As our home is one of a block of fully-attached terraced houses, it is not unusual for noise from neighbours at either side to penetrate our rather thin walls. Only a couple of weeks ago we were disturbed by the thumping of drums issuing from the powerful high-fidelity music system owned by one of our neighbours. The continuous deep-bass thumping had not only irritated me, but vibrations can be literally felt in our lounge and Alex my wife started to suffer from headaches. This was enough for me having to handwrite a kind letter explaining the situation with a request to turn down the bass tone. Within minutes of posting the letter through their front door, all felt silent. Since then, only occasionally was I able to hear a much tinnier version of what they were playing next door, at a much more tolerable noise level.
However, our neighbour on the opposite side of us happen to run a private daycare business for young children of working mothers. Although quiet at weekends, lately we were both disturbed by an apparent new arrival - a child no more than two years old at a guess, and could be considerably younger. So for several mornings we could hear constant crying, the child screaming out,
Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!...
To hear such wailing can only bring distress. Although out of our sight, our imaginations are vivid with mental pictures of a helpless toddler sitting on the floor, a toy or an uneaten sandwich between his legs, loudly crying his eyes out whilst arms outstretched, longing for his mother's presence during whom she sits alone in her car, driving to her office to face another day. How helpless have I felt, how sad, how distressing. And I wonder how many times this sort of thing is repeated across the country, and particularly in the Home Counties, where we live.
The normal explanation given by mothers for this scenario is that she has to work, otherwise her husband's sole income would not be sufficient enough to support the home budget. Although in some cases this may indeed be true, I can't help feeling a degree of scepticism over their universal "must work or go broke" excuse. And this feeling of scepticism could apply even more here in the prosperous South of England. In this day of female academic success, the real reason why they feel that they "must work" is to pursue their career prospects. That covetous career ladder for which these past three years spent at university, along with the dizzyingly high college fee debt hanging over their heads, certainly makes the prospect of promotion worthy of pursuit, even to the cost of the child's emotional welfare.
So what I have read in the past,* the child's most important years of his life are the first five years spent at home with Mother. One striking example can be found in the early chapters of Exodus. In the second chapter we have a married couple, Amram (meaning the Exalted one) and his wife Jochebed (meaning God's glory). Having given birth to two children already, Aaron and Miriam, their third and youngest child was Moses, which by then the Egyptian Pharaoh had already decreed that all Hebrew boys born must be destroyed. To preserve his life, Jochabed had her son placed in a casket and left to float in the River Nile under the watchfulness of his older sister Miriam. Soon it was spotted by the daughter of Pharaoh, and offered to adopt him into the Royal family. However, Pharaoh's daughter needed a maid to wean him before adoption, and after Miriam approach with the offer, the infant was committed to his own mother to wean him.
This meant that as the lad began his life in Pharaoh's palace, he was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians, the equivalent of a doctorate today. His was also groomed to be the future king of Egypt, and as such, the ruler of the whole known world. As his own Hebrew people sweated under their cruel taskmasters under the hot sunshine, Prince Moses was at his most comfortable ease, reclining in the softness of sofas in the palace. But he never forgot what his parents taught him during his sensitive infant years. He recalls sitting on his mother's lap day after day to be taught with affection about the God of the Hebrews, and of the Covenant made with his forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and how one of Jacob's sons, Joseph, who rescued both Egypt and his own family from starvation by a severe seven-year famine. He recalls his mother escorting the young boy outside, and made to watch his own people suffering under the taskmaster's whip, the groaning under heavy labour, and then turning to look up to his mother, only to watch her face crumple into tears.
"Look, Moses, these are your people, the Hebrews, slaving under the Egyptians's whip."
"Mummy, is Daddy among them, suffering with all the others?"
"Yes sweetheart. Daddy is suffering under the whip with all the rest."
Jochabed lowers herself to the level of Moses' eyes, tears rolling down her beautiful cheeks.
