Dr. Lee was an emigrant from South Africa. He came to Australia via the United States. His time in the USA was not a comfortable one for him, and like many foreigners who speak English, find that there are subtle cultural differences in the USA that make settlement difficult. In the 1980′s he helped and encouraged Calvinistic pastors and families to resettle in Australia.

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee passed away December 23, 2011. He turned 77 years of age on December 5, and two days later he and his wife, Nellie, celebrated 48 years of marriage. In September this year he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, alias Amytropic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease. My older sister succumbed to this illness 12 months ago, so I know the debilitating effect and how this disease slowly shuts down the human body. There is no known cure.

I first met Dr. Lee in 1981, soon after he arrived in Australia. We became instant friends. Over the past 30 years, he was always a friend, a mentor, and a great encourager. It was Dr. Lee who encouraged me to begin writing. He did not always agree with my views, but he never let that affect our friendship. Dr.Lee was a regular speaker at conferences I organized in Australia during the 1980′s.

On our first meeting, one of his questions to me was the topic of family worship. We had our first child at the time, and he wanted to know if I was conducting family worship. “Yes,” I replied. He then wanted to know how often I did this. “Every day,” I replied. But I missed the point. He wanted to know how often each day I conducted family worship, and when I told him we did it once a day, he encouraged me to do it twice each day – morning and night. There is no shortage of advice from everyone on just about every topic, but this advice still stands out as being the best advice I have ever received.

When you visited his home, this was his practice: family worship morning and evening, a Scripture reading, a short monologue from him, then each person was questioned what they might have learned from the passage. You were expected to pay attention. Singing of psalms/hymns and prayer completed the family worship time.

Soon after his arrival in Australia Dr. Lee became embroiled in a disagreement with the Creation Science Foundation. A student of the Hebrew language, he would not commit to the simple argument that the word “yom” in Hebrew always meant a literal 24-hour day. Nor was he an ardent proponent or defender of Christian schools or home schooling. But he was very much in favor of Christian education. This baffled some of us, but he had his reasons. This did nothing to diminish the respect he commanded for his defense of the Christian faith, and Calvinism in particular.

In his retirement years, he limited his activities to writing and interacting with people via the internet. Many people found him a strong opponent of paedo-communion, while at the same time being an even stronger defender of paedo-baptism. Dr. Lee was of the opinion that you could withhold the Holy Spirit from your child be refusing to apply the waters of baptism. From Nigel, I learned that when you hold a new child in your arms, you have to make a choice: either that child is within the covenant or he is not. Either the child is one of the elect or he is not. The choice you make at this point will govern how you interact with your child from that time onwards. While you cannot know for certain, the presumption of regeneration in this new-born child was the preferred option. Anything else, suggested Dr. Lee, was a denial of the covenant promises.

You begin to appreciate the man, affectionally called “Nik” or Nigel by his friends, when you understand how he responded to his father’s murder in South Africa. Upon hearing the news, he returned to be with his mother, and during that time visited the alleged killer in jail. There, in front of the prison guards, he led this young black man to the Lord, and Nigel believes the man’s conversion was genuine. They corresponded for many years, after the man’s conviction and sentencing to incarceration. Nigel was a believer in the death penalty, and made no pretense that he would move from this position even if the young man converted.

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