I Have A Dream...

August 28, 1963. This ten-year-old could be seen roller-skating up and down the straight street of St Georges Square in the SW1 district of Pimlico. This Victorian layout barely deserved to be called a Square. Rather, it was an elongated strip of green, back then, boasting a disused set of tennis courts at one end which was towered over by the spire of St Saviour's Anglican Church, built to separate the garden from the main road of Lupus Street at a busy area where this street also intersects with Belgrave Road. Hence the church also served unintentionally as a sound barrier from the busy traffic, making St Georges Square a quiet place to live and to stroll around.

Gardens, St Georges Square, Pimlico.

It would be relatively easy to imagine St Georges Square in its pre-War heyday, especially around the 19th Century. Townhouse owners would leave their servants to tend to their duties while they stroll arm-in-arm with their wives around the central garden. The perfect gentleman, attired in the peak of traditional but rather tightly-fitting English tailoring whilst she would find her corset rather restricting and somewhat uncomfortable, yet does not complain as the two make a comment to each other over the well-manicured flower bed.

Meanwhile, gentlemen dressed in white whack the ball over the net in an energy-sapping tennis rally until the ball hits the net, the rally ends and a point is scored. Like cricket, tennis was perceived as an English gentleman's game, which unlike football, carries an air of snobbery, although they may not admit this to themselves.

All these - garden, disused tennis courts, church - were all nicely slotted in between two parallel streets, each bearing the same name. But the postman would never be confused. One street of terraced townhouses were all with odd numbers. It was the street on the other side of the garden strip which carried all the even numbers. We live in the odd-number street.

But I'll go back a few years before 1963. Probably around 1956 or 1957. Left free to play outside our basement gate. After a while, quite likely after a prolonged silence, Mum decided to see if I was okay. Upstairs from the basement, the street was deserted of any pedestrian or traffic alike. Mum begins to panic, quite likely calling out my name from the top of her voice yet still out of earshot. Eventually, she sees someone approaching. She then asked him if he had seen her son anywhere. The man replied that he did see a three or a four-year-old boy across the other side of the busy Grosvenor Road, past the far end of the square, holding onto some railings and looking down into the River Thames.

Mum ran more than 300 metres down the street and crossed the main road to see me standing there, innocent and totally unaware of any potential danger, enjoying the view of the river, perhaps impressed with the more numerous boats which plied along. Not too long after that incident, when Mum used to send me on shopping errands, we all became aware that travelling as a sole backpacker was a trait I inherited whilst still in her womb.

Indeed, it was a different world in those days! A world when ownership of a car was more of a privilege than a necessity, along with "helicopter parenting" and political correctness were both totally unknown and unnecessary. It was when children were children who could go out to play safely unsupervised, whether roller-skating up and down the street, kicking a football in the central public garden, or if out in the sticks, to play in the woods with schoolmates, perhaps damming a stream or building a secret tree-house. Those days when a grazed knee was quite common, rough-and-tumble was part of growing up, and words such as paedophilia would never appear in any Oxford or Collins dictionaries.

And yet, even during such wonderful and innocent childhood days, under the surface was a feeling of deep discontent. The ship Empire Windrush had brought the first generation of Jamaicans across the Atlantic into Tilbury as early as 1948 under Government recommendations to rebuild post-War Britain. Indeed, it wasn't long before angry young Englishmen began to put up posters ordering Coons Go Home, and other insulting posters. Even as late as 1978, National Front posters were still on display in the streets.

Like the one poster, I saw pinned to a tree every morning after alighting at Weybridge Station in the heart of leafy Surry. And it remained there for months. As I walked along Brooklands Road to the site of a disused car racing track on which the giant British Aircraft Corporation works occupied before closing down during the 1980s, I was confronted with the words:

Support National Front for a WHITE England. 

What more can I say? Seeing this poster in the home country of both Darwinian evolution and Francis Galton's eugenics may send shock waves among our present generation, especially among Black Lives Matter street protestors, there's little doubt that such language was inspired by Enoch Powell's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech he delivered in Birmingham, insisting all coloured immigrants should return to their original home country before any interracial conflict arises.

"Shall we take a stroll, my dear?"

It was worse in America. The black slave as seen as a mere chattel to be used by his owner's discretion and regarded as an animal going back long before Darwin thought up his evolutionary theories.* And so many a British churchgoer would praise the likes of devoted Christian, William Wilberforce to usher in his stance of having slavery abolished, and so, in Washington DC, one black man, Martin Luther King, on August 28, 1963, made his famed speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of an audience of 250,000 civil rights supporters which opened with his famous words, I have a dream...

Like William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King was also a devoted Christian. He was one of the founders and the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which encouraged black churches to campaign nonviolently for freedom against pro-slavery bias as insisted by the Ku-Klax-Klan and any other pro-slavery organisations and supporters. And that was a hundred years after slavery was officially abolished, yet the driving force among white American supremacists to revive slavery is very much alive and kicking.

Included in his famed speech was his stance in condemning capitalism as being associated with slavery, as well as his defence for the poor and his opposition towards the Vietnam war. After all, according to him, the average plantation owner used unpaid forced labour to grow and harvest his crops, to put on sale to the market with every intention of making a profit. It's for this particular reason for Luther King to be assassinated whilst still in his prime age of 39 years. That is the belief held by the FBI that Luther was part of a conspiracy towards Communist support. Under orders of FBI director J. Edger Hoover, he died of a gunshot wound on April 4th, 1968, just sixteen days before Enoch Powell gave his Rivers of Blood speech on April 20th, 1968. 

