A Future Chat With the Pharmacist.

Alex looked concerned as she checked her prescription supply.

Alex: Sweetheart, can you pop down to the surgery and order another supply of Diazepam and Baclofen?

Frank: Okay no problem. As a matter of fact, my Warfarin is running low too. I have only four day's supply left. It's time to top up. How much do you still have left?

Alex: (counting) I would say four or five days.

Frank: Okay. I'll be back shortly.

As I walk merrily down the tree-lined path into the woods which makes up a corner of South Hill Park, I ponder on how fortunate as a nation to have the National Health Service. Being a short walk, I decided to leave the bicycle behind. By walking, I can look around our unspoilt environment and thank the Lord for his sustained Creation, as well as thanking him for allowing me to see another day in human history.

I approach our local NHS surgery. Ordering prescribed medicine is a simple task. Just tick the boxes printed next to each drug listed on the form, which came with the last prescription, and then to post it through into the renewal box fixed for the purpose next to the Prescription Enquiries window.

As I approached, I began to feel alarmed at the empty car park, which was never free from the four or five cars which were parked there during office hours. As I approached the main entrance, I was suddenly paralysed with shock! I continued to stare at the notice fixed to the glass-panelled door from the inside, which read:
DUE TO PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, THIS SURGERY WILL REMAIN CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Further notice? What "Further notice?" It could be just for a few hours or days. But equally, it could be for weeks, months, years.

I was gripped by cold, naked fear. I broke into a cold sweat and even felt my long hair attempting to stand on end. How on earth are we to renew our prescriptions? Especially with my wife's Diazepam? With her neurotic disorder, without this vital drug, she can go into involuntary fits of muscle spasm, a convulsion of her body which cannot be controlled by the conscious mind. Her daily dose of the medicine keeps her from having such fits and therefore able to lead a normal life.

Quickly and panic-stricken, I make my way to the Drugstore, just less than 150 metres from the surgery. I then asked the Pharmacist what's on earth is going on. She then explained the current crisis of the NHS. Ever since the Tories had regained power at 10 Downing Street back in December of 2019, as well as leaving the European Union soon afterwards, there has first been a trickle of staff deserting the NHS, followed by a flood of those leaving to return to their home countries. She also explained that a large proportion of the Doctors, Consultants and Nurses were from Europe and India, the latter renowned for its children's ambition to qualify as Doctors through dedication to study hard at school and college, without such distractions such as television, play stations, football team support or pop music.

What? I asked. Isn't there a gene pool right here in England for training qualified NHS staff?

Not according to statistics, was her reply. But equally distressing, according to this Pharmacist, was the strangulation of medical supplies, especially from Europe, where a large proportion is made and shipped. Being outside the European Union, such supplies have now to pass through custom and tariff legislation. With such shipping held up and delayed, along with border tariffs, the price of medicine had to rise.

I responded that I'm not too worried about that, for Alex has a pre-paid certificate and since I'm over 65, I qualify for Senior Citizen's State-funded medical supply.

The Pharmacist gave me a rather drawn-out look, then reassured me that she now has the authority to sign for the medicine in place of the Doctor. What a huge relief! When I told her that we need our prescription renewed right away, she took the forms from me and with her fellow staff members, proceeded to prepare the medicines which we both require. About twenty minutes later she appeared holding two packets.

Disturbingly, she began to jab at her calculator.

That will be ninety pounds, please.

WHA-A-A-T!!! I cried. My wife has a pre-paid Certificate and I'm a pensioner. What's going on?

Pharmacist: You should know by now that since recently, the NHS had imploded on itself, it no longer exists. With that, pre-paid certificates are now invalid and every senior citizen has to pay now as well. Look, you asked for three packets of Warfarin, one of Losartan, one of Spironolactone, one of Bisoprolol, and one of Bumetanide. At ten pounds each, that would be seventy pounds. Then your wife wanted Diazepam and Baclofen, adding a further twenty pounds. That totals ninety.

Frank: My wife did not ask for Antidepressants, Oramorph, Co-Codamol, Senna or Laxido, at least not this time. If she had, then the whole shenanigan would cost us both 140 pounds! That's more than the 110 pounds she spent to buy her pre-paid certificate valid for a whole year. 

Pharmacist: I'm very sorry things turned out this way. But our NHS has been on its breaking point for the last several years. Sooner or later something had to give. Hence the closure of all our GP surgeries.

