Folks, let me tell you something that ought to break your heart.

The Bible says the day would come when people “will not endure sound doctrine… they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4 NKJV). That day isn’t coming to Scotland – it’s been living in St Giles and Canterbury for years.

You’ve got a man who says he’s come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. He wants to hold a big outdoor carol service – read straight from Luke chapter 2, sing the old hymns, give testimonies that Jesus still saves sinners. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

But this week the Church of Scotland and the Church of England are having fits. They’ve launched a campaign saying Tommy Robinson is “subverting” Christmas by… singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and preaching the virgin birth in the open air.

Meanwhile, the real subversion has been going on for years inside their own walls: ordaining practising homosexuals, apologising for ever calling it sin, telling ministers they don’t have to believe in the bodily resurrection or the virgin birth, spending more time on climate reparations and unlimited boat migrants than on the blood of the Lamb and the wrath to come.

Ichabod. The glory departed long ago (1 Samuel 4:21).

So now the same Kirk that welcomes tens of thousands of military-age men arriving illegally across the Channel (while skipping the bits about repentance and hell) tells a repentant street preacher he’s hijacking Christian symbols.

The same Church of England whose bishops marched with Extinction Rebellion and blessed what God calls an abomination is shocked that someone reads Luke 2 without adding a note about open borders and pronouns.

On 13 December in London something beautiful is going to happen. Thousands of ordinary Britons, many who’ve never darkened a church door, some rough around the edges,  will lift up the Name of Jesus, the King of the Jews who was born in Bethlehem, fled a tyrant, and came to save His people from their sins.

People will hear the gospel. Some will get saved. That, friends, is the most biblical thing happening in Britain this Advent.

Jesus said, “I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). He never promised those gates wouldn’t prevail against General Assemblies or Lambeth Palace. When the religious establishment rejected the faith once delivered, the Lord just went outside the camp – same as He did the first Christmas.

So let the dead bury their dead. Let the rainbow-stole brigade put up their posters. The real Church – messy, rough-edged, sometimes carrying baggage – is out on the street lifting high the Name above every name.

If the only thing standing between Britain and the gospel this Christmas is a former troublemaker who now wants to exalt the Saviour, then let him sing! Jesus didn’t come for the self-righteous; He came for the lost and the broken.

I’d rather be out in the cold singing “Joy to the World” with a few thousand prodigals than inside a dead cathedral with clergy who’ve forgotten the power of the blood.

Pray for that carol service. Pray souls get saved. Pray, King Jesus is exalted.

That, brothers and sisters, is Christmas.

Peter