Donald Grey Barnhouse was the minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia [United States of America] from 1927 to 1960. That is thirty-three years. He was the minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church through World War II. He was a well-known international speaker and radio broadcaster and publisher, as well as a preacher, and in the summer of 1939, he had meetings in Scotland and Belfast in Northern Ireland…

Barnhouse was due to preach at eleven o’clock on that Sunday, September the 3rd 1939 in Belfast. He got to Belfast at three o’clock in the morning and was told someone will be there to pick him up at 10:30 to take him to St Enoch's…to preach the next day. Barnhouse describes how he could not sleep. The sermon that he thought he would preach was not relevant now. He needed to speak to the issue [of war]. He had already been told of the possibility of war and that many of the men, especially the men at the church where he would be preaching, would never hear another sermon because they would not come home if there was a war.

When he arrived at the church it was five minutes or so before eleven o’clock. Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, was due to speak on the radio at eleven o’clock. And as the service begins, someone hands him a piece of paper and it read: Hitler has said nothing and Chamberlain has declared: we are at war, and now he had to preach. He read out the message to the people and he described the hush and solemnity of the room, and he began to preach. And his text was: you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but you are not to be troubled (Matthew 24:6). That was his text, and he began to describe what was going to happen in all likelihood as Britain goes to war against Germany. He also talked to the young men before him: many of you perhaps will never come back, but you are not to be troubled. He described the weeping mothers and wives as they bid farewell to their husbands and sons, with all likelihood never to see them again, and he said: you must not be troubled. He described the carnage of war and what they might expect. He did not pull his punches about what was ahead in all likelihood. And he kept repeating the text: you must not be troubled. And then he said: these words are either from a mad man or else they are from God. They are God’s words in the midst of terrible trouble; in the midst of war and carnage, for the Lord’s people who know Jesus, who know the gospel, who have an assurance as to what happens, that God has a plan. The message that Donald Grey Barnhouse preached that day was: God has a plan.¹

Derek W. H. Thomas