This I find so astonishing! Surely, for America to protect her own interests and also to serve as a warning against any more Communist conspiracies both within and elsewhere, particularly for the USSR, worldwide broadcast of the assassination would have surely reached Enoch Powell's ears in good time before even writing his speech. Yet he didn't call it off in respect of Luther King's demise. Instead, his fiery speech against black immigrants runs almost parallel to the views of the KKK who, incidentally, burn crucifixes, as if in complete denial of the Christian faith, although many of them may claim to be Christian.

What the underlying belief I find really creepy that there is some correlation between the views of Enoch Powell, along with the KKK, the National Front, the English Defence League, and other far-right political parties, and that of the Nazis. In one way or another, all these groups insist that the white man is superior to all other races. While the English far-right believes that all blacks and Muslims should be kicked out of the UK (even if they are born here of immigrant parents or grandparents) - the KKK believe that all blacks should be enslaved and owned as personal property, while the Nazi says that all who don't fit the ideal white Aryan race should be wiped off this planet.

All, except the Nazis, claim to be Christian or have Christian connotations, that is, they hide behind a respectable Christian front while they deny the very essence of the faith - that we are all made in the image of God, regardless of race, that through the trespass of Adam and Eve, we are born with a sinful nature and therefore face Judgement, unless redeemed through faith in the risen Jesus Christ who died to atone for all our sins.

Created in the image of God! If one look can launch a thousand ships, then this little statement can kill all racism stone dead. But instead, the natural man's fallen state allows evolution to percolate into his mind and eventually into his conscience until denying it in favour of Creationism sounds rather loopy, and end up facing ridicule by atheists, many of them are scientists and the rest of the majority are well educated. Therefore, to him, Darwinism must be true after all and therefore holds a degree of justification for believing in, defending, and even advocating racism, whichever form it takes.

Martin Luther King Jr.

And as I write this, I have wondered whether Brexit too falls into the same pit. After all, back in 2016, one of the strongest arguments for leaving the European Union was about immigration, both from non-EU countries and mainly from one EU country, which was Poland. After the referendum results, which was for Leave, won by a narrow margin, spikes of violence erupted in some cities against both Poles and Muslims, and the Union Jack and English St George flags began to make a mass appearance.

Indeed, is any of this Christian?

We want our country back! - was the cry. But we are living in it now, aren't we?

No, I guess we aren't. The country that is wanted back is typified by St Georges Square, Pimlico, in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. White, smartly-dressed gentry, their top hats over milk-white faces gazing at the wet green grass surrounding beautiful flower beds, the soil soaked and beads of recently-fallen rainwater clinging to the petals and leaves as the gentle breeze blows. As English as English gets, maids, cycling along gravel paths cutting through country fields, sporting gentlemen engaged in a game of cricket on the village lawn, the snobbish spirit of tennis players at St Georges Square and at other tennis courts elsewhere. This idyllic, non-eventful, gentle life of the indigenous English who has the God-given right to colonise other "backward" nations but woe betide anyone thinking of colonising them...

I have a Dream... Indeed, don't we all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*For a full discussion about American Negro slavery, click here.

Do You See Mud or Stars?

I'm not sure I believe God exists anymore!

Thus, the confession I gave to nine other Zoomers at a morning virtual prayer meeting earlier this week. This daily twenty-minute session hosted by the team of Ascot Life Church took my confession in a very compassionate manner, totally unlike the shouty rebuke from a patronising, ivory-tower moralist at an outdoor Bible study precisely two weeks earlier.*

It has been a dark period of my life, that is, compared to normal living. For it was that morning when my beloved offered to get up, go downstairs and make me breakfast whilst I remain upstairs in bed. It's a duty which I normally perform every day for the whole of our twenty-plus years of marriage - for me to get up early, make breakfast for the two of us, then enjoy it together in bed. But this time, she wanted to have a turn. Not that it's her first time. Rather, she had prepared breakfast several times already in recent months. But this time, as she begins to make her way downstairs, her leg gives way in pain, immobilising her, a symptom of her neurotic disease she had suffered for the last six years.

Indeed, I took over, feeling bitter of heart, not directed at her but at our present set of circumstances which caused me to question the existence of God. After breakfast, I felt compelled to attend the virtual prayer meeting at our laptop terminal in the privacy of our lounge and pour out what was in my heart. This included Alex's ailment, the feeling of loss of church life - no meeting together, no greetings, no hugging, no edification, no corporate worship, no pre- or post-service coffee and fellowship. Instead, the feeling of loss, the detrimental effect exacerbated by the shouty rebuke by a moralist for losing my temper and swearing - which in itself was a sudden release of pent up emotions bottled up for months. This in addition to being lonely and unsupported, especially as a Creationist who is under an endless, constant flood of evolutionary propaganda whether I'm looking for it or not.

It is as if the Christian faith was a terrible let-down and the temptation to return to the atheism I held as a teenager was indeed endearing. It might be worth asking: Did this present coronavirus pandemic expose the true nature of my heart? Yet I look back and recall how I was badly treated by other Christians whilst I was a volunteer in Israel back in 1994 for not fitting into the model of English middle-class respectability. And the plethora of church-attending graduates whose denial of the literal Creation account of Genesis was for their support for Theistic Evolution - a worldview which at times embarrassing for one who insists that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and thus, making me feel as idiotic as a Flat-Earth advocate. And these same graduates can be so self-reserved and cliquey that a few have refused to accept me as a Facebook friend, and even blocked me altogether.

And this attitude among us as Christians - as if I was the disease itself and being present in their midst posing a risk of any of them catching the virus - of self-distancing and wearing facemasks were the be-all-and-end-all of all physical meetings. Such conveying a strong message of fear, cowardice and lack of faith in God, and apparently not realising that God is bigger than the virus, and with an outdoor meeting as aforementioned, it would have been very unlikely any infection would have transferred with a greeting, or even a hug, that would have carried any detrimental consequences.