"Please, my dear son, remember what you have seen today. You are a Hebrew, and these slaves are Hebrews, your fellow countrymen. Soon you must go to Pharaoh's palace. At the palace you will be adopted as an Egyptian and you will learn of their wisdom. But please promise me this."
"What promise, Mummy?"
"That as you grow up in the palace, promise never to forget who you are, who your family are, and who all these slaves are."
"I promise, Mummy."
"One day, sweetheart, you will lead your people out of this land to enter their own land. As I have already told you before, God has revealed this to both Daddy and me at the time you were born."
"I won't forget, Mummy."
As the Prince lounged at ease on the sofa, his head full of the wisdom of the Egyptians, memories of his mother's tutelage were revived, recalling that above conversation a few weeks after his fifth birthday. He also recalled how his mother sat him on her lap every day of his childhood, and with a loving, attentive attitude, taught him everything he needed to know, including his future leadership of his fellow Hebrews, even to the cost of the throne itself. This was the most important time for Moses. Mother and child spending time at home together. Something Moses had never forgotten throughout his life. It was his mother's tutelage which influenced her son's decision to identify himself as one of the Hebrews in expense of the fleeting pleasures of sin (Hebrews 11:24-25) as well as refusing identity as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, hence turning his back on the throne so he could suffer with God's people. Such was the mother's influence towards his young upbringing!
This story tells a great deal. From this I have come to the conclusion that it is a privilege for a mother to bring up her child in a godly manner at home, which to me, has far greater honour than seeking promotion at the office, especially as her toddler cries for her whilst in the hands of strangers. Then to add to this - if finance is the reason for the need to work away from home, then such a reason is weakened by the expense for childcare. It is easy to remember stories appearing in the Media about the income of working women almost swallowed up by childcare expenses. But for many, this is the sacrifice to pay for the chances of office promotion and ascending the career ladder. Then we wonder why these days many children grow up with poor performance at school, emotional imbalances, drug use often riddled with crime, frequent appearances in Court, and a high suicide rate. Such could be the end result of the quest for prominence at the workplace, which also creates a disdain for more menial tasks.
It was like when I was recovering from my heart operation over two years ago. During my three month convalescence period, I paid a visit to one of my window cleaning customers, she being a nurse. During conversation, I asked her whether there is any truth to the rumour that since nursing requires a university degree, many shun the profession, believing that the task of wiping an elderly patient's rear was beneath their academic status. The customer instantly recognised what I was talking about, and gave it a phrase: Too posh to wipe. And yes, she answered that this is one of several core problems with maintaining nursing staff, therefore the heavy reliance on immigrants, as my own experience in hospital can testify.
This obsession with the career ladder also makes me ponder whether that here in the UK alone, up to 200,000 elective abortions are carried annually. 200,000 abortions a year! That is around 548 terminations each day. And that is in Britain only. Mostly for the preservation of the work or social ethic? Really? This was well dramatised earlier in the week in a series of the BBC soap, EastEnders, where one female character went for an abortion, which she kept secret from her boyfriend, in order not to ruin her chances for office promotion. When I consider these things - leaving a weeping child to the care of strangers, sacrificing part of income to pay for childcare costs, the terrifyingly high numbers of elective abortions - I have wondered whether allowing female students into universities was a wise idea. And I write this with the presupposition that every woman reading this would pick up stones in readiness.
This quest for knowledge and divine power. This strong force driving our hearts upwards at the cost of child upbringing at the tenderest age, along with a high rate of elective abortions, which is the killing of defenceless humans, whose silent scream when faced with extinction cannot be heard except by God alone. The crave for promotion, to rise from the ranks, to attain greater power. Tied in with all this is the desire on a national scale to leave the European Union in order to "have our own country back" with the proud, confident and optimistic hope for not mere survival, but to raise to its former imperial glory, to make Britain "the greatest in the world" free from ethnic and cultural diversity. The cry of "Hurry up, let's be out of there" (the EU) keeps on shouting across right-leaning newspapers, whose journalists are ready to stone anyone who dare oppose the move, dubbing such opposition as "Remoaners" - even "Remainiacs".
