Diary of a WIP

Homosexual marriage: trouble ahead

2012-01-28T17:18:00.001Z

It doesn't seem long - not more than a decade or three - since homosexual practice was illegal. Now not only is it legal, but practising homosexuals appear to have been transformed into a group who have to have whatever sort of legal privilege they ask for.

The first book in the Bible establishes marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman. Marriage has long been legally defined as "the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others."

Civil partnerships were introduced to allow homosexuals virtually all the rights and privileges of married couples, the practical differences between marriage and civil partnerships being those caused by the differences in sex.

Apparently this is no longer sufficient. Now there are voices calling for the definition of marriage to be altered to allow marriage not only between a man and a woman but between persons of the same sex. Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and Labour leader Ed Miliband have all voiced their support.

Why the cry for change, if civil partnerships offer virtually the same legal rights as marriage? Because homosexuals insist that homosexual relationships are every bit as normal as relationships within marriage and must not be allowed to appear in any way inferior. But that's not all. There is a second reason. This is a serious attempt to tear down the institution of marriage, divinely appointed at creation and the bedrock of society since.

The Scottish Government held a consultation on the matter which closed in December. When the consultation was opened, the Scottish Government said while no decision had been taken, "the Government's initial view is that marriage should be open to both same sex couples and opposite sex couples" - as though the Government's collective mind was already made up.

A consultation is to be launched south of the border in the next few weeks. Lynne Featherstone, minister in the Westminster Government in charge of equality matters, has said it will be followed by a change in the law. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the reform will be driven through Parliament. Home Secretary Theresa May is reported to have said that the Government intended to introduce same-sex marriage regardless of the consultation; the consultation was merely to help with the "nuts and bolts" of the legislation.

If David Cameron does attempt to change the law, he is not unlikely to have the biggest revolt on his hands since he became Prime Minister. Ministers would be expected to support him; other MPs have been promised a free vote. Opponents say more than 100 Tory backbenchers might vote against homosexual marriage.

MP David Burrowes said an attempt to change the law would open up a can of worms and a legal minefield about freedom, religion and equalities legislation.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, said in an interview in the Telegraph today: "Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. I don't think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is. It is set in tradition and history and you can't just change it overnight, no matter how powerful you are."

It would be wrong to underestimate the pressure for change.

If it comes to it, will Christians be united in their support for traditional marriage, or will there be some voices in the wilderness and remaining Christians acting as though they were unconcerned?

Brave New World again

2012-01-24T10:59:00.001Z

It's been an interesting few days.

The Daily Mail reported that abortion clinics are to be allowed to advertise abortion on TV and radio (with effect from April 30).

Said Dan Boucher, of CARE: "The idea that abortions should be freely advertised on TV along with toothpaste and breakfast cereal says something very sad about the way in which the values of our consumer culture, of acquiring and disposing, are penetrating our way of life."

Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: "Having an abortion is a deeply traumatic experience that can lead to further medical and physiological complications. A 30-second advert is not the place to discuss and promote this medical procedure."

MP Nadine Dorries said: "What this is actually going to do is desensitise what abortion is and the seriousness of it, and making it sound like it's as easy as having your lunch. Broadcasters will be making profit through advertising revenue off the back of a service which ends life. It's appalling."

Cranmer writes: "It is curious that, at a time when all advertising for cigarettes and tobacco is banned from our TV screens in order to avoid promoting and propagating the habit, we should move towards permitting advertisements for abortion. Only a decade ago, HM Government (spurred on by EU directive) outlawed tobacco advertising in order to mitigate the detrimental effects on the nation's health. Why is lung cancer of a higher political priority than mental health? Is the life of an emphysemic pensioner worth more than the child in the womb?"

BioEdge, the bioethics website based in Australia, reports on a couple of interesting stories.

First, a company in Philadelphia suggested that in these days of economic difficulty women should consider "well paid, part-time positions" as egg donors and surrogate mothers. "Wages" range from $20,000 to $35,000.

Professor Art Caplan, of the University of Pennsylvania, said it was "most outrageous."

Second, Dr Anna Smajdor, of the University of East Anglia, said pregnancy and childbirth are so barbaric, painful, risky and socially restrictive for women that public funding should be diverted urgently to the development of artificial wombs.

Ectogenesis - artificial gestation - is still the stuff of science fiction, but may be possible.

"Either we view women as baby carriers who must subjugate their other interests to the well-being of their children or we acknowledge that our social values and level of medical expertise are no longer compatible with 'natural' reproduction."

Another reminder of how remarkably prescient was Aldous Huxley's satirical Brave New World, published as long ago as 1932.

David John Anker and a life worth living

2012-01-21T14:52:00.001Z

Dave and Trish Anker had one daughter, Jasey, when Trish became pregnant again. Everything seemed perfect until Trish's 20-week ultrasound.