And the view of atheist You-Tubers. Yes, I do tune into their videos. I do this to dig into their background, to find out why they believe the way they do and what had brought them to this way of thinking and belief. One feature about them which stand out - they're all well educated, even attended the likes of Oxford University, and they know the Bible well. Therefore if I was to use Scripture as a Christian apologist, any one of these atheists would have run circles around me, and knock me out with an intellectual punch which would be enough to discredit the faith altogether.

It's one of these atheists, Drew McCoy,* who gave an insight into his background in one of his videos. He tells of his growing up in a family committed to a Southern Baptist church in the USA. Therefore its was most likely raised in an environment where personal holiness and abstention from all pleasurable pastimes could have been a principal doctrine taught there. But listening carefully between his lines, I have gotten an idea that he fell victim to a heresy of Lordship Salvation (LS.)

Wait! You might be thinking. Isn't making Jesus Christ Lord of your life is what the faith is all about?

Er, no. We are simply told to believe in Him. Understanding that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried and on the third day risen from the dead brings out that initial trust in Him. Since Jesus is the risen Christ, he is the only way to God through believing in Him.

Lordship Salvation is about putting Christ above everything in your life, including family members, as well as your life itself in order to be saved. Although at first, this looks noble, problems will arise on the practical level. For example, nearby there is a powered indoor fountain which I bought some eighteen years ago. When switched on, the gentle flow of the water over imitation rocks gives that therapeutic relaxing sensation, or to put it another way, the fountain can act as a de-stressor. But wait! Isn't that receiving relaxation or any form of ecstasy other than from God?

I would then be ordered by an LS church elder to dispose of the fountain. I'm not exaggerating. I have witnessed very similarly when an order was issued for the disposal of the TV from the homes of everyone under the leadership of one LS pastor. Never mind that this pastor was later defrocked for committing adultery, TVs were out! Or the case of getting rid of all rock and pop music records. I have heard about this one too. 

Another example: I am a fan of the Sixties pop duet Simon & Garfunkel. One of their greatest songs is The Boxer, along with Bridge Over Troubled Waters and America. These, along with Mamas & Papas Go Where You Want To Go, Look Through My Window, and Twelve Thirty, as all these songs, and others, I can connect with what I call The American Dream, a series of solo backpacking trips across the States which I did in 1977, 1978, 1995, 1997, and 1998. Thus connecting music to personal experience enhances the ecstasy-enriched memories of such times.

Thus any order from an LS pastor or elder to throw away such records would be met with resistance along with my order for him to get out of our house! According to him, my attachment to both vinyl and the fountain would prove that I wasn't saved after all, for I would be guilty of the sin of idolatry. Not to mention the TV,  going to the theatre, cinema, a restaurant, or enjoying a dance in a ballroom with my beloved.

It's that kind of organised religion that is so cramping of lifestyle rather than setting free the believer.  A religion of works, enough to turn a potential believer into an atheist. But having said that, I do have sincere love for other Christians. I guess all these negative feelings I have been experiencing arises from an old adage which was written many years ago:

Two men imprisoned in the same cell. One is looking at mud whilst the other looks up to the stars.

A good psychological lesson here. One has his view of his present circumstance to make him wallow in his misery. The other prisoner, sharing in the same set of circumstances, looks out of the barred window at the night sky above and sees glory in the stars. I guess the apostle Paul when he was imprisoned, he looked up to the stars. He and Silas sang praises to God whilst locked up in prison without any crime committed and as they saw the stars, the jailer was convicted and saved (Acts 16.)

Both Jacob and Moses saw mud. Jacob, after losing his favourite son Joseph to what he thought was by a wild animal, he cried out:

No, in mourning I shall go down to the grave with my son. Genesis 37:35.

Moses too saw mud. On one occasion, he cried out to God:

Have I conceived all these people? Have I begotten them, that thou should say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a sucking father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swearest unto their fathers? Numbers 11:12.

My own natural temperament is to see mud. Therefore it comes as no great surprise that my view of this pandemic and how it affects our churches is with a negative tone, along with my views of Brexit and other current affairs issues. On the other hand, I know one church elder, a personal friend of mine, who sees stars. He is optimistic that no matter how long the effects of this pandemic will take, his confidence in God restoring our church at Ascot has given him an optimistic view which enables his family to praise and exalt the glory of God at an easier level than I can.

But could I ever return to a life of atheism?

All Creation likes to manifest itself in threes, which reflects the Holy Trinity - Solid, Liquid, Gas - Animal, Vegetable, Mineral - Land life, Birdlife, Marine life - Past, Present, Future - Length, Area, Volume; even the atom: Proton, Neutron, Electron.

And this trilogy applies to God's revelation to us: the Bible, Israel, Church. And even Israel, or Zion, is three-in-one: the Jew, Jerusalem, Land of Israel.

3 in 1: Jew, Jerusalem, Holy Land.

As for the Bible, the strongest proof of its divine inspiration is the accuracy of prophecy fulfilled. For example, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and Zacheriah 12:13 are just three examples relating to the crucifixion of Christ, each written between 600 and 1,000 BC. If I was to explain to an atheist that the mathematical probability of all these prophecies fulfilled to the exact place, time and event without any divine intervention and just by pure chance alone, the probability would be one chance in one, followed by 181 zeroes.** Yes, how would he react to that? Interesting thought.

It's the divine inspiration of the Bible, the reality of Israel where I have visited four times in my lifetime and the love I have for fellow Christians, despite our shortcomings, and despite I see mud all the time instead of stars, my faith in Christ will never fail.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* For full details of this incident, click here
**Henry M. Morris PhD, The Bible and Modern Science, 1951, 1968, Moody Press.

