenhill’s decision to join the dissenters, and a local businessman, John Wylie, would become one of the most important influences on the militancy and public character of the emerging movement.

Drawing on personal interviews, the minutes of the Presbytery of Down and contemporary newspaper reports, this instalment explores that evolution: from the locked doors at Lissara, through the establishment of Crossgar and Ravenhill’s decision to join it, to a militant movement increasingly identified with Ian Paisley.

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My book on Dr J.B. Rowell will be available in November, published by The Fellowship Baptist Press, an imprint of H&E Publishing.

James Rowell was a vigorous defender of the Reformed faith, a church planter, a visionary and motivator, a prolific writer, an educator and an effective evangelist—a lover of truth and a lover of souls.

Three main areas of church history that Rowell was deeply involved in were:

1. Protestant Truth Society (PTS) in England, 1910-1912.

2. Fundamentalist controversy among the Baptists in Canada. Rowell was engaged in this controversy from the very beginning, at Brandon College and was a key figure in the split in July 1927, forming the Convention of Regular Baptists of British Columbia.

3. The Canadian Protestant League (CPL) from its formation in 1941, along with Dr T.T. Shields.

You can find it on the H&E website.

2026 marks the 75th anniversary of the formation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster (FPC). The FPC was a latecomer to the fundamentalist-modernist controversy among Irish Presbyterians. Nearly twenty-five years earlier, in 1927, Rev. James Hunter and others split to form what would become the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). In the broader analysis, both the EPC and the FPC splits were responses to modernism within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. However, there were key differences between the two.

The FPC formed out of a localised dispute in Crossgar, Co. Down, centring on evangelism, whereas the EPC resulted from charges of theological heresy brought against a professor at the denominational college. Another significant difference was that the FPC quickly gravitated around one man, Ian Paisley, a characteristic that aligned this movement more closely with American fundamentalism.

The circumstances surrounding this event and the ensuing controversy have become the stuff of legend. On the one hand, the historiography has been celebratory, while on the other, critics have condemned Paisley for stirring up disruption. Whether celebrated or condemned, his name is so closely linked to the events at Crossgar that he has been identified as the “founder” of the denomination, which raises another set of problems. Some within the denomination felt that Paisley dominated the local situation, overshadowing the efforts of those directly involved in Crossgar.^[1] Paisley’s own account might support this, for he viewed the Crossgar events as an extension of the evangelistic thrust of his Ravenhill Evangelical Church.^[2]

Given the issues surrounding the Crossgar dispute and the formation of the FPC, the discussion warrants closer consideration. Drawing on the archives and first-hand testimony, we will discover that the evidence suggests that the Free Presbyterian Church did not originate solely as a Paisley-led revolt. It emerged from a pre-existing conflict within Lissara Presbyterian Church, although Paisley’s intervention and growing public prominence rapidly shaped the new denomination.

I will look at this event in two parts: first, the planned evangelistic campaign and the crisis at the Lissara Presbyterian Church, and then the controversy and the formation of a new denomination.

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Before his ministry in Canada, John Crawford spent some time in England and also served as pastor of Cork Baptist Church in Ireland. His time at Cork Baptist was just after the Great Famine, during which he enjoyed considerable success.

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The first five years of Paisley’s ministry on the Ravenhill Road were marked by an intense, eccentric evangelical energy that transcended denominational boundaries. At this point, he had not yet developed the theology of separation he would later espouse. In his own community on the Ravenhill Road, he knew there were those, even within his church, who thought him “a fool.”^[1] But Paisley was burning with evangelistic zeal, indifferent to the opinions of others, and increasingly eager for “an anointing … holy fire … [and] power in the pulpit work of the church.” [2] This is the story of Paisley’s first years on the Ravenhill Road and the prayer meeting that changed his ministry.

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Next year, 1927, many conservative evangelicals will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the formation of Churches, denominations, and colleges that emerged from the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. For many, the struggle against modernism began decades before, but for Baptists in British Columbia, it began around 1915.

By 1925, conservative Bapti…

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Ian Paisley was born during W.P. Nicholson’s second Ulster campaign (April 1926). He grew up in the afterglow of the Nicholson revival and was ordained to the ministry just 20 years later, in 1946. No man shaped evangelicalism in Northern Ireland in the early 20th century more than W.P. Nicholson, and there is no doubt that Nicholson’s preaching style, including his fiery evangelism, plain speech, denunciation of sin and modernism, and revivalist zeal, echoed through Paisley’s ministry.