As I left the Drugstore feeling crushed and out of pocket, I was wondering how on earth are we going to manage all this. Fortunately, my Pension income is healthy, we should be able to pull through - just, without the need to tighten our belts too much, although it may mean saying goodbye to taking breaks away, whether it's in the UK or abroad. Or as long as we don't fall ill in need of hospitalisation. Just by calling 999 may itself cost us more than a hundred pounds.

On the walk home, I decided to take a longer route, so I can mull on my thoughts.

"Fear coursing through my whole being. Fear? That's an understatement. It was more like terror - frightened of the future. I guess it goes back to December 2019, the month of our last election. Boris Johnson leading the Conservative Party back into power, hence a majority Government back into Parliament. His new Cabinet also included Jacob Rees-Mogg as Chancellor and Nigel Farage as Health Minister.

"Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party? Once, yes. But not any more. The Press, especially the Daily Mail newspaper, advised his followers not to vote for a Brexit Party candidate, in case the Brexit issue was split and divided enough to let Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party into power. The result was that the Brexit Party polled so badly - it folded up, leaving its leader to reconcile himself with Johnson and joined the Tories. The Prime Minister saw Farage as a fit enough candidate for Health Secretary.

"How the Media had demonised Jeremy Corbyn! Nicknamed Jezza by the Daily Mail, his "extreme left-wing" manifesto was reputed to have terrified the middle-classes and the high earners into paying higher taxes. By contrast, the newspapers poured endless praise on the Tory Party. With the promise of "getting Brexit done" along for lower taxes for higher earners, Johnson also promised to pour "billions" into the NHS - but following Brexit, there has been a rapid rise of racial and xenophobic threats, with white, English patients throwing insults at foreign Consultants and Nurses, causing them to leave their profession to return to their home countries, along with being bogged down with the catch 22 situation. The more hours they put in, the more taxes they pay and their pension savings robbed.

"I wonder whether I must take a share of the blame. I did not vote for Corbyn's Labour Party in the last election and it was not because I was opposed to some of his principles, but because of his antisemitic stance, or at least reputed to favour the Arabs, including the Hamas, above the Jews. I can't be dogmatic about this, but if true, then I'm convinced that his lack of popularity with the electorate was spawned by his disregard for the Jews and for Israel's right to exist. It seems so ironic. Antisemitism was always the dogma for the far-right. Therefore what was it doing lurking among the Left? Especially when British political history has demonstrated that the Jews were always favoured by Labour, and in all past elections, the Jewish community had played a vital role in putting Labour into power. By contrast, for a long time, the Conservatives had a level of contempt for the Jewish community, and thus, failed to win their vote."

As I kept on walking, the Hilton Hotel came into view, giving me more time to keep pondering.

"As for this present Tory Government, their policy to restrict immigration to a points system which allowed only the most skilled workers into the UK has made me ponder: Does our PM really favour the better educated? Does he want only the professional to enter the UK permanently? Therefore for the plebs to stay out, they're not wanted? Hmm. This seems to have a smattering of eugenics. And what a surprise! Eugenics had its origins here, right here in England, of all places, and by two white, well-educated Englishmen - Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin.

Charles Darwin, the real father of eugenics.

"And the return of Dickensian England, so it seems. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, a book which featured the young son of a poor family who was left to die of a curable illness while those who were wealthy enough to pay for treatment received it. As the family stood around the grave, watching their son's small coffin being lowered into the ground, who would ever think that it will be a Labour Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, would dream up the NHS centuries later. But by then, for that family, it's a little too late."

I pause to look around as I drew close to my home. Almost there.

"Perhaps it didn't take much of an imagination for Darwin to dream up his evolutionary theories or for his cousin to invent the idea of eugenics. Really, eugenics was already in action for centuries earlier - of some sort. Instead of Hitler's henchmen using it to usher in the Holocaust, it was Mammon which decided who was fit enough to survive, and those who were unfit (that is, the poor) who were left to die of illness. However, this was not Evolution - the development of higher organisms over generations - but man-made Natural Selection through wealth, the elimination of the weak."

I arrived home, dumped the medicine on a nearby table and told my beloved everything that has happened. Then I broke down into tears and wept copiously. While in her arms, she encouraged me to have faith in God, because he knows exactly what situation we're in, our state of health and how the three of us - God, Alex and I will deal together with it like a threefold cord.

Slowly I came to. She is right of course. Having faith in God is the only real solution to all of life's problems.

The Cell Phone, Eugenics, and Darwin

One example of forgetfulness occurred last week when my wife and I booked into a hotel in London for a couple of nights. It was late on the first evening when that characteristic and instantly recognisable sound began to issue from within my rucksack at approximately ten-minute intervals:

Bleep...Bleep...Bleep...Bleep...