A Nightmare for Students

One morning this week I was staring at an e-pigeonhole on my laptop screen, which included a frame of me arranged in a neat set of rows containing anywhere between six to twelve others. The silence became obvious as no one actually prayed - that momentary interlude which usually occurs in prayer meetings when each one of us is stuck in not knowing what to say or to ask for.

I guess Zoom is that one opportunity when anyone in the virtual meeting can look into the privacy of another's home to see whether some idiosyncratic feature or possession would give a clue to the owner's personality, such as a skylight in view covered in dead insects. Indeed, this owner loves to keep dead insects trapped between the two panes of his skylight. Another has a large map of the world hanging on the wall behind him, and so, it looks as if this guy is into cartography. Or he may simply like wall maps. Another may have a fully-stocked bookshelf behind him. Ah! So this guy is very clever, having a well-developed intellect. Unfortunately, some of the prayer meeting participants had wised up to this and now ensures that only a blank wall is seen behind them. 

At least with me, I love the idea of other Zoomers to see the display of travel pictures hanging on the wall behind me, although pity about the panoramic scene of the Grand Canyon which dominates the wall (which incidentally, was purchased at Poole, Dorset, some eight years after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1995.) To focus the camera on that would mean that the frame would shoot over the top of my head. Not very helpful in prayer meetings.

Suddenly the silence was broken by one of the participants asking God to help those students who weren't able to take their A-Level exams this year due to Covid-19. Trying to stir some empathy here, I imagined putting myself in their shoes. How bitterly frustrating it must be, studying hard at school for many months, including homework and revision in readiness to sit the most important exam which will determine the direction for the rest of life, only for all sittings to be cancelled due to a wretched virus. Then the excitement of "the fresher's party" or other social activity at their commencement of University in celebration of flying the parent's nest for the first time. That too, so I heard or read about, is now cancelled due to the pandemic.

During my lifetime, years come and years go, so I see annually, graduates on the top of the pile line up for a group photograph and then throw their mortarboards high into the air, perhaps symbolising the end of all education and the beginning of a new chapter of life - the real world of work. Or is it a gap-year first before the business suit? That narrow slice of opportunity to see the world and even work abroad such as teaching English to students overseas. A little later in the same year, another group of new entrants, or freshers, enter the institution, a dream world which I have longed to partake in but such an opportunity hadn't so far knocked on my door. 

The Internet has indeed opened a new world for many graduates. Here I'm referring to YouTubers, nearly all-male grads who either threw off their business suits for a life of professional video-making or had managed to establish a channel on Google soon after graduating. Last week I highlighted three atheistic YouTube channels - Alex O'Connor, Drew McCoy and SciManDan, with more than 133,700,000 views between them. Then other male YouTubers specialise in travel, and both Alex and I watched them. Again I can pick out three: Jason Billam Travel who at 16.00 hours on August 15th, 2020, had 32,786,603 views; Gabriel Morris, who has 88,004,930 views; and finally, Explore with Josh, with 438,183,555 views - a statistic which is greater than all three atheist YouTubers added together, although Josh specialises in derelict houses, prisons, asylums, hospitals, hotels, and schools all around the globe, and, unlike the others who work on their own, Josh also has a team of two or three accompanies to help shoot each video.

All three earn their living by fulfilling their dreams - to travel the world and making videos, with fame thrown in for good measure. These shoots have to be thoroughly professional to meet Google's rigorous standards, and all appear to be graduates. Jason Billam is typical. He delivers his narration in a plum Surrey accent, whilst Gabriel Morris admitted his past graduation in a typical American drawl.

Indeed, with fame-inducing lifestyles like these three, no wonder that they have shed their faceless business suits (or never wore them in the first place) to pursue such a profession! Yet I could pick any of the hundreds of YouTubers and I'll be very hard-pressed to find any of them wearing a tie - an item of honour here in the UK as I perceive it to distinguish the well-educated professional from the boiler-suit-clad worker whose vocation involves dirty hands, and thus, the tie can have a snobby ring to it. Just look at Eton and Oxford-educated Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg who would never appear in public without a suit and tie - regardless of hot weather and being on holiday.

Jacob Rees-Mogg on holiday in New York, Summer 2018.

And so prayer was delivered up to God on Zoom on behalf of these students, the majority unbelievers. With the news that their estimated A-Level results of 40% of students had been downgraded by a computer has infuriated them to the point of seeking legal action. To them, it's a time of desperation, a moment of frustration that a worldwide pandemic had arrived at our shores at the worst possible time of their lives. If only they had been born just three or four years earlier. By now they would have sailed through all higher education and now pursuing the career of their dreams. And that could include world travelling YouTubing.

Perhaps I feel nonplussed by it all. Especially if the Media seem to concentrate on the plight of female students. Like that in today's Daily Mail national newspaper where the grieving snapshots of three young women were featured together with their testimonies along with the absence of male participants. To me, they give the impression that their world is about to end, the prospect of glittering careers under threat, the possibility of facing a gloomy life without any direction, nothing to build any hope upon. If only their grandmothers had told these girls that two of their regular school subjects were housecraft (cooking) and needlework as part of preparing for the home as adults while their future husbands were trained to be the breadwinner, taking up vocational jobs in the industrial world, construction, mechanical engineering, and a variety of skilful crafts and trades.

And so, when I left school in 1968 without any qualifications to show, my first task in my new job was to sweep the factory floor. Small fry. A mere iota in this big, dirty, family-owned furniture-making firm where my hands were covered in oil-based wood stain and need to be washed thoroughly in inflammable spirits before soaping and holding under the running tap. Yet I thought no more of it, it was the day-to-day life of a school-leaver without any qualifications, nothing more, nothing less. Really, it does make me think about how can an average school-leaver with ambitions for University cope in such a situation. Could it be, yes, could it be that their perception of a successful career is far way too high and lofty to even consider sweeping the floor?