Although there are significant differences between the ministries of the two men. Some would argue that Paisley was the principal heir to Nicholson’s revivalist ministry, that the mantle of Nicholson fell on him. There is evidence to suggest that Paisley himself held this opinion.

So, who was W.P. Nicholson? Did Paisley ever meet him? What impact did he have on Ian Paisley’s life? What can we learn from the similarities and differences between the two men?

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John Crawford was born in December 1819 in north-west Ireland. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but church records show that he was baptised on Friday, December 24, 1819, by Rev. Solomon Brown of Castledawson Presbyterian Church. At the time of his birth, the family was living in Rosegift, in the parish of Ballyscullion, just north of the village of Castledawson, about forty miles south-east of Derry (Londonderry)

.

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This is an excellent resource for the Church in Africa, by Dr Musa Gaiya, from Jos, Nigeria. Dr Gaiya has served as the Professor of Church History at the University of Jos for over thirty years. I visited Jos in November past, and I am grateful to Dr Gaiya for inviting me to give a talk at the University.

I would also recommend this book to Western readers. While African Christians need a clearer context for understanding their place in the global Church’s history, Western Christians need to dispel misconceptions they hold about the African Church. Western Christianity owes the African Church a great debt of gratitude, for it was in North Africa that some of the Church’s great doctrines were thrashed out. We also forget that Christianity was in Ethiopia before it was in England or Ireland.

This is an excellent, comprehensive overview of Christianity, spanning from the early Church through the Medieval period to the modern missionary movement.

You can get the book on Amazon

It was great to spend time with the author, his wife, Pamela, and their daughter, Gracie, yesterday.

For evangelicals in Ulster (and perhaps many others), the name Paisley is synonymous with the Ravenhill Road in Belfast. Ian Paisley preached there for over sixty years, led many protests from there, and built one of the UK’s largest evangelical churches, the Martyrs Memorial, which in 2015 was designated a Grade B1 listed building.

Since the early 1920s, Ravenhill Road has had a strong evangelical identity, especially linked to the Ravenhill Presbyterian Church, in a city characterised by mission-hall revivalism, a strong Protestant identity, and polemical opposition to Modernism. In Belfast, evangelical Mission Halls, other independent Halls, and the Presbyterian Belfast City Mission were only part of a vibrant, influential, and very public evangelical culture outside the mainstream denominations.

Born out of the 1859 Revival and later the Nicholson Revivals (1921-1926), the Mission Hall movement had become a defining feature of Belfast evangelicalism. In working-class Protestant areas, especially, like the lower Ravenhill Road, these halls, scattered throughout the city’s streets and industrial areas, were usually small, simple, non-denominational gospel centres, organised by lay evangelicals as the mainline denominations succumbed to the wave of theological Liberalism in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The culture of the movement was aggressively evangelistic, with an emphasis on Bible teaching, prayer meetings, missionary conferences and street evangelism. On Friday evenings and throughout the weekend, an army of lay preachers from several denominations would emerge, often cooperating in citywide evangelism, sharing “the ring” to preach, give a testimony, or sing. Belfast became known as the “city of religious nightclubs.”^[1]

So, where did Ian Paisley fit into this evangelical and revivalist milieu when he arrived in Belfast in the mid-1940s?

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In 1921, Ireland was reeling from Partition: the creation of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, also referred to as Ulster (for reasons too complicated to go into now). Civil war raged in the Free State, while in the north, which remained part of the United Kingdom, serious political unrest persisted. In the spring of that year, the Irish-born revivalist preacher, W.P. Nicholson, was given a leave of absence from the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) for a gospel campaign in his hometown of Bangor, Northern Ireland. The campaign proved an exception to the rule that a prophet has no honour in his own country (Mark 6:4), and Nicholson’s message was received with great effect. Other meetings follow in Portadown, Lurgan, Lisburn, Newtownards and Belfast, and thousands of men and women were converted to Christ.

Nicholson left for America again in June 1923, and on his return in July 1924, he began a second Ulster campaign. The first campaign (1921-23), amid serious political unrest, had a much broader evangelistic appeal. During the second campaign, however, Nicholson’s influence rested on a much narrower evangelical base, chiefly because theological Liberalism was gaining traction within the Presbyterian Church. Nicholson’s evangelism was flavoured by a fundamentalist response to the theological liberalism that was gaining traction in the mainline churches, particularly the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The impact of these two campaigns in Ulster was profound, affecting four main areas of life and ministry in Northern Ireland.