"Oh no!" I exclaimed. "The cell phone battery is dead and do you know what? I have forgotten to bring the charger."

After a while, as my wife and I were together in bed, she asked,

"Can you remove the battery? I can't sleep with that sound."

I was reluctant at first, as I'm one of those people, where anything is involved, after taking something apart, I always find it impossible to put back together again. So instead, I arose, took the rucksack and wrapped the Vodaphone in thick clothing and placed it back inside the bag. No use. The bleep has that capacity to penetrate any material, regardless of how thick the wrapping may be. Therefore, I managed to pry the phone open and removed the battery from its place. At last, no more bleeping.

Only to replace the battery once back at home, and seeing no response after connecting with its charger. And so, what was wrong? Was it the phone? Well, the unit screen lit up and it started to bleep again, confirming that the battery and back cover were both replaced properly. So could it be the charger itself? Or even the wall socket? So I plugged the charger into another socket. Still no response. And then the phone beeped. It never does that during the powering-up process. So I guess the fault must be with the charger.

Oh, the mystery of technology! It's as if the length of wire had taken offence at being left behind at home, and decided to call it a day at that particular weekend. After making several inquiries at different outlets and getting nowhere, I decided to buy a new cell phone altogether. After all, I had the present one for several years already. And I wanted a phone - yes, just a phone, a device for making calls and to speak to the person at the other end. None of this smartphone lark, which is basically a miniature mobile computer, complete with the Internet.

Never in a million years would I look like and act like a zombie, walking with half-glazed eyes fixed on the device held in front, not looking where I'm going, and being totally unaware of a fast-approaching cyclist or a crushingly-dumb dog-walker who, in all his wisdom, had decided to let his Staffie off its lead in public. Neither would I ever carry an Internet terminal with me wherever I go. After all, I have recently read that Google is able to track you down through the smartphone, no matter where you may be. After all, I don't feel comfortable having someone gawking at me whilst having a pee at a public restroom.

Therefore, a new mobile phone I was after. As I approached the Vodaphone outlet, this woman, half my age but considerably taller, sprinted to the door just as I was about to enter. I was furious! But all I did was mutter under my breath. British stiff upper lip? Or rather I did not want to create a scene. After a couple of minutes, an assistant appeared from the stockroom behind the shop, and he approached me. I directed him to the tall lady who was browsing nearby. At least she was decent enough to realise what she had done was wrong, or that her conscience was bothering her, because she redirected the assistant back to me, and I proceded with the purchase of a new phone.

With my wife, I spent a couple of nights at a rather expensive hotel in London. It has nothing to do with poshness, this particular hotel was step-free from street to our room, a necessity for one confined to a wheelchair. There are many cheaper hotels around, especially in Pimlico, but all have a flight of steps leading to the front door, and furthermore, each being set in a former Victorian residence, lifts were never included in its design. 

This trip was made to attend a two-day Creation International Conference held at the beautiful and large Emmanual Centre, not far from the Houses of Parliament. Three of us attended, a very good friend of ours from another church, my wife and myself. All three of us are devout Young-Earth Creationists, and this conference was in full support of what is taught in the Bible. Just to add, this was not our initial meeting. Creation International had its first ever conference two years previously at the same venue. Back then, as this time, the talks delivered were very edifying.

Creation International Conference 2018, Emmanuel Centre.

The opening talk I found very powerful. How the authority of the Bible was destroyed in Western society by the advent of Darwinism. For me, this is very serious stuff! Because, although hard it may be to believe, I do see a connection between Darwinism and the behaviour of the female at the entrance of the Vodaphone outlet, namely in a sense, being part of her struggle for survival and with such belief, blocking her mind from the truth of the Gospel.

This also brings grief to me. Yes, I have a concern when I looked in an old edition of The Guinness Book of Records which featured a photo of the largest crowd on Earth, which was made up of Hindus gathering for a national festival in India. The crowd was massive. I thought about babies born, grew up, and living a normal life there, without any opportunity to hear and believe the Gospel of Christ. It was easy for me to be grateful that I was born in a Christian country where the Gospel is, or meant to be, available at any mainstream church I called at, regardless of denomination. What hope is there for these Hindus? Or for that matter, having been born in a Middle Eastern country where Islam has full reign? Or even born in Soviet Russia, or in China, back then both under the grip of atheistic Communism?