It doesn't seem to occur to these students that if their car was to break down in the middle of a long journey, the mechanic with grease-smeared hands would be far more useful and helpful than one videoing a gelateria at a street in a southern Italian city. It can also be said that the cheerful grave digger whistles merrily as he shovels the earth back in to cover the coffin which holds the corpse of the company executive.

Yes, I started working life as a small fry, an insignificant cog in a large machine which has constantly kept me in my place with a weekly pay of just £4.00. But if this is as low one can get, then the only way is up.

And this began with my conversion from atheism to faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour in December 1972. Tremendous changes came after that. As I started to read the Bible, I felt both intelligence and wisdom began to grow, and I began to acquire knowledge. Like many other newly-converted Christians, there were parts of the Bible which I found difficult to connect, especially about the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and particularly with Joseph. It was a few years later while I was at someone's home when I came across a series of a comic book version of the Bible, and the owner was pleased to lend them to me. That is the whole Bible in the form of a comic strip. Suddenly everything fell into place and my understanding of Holy Scripture grew.

Including the prominence of Jerusalem in both the Old and New Testaments which inspired me to visit the Holy Land in 1976. And this was how I responded to the prayer. Although it sounds as if I was unsympathetic to the student's cause, actually I was right not to show too much pity. As one who left school without any qualifications and started working by sweeping the floor, not only had I survived for half a century by dirtying my hands, I also added how knowing God is the ultimate fulfilment in life, including growth in knowledge and wisdom, my visits to the Holy Land, our strong, loving marriage, and my denial of high education and careers being the be-all-and-end-all for our existence. Then I prayed for them to know God to be their purpose, as we are all going to die one day. Indeed, our lives are about the afterlife and are centred on it.

And the whole virtual group was in agreement. And my name was even quoted in prayers which followed.

Western Wall, Jerusalem, taken 1994.

Now I wished that I was more specific. Such as how I felt God be glorified when he allowed me to visit great locations such as the Great Barrier Reef, the thundering roar of Niagara Falls and the immense Grand Canyon. Not to mention a hike through a rainforest and waterfalls at Blue Mountains N.P. along with the admiration of tropical trees and vegetation not found in the UK. Furthermore, I can boast on God allowing me to look up at the night sky Down Under and see the Southern Cross directly above my head - a bane to my graduate friends whose hobby happens to be stargazing.

Therefore, may these students find their satisfaction in God through faith in the Crucified, Buried and Resurrected Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 

Christian Love or Atheist's Brilliance?

October 16th 1555. The one day marked in British history as "victorious" for two Anglican clergymen who were burnt alive at the stake outside Balliol College of Oxford University. The two referred to cannot be any other than Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer.

But why this waste of life? Could it be their conviction that the Catholic Church who ordered their execution believed in the Transubstantiation while these two didn't? To make things a little simpler, this long word simply means a change of a substance from a loaf of bread to the body of Christ and red wine into the blood of Christ. The Catholic Church taught - and still teaches - that at every altar around the world, at the Eucharist or Holy Communion, a miracle takes place when a piece of bread changes into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and the eating of this assures the partaker of entry into Heaven after death on condition that no mortal sin is committed without penance whilst still alive.

Ridley and Latimer denied the reality of the miracle - and they had a point. The host, which is not bread but a thin round wafer, remains the same after the blessing. Latimer and Ridley insist that these two substances are only symbols representing the body and blood of Jesus Christ crucified, and with this, they paid with their lives, with one of them crying out that may the light of truth will never be extinguished here in England as the flames started to lick.

Then came the publication of Charles Dickens' writings some 283 years after Ridley's demise, giving quite a detailed description of the Anglican Church in his day, and it wasn't pleasant! He likened it to riding the high horse of morality whilst heavily judgemental towards sinners, right to the point of hating them and condemning them all to Hell - and yet still remaining mutually exclusive from such sinners. And such was English society during the 1838 Dickensian era when theft and prostitution thrived in the city streets amidst dirt and squalor. And each Sunday, these well-to-do people, dressed in the most expensive height of smart fashion would be seen filing into a nearby church where no thief or prostitute dare venture.

Moving forward into the present and with the advance of the Internet, I see something very sinister happening right before me. Sinister? In Italian, the word is sinistre, meaning left, such as my left hand or left foot. Maybe "weird" instead? Perhaps that's more appropriate. But it's not good. I'm referring to the closure of our church at Ascot, along with most if not all other churches, and the advance of popularity towards atheists on YouTube. This coronavirus pandemic had our Government order the shutdown of all public gatherings including churches, creating instead, "virtual meetings" on the computer screen, followed by "virtual coffee" on Zoom. And so each of us appears in a small individual frame, set in a structure which is not unlike a pigeonhole. 

Although our elders are excited that "more people tuning into our services than before" - in referral to outsiders, whether Christians or unbelievers - nevertheless such virtual meetings cannot hold a candle to the real thing, the proper church meeting where strong bonds, body contact and hugging have all proven to be very beneficial to all three, spiritual, physical and mental health alike.

Lack of physical contact brought in by fear of this pandemic has already proven detrimental to me personally, but I'll come back to that. Instead, I have become rather intrigued by up to nine celebrities which I'll divide by three groups of three. Three authors: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens, all self-confessed atheists. Then I'm already familiar with three BBC reporters: Andrew Marr, Simon Reeve and Brian Cox, of whom only Andrew Marr is the atheist, the other two are more likely agnostics, although both might have had bad experiences with organised religion, at least Simon Reeve admit this. Then the three YouTubers, all self-confessed atheists: Cosmic Skeptic whose real name is Alex O'Connor, Genetically Modified Skeptic, whose real name is Drew McCoy, and SciManDan, whose only clue to his name being Dan or Daniel. Of the three YouTubers, I have met and spoken to Alex O'Connor face-to-face at Oxford.