No, all this quest to leave the European Union is not so much for the benefit of the Economy, you understand, even if this is one the reasons used to promote Brexit. Rather, its for independent national glory and sovereignty. A reversal to an all-white, home-born, xenophobic Britain, deep in classism, head of the Commonwealth, just one step from being the motherland once again of a worldwide Empire. This bulldog, this massive bulldog, even wearing a tie made from a Union Jack flag, remains the icon of a strong Britain - a powerful force to be reckoned with.
And so we are endlessly fed with such fodder, day in, day out, when I turn the radio on at seven in the morning, whether I turn on the TV at six in the evening, this same, stomach-turning slop comes out of rather than goes into my ears.
No doubt it has all to do with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:4-6, we read (KJV):
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
If this is history rather than fable, then the serpent is very much alive and speaking to this day. The want for power, the quest for divinity, to rise from the ranks, to be someone, a man or woman of renown - isn't all this coming from the mouth of the snake? For the need to believe in Evolution, to evolve forever upward from a single cell amoeba to some superhuman deity with supernatural powers - isn't that the serpent talking? Or for the importance of knowledge above character? University knowledge, a degree, a doctorate, whilst confining the Scriptures to the realm of myth - serpent talking again? The wanting to climb the career ladder, to reach for the top? The bulldog spirit of national glory and sovereignty - without the need for God - snake talking again? I tend to think that the British bulldog is a spirit, an invisible entity in the air, a fellow fallen angel and assistant to the serpent, who is continually enticing our nation to stay away from the truth of the Gospel and replacing it with self confidence, pride and optimism, using Darwinism as its bedrock.
Frightened children left with strangers, the wailing cry of Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! heard through the wall and from the neighbouring back garden, the rivers of flowing tears, the number of abortions and silent screams reaching well into the thousands, much if not all, to climb the career ladder to power just as the snake had promised to Adam and Eve. Added to all that is the collective aspiration for national glory, strength and supremacy.
Contrary to myth and folklore, the serpent is very much alive and talking, enticing even regular churchgoers, and therefore weakening their testimony of the Gospel to the watching world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Dr. M. R. DeHaan M.D. The Jew and Palestine in Prophecy, Zondervan Publishing House, 1950, 11th Reprint 1972.
So what I have read in the past,* the child's most important years of his life are the first five years spent at home with Mother. One striking example can be found in the early chapters of Exodus. In the second chapter we have a married couple, Amram (meaning the Exalted one) and his wife Jochebed (meaning God's glory). Having given birth to two children already, Aaron and Miriam, their third and youngest child was Moses, which by then the Egyptian Pharaoh had already decreed that all Hebrew boys born must be destroyed. To preserve his life, Jochabed had her son placed in a casket and left to float in the River Nile under the watchfulness of his older sister Miriam. Soon it was spotted by the daughter of Pharaoh, and offered to adopt him into the Royal family. However, Pharaoh's daughter needed a maid to wean him before adoption, and after Miriam approach with the offer, the infant was committed to his own mother to wean him.
This meant that as the lad began his life in Pharaoh's palace, he was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians, the equivalent of a doctorate today. His was also groomed to be the future king of Egypt, and as such, the ruler of the whole known world. As his own Hebrew people sweated under their cruel taskmasters under the hot sunshine, Prince Moses was at his most comfortable ease, reclining in the softness of sofas in the palace. But he never forgot what his parents taught him during his sensitive infant years. He recalls sitting on his mother's lap day after day to be taught with affection about the God of the Hebrews, and of the Covenant made with his forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and how one of Jacob's sons, Joseph, who rescued both Egypt and his own family from starvation by a severe seven-year famine. He recalls his mother escorting the young boy outside, and made to watch his own people suffering under the taskmaster's whip, the groaning under heavy labour, and then turning to look up to his mother, only to watch her face crumple into tears.