Really, what is happening in the world? Why such hostility against the truth of the Bible and the Gospel of Christ? It seems as though there are invisible forces in the air, carrying a ferocious hatred of the Truth, and ensuring that mankind as a whole either rejects the Gospel or kept in ignorance of it, so I was reminded at the conference. Europe under Christian influence? This might have been the case during the 18th Century when the Reformation was underway and sporadic revivals took place. But in the 19th Century, something incredulous happened. How could a tiny acorn grow into a mighty oak tree which branches had covered the entire globe? 

It was at the conference, which boasted a Christian bookshop based mainly on Creationism, that I bought a book, Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview, by Jerry Bergman. A fascinating book, it confirms what I have already suspected, and featured in one of my previous blogs, that there is a direct connection between Darwin's theory of evolution, the survival of the fittest, and natural selection. Darwin's book, On the Origins of Species, was read and absorbed by Darwin's cousin, Englishman Francis Galton, who transferred the universal biological idea of survival of the fittest to social evolution. He wrote, Hereditary Genious, a book on eugenics which became very popular among German scientists and academics. His work was about humans who are physically, mentally or psychologically weak, along with the deformed, the cretin, the homosexual, the non-white, even the politically deviant, all must be wiped off this planet in order to make way for the strong, that is the Aryan Race, which is the tall, white, intelligent German society.

One thing which struck me whilst reading Bergman's book. That is if Darwinism, along with Galton's writings, had never taken off or even ever published, the chance was there would have been no World War II, neither would the Holocaust had ever taken place.

Survival of the fittest involves the mass death of "the weak" in order to make room for "the strong". Not only does this mean the elimination of up to six million Jews, but also the elimination of five million Slavic peoples, making a total of eleven million innocent people exterminated at Nazi death camps during the War. The idea of all this was to allow the German Aryan race thrive and prosper, allowing them to spread across the globe under intense nationalistic and imperialistic beliefs.

Kill the weak! Exterminate the deformed! Put an end to the mentally handicapped! Also, destroy all other "subhumans" including non-Caucasians! Make sure all Jews are exterminated! Make way for the strong! Be patriotic for Germany! Build a worldwide Empire! How diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ all that is!

Academics, particularly Darwin, Galton, Hitler and many of his educated supporters hated the teachings of Christ, even if both Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler, along with others, might have put on a religious front to suit their own purposes or to advance their cause. Yet, Darwinism with its evolutionary theories, the concept of survival of the fittest through natural selection dominates our thinking to the extent that only a tiny minority here in the UK accept the Bible as factual history, whilst the evolutionary concept is constantly pushed as fact by the likes of David Attenborough, Andrew Marr, Brian Cox, and others.

At the opening talk, Creation International Conference 2018.

The only way to combat such deadly heresy is to accept the Bible as the true and historic Word of God. And that includes the historicity of the first chapter of Genesis:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth - Genesis 1:1.

That is no myth, it's history. As much history as the facts about Henry VIII and his six wives. The early chapters of Genesis are not a myth, neither should it be equalled with the legends found in the Babylonian Enuma Elish with its mythical tale of Creation, or from the Gilgamesh Epic, also Babylonian, depicting the legendary version of Noah and the Deluge. Earlier this year we had a graduate preach on the equality of Genesis with the Enuma Elish, thus denying the historicity of the Biblical version and relegating it to mythology.* That is a very dangerous road to take! Perhaps without the graduate realising it, it's not far from believing in Theistic Evolution and eventually to apostasy.

My plea to this graduate and his ilk is: Renounce any mythical dimension of the Creation story and accept and preach the historicity and truthfulness of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. None of these chapters is myth, legend or fable. They are as much factual history as any textbook on British history.

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

*For my blog in direct referral, click here.

A Hidden Secret in the Campground.

Tim and I finally arrived at Corfe Castle camping site one Spring Bank Holiday Saturday in the year 2000, after driving me there in his car. Camping was never my ideal of spending the night, but I knew that Tim loved it, having spent his youth as a member of the Boy Scouts, as well as being a keen rugby player at school. A typical Brit of the times, one who is not given to emotionalism, perhaps rather unlike me. As one of his mates who spent his post-college days residing as a lodger, Tim was described "as sensitive as a brick." It wasn't long after arrival at the rather attractive-looking campsite when each of our tents was fully assembled and secured in place, one beside the other.

But that night, the roof of my tent was resounding with the heavy clatter of raindrop impact, the loud noise keeping me awake. Such torrential downpours are typical in Dorset, a coastal region on the West Country peninsula of England jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. However, this time the heavy rainfall lacked the flashing lightning and crashing thunder which shook the area whilst staying at Lulworth Cove Youth Hostel four years earlier in 1996. 

