To Take A Peek Inside...

Mohamed Lahouaj Bouhlel, the terrorist trucker who deliberately slew many in Nice, hardly ever attended a mosque, so his cousin testified. He ate pork, a meat forbidden in Islam. He also drank wine - also forbidden in the Islamic faith. And oh yes, he took drugs as well, also forbidden. Yet as he used his truck as a weapon to plough into a cheerful crowd celebrating their Bastille national holiday, he cried out in Arabic: Allah is great!

Is he?

Allah must be one hell of a lousy entity if he has ordered such a massacre to be carried out in his name. And then, the hating trucker had hardly completed his divine assignment when the police approached and shot him dead. Maybe some of the more radical Muslims are now looking at this martyr and feeling envious of his entry into paradise populated with virgins for eternal enjoyment as a reward for his Jihad commitment. So the Muslims believe. On the contrary, if the whole Bible is a true and a reliable document, then this Allah is certainly not the God of the Bible, neither the God of Israel, nor the God of the Christian. Allah had never created the Heavens or the Earth, neither breathed life into any organic substance, whether it be animal, human or vegetation. Rather, Allah is more likely a demonic entity residing in the air, and the slavish master of deceit for every Muslim who has lived and died without ever knowing Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. A shocking testimony! Furthermore, this would immediately bring up the question - how can I be so sure that I am in the right faith and they are not? Does this train of thinking make me equally bigoted as the Jihadist himself? More on that a little later.

 Victims of the terrorist attack, Nice.

But what was really on Bouhlel's mind? Simply this: Hatred of society. Hatred based on envy of the freedom enjoyed by us Westerners. No diet restrictions, no ban on alcohol, no compulsion for religious attendance, women don't have to cover their faces with a burka or veil. Education is free, and leading to advances in Science and technology. But most of all, we are free to enjoy some fun without the fear of breaching religious restrictions. For example, I do not perceive as sinful to have a glass of wine with my dinner, or to bite into a delicious pork fillet, or for a mate and I to enjoy a day out at the fairground, or to take my wife out to a dance hall or to a rock concert. And at church I can stand and clap my hands in joyful praise, even feeling free to remain seated while others are standing. No tight religious liturgy or order of service, as in a mosque. And no calls to compulsory prayer at fixed times. Instead, we are free to pray any time.

Tied in with this may well have been a feeling of inferior complex. Perhaps wishing for a higher level of education and a profession to go with it, bringing in a decent income. Decent by comparison with high income earners in France or any other Western country, and not by Arab standing. Envy gives way to hatred, and hatred into revenge, bloodthirsty killing of as many as possible. No consideration for young children or their mothers. Instead, man, woman and child suffers without any discrimination, without a sliver of pity.

His hatred of Western society with all its liberties was also tied with hatred of his own childhood religion. Islam is a religion of fear, based on works and punishment. Hell is real to Muslims as well as to Christians, but with the former, one has to work to earn his place in Paradise, although a direct entry is granted to anyone who dies in defence of his faith, or better still, to fight in order to spread it. What I find amazing is there has always been a parallelism existing between the history of Islam and the history of Roman Catholicism, where direct entry into Heaven is concerned. The Vatican grants a plenary indulgence for anyone who dies whilst defending or promoting the faith. That means the martyr enters Paradise from the moment of death through his own merit, and not on the merit of Jesus Christ.

But with the case of Bouhlel, I don't believe either Heaven or Hell mattered to him. He hated his own religion, and he hated the freedom within the constitution of Western society. And he took his revenge. It is certainly not new.

The first recorded case of hatred based on envy is about Cain and Abel. Abel offered a sacrifice based on faith which was acceptable to God and, in a sense, he was set free from the penalty of his sins. Cain's sacrifice based on self-effort was rejected by God, and we read that "his face fell". Consumed by envy, hate and anger, he did not hesitate to slay his own brother (Genesis 4:1-16). In the New Testament, a well detailed record of the first Christian martyr is readily available. After showing the real meaning of the Law to all the Sanhedrin members assembled, and demonstrating their inability to keep that Law, Stephen was led outside to be stoned to death (Acts 7). The real fury among the Sanhedrin was aroused when Stephen shared his vision of the risen Lord standing up beside his Father, ready to receive him. Again, expressing his own freedom from the Law led to his murder by the hands of those who maintained living under the Law.

Nice during better times - symbol of Western liberty.

Then to mention the countless believers who were martyred for their faith and freedom in Jesus Christ, first by the Jews who were still bound by the Law of Moses, then by the Romans, who for millennia had to sacrifice at the altars of their pagan deities. Indeed, the believer's freedom in Christ did not go down well among those under the Law, whether Jewish or Gentile. And so, over the first centuries began the rise of the Catholic Church, whose Catechism rejected salvation through faith in Christ alone. As a result, the Vatican instituted the Office for the Preservation of the Faith, still in operation to this day. This department of the Holy See was responsible for the torture and killing of "heretics" who found freedom in Jesus Christ alone.

As the aggressive stance of the Catholic faith subsided with the rise of Protestantism and the widespread reading of the Bible by the common people, another source of aggression began to rise - and that is within Islam, and at present poses the greatest threat to the West since the War. As I see it, the liberties we enjoy both as individuals and socially were initially laid by our Bible-believing Christian forefathers, particularly in Northern Europe, Britain, and North America. These freedoms now enjoyed represents the freedom bought by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and are meant to allow us to live for God out of the purity of our regenerated hearts. Catholic-dominated Southern Europe, along with South America, learnt of such freedoms only after the Roman Catholic Church was forced to relax its church regulations under the eyes of the Protestant world.

What a great pity it is, when deserting the Bible has led to the rise in crime and the decline of personal morality. For example, a quiet social at the pub. There is nothing wrong in that in itself. From time to time I go out for a drink with my mates (although these days, being on medicine, I abstain from all alcoholic drinks.) But none of us has ever left the pub drunk. Unfortunately here in the UK, excess alcohol consumption is a problem among the younger people in major cities. Our reputation abroad, especially at the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, has become notorious through consumption of cheap alcohol. With the thought of taking my wife in a wheelchair to Paris in the Autumn, I am concerned about the high levels of pickpocketing and handbag-snatching. And that despite the presence of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, the principal church of the whole of France.

Reading and understanding of the Bible, mixed with faith, liberates us to live for God from the purity of our hearts, enhanced by the presence of the Holy Spirit within. Paul himself writes that having faith in Christ liberates us from the obligation of the Law of Moses (eg: Galatians 3:1-25, 5:1-6 where circumcision is part of the Law) but gives us the enablement to live in Christ with the power of Christ in our hearts. Supposing much of society read, believe in, and take heed of the Bible. Would there be far less evil in the world? But amazingly enough, it is the academic world which must take a large proportion of blame for our present society's rejection of Holy Scripture. The theory of Evolution is constantly pushed through schools, colleges and the Media, mainly television. Darwinism is constantly being popularised in BBC documentaries presented by atheists such as Professor Brian Cox, along with naturalist David Attenborough.

Multitudes tune into, watch and soak in these Darwinian theories, maybe not realising that such propaganda destroys the credibility of the Bible. For if the record of Divine Creation is proved to be false, along with the existence of Adam and Eve, then how could the record of the Virgin Birth of Christ, his Crucifixion and Resurrection be reliable? Genesis holds the key of the entire Bible. If proven historically untrue, then the whole Bible falls, including the New Testament. And it is this unbelief which enslaves us to the moral law with the resulting increase in evil. There are many atheistic academics who knows the Bible very well, maybe even better than Christians do. But their head knowledge without faith provides a source for ridicule rather than believing, and the multitudes follow in their footsteps, simply because they are well learnt and therefore counted for reliability.