"Look, Moses, these are your people, the Hebrews, slaving under the Egyptians's whip."
"Mummy, is Daddy among them, suffering with all the others?"
"Yes sweetheart. Daddy is suffering under the whip with all the rest."
Jochabed lowers herself to the level of Moses' eyes, tears rolling down her beautiful cheeks.
"Please, my dear son, remember what you have seen today. You are a Hebrew, and these slaves are Hebrews, your fellow countrymen. Soon you must go to Pharaoh's palace. At the palace you will be adopted as an Egyptian and you will learn of their wisdom. But please promise me this."
"What promise, Mummy?"
"That as you grow up in the palace, promise never to forget who you are, who your family are, and who all these slaves are."
"I promise, Mummy."
"One day, sweetheart, you will lead your people out of this land to enter their own land. As I have already told you before, God has revealed this to both Daddy and me at the time you were born."
"I won't forget, Mummy."
As the Prince lounged at ease on the sofa, his head full of the wisdom of the Egyptians, memories of his mother's tutelage were revived, recalling that above conversation a few weeks after his fifth birthday. He also recalled how his mother sat him on her lap every day of his childhood, and with a loving, attentive attitude, taught him everything he needed to know, including his future leadership of his fellow Hebrews, even to the cost of the throne itself. This was the most important time for Moses. Mother and child spending time at home together. Something Moses had never forgotten throughout his life. It was his mother's tutelage which influenced her son's decision to identify himself as one of the Hebrews in expense of the fleeting pleasures of sin (Hebrews 11:24-25) as well as refusing identity as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, hence turning his back on the throne so he could suffer with God's people. Such was the mother's influence towards his young upbringing!
This story tells a great deal. From this I have come to the conclusion that it is a privilege for a mother to bring up her child in a godly manner at home, which to me, has far greater honour than seeking promotion at the office, especially as her toddler cries for her whilst in the hands of strangers. Then to add to this - if finance is the reason for the need to work away from home, then such a reason is weakened by the expense for childcare. It is easy to remember stories appearing in the Media about the income of working women almost swallowed up by childcare expenses. But for many, this is the sacrifice to pay for the chances of office promotion and ascending the career ladder. Then we wonder why these days many children grow up with poor performance at school, emotional imbalances, drug use often riddled with crime, frequent appearances in Court, and a high suicide rate. Such could be the end result of the quest for prominence at the workplace, which also creates a disdain for more menial tasks.
It was like when I was recovering from my heart operation over two years ago. During my three month convalescence period, I paid a visit to one of my window cleaning customers, she being a nurse. During conversation, I asked her whether there is any truth to the rumour that since nursing requires a university degree, many shun the profession, believing that the task of wiping an elderly patient's rear was beneath their academic status. The customer instantly recognised what I was talking about, and gave it a phrase: Too posh to wipe. And yes, she answered that this is one of several core problems with maintaining nursing staff, therefore the heavy reliance on immigrants, as my own experience in hospital can testify.
This obsession with the career ladder also makes me ponder whether that here in the UK alone, up to 200,000 elective abortions are carried annually. 200,000 abortions a year! That is around 548 terminations each day. And that is in Britain only. Mostly for the preservation of the work or social ethic? Really? This was well dramatised earlier in the week in a series of the BBC soap, EastEnders, where one female character went for an abortion, which she kept secret from her boyfriend, in order not to ruin her chances for office promotion. When I consider these things - leaving a weeping child to the care of strangers, sacrificing part of income to pay for childcare costs, the terrifyingly high numbers of elective abortions - I have wondered whether allowing female students into universities was a wise idea. And I write this with the presupposition that every woman reading this would pick up stones in readiness.