Tim poked his head through my tent door and asked whether he could share my tent for the rest of the night, as his had sprung a leak and was letting the rainwater in. Of course, I had no objection, he was welcome. 

We spent the next day hiking the West Coast Path towards Kimmeridge Bay. It was during this hike that my foot sunk into a mud puddle created by the previous night's rain, and as I pulled my foot out, the puddle protested with a loud squelch. I then complained why I always preferred the city streets. His response to my excess emotionalism was akin to saying, "Don't be so wimpish! Man up!"

I then told him of my experience as a young boy, when my primary school class made a weekly coach trip to Richmond Park, west of London. On one occasion I found myself sinking to my ankles, with both feet, in mud. I was terrified and cried for help. This was not long after watching a Western on our monochrome TV at home with Dad. The film ended with the villain sinking into a patch of quicksand until he was fully submerged, head and all. I asked my father whether quicksand really exist in real life. He said yes, quicksand exists, but what he didn't say was, "but not in this country". It was after my explanation that Tim had a far better understanding of my fears. Which led me to thinking that childhood is the most vulnerable time of our lives when fears and phobias are quickly established, and can last a lifetime.

There goes two hikers heading west towards Kimmeridge Bay from Corfe Castle Campground, with the car left behind and the two tents remaining upright next to each other. Both of them married. One an Englishman - stoic, stiff upper lip, unemotional, father of three children. The other with Italian blood even though legally British, prone to panic, a trembling lower lip, emotional, and having no children. And oh yes, having hiked alone into the Grand Canyon and through the rainforest of Blue Mountains National Park, having stood on the rim of the crater of a live volcano, and snorkelled at the Great Barrier Reef. Yet panics over a patch of mud in rural England. Such is the likes of me, I guess.

As we husbands are enjoying a weekend away at the glorious and spectacular Dorset coast, our wives are also together back at Tim's house. My wife Alex had more in common with Tim than with me on this one issue - like him, she too enjoys camping, having camped during her childhood too. But none of us were any of the wiser. That is, something else was taking place during that Bank Holiday weekend. I wasn't to know about it until about two weeks later.

It was a Thursday morning, a typical working day. Alex was sure that she was pregnant. So the day before she went to a nearby pharmacist and bought one of those home test strips. Dip it in urine, and if only one coloured bar show, then she isn't pregnant. But if both bars were to become visible...

She went to the bathroom with it and within a few minutes returned. She showed me the result. On the strip both bars were visible, one more stronger than the other, but the difference in intensity did not matter, according to the instruction on the box. Suddenly everything had changed. A new status was awaiting me - fatherhood. I had never forgotten that morning, two weeks after that camping weekend. I wanted to shout out of the window, and I nearly did. The first thing I did, in sheer excitement, was to phone my parents.

Ultrasound scans at our hospital revealed the age of the embryo. They proved that conception had taken place some two weeks before that Bank Holiday weekend. And so, whilst I accommodated Tim in my tent under torrential rain, hiked the coastal trail, and panicked over a patch of mud, back at home a new life had already began in my wife's womb. To me it was a miracle, a fantastic miracle! Eight months later there was I, sitting in a side room at a maternity ward, with my first daughter asleep in my arms. As I looked upon her cute face, her eyes closed in peaceful sleep, it was as if the whole of my life was in preparation for this one event. To add to this, I wasn't in my early to mid twenties but already 48 years old, an age when many are already grandparents.

At that time, I thought how wonderful it must be to create new life. To my mind, to have the ability for parenthood must be the greatest privilege anyone could have. To know that half of my chromosomes combining with the half of my beloved's chromosomes creates new life. Therefore one of the deepest mysteries that has ever existed on this planet is how could one have the nerve for an elective abortion. 

And I write this on the same Bank Holiday weekend as the camping weekend eighteen years previously. It is also the very same weekend that a result of a referendum which took place in the Irish Republic only yesterday. The vote was on whether the 8th Amendment would be retained or repealed. The result has revealed more than two-thirds of the Irish population has voted for the Amendment to be repealed. That means elective abortion will become legal up to the age of twelve weeks into the life of the fetus. Perhaps not as bad as over here in the UK where elective abortions can be given up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, but nevertheless still disdained by the Catholic Church, Ireland's official religion.