But I need to answer this question: If I, for example, declare that Jesus Christ and the Bible is right but Mohammed and the Koran is wrong, does that make me a bigot? One source of proof is Old Testament prophecies. No other book contains prophecies which as been fulfilled over thousands of years as the Bible has. Even in the dawn of human history, a prophecy was announced by God to the serpent, within both Adam and Eve's earshot. All three heard the prophecy of the coming Messiah (Genesis 3:15). Later, Melchizedek  brought a meal of bread and wine to Abraham, after freeing Lot and the people of Sodom from hostile armies (Genesis 14:18-20). The bread and wine can only symbolise the body and blood of Jesus Christ, some two thousand years before he was born.

The story of Moses' early years is also prophetic of Jesus Christ. When he was a boy, the young Hebrew was adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh King of Egypt. He grew up in the King's palace. When he was in his forties, he went out to see for himself the plight of his own Hebrew people. He saw one of his own brothers being beaten by an Egyptian guard. In his quest to deliver Israel, he killed the guard and buried his body. The next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting. Moses went over to them and asked why they were fighting each other, since they are brothers. But the one in the wrong replied, Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Will you kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday?

At this, Moses fled from Egypt to the desert of Midian, where he spent the next forty years tending sheep, and marrying a non-Hebrew wife Zipporah, before being called by God in a burning bush to return to Egypt (Exodus 2). Jesus came into the world to redeem Israel and rule over his Jewish kingdom. But instead he was crucified, buried, and on the third day rose physically from the dead - a phenomenon never experienced by Mohammed or by any other religious leader. He then ascended to his Father in Heaven, where he is now, waiting for the command to return to the Throne of his father David in Jerusalem.

Moses was rejected by the children of Israel, so was Jesus rejected by the same people. Moses went into exile, so did Jesus after his Resurrection. During his exile, Moses married Zipporah, a non-Jewish wife. The Bride of Christ is the Church, which is mainly Gentile, which he is at present gathering together during his "exile". Just as Moses returned to Egypt to rescue Israel from slavery to the Egyptians, so Christ will return to deliver us from our sins and all its effects, including death.

Other prophecies relate directly to the Jewish Messiah. Micah foretells of his birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and that a virgin shall first conceive (Isaiah 9:14) and the child will be called Immanuel, which means God with us. David's psalm foretells of his suffering on the cross, along with the accurate description of how his clothing will be distributed - a thousand years before the event taking place, and long before the Roman form of capital punishment by crucifixion ever existed (Psalm 22). Isaiah gives a full chapter over the future suffering of Jesus - some 700 years before it happens (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). Then Zechariah 9:9 foretells Jesus entering Jerusalem riding upon a donkey, a foal of a donkey, which was fulfilled at his Triumphal Entry. And in Zechariah 11:12-13, an accurate prophecy of the thirty pieces of silver was foretold, which was fulfilled in Judas Iscariot's betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. These are just a few of the many prophecies regarding Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

It has been mathematically proved that if all the prophecies foretelling the life of Jesus were not divinely inspired, then the probability of all these prophecies being fulfilled entirely by chance would be one out of a number consisting of one, followed by 181 zeroes!* On the contrary, the Koran does not contain any prophecies whatsoever, which makes the Bible unique among every other book ever written in human history.

The claims of Jesus himself. One of his titles is Immanuel - "With us is God." A series of sermons delivered at our church at the moment is about what Jesus says about himself. Statements such as: I am the Way the Truth and the Life, I am the True Bread from Heaven, I am the Door of the Sheep, I am the Resurrection and the Life, I am the Light of the world - has never been spoken by Mohammed or by any other religious founder. These statements must prove either:
That this Jesus of Nazareth is totally insane, or a deliberate liar, or -
What is says about himself is true, and therefore must be the Son of God, something Mohammed does not and cannot claim.

Thirdly, Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the only person in human history ever to rise physically from the dead. This itself is enough testimony that he is the unique Son of God.

My faith in Jesus Christ as the son of God is not based on bigotry, but of his testimony on who he is. And Mohammed, whose bones are still with us, buried in Medina, cannot even compare.

Too bad Mohamed Lahouaj Bouhlel never knew Jesus Christ as his Saviour. Had he, he would be alive and well now, along with 84 other people who have so far died at the promenade in Nice.

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* Henry M. Morris, The Bible and Modern Science, Moody Books, 1968. P. 120.

Is There Something in the Air?

Just a couple of weeks ago the above graphic appeared on the main scroll of Facebook. It is a tongue-in-cheek psychological test on your anxieties or negative thought processes that goes on in your mind. The object that I first saw in the picture was an apple cut in half, although I could see that there was something not right about it and as such, I would hesitate to take a bite.

It was when I took a closer look that I began to notice that the cut face of the fruit is actually a butterfly or moth, with the pips arranged to resemble an anxious face gazing apprehensively at a maggot crawling on a knife which had just bisected the apple. The answer to the accompanying question - what was the first thing I saw in the picture? - it was the cut apple itself. And the result? I was afraid of death, particularly among others. That was my given analysis.

As already mentioned, the test was tongue-in-cheek, most likely a data list of psychological analysis, of which any one could have been selected at pure random by the computer, very much the same as the daily horoscope readings are selected before publishing in a daily newspaper or weekly magazine. But in this case my analysis from answering one question from a given list proved to be 100% spot on! Fear of death has dominated my thinking process, after being warned of eternal Hell as a young boy by my mother whenever I said or did something amiss. So belief in the afterlife helped mould my thinking process - to the stage of hating God by the time I've reached teenage years.

It was after conversion to Jesus Christ when I was twenty years old that I developed a concern about other people's eternal fate, particularly my family and friends. For example, my late father was only a nominal Roman Catholic, who himself admitted his agnosticism, although he never denied the existence of God in the way I did. Yet thinking of where he might be now - if he is conscious - sends me into feelings of helplessness, despondency, even fear. According to my experience, awareness of death has put everything in life into proper perspective. Just as King Solomon concluded in his Old Testament book Ecclesiastes. Life is vanity, chasing after the wind, and rich man, poor man, along with the lowest worm, the same fate awaits us all.

So it happened to a teenage Muslim jihadist I read about in the paper earlier this week. He was forced by his commanders to drive into an enemy village and detonate a bomb that was planted in the vehicle he was driving. He knew too well that he had no other choice. Had he refused, his comrades would have either dished out severe punishment or the death penalty. Likewise if he had driven off in an attempt to escape. As it was, he was given the privilege to die with full honour, with the promise of Heaven. Instead, the unwilling suicide bomber burst into tears with terror. Supposing this Allah, to whom he was about to sacrifice his own life, was non-existent, and all he had was a false ticket to Heaven? Yes, what then? This might have been the reality which struck him at that vital moment. The terror of eternal Hell, taught throughout Islam as well as in Christianity.

A teenage jihadist's final moments of terror. 

As I read the forum of comments trailing the online article, I felt rather shocked by the brutal lack of sympathy expressed by us British readers. Statements such as "One less terrorist", "Burn in Hell", "It's Hell for you", and even "At least you won't set foot here, a Christian country." So the plethora of cruel statements fill the ever expanding column with not a hint of compassion directed at the lad's feelings. Hatred of the Muslims by a nation which claims to be Christian. Indeed. Then again, the entire philosophy behind Islam is built on a very truculent and unreliable deity. 

Muslims believer that Allah is the very God of Abraham, with his eldest son and their own ancestor, Ishmael. They also reluctantly acknowledge Ishmael's younger brother Isaac, and his son Jacob, the father of the Jews. They accept that the children of Israel were called by God to be his own people. But over the centuries of continual disobedience and unfaithfulness, God decided to throw out the Jews and replace them with a new group, the Church, But soon after the Church was established, it too fell into apostasy and unfaithfulness, according to Mohammed. By the seventh Century AD, God - who to the Muslims had always borne the name of Allah, throws out the Church, and through this prophet, a new religion was established, a faith which had its ancestry in Ishmael. Of all the 360 idols standing within a pagan temple in Mecca, only one remained standing after all the others were destroyed under the prophet's orders. That was the moon deity which bears Allah's name.