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Two men loom large in the story of Baptist theological education in Canada. Born within forty miles of each other in the north west of Ireland, they emigrated to pre-confederation Canada. Although no direct correspondence survives, it is very likely they met and interacted during their lifetimes. Their point of contact was Dr Robert Alexander Fyfe (1816-1878), a prominent Baptist pastor, educator, and owner of the Canadian Baptist paper. Both men were close to Fyfe and, under his influence, were instrumental in realising his dream of an institution of theological education in Canada, but in the mysterious providence of God, the fortunes of each man were very different.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was going through boxes of books I had stored from my move from Canada when I discovered this little treasure. I got this, presumably from the library of Dr J.B. Rowell, about 15 years ago: Debate on the Points of Difference in Faith and Practice Between the two religious Bodies Known as the Disciples of Christ and Regular Baptists; Embracing the Subject of Calvinism and the Design of Baptism.

What makes this book interesting to me is that the Baptist representative in the debate was Prof. John Crawford. Crawford has an amazing story, which I researched and wrote a couple of years ago, and will serialise it on this subsack in the coming weeks.

In brief, Crawford was born in the north of Ireland into a Presbyterian home. He was converted to Christ under the ministry of Alexander Carson and subsequently became a Baptist, sacrificing his inheritance. After pastoring in England and in Cork Baptist for a time, Crawford emigrated to Canada in the aftermath of the Potato Famine.

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Ian Paisley was deeply influenced by the evangelism he witnessed growing up at the Gospel Tabernacle in Ballymena and by his home environment. However, his mind was first set on a career in farming. In this article, drawing on his own words and personal interviews, I will examine Paisley’s interest in farming, his first foray into preaching at 16 and his change of heart from farming to the pulpit ministry. I will show how he felt the call was confirmed during his time at Bible college and how he learned to preach in the streets of Wales. I will consider his time at the Reformed Presbyterian College in Belfast and his first days as “the boy Preacher” in Belfast, before his pastorate on the Ravenhill Road.

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In the latter months of 1823, it was clear that maintaining a stable government under a Colonial Agent was insufficient. Although the disturbances were greatly influenced by Lott Cary, it was evident to Jehudi Ashmun that Cary had acted in the colony’s best interests, even though his actions were misguided.

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Alongside the expanding online resource library at krapfproject.org, we reach into the daily lives of pastors across rural Africa, sharing theological, devotional, and commentary material with a growing interactive WhatsApp community and meeting a real need in remote places.

The Church is growing in Africa, yet there remains a significant need for a solid theological foundation and awareness of serious theological pitfalls. If this burden resonates with you, would you prayerfully consider partnering with us in this ministry? You can sign up for our prayer newsletter on our ministry website or our WhatsApp updates. To donate, you can visit our UFM donation page.

The Krapf Project partners with UFM Worldwide (a registered charity in the UK and a 501(c)(3) in the US) and Crossworld (a registered charity in Canada).

I receive messages regularly, like the email below, showing appreciation for the small part that the Krapf Project plays in helping the Church in rural Africa.

“Hello Sir,

It is my sincere pleasure to express my deep appreciation for the great and wonderful work you are doing. You may not fully realize how grateful I am, together with many others who may never get the opportunity to comment or openly acknowledge such a noble task.

Your work is truly inspiring, truthful, insightful, and profoundly impactful to all who seek to know, love, and worship the true God. The wisdom and dedication you share continue to touch and guide many lives in remarkable ways. May God richly bless you, grant you good health, strength, wisdom, and many more years of life as you continue serving humanity with such excellence and devotion.

Thank you once again for your invaluable work.

Sincerely,

D.M.T [May 2026]

Biographers have gleaned very little about Ian Paisley’s childhood and youth that is not related to the Church or the Christian ministry. Reports differ about his time at the Ballymena Model School, ranging from the one extreme of a reserved, nervous, pious boy to the other of punch-ups, bullying, and bloody noses.^[1] The reality is probably a mix of both, and there is nothing out of the ordinary here. The Paisley boys were no different from other boys, given to pranks, schoolyard mischief, and frivolity.

However, drawing on his own writings and numerous sermon illustrations, the biographer is able to paint a picture of the home life, and the influence of this home on young Ian Paisley cannot be overstated. By all accounts, it was a happy home, although it was guided by a “narrower perspective on life” than that of many around them, or than Paisley would later demand for his own children.^[2]

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