Early in my wife's pregnancy, our GP actually asked us if we would consider an abortion. I was horrified even to be asked such a question. I told him specifically that we don't believe in elective abortion. And after waiting for nearly fifty years, would I consider my wife to have an abortion? And as we went home, I watched her tummy gradually swell as the young one grew and developed inside. On one hand excited, yet on the other hand, terrified. Afraid of that dreadful possibility - spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage. And well grounded fears. Our third child died in the womb. We had it buried at a cemetery near the hospital. The impact that had on us was devastating. At least we were comforted by the thought that this person is already in heaven with Jesus - not as a baby but as a fully grown adult whose physical body never had the chance to grow and mature.

Therefore I consider this to be a sad day for Ireland. Even though far greater restrictions will apply. That is the maximum age of twelve weeks after conception, in contrast with our twenty-four weeks over here in Britain. Here in England and Wales, since 2012 there has been an annual average of 185,000 induced abortions.* Or for the last five years, around 955,000 fetuses destroyed in our country, mainly due to social issues or for convenience. Or in other words, the mother can now pursue her career and climb the social ladder, or even to go out and party, or even the father is relieved, now the "nuisance" child is taken out of the way. 

As incredulous all this may seem to me, I can't help believe it to be the deepest mystery that can dwell in the human mind. Yet that is what I see and hear about within our modern British culture. And it's so unfortunate that I'm disliked by a few, even by regular church-going Christians, for my concern over our materialistic and social class-centred culture which allows legal abortions, a philosophy resting on the bedrock of Darwinism, along with its sister train of thinking which shares the same Evolutionary bedrock - eugenics. Coming to think of it, I am wondering whether there is any difference between elective abortion, acceptable in our present society, and eugenics, a terrible philosophy promoted by pre-War scientists to allow the Nazis retain their beliefs in racial and national superiority based on Darwinism. 

Yet on the other hand, could I smell a whiff of hypocrisy among religious pro-life campaigners? Yes, I'm referring to those standing up against induced or elective abortions. The Roman Catholic Church, for one, may indeed make a moral stand against such procedures, but this tends to stand at odds with the Church's past, when so many were slain throughout its history - the Spanish Inquisition being one case in point. And to add to this, the Catholic Church (together with a number of Protestants) turned a blind eye from the Holocaust of the slaying of six million Jews.

How God sees it all, I cannot comprehend, as his thoughts are higher than my thoughts and his ways higher than my ways. But I can imagine God shedding a tear whenever an abortion is carried out. Furthermore, I do believe that every child who dies in the womb, either induced or spontaneous, will go straight to heaven to be with Christ. If that is true, then the heavenly kingdom will be populated by a majority who were never born to see the sun. But again, my thoughts does not necessarily reflect Divine reason, as His thoughts are above my thoughts. His ways is beyond finding out (Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 11:33).

Abortion is a dreadful procedure. And I don't want to say this merely from a religious perspective. Rather, my heart goes out to those who faced extinction through no fault of their own but through the selfishness of their mother, or even under the wishes of a reluctant father. As that, a symptom of a fallen world. A world only Jesus Christ can heal.

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

*UK Gov. Department of Health, Abortion Statistics, England and Wales, 2016.  

Oh Heck!

The waters thundered as it cascaded over a hidden curved cliff of Horseshoe Falls. The very shaking of the ground emphasised the intensity of the force generated as the waters of Lake Erie falls into the Niagara River, leading to Lake Ontario, which is 51 metres lower in elevation. So after standing at the edge for a considerable time, this young and slim 24-year-old backpacker made his way downstream to the start of Rainbow Bridge which spans the Niagara River, which flows to the lake. Sectioned off from the main, traffic-bearing international highway by a steel barrier, is a footpath, from which one can look back towards Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side, and the less impressive Bridal Veil Falls and the American Falls, both near the city of Buffalo, New York State.

Halfway across the bridge there was a double line painted across the path. By sitting astraddle on the lines with one foot in Canada and the other in the USA, for a moment I felt truly international. When I got back up on my feet, I was able to proceed along the footway towards the passport control on the American side. And because I had the passport on me, which back in 1977 carried a valid US visa, I could have passed through into the USA proper there and then. But I didn't, because I knew that the very next day I'll be on the Greyhound Bus on an overnight journey from Toronto to Chicago, crossing the border at Detroit in time for a breakfast stop before switching busses for Chicago, if I can remember, arriving at "the windy city" on the shores of Lake Michigan somewhere between twelve to fourteen hours after boarding the bus at Toronto Greyhound terminal.

Nevertheless, on the southeast end of Rainbow Bridge, I was as much in New York State as anyone in the city of the same name. Sitting on the painted line was something big for me. It represented a spirit of internationalism, something I have always fervently believed in. And in this case it was between Canada and the US, each with its own Head of State - Canada with its Governor, a Commonwealth representative of Her Majesty the Queen, and the other, a President, Head of a Republic (in 1977 it was President Jimmy Carter occupying the White House.) Two very different nations yet sharing the same English language. At least I could be understood easily in either.