I sincerely believe that such a fickle deity as Allah is the driving force behind jihad and national and international terrorism. I don't think jihad stems from a misinterpretation of a few verses in the Koran. Rather it's the fear that if they don't live up to Allah's expectations, they too will be thrown out by their deity and some other group would take over. And why not? What guarantee is there for their security if their god has a record of disowning those he claimed were his yet were disobedient or lacked commitment?  I believe it is this fear of disenfranchisement that motivates Muslims to fight their jihad. And furthermore, to gather en-mass to the holy site in Mecca. Here, vast crowds of Muslim pilgrims chant to their deity out of fear rather than a love for Allah. As long as Allah remains pacified, he will not cast them off like he did with Israel and the Church.

Vast crowds of pilgrims at Mecca

Vast crowds gather to worship a deity, a pagan one at that, out for fear of being cast off. It makes me wonder how just by being born at a certain area virtually guarantees slavery to such a system. But Islam is not the only religion, further east there are two more prominent faiths, Hindu and Buddhism. At least with those two, we do not hear of jihad-type "holy wars" to convert the outsider, or die. Could this be that because these two faiths are very ancient, Hindu in particular, predating centuries before Christ? And therefore they don't worship a god known for disowning his people? Who knows? That is only my speculation. As with the Islamic jihads. But this one thing underlies all these faiths. That is, every individual is born innocent, grows up to learn about the religion of the land, spends his life in worship of such deities, then dies without hearing about the love of the true God through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God. I think of these things. Millions born in the large part of the world who grow up without any knowledge of Jesus Christ.

And why does this touch a nerve in my heart? Could it be because the apostle Peter made this plain statement:

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

Acts 4:12.

So it stands to reason that all Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all other faiths not acknowledging Jesus Christ leads to death, simply because life comes from Christ alone, as the apostle John has written, that in him, Jesus, was life, and that life was the light of all men (John 1:4). This is where I find everything concerning this matter so hard to swallow. Christ died and through his resurrection, atoned for the sins of the whole world, thus reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (2 Corinthians 5:19). Yet to this day much of the world remains in ignorance. Just how effective was the Atonement? Yet we read that the light of Christ shines into every man ever born. Even nature itself testify of creation. I stood at the bottom of the Grand Canyon one night in 1995. The display of stars overhead was astounding! Never in my life in the UK have I seen such glorious heavenly splendour. The threefold testimony of Revelation, Nature, and Consciousness are three witness for the existence of God. And even Revelation itself seem to be threefold - the Bible, the presence of the churches, and the restoration of Israel as a sovereign nation. 

Although both the Middle East and the Far East regions of our planet seems to be shrouded in darkness, for us to call ourselves "a Christian nation" seems to be equally deceptive. True enough, our Constitution is founded on Christian principles. For an example, in the Law Courts, a witness swears to tell the truth by holding a Bible. But all these things don't make us a nation of true believers. Instead, I have found that the majority of British people do not know the love of Christ. In my mind I believe that Darwinism has played a major role towards mass unbelief. Nowadays, the revelation of divine creation in six literal 24-hour days followed by a day of rest on the seventh is held as ridiculous, and it is considered that no scientist worth his salt, or anyone with an ounce of common sense would even consider such revelations as historical. Yet the existence of our weekends and Sabbath days in other countries, along with the global institution of marriage, together with our Constitution and those of many other lands, all testify to the historicity of the Bible.

No other science discipline has been so controversial as Natural Evolution and Historical Geology, the latter being the works of Scotsman Charles Lyell, on which Englishman Charles Darwin based his own works of Evolution. On these two authors, considered brilliant in the academic world, the truthfulness of the Gospel is denied, as it stands to reason that without the historicity of Divine Creation, the reality of sin, atonement, and judgement have no place in rational thinking. And so, as we advance in knowledge and civilisation, this same knowledge, I think, holds responsibility for our spiritual and moral decline, with more and more stepping off this planet into a lost eternity. Tragic!

Is there something in the air? An entity who is behind all this darkness, and blinding people from the truth of the Gospel? Perhaps the answer is found in 2 Corinthians 4:4, that the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ. And also of Ephesians 2:2, when every one of us was under the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit at work in those who are disobedient (of the command to receive the Gospel).

It is a terrifying concept, especially to the ones you love most. After all, I wonder how the mother of the Islamic teenager, unwillingly forced to blow himself up, must have really felt? Especially as she remembers holding him as a newborn in her arms.

300 Young People Saved - Yippee! - er..Really?

Recently the younger members of our church at Ascot attended Newday, a Christian festival held in the Midlands area of the United Kingdom. Many hundreds of young people attend annually from all over the nation, where they set up camp to listen to speakers deliver God's word to a large young audience inside a large marquee.

Newday 2010

Although not having attended this event myself, what I know of it, Newday to me is a reminiscence of former Christian festivals I attended in the past, Spring Harvest in Minehead, Somerset and Stoneleigh, near the city of Coventry. Both of these festivals involve deliverance of God's word in sermons designed to equip us in our own churches and in particularly as lights to shine in a sinning world.

One of the church's elders and also a personal friend of mine, Dave Rogers, announced from the front that at this year's Newday, up to 300 young people were saved, that is to say, repented and trusted in Jesus Christ to redeem them, as a result of regeneration of the inner man, to be adopted into God's family through faith.

With news like this, I should have shot up from my seat and shout with joy, "Yippee!" 300 more souls redeemed and destined for Heaven is fantastic news! There is a lot to praise and glorify God for. But instead I remained in my seat and quietly absorbed the news. Not because I am British, and as one is aware, emotions are things we British don't share. No. Rather I accepted the news with a dose of caution. And not because I have a pessimistic tendency, but rather I'm aware of the four kinds of hearts the seed of the Word of God can fall on.

It is found in Matthew 13:1-23. Here we read that Jesus Christ himself gave an illustration of four kinds of hearers who receive a divine message. The first group are those whose hearts are so hard that they are likened to a footpath, on which the surface had been compressed solid my the weight of many feet which trod upon it. Any seed which falls on the path tend to remain on the surface and becomes as vulnerable bird food. I doubt very much that any of the 300 saved at Newday were of this category.

But there was a high possibility of the three other categories who were there and believed the message. Of these one group represented the rocky ground. They are the ones that has a thin layer of soil. When the seeds fall, they remain until they germinate, but did not grow beyond the next day of hot sunshine when the heat scorched the young saplings to non-existence.

Then there is another group who also heard the word and believed. But they were attached to the world, not only in wealth and possessions but love for the culture too. They are represented by plants which choke out the space for the divine seedlings to grow.

I have heard sermons, either on tape or over the Internet, about these two groups. All agree that the first group, the footpath, were those who resisted then forgotten the message, therefore they cannot be saved. Also all agreed that the fourth group, the field of good soil on to where the seed was sown, produced the right sort of crops, represented truly saved people.

But disagreement arose about the other two, the rocky soil and the worldly soil. On the Internet I listened to a sermon delivered at the Calvary Community Church in California, insisting that these two groups - the rocky soil and the worldly soil were not truly saved people. Their sermon can be heard if one log in to the Living Waters website. On the other hand, some years ago I also listened to a taped message dealing with the reasons why these intermittent two groups were saved after all.

According to the taped message, they were saved because they believed the word of God. They based the assumption to what Jesus Christ himself said on occasion, that who ever hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned, but has passed from death into life (John 5:24). And not forgetting the more famed John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that who ever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

These and other similar verses of Scripture were the basis of the message on why the rocky ground and the worldly ground were still saved. They were saved according to the promise made by Jesus himself, that is we are saved by hearing and believing.

But others, such as the speaker at the Calvary Community Church, disagree. He insisted that these two groups were not true believers. How come? They believed the word, didn't they? Yes they did. But their belief were only intellectual. "Jesus Christ? Yes, he was a great teacher, and taught some great things which all makes sense, just as it makes sense to say that a cloudless sky is blue." Full stop.

And it's here that I tend to agree with the Calvary Community Church. There is a difference between intellectual belief and trusting. Like believing that a chair is made for sitting on and actually sitting on the chair. I think here lies the heart of the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism on the subject of eternal security of the believer. This debate goes on on why the Scriptures seem to say at some points that a saved person cannot be lost while at other places it seems to say a person who has believed can still be lost.

