‘Behold your God!’ was the theme of this year’s annual conference at Westminster Seminary UK in Newcastle.
Keynote speaker Joel Beeke was joined by Westminster’s president Ian Hamilton, faculty members Peter Naylor and David Pfeiffer, and Simon Arscott from the IPC (International Presbyterian Church).
Westminster Seminary UK started in 2013 after conversations between Ian Hamilton and Dr Joseph Pipa, the former president of the Greenville Theological Seminary in South Carolina. Its first graduate completed his studies in 2016 and it gained charitable status in 2020. Westminster and Greenville now have a flourishing partnership.
Dr Beeke is president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. In what delegates described as a ‘moving address’ – on spiritual marriage with Christ in heaven under the heading The Wedding, the Bridegroom, the Bride, the Guests – Dr Beeke said: ‘You can take the light of God’s glory viewed through the prism of His attributes, as revealed in His word, and gaze and gaze at them without ever reaching the fullness of God’.
Among other talks, Ian Hamilton spoke on the early church’s great defining gatherings at Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). Peter Naylor spoke on the character of God, Christ the revelation of God, and the blessing of God upon His people as revealed in the Psalms.
About 200 people attended this year’s conference. ‘Happy days are here again, when those whom you love magnify Christ before you’, commented attendee Geoff Thomas, former minister of Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth.
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