It was even easier for the apostles of the risen Christ to travel from one country to another, as far as I know, there was no such thing as passport controls. I guess that at any port around the Mediterranean, one can disembark from a ship, straight onto the street as easily as one stepping off a bus at a High Street bus stop. Even recently in the seventies, all railway stations in Italy were open stations. There were no ticket barriers, and I recall backpacking Italy between 1973 and 1975 and stepping onto the platform from the station concourse without passing through any gates, turnstiles, or barriers. A very different system to that in the UK, where the presence of barriers manned by scowling ticket inspectors made me feel that I couldn't be trusted to board a train without first paying the fare. 

It is a universal culture of inclusiveness. And among the Diaspora, the Jews living in foreign lands of former exiles did not feel any different from those living in and around Jerusalem. And on special occasions they all showed unity despite speaking multiple languages. On one Pentecost festival, Jews from up to fourteen different nations identified themselves (Acts 2:7-12) yet they were all united in worship and purpose. But far more important than this is how the Crucifixion, death, burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was the beginning of a unity of all God's people - Jews and non-Jews - into one body of Christ.

Poor Peter! He was already given by Jesus "the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" of Matthew 16:13-20. He preached the very first sermon after the Resurrection, and three thousand Jews were converted. So it can be said that the apostle used his keys to open heaven to the Jewish people en masse for the first time in church history. But a later incident took far more effort on God's side. Peter had to be shaken by a series of visions before he felt comfortable enough to use his keys at the house of a Roman centurion, with the apostle somewhat reluctantly witnessing the first Gentile conversion since the Resurrection (Acts 10). Some time later, Peter could be seen sitting, or more likely, reclining very tentatively at a table in Gentile company at a house in Antioch. But even then he had some fellow Jews with him, including Barnabas and Paul, among others. Although Peter was not alone in an ethnically diverse company, he was feeling ill-at-ease. Then, when a house servant announced that men sent by James had just arrived, Peter and Barnabas suddenly arose and separated themselves in fear of the new arrivals (Galatians 2:11-14).

The sternest rebuke Paul could deliver to his fellow apostle demonstrates the removal of the ethnic barrier which before separated the Jew from the non-Jew. Peter's fear probably arose from a couple of incidents when just before Jesus healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman, to whom Jesus himself called a dog, and then told her that he came to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21-28). Also Jesus, in sending out the Twelve, specifically instructed them to avoid the Gentiles and the Samaritans alike, and minister to the house of Israel only (Matthew 10:5-6). Therefore I can imagine how cautious Peter must have felt being in Gentile company, without fully realising the effect of the Cross in removing the ethnic barrier. It was after the Cross and after his Resurrection when Jesus instructed his followers to "Go out and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." (Matthew 28:18-20, also Matthew 10:8). No doubt in my mind, Peter thought that his Lord meant to go out and make disciples of all the Jews living in the furthest corners of the Earth. And his retention of such a belief restricted him to minister to the Diaspora, even if as far away as Babylon in modern day Iraq (1 Peter 5:13).

But Paul's rebuke to Peter has shown that the Cross has removed all ethnic barriers, even to the extent that he later wrote,

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28.

Therefore, when a poster appeared on Facebook earlier in the week, I thought, Oh heck!

The poster was a lobby to have Toby Young fired from his post as University Regulator. What was quoted was a real shocker for a responsible person who suppose to represent a country with a Christian constitution. For this is what the poster read:

Toby Young - Theresa May's new university regulator - thinks state school undergraduates are "stains", wheelchair ramps are an example of "ghastly, politically correct inclusiveness" and children with learning difficulties are illiterate troglodytes.

Toby Young, University Regulator.

Oh heck! It took me a while to recover from the shock. During that moment I actually signed the lobby to have him kicked out by the Government. But it was afterwards, when I realised "I'll shoot first, then ask questions" - that I decided to investigate further into such accusations. Although the right-wing national newspaper The Daily Mail had shoved such statements under the carpet and defended his right to keep his job, I had to turn to The Guardian newspaper to try to dig into the facts. On his views of of state school undergraduates being "stains", he was referring to students from state schools entering prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge without achieving the "proper" qualifications for admission. As I see it, if all state school students can be so generalised, then that gives the impression that only privately educated students are clever enough to study at Oxford and only they should be admitted. If this attitude does not have a connection with eugenics, then what does?