Before I go any further, here I must stress that it is not up to me to say whether a believer is a true one or not. That only God can decide. But sooner or later the false convert will eventually reveal his true nature.

False convert? This phrase was used during the 19th Century Awakening, particularly in America. It is used at the Calvary Church today. It means that one's professed faith in Christ is not genuine. And sooner or later this will show. There are several types of false converts. One kind of emphasised by Charles G. Finney, the 19th Century New York evangelist.

Although I don't agree with Finney's Pelagian view of theology (the theory that the sinner can be saved by changing his own heart), he did produce some fine definitions of one kind of false convert. According to Finney, such a person does all the right things, such as attending church, prayer meetings, Bible study, serving others - out of fear of Hell and his attempt to prop up his hope for Heaven. Finney then quotes an example written by someone who debated against infidelity, "because (ignoring it) may ruin all my hopes for eternity." Finney then describes a test, to determine the genuineness of one's faith. The true Christian will always rejoice at the news of another person getting saved, even if he had no part in that person's conversion. The phony, on the other hand, will feel resentful if he had no part in it, and even more if the new Christian joins a church of another denomination or that of a rival minister.

Charles G. Finney

But it is the false convert described by the speaker (not named on the Internet) who is of greater interest here. This kind of person may not be motivated by fear at all, but more by apathy. He may, for a while, show an enthusiasm for Christ, perhaps to impress fellow Christians in the church or to ensure that he is accepted and makes friends. Or maybe to satisfy his Christian parents. But after a time, whether it will be for a few months or several years, he will disappear from the church. This is not because of a new job compelling him to move location. In that case he would join another church in his new location. Rather, the reason he leaves was because his professed faith had shrivelled up, and may even show hostility towards all spiritual things. And believe me, when I was a member of both Bracknell and Ascot Baptist Churches, I have seen young converts come and go, that is to say, left the faith altogether, often with hostility, or consumed in the pleasures of this world.

The key Scripture is found in 1 John 2:19 which reads:
They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

In other words, lack of perseverance is proof of false conversion.

And this is, I believe lies at the heart of all "Arminian" Scriptures. Consider Hebrews 3:12:
See to it, brothers, that none of you (in the church fellowship) has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.

Because in many ways it is difficult to tell the difference between the true and the false, those whose faith persevere in troubled times are most likely to have a true faith, as the Bible indicates, perseverance is in itself a gift from God. It comes in the same package as one's salvation, forgiveness of sins, a love for God and for each other and eternal life.

Let's look at the genuine believer now. Jesus refers to him as a field of good soil. He produces crops of beneficial value, up to a hundredfold. But there is more. A good test whether a believer is genuine is that he -
(a) does not sin continually and (1 John 3:6)
(b) he loves his Christian brothers. (1 John 3:10)
And both of these are found in the first letter of John.

The apostle also wrote that to say that we are sinless makes God a liar, for God says that we are sinful. (1 John 1:8) So what does John mean that the Christian does not sin? I think this means deliberate or planned sin. A Christian does not secretly steal nor is he dishonest with his money, neither does he tell a lie, nor throw insult to someone else simply out of dislike. But we are still subject to spontaneous sins, which we can call for forgiveness afterwards. A few days ago a door salesman was persuasive towards my wife who had already declined his offer. I came out and told him brusquely to beat a retreat. Afterward I realised that a more gentle approach would have been a better witness for Christ. I prayed for God's forgiveness and I believed that I received it.

A true believer will love his fellow brothers, and be ready to forgive if anyone, inside the church and out, asks for forgiveness if having offended. A true believer should not hold grudges, especially with someone who disagrees with him on certain issues. This is because the Spirit of Christ dwells in his heart, and God will always be there for him when he feels weak and needs strengthening.

And also the Holy Spirit in him will fill his heart with thankfulness, and that in particular can be true if I wake up in the morning knowing the uncertainty of the day ahead. At times of trouble he can remember that the Lord is his refuge and strength, a strong tower within the righteous run and within finds shelter. (Psalm 9:9, 46.)

The saving of the 300 people at Newday is tremendous news! I just hope this will be 300 more acres for crops to grow by a hundredfold. This would give us 30,000 acres of goodness which would glorify God and be a benefit to the churches and society as a whole. Not to mention Heavenly citizenship.

Come On, Lord Sugar, They're Not That bad, Are They?

Ben and Catherene Mullany, both 31, from Pontardawe in South Wales, strutted along the Caribbean beach of Antigua like two proud peacocks as they enjoyed their two-week honeymoon in July, 2008. They where white, middle class and oozing high levels of education, professionalism and in turn, wealth. Their wealthy exuberance were further enhanced by staying at the £330-a-night Cocos Hotel. This would have added up to £4,620 on accommodation alone. On top of this, there would have been the cost of the air tickets, travel insurance and pocket money. I believe that the total cost of the holiday would have been greater than the annual income of many of the locals, many struggling day by day to make ends meet. Then again, their strutting should not have come as a surprise. Ben was once in the Army, followed by a stint as a Police Officer before becoming a student Physiotherapist. His bride, Catherine was a Paediatrician.
Then in the early hours of July 27th, the day they were due to fly back to the UK, two would-be robbers burst into their bedroom. They were suspected as being 23 year old Kaniel Martin and Avie Howell, 20. They shot the sleeping couple each at the back of the head. Catherine was killed instantly. Her husband Ben survived the ordeal, but died a week later at a UK hospital.
The gang got away with just their mobile phone.
Envy struck again.
Maybe, had this couple spent their honeymoon in the UK - sure, at times they would have been bored, stuck in their hotel while the heavy rain clattered on the window panes from outside, then wrapping up warm as they strolled along the wind-swept shingle beach, watching the grey, murky seawater churn on a strip of exposed sand while picking at the hot cod and chips from the large paper wrapper - then who knows, at present Catherine would have had a child crawling across the lounge floor of their home while breastfeeding her newborn. And afterward, after Ben comes in from work, their memories would have relished on their washout of a honeymoon, how it strengthened their bond between them.
Yes, it can be difficult at times to bury my face into a pillow and soak it with my tears over their fate.
Or the case of Gerry and Kate McCann.
Gerry was a Consultant Cardiologist, while Kate was also a Doctor. They with their three children flew to Praia du Luz in Portugal for a holiday during late Spring, 2007. One evening while the children were asleep, they enjoyed a bite at an eatery, close to their apartment. It was then, on 3rd May, that their eldest daughter Madeleine disappeared, presumed kidnapped.
The Media was on the case for weeks to follow. Both the BBC News and the newspapers spewed out article after article on the case of missing Madeleine. It was not surprising that I felt my sympathy dry up after repeated hearings and readings. Then one evening I was browsing the Daily Mail online, and one of the commentators under the McCann article wrote words to this effect:
If Madeleine had been the daughter of a single mother working as a Tesco Shelf-Stacker somewhere up North, this case would have been long forgotten!
I had fully identified with this writer. The British Establishment have a reverence for the higher standing, don't they?
As in the case of the 2012 London Olympics. Again, according to the Daily Mail article published a couple of weeks previous to this, 250,000 of the UK's public applied for seats at the 80,000 seat athletic (Track & Field) stadium. Of these, 36,000 were allocated, leaving the rest - 44,000 to private sponsors.
In all, these sponsors contribute £1.4 billion to the Games. If this seem a large contribution, it will be dwarfed by the £12 billion of taxpayer's money. (In this article, the Imperial billion is used, which is 1,000,000,000,000.)
Of some of the sponsors, head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter and his colleagues will enjoy a £1,500,000 mega-freebie and at the same time stay at the May Fair Hotel at a much reduced price, while competitors themselves were unable to secure their families with accommodation.
Even the Government is giving freebies to it VIPs and dignitaries. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport had spent £750,000 for 9,000 seats at the stadium. This equals £83.33 per seat.
Newspapers have labelled the ticketing ballot "grossly unfair" to the British public, whose taxes makes up the largest proportion of funding, yet Lord Sebastian Coe, 1980s Olympic 800 metre champion and Tory MP, says that the ballot was seamless.

