Tundergarth Church

Tundergarth Church is a place of pilgrimage. This is not because some obscure medieval saint lived and died here, performing questionable miracles inbetween, nor because it is especially ancient or architecturally interesting. Rather, it is located opposite the field in which the nose section of Pan American flight 103 landed on the night of 21st December, 1988, having been targeted by agents of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s terrorist state in Libya. All 243 passengers and 16 crew were killed, as well as 11 people on the ground. 845 square miles of surrounding countryside were painstakingly searched for body parts and debris, and the church was used as the base of operations, as well as a location for several of the funerals. It is now where families and friends of those murdered come to pay their respects. Nearby is a Remembrance Room with information boards about the attack, and a record of its victims.

Beautiful though the countryside is about Lockerbie and pleasant though Tundergarth Church may be, we shall forever associate them with some of the vilest, darkest intentions of the human heart. Although two were eventually tried and one convicted of the bombing, it was some time before Gaddafi was toppled. There was certainly a shortage of repentance and remorse for this devastating act of terror on its perpetrators' part. The great God of heaven, who saw the suffering and heard the cries, will not let such atrocity go unpunished. Although He is merciful to those who seek His mercy, and gracious to those who repent of their wickedness, He will dispense dreadful justice to those who conceal, justify and boast of their evil.

Charles Spurgeon, in the Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith (1889), writes for August 16:

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. (Proverbs 28:13)

Here is the way of mercy for a guilty and repenting sinner. He must cease from the habit of covering sin. This is attempted by falsehood, which denies sin; by hypocrisy, which conceals it; by boasting, which justifies it; and by loud profession, which tries to make amends for it.

The sinner's business is to confess and forsake. The two must go together. Confession must be honestly made to the Lord Himself, and it must include within itself acknowledgment of the wrong, sense of its evil, and abhorrence of it. We must not throw the fault upon others, nor blame circumstances, nor plead natural weakness. We must make a clean breast of it and plead guilty to the indictment. There can be no mercy till this is done.

Furthermore, we must forsake the evil; having owned our fault, we must disown all present and future intent to abide in it. We cannot remain in rebellion and yet dwell with the King's majesty. The habit of evil must be quitted, together with all places, companions, pursuits, and books which might lead us astray. Not for confession, nor for reformation, but in connection with them we find pardon by faith in the blood of Jesus.