This quest for knowledge and divine power. This strong force driving our hearts upwards at the cost of child upbringing at the tenderest age, along with a high rate of elective abortions, which is the killing of defenceless humans, whose silent scream when faced with extinction cannot be heard except by God alone. The crave for promotion, to rise from the ranks, to attain greater power. Tied in with all this is the desire on a national scale to leave the European Union in order to "have our own country back" with the proud, confident and optimistic hope for not mere survival, but to raise to its former imperial glory, to make Britain "the greatest in the world" free from ethnic and cultural diversity. The cry of "Hurry up, let's be out of there" (the EU) keeps on shouting across right-leaning newspapers, whose journalists are ready to stone anyone who dare oppose the move, dubbing such opposition as "Remoaners" - even "Remainiacs".
No, all this quest to leave the European Union is not so much for the benefit of the Economy, you understand, even if this is one the reasons used to promote Brexit. Rather, its for independent national glory and sovereignty. A reversal to an all-white, home-born, xenophobic Britain, deep in classism, head of the Commonwealth, just one step from being the motherland once again of a worldwide Empire. This bulldog, this massive bulldog, even wearing a tie made from a Union Jack flag, remains the icon of a strong Britain - a powerful force to be reckoned with.
And so we are endlessly fed with such fodder, day in, day out, when I turn the radio on at seven in the morning, whether I turn on the TV at six in the evening, this same, stomach-turning slop comes out of rather than goes into my ears.
No doubt it has all to do with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:4-6, we read (KJV):
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
If this is history rather than fable, then the serpent is very much alive and speaking to this day. The want for power, the quest for divinity, to rise from the ranks, to be someone, a man or woman of renown - isn't all this coming from the mouth of the snake? For the need to believe in Evolution, to evolve forever upward from a single cell amoeba to some superhuman deity with supernatural powers - isn't that the serpent talking? Or for the importance of knowledge above character? University knowledge, a degree, a doctorate, whilst confining the Scriptures to the realm of myth - serpent talking again? The wanting to climb the career ladder, to reach for the top? The bulldog spirit of national glory and sovereignty - without the need for God - snake talking again? I tend to think that the British bulldog is a spirit, an invisible entity in the air, a fellow fallen angel and assistant to the serpent, who is continually enticing our nation to stay away from the truth of the Gospel and replacing it with self confidence, pride and optimism, using Darwinism as its bedrock.
Frightened children left with strangers, the wailing cry of Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! heard through the wall and from the neighbouring back garden, the rivers of flowing tears, the number of abortions and silent screams reaching well into the thousands, much if not all, to climb the career ladder to power just as the snake had promised to Adam and Eve. Added to all that is the collective aspiration for national glory, strength and supremacy.
Contrary to myth and folklore, the serpent is very much alive and talking, enticing even regular churchgoers, and therefore weakening their testimony of the Gospel to the watching world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Dr. M. R. DeHaan M.D. The Jew and Palestine in Prophecy, Zondervan Publishing House, 1950, 11th Reprint 1972.
Dear Frank,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the excellent post. There is no greater calling than to raise, teach and nurture a child to grow up loving yet fearing the Lord, and seeking to do His will. Society, prompted by Satan, has done women and their families a tremendous disservice by convincing them that their empowerment and fulfillment requires work outside the home. Yet the Biblical ideal of the Proverbs 31 woman portrays a woman who puts God first, then her family, yet is still able to work productively outside the home and to be a positive force in her community.
As the End Times draws near, the coldness of many, including mothers, is increasing, and the news is full of sickening stories of parents who abandoned or neglected or even murdered their children so they could go party. I believe that God will not put up with this for much longer before His mercy turns to judgment.
God bless,
Laurie
Great post, Frank.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately most people do not realize the entire conflict over leaving the EU serves to distract people from the far more important issue of developing a satanically inspired world government and replacing God's principles with Satanic ones. Ultimately, it doesn't natter which side wins, as Satan still increases his power and influence.