Track & Field Stadium

Is it another way of showing class favouritism?
Staying with sport, this article was written at the start of the 2011 Wimbledon Tennis season. Our star is Andrew Murray, the only Brit who stands a chance to win the Grand Slam at the men's singles final. Murray may be Britain's only hope, but unfortunately for the English, Murray is a Scotsman. The only Englishman ever to win the Grand Slam was Fred Perry, a son of a coal miner, who in 1934 defeated Australian Jack Crawford.
As the story goes, the officials would not present the trophy to a coal miner's son. So he was told to lift it himself. But the officials were much happier to present the runner up prize to the upper/middle class Australian. By 1936, Perry felt so betrayed by the fierce snobbery within the All England Lawn Tennis Club that he defected to the USA.
Nowadays bankers makes a good example of the Middle classes, the backbone, so we read in the newspapers, that holds Britain together and acts as a power engine for its economy. They are generally hated by the public for their pre-credit crunch greed, but still given adoring respect by the Establishment.
One good example of this was Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin, former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland. At his present age of 52, I take it that he was one of the 1980s City Yuppies, and therefore one of "Thatcher's Children". (Yuppie is the acronym for "Young Urban Professional." - now generally obsolete.) Goodwin as head of the RBS brought the Bank to its knees, and it would have gone bust had it not been bailed out by the taxpayer. Yet for this dramatic failure, he was knighted in 2004 for "Services in Banking". He resigned in October 2007 and is the recipient of a £700,000 pension pot.
There were many MPs in Parliament who lobbied to have Goodwin stripped of his Knighthood, but as far as I know, the Establishment had allowed him to keep it.
So it was of little surprise that by watching The Apprentice a couple of weeks ago, that I felt a smidgen of satisfaction when Lord Alan Sugar swore at contestant Jim Eastwood for bringing his task to ruin for the rest of his team.

Lord Alan Sugar

Perhaps what makes The Apprentice so entertaining is the way Lord Sugar takes these contestants down a peg or two when faced with failure. And in view of the whole nation, which I think, enjoys blaming them for the economic mess, the Recession and spiralling inflation with which we all suffer. A man in a suit is an easy target, isn't it?
But it is one thing to point the finger at the Establishment. It is quite another to see class discrimination and favouritism within the churches.
Neither the Establishment nor the public need to be reproved for class favouritism. They don't need such reproof. What they need instead is individual conviction of sin and the need of the Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Salvation is their need, not mere reproof. But Christian believers are very different. They uphold Jesus Christ as Saviour and their Lord, but I have still seen class favouritism among English churches. Plenty of it.
On a personal front, the attitude shown among Christian believers leaves a lot to be desired. Back in the 1970s and the 1980s, I was a member of what was Bracknell Baptist Church, the forerunner of the present Kerith Community Church. Members of my age were very forward with their University degrees, especially when communicating with the opposite sex, or seeking favours or responsibilities from the Elders. They tended to rate class as a more personal importance than their love and commitment to Christ. Youth leadership were chosen by the elders apparently by their level of education rather than of spirituality, as some discredited Divine Creation in favour of Evolution, therefore calling God a liar (for declaring that He made everything in six days when actually to them this was not true). Oddly, I found that nearly all the graduates who joined our church in my younger days believed in Evolution, and held their degrees and social class as high priorities.

We are one in Christ. No class favouritism here

Here I'm in danger as playing the judge. Everyone is accountable to God, and to God only, not to any of us. Therefore I have no right to act as a judge. God alone will judge us all.
But we believers need to take heed of what the Apostle James wrote to believers who were snobbish in his day. In chapter 2 of his letter, he wrote how bad it was to pay honour to a well dressed man who enters the assembly, and then treats a man in unbecoming clothes who also walks in with scornful disrespect. He calls this murder and therefore no better than a physical killing. Snobbery, class favouritism, honouring the rich, showing disrespect to the poor, shunning humble tasks - all these things are classed as murder and should not be seen among Christian believers.
Rather, we should put Jesus before national or class superiority. I would say that being filled with the Holy Spirit will dispose of such attitudes.
After all, we shall all die, and then all these things we be done away with. They are not eternal.
I bet Ben and Catherine Mullany would have wished to have walked along the cold, wet windswept beach in the UK with their raincoats flapping in the breeze instead of the warm, calm sunny tropical Antigua's beach lapped gently by the turquoise blue sea.

Prayer Is Hard Work

I called round to Tim's house one weekday evening sometime in the 1990s. Soon he served up a meal, as he often did. While sitting on one of his armchairs, I began to tuck in.
"Daddy!" cried his young daughter, "Uncle Frank did not say grace!"
I blushed slightly, expecting my mate to walk into the room scowling, for I perceived as showing a bad example to his children. Instead he had a big grin and said words to the effect, "Saying grace before meals is all religion, isn't it?"
I was relieved. The guy understood.
When I first became a Christian in 1973, I used to say grace before meals at home, before I flew the nest. It was done as an attempt to win my agnostic parents into God's Kingdom. Then on one occasion we all sat at the dinner table and after giving thanks (the only family member to do so) I immediately protested to my mother,
"Mum, you know that I don't like garlic!"
And began to pick them out.
"YOU HYPOCRITE!" My father shouted across the table. "It just goes to show what a hollow sham all this thanksgiving really is."
We both looked into each other's eyes. I knew full well he was right. Religion. After that I never said grace before meals again, except as a guest at a Christian's home.
But grace before meals is only a small portion in what is sanctimoniously called prayer. What is prayer? Truly, it means "Having a chat with God" which is a result of a good relationship.
But as a child, prayer was something quite different. While in English the word carries a religious ring to it, in the Italian language the meaning was more blunt. The Italian for Prayer is Pregare which literally means "to beg." Even in classic English, much now archaic, the original meaning of the word "pray" was used in the context, "I beg you" For an example, a request like this was most likely used,
I pray you allow me more time to repay the loan.
From my childhood days, prayer was about religion. As with grace before meals, we were taught to pray at morning assembly, something which I had to do from age five to 15, when I left school and was able to put all that pretence behind.

At junior school we were told to hold our hands together (as shown in the above illustration) and shut our eyes. Of course, I believed that if I posed otherwise, then it's not prayer. This stayed with me well into adulthood and even after my conversion. During school assembly we recited the Lord's Prayer every morning, starting with Our Father, which art in Heaven... with some feeling that God was not my Father, and in those days he wasn't. We also subconsciously associated our image of God with the strict, cane wielding Deputy Headmaster, who would cane a pupil for just talking while filing through the corridor to our classrooms. Little wonder there were a growing number of atheists particularly among the boys. I was more than glad to ditch this religious stuff the moment I walked out of the school premises for the last time in 1968.
To recap, Prayer was no more than Recital. At the Catholic Church with which I grew up, prayer was more to do with reciting the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Act of Contrition. These were set prayers, and I had to be mindful not to get the words wrong. More devoted Catholics had the Rosary, a string of beads with which a set prayer was recited at the handling of each bead.

A traditional Rosary

A silver Rosary opened out to show its structure. A prayer is recited with each bead held.