Concentrating on the three YouTubers, their popularity is reflected by some stats I did in preparation of this blog. Between them, at midday on 8/8/2020, they have 133,794,891 views. This is divided as follows: SciManDan: 76,238,071 views and 371k subscribers. Drew McCoy has 26,546,736 views with 296k subscribers, and Alex O'Connor has 31,010,084 views with 360k subscribers. Boy! I wish that many would read my blogs!

Of the three, SciManDan I found to be more intriguing. Married with children, he has several channels, one of the rebuking the Flat Earth theory. Another is a tutorial on physics, where I learn that energy is always transferred from one source to another without petering out, a concept I should have learned at school.

His rebuke against Flat Earth and his knowledge of physics bring out his high level of education. And for a Christian such as I am, this poses a level of embarrassment. This is due to the awkward fact that Flat-Earthers are generally Christians who believe that our planet is a divinely-created flat disc covered with a solid glass-like dome which is referred to as the firmament, according to Genesis 1:6-8.

Among Christians, Flat-Earthers are a tiny minority. Although here in the UK, committed Christians makes up about 2% of the population, a great number of them believe in Theistic Evolution, thus accepting that the Earth is a sphere billions of years old and organic evolution went through its process under God's guidance and supervision. Over the years I have associated with Christian graduates who were committed to Theistic Evolution, on a regular basis. Then there is a class of Christian believers who are Biblical Creationists and I'm in that class. Therefore what do I believe in?

I believe that the heavens, that is, the entire Universe, and the Earth were created supernaturally in 6x24-hour days as narrated in Holy Scripture. The Earth is a sphere wrapped by an atmosphere, and it has always been that, a sphere. As for the firmament, this was not a glass-like dome covering a flat disc. Instead, the Hebrew indicates an expanse, a layer of water vapour in the upper atmosphere surrounding the planet. Whether it was in the stratosphere or the troposphere, I cannot be sure, but as any meteorologist would agree, the firmament or expanse is not there now. Therefore, what has happened to it?

Could the collapse of the expanse, along with tremendous tectonic movements within the Earth's crust be the cause of the Noachian Deluge which wiped out all antediluvian life? And that which is endorsed as historic by Jesus Christ himself? However, that's a topic for another day.

Thus I could be classed as one of a small minority who stands by my conviction. The likes of SciManDan could laugh aloud if he were to read this. But this along with the embarrassment is the presence of what I would call Hyper-Creationists who believe in a flat earth and also partakes in the Christian faith. Such people make me ashamed to be a Christian, especially under the scrutiny of well-educated atheists.

But going back to the Coronavirus pandemic, I miss the church service and fellowship resulting from being physically present. However, one friend of mine runs an outdoor Bible class at South Hill Park, not far from my home. Eight people, I think, were present including two couples, three single men and myself. Then I was involved in an incident there where, I'm sure, would convince any learned atheist that Christianity is nothing more than man-made religious opium.

Months of lockdown was beginning to take its toll. Unable for us to travel, repeated hospital appointments along with repeated calls for an ambulance, watching my beloved suffering intense pain, her immobility, this wretched compulsion to wear facemasks when having a covering over my face affects my throat, causing irritation and coughing, watching a Democracy turn into a Police State where anyone not wearing a mask in public is likely to get nicked...

This fear. This universal hysteria! This universal and hysterical fear of a virus which seems to be proving that it's far, far less fatal than that which is spewed out by the Government, its allied scientists, and the Media, both TV and newspapers. Figures of death statistics are shown to be inflated, including the death statistics of those who were tested positive but had died from a different cause, even after recovery from the initial pathogenic infection. And so far, although the rate of infection is rising again, forcing quarantine for everyone returning from certain countries overseas, the rate of hospital admissions and death numbers remains static.

One afternoon this week, I return from a shopping trip to see my wife lying on the floor with the phone in her hand, trying to call for an ambulance as she lay gripped in agonising back pain. Quickly I took out the bottle of Morphine oral solution from the cupboard and gave her seven millilitres, which is below the maximum ten, and spoke to the person at Ambulance Control at the other end of the phone saying that everything is in hand and an ambulance is not required. I then watched Alex recover as I laid her on the sofa. One sidekick of morphine is sleepiness, and so she slept as I made my way to the Bible study group.

Seeing my beloved lying on the floor when returning home is not a new thing at all. The first time was when she was pregnant with our second daughter and she was rushed by ambulance to hospital where she was kept in overnight. Fortunately, both she and the baby were okay. But there were other times, later in life, when I find her unconscious and not breathing, as her throat muscles had involuntary tightened around her airway, and I had to carry out a resuscitation procedure on her.

Therefore, my spirit was very low when I made off to the Bible study group. Only seven other people were there but the circle was very wide in relation to the few who were present. When looking for a place to settle - straightforward, really - a panic began to ensue as if I was the disease itself and people began to fuss, lest I pass the (non-existent) virus to them.

And that was when I tipped over the edge. My anger and frustration, up to the present contained, suddenly exploded. And out came language so strong that any thick iron bar would buckle under its force. Six of the people took my onslaught in silence, most likely realising that such a release of tension was necessary for my future wellbeing.

But not Steve, the unmarried moralist who had to mount his high horse to shout back at me not to swear like that. Oh, I could have knocked his lights out! Nothing - indeed nothing - could have added insult to the wound in a way this moralist had just done! This episode gave me a very bad worldview of the Christian faith.