But most hurtful was his perception that wheelchair ramps are ghastly, and children with learning difficulties are illiterate troglodytes. The meaning of the word troglodyte is that of a caveman, a Neanderthal Stone Age entity totally deprived of any civil and academic attributes. This is the basis for the science of eugenics which was the groundwork for the slaughter of the Jews during Adolf Hitler's holocaust. And here is Toby Young, a staunch English Tory, a self-confessed snob, and of course, a devout Brexit supporter and voter. It is my desire that Toby Young will never set his eyes on my beloved wife, who is confined to a wheelchair whilst out of doors.

Eugenics and its Dire History.

Lately I have been reading in a journal* about the history of eugenics. In the light of the above revelation, it is an interesting study. 

I have always been aware of the Roman Catholic Church's hostility towards the Jews since the fourth Century. During the eleventh and twelfth Centuries, Catholic Crusaders have a history of persecuting Jews, even to the point of locking them inside their own synagogue and setting the building alight. Rome offered a choice of two options: Convert or die. Not surprisingly, the Jews preferred death in order to keep their race and their faith alive. Even after the Reformation, Martin Luther took a hostile attitude towards the Jews for killing Jesus instead of submitting to him, and called their meeting rooms "Synagogues of Satan." As a result, the Church's hostility towards the Jews became the initial bedrock for the rise of predominately German eugenic scientists and academics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The first of note was Englishman Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. He advocated Social Evolution, the advancement of human intelligence for the betterment of society with the consequential elimination of people with lower intelligence and hereditary physical impairments. This is the basis of eugenics, and such a concept drew in a number of brilliant followers, especially from Germany. These included Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena University, who specialised in zoology, and was a devoted follower of Charles Darwin. In the 1860's he wrote a book, Die Weltratsel (The Riddle of the Universe). In it, he advocated the killing of those with bodily defects, cretins, the crippled, the retarded, along with others who don't match the ideal model of the human race. 

Nineteenth Century Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau used Darwin's theory to discourage the interbreeding of different races while advocating the superiority of Northern European peoples. His works resonated with anthropologist Alfred Ploetz, who was the founder of the German eugenics movement. Ploetz wrote The Fitness of our Race, a book which had heavy influence on future Nazi leaders and intellectuals, along with his 1904 work, The Journal of  Social and Racial Biology. Other disciples of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, J. A. de Gobineau, and Alfred Ploetz included Fritz Lenz, Ernest Rudin, Karl Pearson, Charles Davonport, August Forel, and psychiatrist Wilhelm Schallmayor. #

All these were German and English intellectuals who laid the groundwork for the rise of Nazism, and gave Adolf Hitler the sceptre to "solve the Jewish problem" for the advancement of his own Germanic Aryan Race. Along with the elimination of the Jews, those on the death roll also included the Slavs, along with the imbecile, slow learners, the cripple, the hereditary deformed, the homosexual, the negro, and anyone else who did not fit the ideal model of perfect human society. And whether you may agree with me or not, I cannot help see a connection or continuation of the spirit behind these past academics and that in the likes of Toby Young. 

Darwinism, to my mind, must be thoroughly unchristian because we can see the fruits of it above. Indeed, Toby Young is no Christian, yet he is highly respected by both Government and intellectuals, and many among the middle classes would honour him with a curtsy, I guess, including those who attend church - if they are unaware of his creeds. By such reading and research into his ideas, I can't help but come to the conclusion that Darwin, Galton and Young are out and out against the teachings of Jesus Christ in reference to caring for the poor, the lame, and the needy. Paul's nine fruits of the Spirit is dynamically opposed to Young's philosophy, along with Hitler's. These fruits of the Spirit are Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, and Self control. And these are all apt between every race, every nationality and between every physical state of health and looks.

The Yad Vashem, for the Jews killed in Hitler's Holocaust.

And furthermore, Darwinism is a direct denial of Jesus Christ and his atonement made on the Cross. Evolution denies the historicity of Adam and Eve, their Fall and the beginning of death for all mankind. If death was in existence before Adam and Eve, then the death Jesus suffered has no relevance at all. Instead, if he had ever existed, then he died in vain. 

Jesus instructed his followers to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give (Matthew 10:5-8). Something Toby Young can certainly learn.

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

*Journal of Creation, Vol. 31 (3) 2017, page 103.

# Ibid, page 107.

Correction of error: Chicago is on the shores of Lake Michigan, and not on Lake Superior, as I have originally stated on paragraph #2. This has now been corrected, and I apologise for the original mistake.