Recital prayer is the binding force of every religion. Hindus, Muslims, Judaism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, even Church of England services. It is relatively easy to recite a prayer at a set time and place. It is easy for a priest to instruct a penitent to recite two "Our Fathers" and eight "Hail Marys" with the aid of a Rosary each day at 10.00am and 3.00pm.
But supposing all recital prayer is removed from our Christian lives altogether? What then? Church prayer meetings?
Going to a prayer meeting is something totally different from a lifetime of recital, especially in non-formal churches such as Baptist or Pentecostal. In these there are no fixed prayers. One imagines sitting for a hour or more, wondering what on earth is he going to pray about. It does not excite enthusiasm.
Dave Rogers, an elder at Ascot Baptist Church and a personal friend of mine, could not have been more spot on. Standing at the front, he unreservedly announced:
Prayer is hard work!
And so it is. The big issue here is what to pray about. And how to keep on praying for a full hour long after you have run out of ideas.
Furthermore, I tend to feel put down when I read or hear of the likes of Martin Luther or John Wesley so patronisingly declare that one cannot be spiritual, nor care much for God's affairs unless he prays for up to four hours every morning! Whew! Fine for a full-time minister living in a much slower, agricultural world than the fast paced service/industrial world we live in today which takes up the greater part of our working day.
Various aids were put out to help us in our prayers. One of them originated from Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, near Chicago. He formulated ACTS, taken from the name of the New Testament book. It is an acronym, and when the code is unscrambled, we get this:
Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplications
Although this formula, no doubt have been a help for many in their prayer lives, it is a formula. Therefore there is a tendency to turn this aid into another religious format by believing that this is the way to go about it. And this in particular when it was shown to have worked with certain or even with many individuals.
So what is prayer to me?
Personally, I find spontaneous prayer more functional than set prayer meetings. Spontaneous prayer is turning into prayer a thought that have dropped into my mind. Setting out to work in the morning, often whether its sunny or dismal, it's good to thank God for this new day, thanking him for keeping me alive to see this day in human history. Counting all that I have and thanking God for them. This kind of thanksgiving exceeds grace before meals by a long shot. Along with thanking God for food and drink, I can thank him for good health, a roof over our heads, our clothing, my spouse, my job - without we would not be able to eat - our tax credits, our holidays, and everything we have - computer, TV, cooker, microwave oven, washing machine, tumble dryer and all other utilities as well as niceties which grace our home with little luxuries.
Along with thanksgiving there at times a need to confess my sins. It is this that at times puts me off prayer. Confessing is something I feel I need to "clear the air" before settling down to prayer. Then again there are supplications, asking God for things. I don't feel it's wrong to complain to God that we are hard up and we could do with some financial uplift. Often enough, this problem resolves itself, often with an offer of extra work, or a backpayment from a client just returned from holiday or other absence.
Then there is intercession, to me the most difficult form of prayer. Difficult due to the intensity of love for this other person or group of people. It is much easier to pray for someone I love than it is for someone I don't love.
All these can be spontaneous prayer. I'm lucky enough as a self-employed worker to stop what I'm doing and start praying if such a thought drops into my mind. For those at work for an employer, this could be much harder to accomplish. Although I don't have this kind of experience, maybe jotting down on a piece of paper the passing thought before it's forgotten does not sound a bad idea.
Then my friend Dave Rogers, along with the other church elders, spend time in prayer and Bible study each morning before doing anything else. This requires being shut alone in a quiet room, undisturbed. This is praiseworthy and demonstrates a high level of self-discipline. With me, because I tend to be less strong on discipline, so far I have accomplished the Bible study bit, reading a chapter each morning. Whether this is right or not, I rely more on spontaneous prayer than fixed times.
And I should say here that the will and ability to pray comes from God in the first place. True prayer is a gift of God, not human strength, and therefore not recital. But how one conducts his walk with God is a matter between each person and God. No one in the church should judge or criticize an other's walk with God.
Prayer is hard work. Especially in fixed times. Talking to God in one sense is like talking to a parent or a friend. But when the other person replies straight away, when one finishes prayer, all there is is silence. It takes faith to believe that God has heard (paid attention) to prayer.
But for believers in Jesus Christ, having a chat with God is as essential as breathing.

Tut Tut, Naughty

Herodias was ambitious. She was fed up of her husband Philip's domineering attitude. Always had to be submissive to him as Tetrarch, or governor of Ituraea, a region north-east of Israel bordered on the west by the River Jordan, an area occupied by Syria today. To the west of the Jordan River was Galilee, which included the west coast of the Lake of Tiberias, governed by Philip's half brother, recently divorced Herod Antipas, and apparently childless. These two brothers were the sons of Herod the Great, who not only governed the whole of Israel and Judah, but he refurbished the Temple in Jerusalem, and also built a shrine enclosing the sealed entrance of the Cave of Machpelah close to the town of Hebron (see my blog The Stone Bible, 1st February, 2011) - before he died following the slaughter of the Innocents in 4BC.
Where her husband Philip was authoritative over his own household, Herod Antipas had a much more malleable character, a personality she can wind around her little finger. So after a massive bust up, she left her husband, and taking her beautiful daughter, settled into Herod's palace.
For some reason historians cannot seem to agree on, Philip could not gainsay his half brother. Instead he remained at his palace alone and defeated. Soon after, Herodias married Herod and began to rule over his house as well as over the region of Galilee.
Then John the Baptist called out to them as they passed by in their chariot, saying that it was unlawful to marry someone else wife while her husband was still alive.
Herodias was furious! How dare this itinerant preacher tell her what was right and what was wrong. She ordered Herod to arrest him and thrown into the palace prison, to await execution. At least Herodias succeeded in having John silenced, if not her conscience.
I suppose Herod would have wanted a super injunction if the law courts were able to hand it out in those days. Herod rather liked John, and was willing to have him talk in his presence. He certainly would not have wanted the general population outside muttering and tut-tutting over his misdeed. He felt guilty and exposed. But unfortunately, his conviction of wrongdoing failed to result in a conversion. Had it, Herod would have sent Herodias packing, and he himself making a journey to Jerusalem to sacrifice a sin offering at the Temple.
I guess this is the outcome of State religion, in force in Israel up to the Crucifixion. God through Moses had set up this State religion - with the Law, detailed instructions on how to live, along with animal sacrifices and a special set form of worship. These applied to every Israelite, regardless of whether the person wanted to love or honour God or not. It was a disastrous failure. God himself knew this from even before such a covenant was ratified. The Law and state religion does not save, rather, it condemns. It causes one to judge another, and to compare one person's character and actions with another, even if nobody is actually "white" (having a spotless character), if someone else is "black", then even if the one judging is "grey", in front of the "black" person, he'll appear as "white".
That was how State religion was lived out in at the time of Herod, John the Baptist, the Pharisees and soon after, Jesus Christ himself.
The Pharisees were so notorious in judging and finding fault in others that both John and Jesus denounced them for their hypocrisy.
Finding fault, judging and making comparisons gives the person doing these things a sense of superiority, or a sense of self righteousness, with a deceptive idea of reaching Heaven after death by self effort.
It was easy for Israel as a whole to exalt itself on a national level, this sense of moral and spiritual superiority. During the time of Christ, no Jewish person would enter a house of a non-Jew, or Gentile, no Gentile was to enter the Temple area of Jerusalem, and they were made to stay away from the Jewish home.
Even the Apostle Peter, leader of the early Church, had difficulty in direct communication with the Gentiles. With the case of the Roman Centurion Cornelious, Peter had to have a special vision from above before he was convinced that the Roman men who arrived were sent by God. And even at Cornelious' house, Peter said that it was an abomination for a Jew to enter a house of a non-Jew. Charming! Cornelious could have shown him the door.
Even some time later, while Peter was at last settling down to dine with Gentile Christians, he suddenly rose and left the room when news of Jewish believers from James were about to arrive. Paul had to rebuke him, and he did so in public too.
On the national level, England seemed to have taken over from Israel in morality and national superiority. No greater proof of this than William Blake's poem Jerusalem which asks whether the feet of Jesus Christ once trod this green and pleasant land. Despite that there is no historical truth that he ever set foot here, this did not stop the poem from being put to music in 1916 by Sir Hubert Parry to create a patriotic hymn sung as an alternative to the National Anthem.