It's not the first time my view of the Christian church had dipped so low! As I might have said before: If it wasn't for God's grace and familiarity with the Bible, this experience would have cemented my atheism forever! I actually believe that the likes of Steve would have sent many to Hell rather than to Heaven. Therefore, by making a comparison, had the likes of Alex O'Connor, Drew McCoy, SciManDan, or even Andrew Marr or Sam Harris had been present, I believe that one of them would disregard any virus threat to lay both hands on my shoulders and quietly instruct me to breathe deeply and smoothly. 

"You are right in everything you have said. Now gently... Breathe in, breathe out, be calm and let your emotion gently settle."

And guess what, during my lifetime I have calmed a few angry men by using that very method. And it works.

Brian Cox - more approachable than many a religious moralist?

All this makes me ask: Do other Christians ever get angry? If not, then indeed they are truly regenerated in Christ - whilst I'm still in my sins. But if they do, how do they deal with it? Especially the likes of Steve. An interesting point here.

This Dickensian attitude among Christians could become a thing of the past if Christians show true agape love for each other. And that, I feel, is what the Church desperately needs in order to outshine the most clever of atheists. And according to what I have seen and heard, Christians just don't have such agape love. Plenty of education, yes, plenty of wealth, yes, holding down good jobs, yes. But having the same love God has for us? - Er, no. We all fall short in this area, including me. Until we change, atheists will always run rings around us in mocking ridicule.

Virtual Travel - I Miss The Challenges

It was another ordinary schoolday as I sat at my desk during the Religious Education class during the mid-sixties. The male teacher specialising in this subject might be considered eccentric, a bit of a crackpot or even weird, but at least he wasn't the threatening type who would boom his voice across the classroom. Nor was he the one who would have taken out his cane from his desk drawer to whack the palm of the hand of anyone who dares doodle throughout the lesson. In other words, eccentric he might have been, he was nevertheless likeable.

He had his own way of transferring knowledge from his graduate-level mind to a bunch of fully-abled thickos in what was considered the slowest learning class in the entire secondary educational stratum. Whether I was thick or simply lacking interest, or finding the subject in conflict with the evolution of the Dinosaurs before their sudden extinction supposedly 65 million years ago, that's left to a matter of opinion. But I have always felt that he would find his job of teaching considerably easier if he had taught at a grammar school where brighter pupils would have been more attentive. 

The school where I had RE lessons is now facing demolition.

But I do recall what he was trying to teach. Beginning with the call of Abraham, one city which began to be prominent throughout his lessons was Jerusalem. Back then I had no idea where it was located, but one of his main lessons centred on "the Temple on top of the mountain," and one particular afternoon, he told the whole class for each of us to draw an image of the area.

Having seen images of high, snow-capped mountains, the only reality of what was considered high ground was at Box Hill in the leafy county of Surrey. Part of the North Downs, from its summit on a clear day one can see the South Downs at a distance, across a valley known as the Weald, through where the border of Surrey and Sussex runs. And to Box Hill made an afternoon out with my parents and baby brother in their car from our London home a few years earlier.

But Box Hill was exactly that - a hill, not a mountain. During boyhood, I was already able to distinguish the difference between a hill and a mountain. So such terms such as Temple Mount or the Temple atop a mountain taxed my imagination. Since nobody at school, church or at home had shown me a photo of Jerusalem, it was down to me to concoct how the area appeared.

So I drew a mountain, in shape not unlike that of Mont Blanc of the Alps or even Mt Everest of the Himalayas. And at the summit, I stuck a very small square with the belief that in reality the size and ruggedness of the mountain would both dwarf and conceal any man-made structure built on it.

It was about the same time when a new deputy-head arrived to take his place in the school. By contrast with the religious master, this cane-happy newcomer quickly became a source of terror to the entire school, but particularly to us boys. There were a couple of other male members of staff who scared us, but this one takes the biscuit.

One morning, during assembly, this deputy headmaster shared with the whole school his experience when serving as a British Mandate peacekeeper in the Middle-East territory of Palestine before the birth of Israel as a sovereign nation in 1948. He described his post in Bethlehem, and how he became familiar with a star marking the exact site of the birth of Jesus Christ. After describing the star in detail, his testimony stuck, which would influence me for life. 

By the end of 1972, less than five years after leaving school during Spring of 1968, the city of Jerusalem became more of an interest to me after conversion from an atheist to a Christian, and the regular reading of the Bible which followed. My desire to visit Jerusalem came to a head in 1976, when I took my first backpacking trip outside Europe, to arrive into the Holy Land as a naive 23-year-old. Oh, such glorious days before the Internet when I entered through the door of a hotel in West Jerusalem and simply asked for a room without any of this modern electronic pre-booking! And I was offered one straightaway.

Later that evening, whilst lying on the bed, a loud gunshot echoed across the land. With the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, I was suddenly reminded that this was no exotic beach lined with palm trees and sloping into a calm turquoise sea, lapping gently on the sand. Rather, this was a war zone, and visiting alone was not only challenging but afterwards became the talk of the town within the entire company where I was employed.

The next morning, I walked along Jaffa Road, arriving at Jaffa Gate, one of several gates into the Old City. Through narrow roofed streets, I walked and arriving at the Western Wall and also entered the Haram esh-Sharif and even had access into the Dome of the Rock itself, wherein its interior is the summit of the hill where Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac. From the view at the Mount of Olives, Temple Mount, or Mount Ophel as its also known, was nothing like that drawing I submitted to the religious education master years earlier.

But while I was in Jerusalem, I quickly had to learn to keep my wits about me, learning how to say No firmly without being rude. A tourist will always stand out like a sore thumb when gazing with fascination at a particular site, whether it'll be a mosque, a church, an ancient ruin, or any other places of special interest, and I was an easy target for those Arab "guides" who, one by one, approached to persuade me to listen to him and learn of its history and purpose - for a fee. This included entry into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. Back in 1976, no one can just enter and walk around. Instead, a Muslim would stand at the door and any visitor arriving would pair up with him and be escorted around, again for a fee. As such, it was one way Palestinians earned their living.