William Blake

Jerusalem is still sung at sports venues, particularly at Rugby matches, at the Ladies Institute, and at the wedding service of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, in front of a worldwide audience of around two billion viewers. In Parliament there was a debate whether Jerusalem would become the official anthem for England, but nothing of this had so far been declared.
The statement, Our God is the God of England, I actually heard right here at Ascot Baptist Church during the early 1990s. I was the only one who disputed the statement. Most of the others in church at the time seemed to have accepted.
Jeremy Paxman backs this up in his book, The English - A Portrait of a People. In it, Paxman interviews performer George Formby, to which he replied that Englishness is very deep spirit of St. George. The idea of St George is to fight against evil. (P.81)
Paxman discusses how the English believed that they were a covenanted people of God which began to peak in the 18th Century, in very similar pattern to ancient Israel. Sir Edward Hine, for example, in 1879 delivered a lecture in Chelsea advocating the crackpot belief that Britain was Israel (literal bloodline) and America was the lost tribe of Manasseh, arriving into the British Isles centuries after the "Ten Lost Tribes" were led away to Assyria as told in the Old Testament.
The nation as a whole now rejects this idea, but still hold to its form. In my schooldays morning assembly always had a Christian element, and that's despite the rise in atheism, particularly among the boys. I have seen over the years the decline in the belief in God, let alone commitment, yet upholding its Christian roots and morals. Very much like ancient Israel.
One example I would like to quote here is the case of Donald McGill, (1875-1962) an artist who designed the saucy postcards sold at British seaside resorts. In 1953 he had his entire stock confiscated from a shop at Ryde, Isle of Wight, the result of churchy bureaucrats who wanted to keep control of public morality. In 1954 he appeared in Court and was fined £50, a lot of money in those days. He escaped prison by a narrow margin. But soon after, his saucy postcard business began to flourish across the nation. The public found those cards amusing, and refused to have their morals controlled. And the attempted ban did not result in any conversions to Jesus Christ as Saviour either.

Into more modern times, I can name three married celebrities who each betrayed their wives by sleeping with their mistresses. Each of the three attempted to hide their misdeeds by getting an injunction from the Law Courts. This means that they have their privacy protected from the Media. In other words, they can err without the public knowing anything about it.
These were public figures. One was the BBC correspondent Andrew Marr, who actually asked for his injunction to be lifted. In 2003, Andrew Marr traveled to the Galapagos Islands to advocate Charles Darwin for the BBC Greatest Briton of All Time competition, which by public voting, was won by Winston Churchill.
The second was Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin, who slept with a work colleague, and it is thought by many that this misdeed was connected to the banking crisis which brought along the credit crisis and eventual Recession in 2010.
But the most dramatic was the case of Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs, who ordered an injunction after betraying his wife Stacey to sleep with Imogen Thomas. The injunction was a failure due to the many Twitter posts revealing the footballer's identity. When Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming revealed the footballer's identity to the House of Commons, Speaker John Bercow rebuked him, saying that Giggs' privacy should be respected.
But to me who don't follow football, where Ryan Giggs would have remained an relative unknown, except for those into football, now has become infamous across the nation. It was so unnecessary. For news of adultery among celebrities means little to us now. Giggs should have realised that the nation hardly tut tuts any more.

Andrew Marr, fan of Charles Darwin

Yet journalists such as the Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell still advocates Britain as a cultural superior nation due to its Christian heritage, despite its departure from anything Biblical or spiritual. In this weekend's paper she criticized First Lady Michelle Obama who, with her President husband Barak, was visiting Britain, and was giving an emotional talk to some students at a London girls school about "Triumph over Adversity". Platell responded with these words:
Perhaps someone should have explained to the First Lady that this is Britain and we don't tend to go for all that schmaltzy, heart on the sleeve drivel.
Wow, I wonder how many people reading this turned to Jesus Christ for salvation?
Now let me get real here. There is only one message all Christians should deliver. That is to repent and believe in Jesus Christ and be saved from separation from God and eternity in Hell. There is no other way to Heaven other than trusting Christ and him crucified.
Enough of this idea that just because one is British or English and was baptised in a church as a baby, one can work his way to Heaven. And don't be deceived by the sight of coffins containing war casualties passing through Wootten Basset after their heroic deaths in Afghanistan. Unless they were converted to Jesus Christ while still alive, they would now be in Hell. War death does not save one's soul.
When in Athens, Paul looked at all the pagan altars surrounding him, most if not all had occult influence. But instead of lobbying the Government to have them demolished, as we would probably have done, he just heralded the Gospel of Christ. It was the same when the Apostle was at Ephesus. He did not talk against the Temple of Diana which dominated the city. He just preached the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and faith in him for salvation.
It is not the adulterous acts committed by celebrities that sends them to Hell, it's not trusting in the Saviour. Lobbying against an occult shop about to open in the High Stret will be of no benefit whatsoever. Rather, such actions would cause Christians to be seen as miserable fun-spoilers, and further alienate the unbeliever from the local church.
We as Christians now have only one message: Repent and be baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall receive remission of sins.
Who knows. If Herod Antipas heard such a message, he might have repented after all. Poor John. He told the governor that this act was wrong and he paid with his life.

Whoops! Not This Time...

Judgement is coming on May 21st, 2011. The Bible guarantees it!
That was the cry of one Californian evangelist, 89 year old Harold Camping, who by means of his followers across the United States, invested millions of dollars in billboards declaring that the Rapture of all Christian believers will take place at 6.00pm Pacific Time on Saturday May 21st. This announcement did not remain an isolated incident restrained within a few streets of a city, but rather spread right across the USA and even crossed the Atlantic to reach us here in the UK. As the radio broadcast was boldly made while I was at the gym, I would not be surprised that it was also broadcast across the Pacific Ocean to reach Australia and New Zealand too. After all, the Rapture is an event of such geographic magnitude, it had to be broadcast worldwide.
So how did this evangelist arrive at the conclusion that May 21st, 2011 was to be the day? By doing some math by deciphering certain "hidden codes" found in the Bible. This has reminded me of the time, not that long ago, when some Jewish scholars have found the name of Adolf Hitler by deciphering the codes, they say, were found in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, which forecasted the end of the world then.
Yet all this despite what Jesus Christ himself had plainly said just before he was crucified:-

No-one knows the day nor the hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father...Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Matthew 24:36,42.

But what is exactly the Rapture? It has become quite a common word used these days. Even Richard Dawkins used it in his book, The God Delusion.
There are two passages in the New Testament which seem to teach it, both of these texts were part of Paul's letters, one to the church in Corinth and the other to the church in Thessaloniki. They describe the sudden disappearance of Christian believes to heaven, first the dead in Christ rising followed by the living, "in the twinkling of an eye" which indicates suddenness. Here are the two passages.:-

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead shall be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
"Where, O death, is your victory?
"Where, O death, is your sting?!
1 Corinthians 15:51-55.

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede them who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.
I Thessalonians 4:13-18.

Thessaloniki

There are those, like myself, who believe that this event, known as the Rapture or the Translation, will occur sometime in the future, but nobody knows when. They believe that the Lord has deliberately withheld the date, to make the event always imminent, so believers should expect it to occur even in their lifetimes. This encourages the believer to "keep watch", just as Jesus himself exhorted.
There are other Christians who do not believe in the coming Rapture. Among those there are some who say that the Rapture was coined up by Jesuits Ribera and Bellarmine in 1591, after the Council of Trent. Their aim was to protect the Pope from the Protestant accusation of being the Antichrist, predicted is yet to come, in the Bible.
But which ever the case may be, now that it is at present Sunday morning of the 22nd, and not as much as a sneeze had taken place, it is of my opinion that Harold Camping has done a serious disservice to both the Bible and the Christian faith.
We are living in the days where the historicity and truthfulness of the Bible is constantly being attacked by both evolutionary scientists and atheists, and by general secularism, particularly here in the U.K.- where it has one of the lowest church attendance in population density in Europe. In other words, Christians are being made to look foolish.
This plays right into the hands of atheists. In the USA, I read online, that they were already planning parties to revel in such foolishness.
I can imagine right now Richard Dawkins smirking at the non-event, knowing full well that his scientific theories will triumph after all. And he will draw more and more disciples, eventually turning the majority in this nation into an anti-God and with a strong unbelief attitude.