And so, Islamic minarets would sound the call to prayer which echoed through the streets of the Old City and down the Kidron Valley between Ophel and Olivet. At other times, traditional Arabic music played on the radio, making such a contrast to our western music. And at a Muslim wedding, I was a guest of one, or rather at the reception held in the yard of a private home. A live sheep was brought in, and in front of us all, its throat was cut and its blood flowed as a rivulet to the drain. It was then skinned whilst still thrashing its legs. I realised the reality of Biblical animal sacrifices from that moment, and we all partook of the meal.

I managed to find a way to Bethlehem by bus, and after entering the rather prominent Church of the Nativity, I made my way to the underground crypt where the star is located, with the manger close by. As I spent considerable time there, I remember our terrifying deputy headmaster and wondering what he would have thought had he seen me there as a result of his testimony years earlier, perhaps the only pupil of the whole school who had made an effort to visit.

Star of Bethlehem. Visited 1976, 1993, 1994.

And my return to Israel in 1993, after seventeen years. It was then when I discovered a suitable venue of accommodation for backpacker's, the New Swedish Hostel, a former hotel, in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem. Again, with "off the street" inquiry at its reception, I was offered a bed in the large dormitory which I saw accommodates people of both genders, unlike that of any HI YHA hostel. It was this visit when I learned the habits and the culture of the Jews more than at the first 1976 visit. This included the initiation of the Sabbath, with a large gathering of Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall, singing, dancing and praying with no fixed liturgy as in Christian churches. 

It was at one of these occasions when a group of English youths appeared near the Western Wall shouting ENGLAND! ENGLAND! in the same way as football fans do. Personally, not only did I find this incident disgusting behaviour as guests in a foreign country, but also rather puzzling. As far as I'm aware, Israel does have a national football team but, the game being somewhat alien to the Jews, Israel had never qualified for the World Cup and therefore never played against England. Nor was 1993 World Cup year. Therefore, who were these English youths? Where did they stay? What were they doing at a land such as Israel, and Jerusalem in particular? Certainly not on a Christian pilgrimage! Furthermore, has any group of Jews ever chanted ISRAEL! ISRAEL! at London's Trafalgar Square? Indeed, it looks as though the English are trying hard to make a bad international reputation for themselves. Why? That is a mystery, but I'm beginning to wonder whether, as a Brit myself, I will be tarred with the same brush.

And border security, Israel has one of the toughest in the world. At the end of the 1993 visit, and before checking in for the flight back to London, I had to tell the female officer at Lod International Airport, that I'm British and where I was staying whilst in Israel. When I told her about a small backpacker's hostel in the Old City of Jerusalem, she then escorted me into a small room where I was to strip down and undergo a thorough search, along with the emptying of the rucksack. Eventually, I was cleared to check-in and to wait as normal at the departures lounge. I felt humiliated by these highly trained officers, but it took me a long time before realising that as a Brit staying in a Palestinian hostel does not bode well with Israeli authorities! And that I had to learn the hard way.

All these ups and downs with travel, especially as an independent tourist, cannot ever be captured on virtual travel. And websites such as You-Tube, Alex and I have watched plenty of videos of walking tours and filming of the places I had already visited, especially those of Israel. Indeed, these were to revive memories rather than "virtual explore" a location I had not visited, but these too I tend to include during these days of Coronavirus lockdown.

And now with stricter laws on lockdown burdening our land, indeed, this is no time for travelling. In fact, I'm not too optimistic over the future either. At present, I know three Christian young men whose wives are pregnant, with each ready to give birth around the start of next year. These three, and all the rest of the unborn, I feel sorry for. What kind of a world will these children grow up in? Will buying an air ticket be so thoroughly difficult and bound so tightly with bureaucratic chains, that any idea of international travel will be confined in one's dreams or at best, virtual travel on the Internet, and that done by professional presenters under the terms of the company they work for?

This danger of catching a virus whilst overseas and with inadequate insurance cover may start a new phobia among many a Brit, the post-Brexit bureaucracy between the UK and the EU, if not downright hostility, may deter one from buying even a passport, let alone an air ticket, and then this issue of quarantine, whether abroad or back in the UK could well still be an issue here.

I look around. What has happened to the reputed stoic Englishman, the bulldog spirit which sent many a past foreigner trembling? It takes just one man in a suit and a tie to declare the need to wear facemasks, and the whole nation turns into one of panicking fear, populated with faceless zombies of horror film writers. And that despite the irritation developing in my throat whenever I wear one, an indication that wearing a facemask can be harmful rather than beneficial, breathing back in the carbon dioxide and other waste breath particles expelled by the lungs. And I don't even have the pathogen, and even when I thought I might a couple of months ago, I was still refused a test when I asked for one, due to "insignificant symptoms."

Wading through Hezekiah's Tunnel with one other person, 1976.

The reason why I have chosen Israel as the yardstick of the highs and lows of independent travel is that the Holy land and everything in it testifies of the truthfulness of the Bible. It was in the Jerusalem area where Abraham almost offered up his son Isaac (but stopped by God himself at the last moment.) It was at Jerusalem where David established it as the capital of Israel, it was there when the Babylonians razed it to the ground and later rebuilt by Ezra and Nehemiah. It was in Jerusalem (or nearby at the time but within its walls now) when Jesus was crucified, he was buried there and it was where he rose from the dead on the third day. And when he returns, he will sit on his father David's throne in Jerusalem.

Thus Jerusalem, Israel and the Jews, alive with us to this day, testifies of the existence of the glory of God and the entire land is a rebuke to all atheists and unbelievers.

This pandemic is a very sore point in human history, but God is right here with us, waiting for all to call upon him.