Richard Dawkins

Dating prophecy is not new but it is dangerous in a way that first, it weakens the testimony of the Christian faith and makes it all the more unappealing to the unbelieving population. Secondly there is a serious loss of creditability to the one who made it, if his prediction did not come to pass by the date he had set.
Californian Bible scholar Hal Lindsey was a case in point. One of his books was The Late Great Planet Earth in which he believed that the future Antichrist was alive and feeding his soul with quests for power and knowledge as he wrote and published his book in 1970. He also believed that Armageddon would take place around 1990. Later he released another book, The 1980s Countdown To Armageddon, in which he documents on the rise of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, overtaking that of the United States, making the USSR a dangerous and threatening world power, with its sole aim of turning the whole planet Communist, especially the United States. That was before the collapse of Communism in the 1980s itself. So far, in 2011 we are still here. And it is my opinion that Lindsey had lost a lot of creditability, especially among the U.S. Senate, where I once read that The Late Great Planet Earth was taken notice of by them.
Then again, back in the 19th Century, a small organisation which was to call itself Zion's Watchtower Society formed in New York in between 1870 and 1875 under the tutelage of Pastor Charles Taze Russell. It began to expand across America very rapidly, and their members, Jehovah's Witnesses, won converts across the Atlantic. In fact, according to William Schnell, in his book 30 Years A Watch-tower Slave, the world was meant to end in 1914. When the Great War broke out that year, fulfilling Jesus' prediction of "Nation rising against nation" the Watchtower Society gained enough creditability to win over the population of Germany to the extent of becoming the State religion, which was only thwarted by the outbreak of World War II.
According to Schnell, the end of the world was postponed until 1924, the year the Kingdom of Christ was meant to begin. When nothing supernatural occurred, the Society re-interpreted Scripture to predict that 1924 was the beginning of "The Last Generation", mentioned by Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:34. Calculating that a generation was to last 40 years, the Battle of Armageddon should have taken place in 1964. It was after this that the "movable prophecy" teachings of the Watch-tower were put on the back shelf in order for the organisation not to crumble.
Dating prophecy in regard of when the world will end is forbidden in the Bible. Such attempts makes the Bible and the Christian faith appear ridiculous. It does not give God any glory, rather it turns agnostics in to atheists, it causes atheists themselves to smirk with satisfaction, and most seriously, it keeps many from trusting the Lord Jesus Christ to save them and receiving eternal life God gives to all who believe in him.
We as Christians need to watch and wait for his coming, which remains an ongoing process generation after generation. The formation of the state of Israel in 1948 gives a clue that the End Times is soon, according to many Bible scholars. But dating prophecy is wrong and no one, Christian, secular or of another religion should attempt at it.

Good Friday? I'm Confused!

The Easter Weekend. Like everyone else born in the UK and grew up in a Christian environment, we all believe that Jesus Christ was Crucified on a Friday and then rose physically from the dead early Sunday Morning. Thus we say that he was in the tomb for three days.

This has been our tradition for some 1,700 years. It was formalised by the Roman Catholic Church early in its history and it passed unchallenged into the Reformed churches who continued to worship on Good Friday. Even today, I was at Ascot Baptist, my home church, worshipping on Good Friday.
So far so good.
Except that ever since I began to read the Bible from 1973, I felt uneasy about a Friday Crucifixion. Especially when the Lord Jesus was speaking openly and was making predictions about himself. And this appears at just one verse in the whole Bible, Matthew 12:40, which reads:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
With a statement like this, a Friday Crucifixion doesn't seem to make sense. And again, why couldn't have Jesus simply said "Three days" and left it there? Rather, was he deliberately trying to tell us something?
A Friday crucifixion may have found its place if three days and two nights were on his mind - Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and Sunday morning before daybreak. Even on the Hebrew clock, when the new day begins at sundown, the same would still apply. Friday would end at sundown, and Saturday would have ended at sundown the next evening, making all of the second night as part of Sunday itself. It would still be two nights, not three - small hours Saturday and small hours Sunday.
Again, as with the previous two articles, I will try and keep this one as simple as I can.

In the old Testament, soon after the children of Israel were lead out of Egypt and settled near the foot of Mt. Sinai, the Ten Commandments were given. This was followed by many laws and regulations for daily living. Among these laws, the Passover was instituted. In fact the Passover was instituted while the Israelites were still in Egypt. It was to mark the anniversary of the deaths of the firstborn of their Egyptian taskmasters, allowing Israel to escape in haste. What the children of Israel had to do was to kill a lamb, sprinkle its blood on their doorposts, roast it and then eat it with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. That night, when the Angel of Death visited Egypt, he passed over every house which had blood on its doorposts, resulting with all in the house spared from death.
Then the anniversary of this event was to be celebrate every year at the specific day, week and month.
The exact details being this, at the Spring month of Nisan:
10th Nisan - Lamb selected.
14th Nisan - In the afternoon, lamb killed, roasted.
15th Nisan - early at night, Passover lamb eaten, first day of unleavened bread, which is to last a full week.
If this is compared to the Passion of Jesus Christ, the events would unfold like this:
Sunday 10th Nisan - Jesus Christ enters Jerusalem on a donkey and reveals himself as the Jewish Messiah (i.e. Christ) to the crowd waving palm leaves.
Thursday 14th Nisan - after sundown - Last Supper with his disciples, in the Garden of Gethsemane, betrayed by Judas Iscariot, arrested, brought to the Jewish hall of judgement, at daybreak, brought to Pilate. All leaven removed from every Jewish household, hence "the day of Preparation."
Thursday 14th Nisan - Midday, Christ Crucified. At 3.pm, Jesus Christ dies, Passover lambs slaughtered in every Jewish household. The body of Jesus taken down from the cross and buried.
Friday 15th Nisan - First day of Unleavened Bread, or a "high day" after sundown the freshly roasted Passover lamb is eaten.
Saturday 16th Nisan - Normal weekly Sabbath.
Sunday 17th Nisan - before daybreak, Jesus is resurrected, stone covering the tomb's mouth is rolled away, Mary and her companions bring spices to further anoint the body, resurrection revealed and disciples told.
So to make it simpler:
Sunday 10th - Triumphal Entry.
Thursday 14th - Crucifixion, death, burial.
Friday 15th - A "high day".
Saturday 16th - Normal Jewish Sabbath.
Sunday 17th - before daybreak, Resurrection.

Thus the three days were:
Thursday late afternoon, about three hours of daylight left.
All day Friday.
All day Saturday.
The three nights - as we understand them:
Thursday night
Friday night
Saturday night.
As the Jews understood them:
Friday morning
Saturday morning
Sunday morning.

Therefore is the idea of a Thursday crucifixion the correct one?
That's how it looks to me.
The idea of a Friday crucifixion, I think, stemmed from the reading of the Gospels when the writers insist that the death of Jesus took place "on the day of preparation for the Sabbath." But that Sabbath was not the weekly Saturday Sabbath, but "a high day" (John 19:14 AV.) In other words, the first day of Unleavened Bread, or Passover Week, which fell on a Friday.
In John 18:28, the Jewish accusers refused to enter Pilate's hall, for fear of defilement, "because they have yet to eat the Passover". (So the Passover wasn't eaten yet.)
But what about Matthew's account of Jesus eating the Passover with his disciples?
Jesus sent two of his men to be lead to a large room to prepare it for that evening. It was still Wednesday Nisan 13th when the room was located and prepared. The meal they ate that night was the Last Supper, not the Passover, and when they all sat at table, it was after sundown and as such, it was already Thursday the 14th, the same day as the crucifixion and the death of Jesus Christ timed to coincide exactly with the killing of the Passover lambs across Israel.
A Thursday crucifixion? I would guess that most if not all Christians reading this would dismiss it as fantasy from an over-emotional manual worker lacking education.
But I would recommend reading How Close Are We? by Dave Hunt, who gives a thoroughly in-depth investigation of the passion week and presents it in easy to understand yet accurate scholarship.
A Thursday Crucifixion satisfies any doubts I might have had on the most crucial point of the Christian faith. If something does not add up, it would be much more difficult to stay firm in the faith during difficult or testing times. To know how thoroughly accurate the Bible is, and always have been, is the sharp sword that would make old Mr Doubt run away without looking back!