The ultrasound technician went for a doctor. The doctor's first words were "I'm so sorry." The baby had Potter's syndrome - a shortage of amniotic fluid which prevents normal development of lungs and kidneys and means the baby is likely to be stillborn, or at the most, to survive a few hours.

One of the first things the doctor said was that they should think about terminating the pregnancy. "We didn't hesitate," writes Trish, "and told him we would never even consider that, since we believe only God can create life and only He has the right to end life. . .

"Dave and I cried the whole way home. . .

"We begged God to heal him and spent a lot of time during the following months with our hands on my growing belly feeling our baby kick and squirm, and made sure that Jasey felt included in those times so he would feel real to her as well. We hoped and prayed that David knew how much we loved him" - they had decided to call the baby David John - "and counted every day of my pregnancy as a blessing. That is not to say it wasn't an extremely difficult time! We struggled to accept God's will, and though it is painful for me to admit it now, there were times as I grew bigger and more uncomfortable that I wished for it all to be over."

The night before a further ultrasound, Trish went into labour. It was a difficult delivery. During the delivery, David's heart stopped beating.

"One of our nurses cleaned him up and placed him into my arms. He was still warm and merely looked as though he was sleeping. Dave and I held him and kissed him with tears streaming down our faces. Then Dave went to call our family to meet our son. I will never forget the sound of my mom and sisters weeping as they came down the hall. . .

"We held him for hours and told him how much we loved him. When it was finally time to let him go, it was so hard to let the nurse take him and put him in his little bassinet. . .

"To this day we have regrets about the short time we spent with David. . . but the one thing I will NEVER regret is that we chose not to end his life. He was our son, loved and longed for, and his life, although short, has touched our lives and the lives of our family and closest friends unforgettably. However short, his life was truly worth living."

Some people today would look down their noses at Dave and Trish Anker. But can it be so wrong to have such a high opinion of the value of human life?

Reunited at last

2012-01-19T12:46:00.000Z

Randy Alcorn tells a beautiful true story on his blog.

While she was in her teens, a farm girl named Minka was raped. Her parents sent her to a home for pregnant girls, with the understanding that she would not be able to bring her child back home.

Minka gave birth to a blonde-haired little girl with a dimpled chin. She called her Betty Jane. A pastor and his wife wanted to adopt the baby. "I loved that baby so much," said Minka. "I wanted what was best."

Betty Jane was renamed Ruth. Minka had no further contact with her, but wrote dozens of letters to the adoption agency, who kept her informed of the child's progress - until there was a change in management at the agency, and Minka lost touch.

The years rolled by. Minka married and had more children. When she was in her nineties, she prayed a prayer. "Lord, if You would just let me see her," she said. "I promise You I will never bother her."

One day the phone rang. A man began to ask about Minka's background. It was Ruth's son, seeking his mother's natural family.

Not long afterwards Ruth and her son arrived at Minka's apartment with a massive bunch of flowers. They talked, looked at photographs and caught up on the years they'd missed.

Minka is now 100, and Ruth 82. They are still in regular contact.

Says Dianna, a daughter from Minka's marriage: "I have never seen my mother so happy."

Says Randy: "The story is so powerful because the rape, as evil as it was, in no way diminished the mother and child connection, and the joy they've experienced in the past six years. It's a great example of how a child conceived by rape is as precious as a child conceived by love, because a child is a child. The point is not how she was conceived but that she was conceived. She is not a despicable 'product of rape' but a unique and wonderful creation of God.

"After I had shared similar thoughts in a message at my church in 1989, a dear woman in her mid-twenties came up to me, sobbing. I'll never forget what she said: 'Thank you. I've never heard anyone say that a child conceived by rape deserved to live. My mother was raped when she was twelve years old. She gave birth to me and gave me up for adoption to a wonderful family. I'll probably never meet her, but every day I thank God for her and her parents. If they hadn't let me live, I wouldn't be here to have my own husband and children, and my own life. I'm just so thankful to be alive.'

"Women often think that a child conceived by such a vile act will be a constant reminder of their pain. On the contrary, the innocence of the child often has a healing effect. But in any case, the woman is free to place the child for adoption, which in some cases is the best alternative. Aborting the child is an attempt to deny what happened, and denial is never good therapy. One woman who had been raped and given birth to the baby said to me, 'A baby is the only beautiful thing that can come out of a rape.'"

You can read the whole thing here.

Keeping on going

2012-01-14T10:16:00.000Z

In a race, it's not the one who starts well, but the one who finishes well who wins the prize. The Christian life is like that. It's not the one who starts well, but the one who keeps on going to the end of the road who gains the reward.

There are difficulties, there are distractions, there are temptations. But there are plenty of encouragements. Isn't it remarkable how many dozens of times the Bible tells us to "fear not"? Have you noticed how many times we are instructed to "stand fast"?

Christians are promised God's love, God's protection, God's provision, God's power and God's presence. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" we are asked. "Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," the Bible says.

"He will not leave you nor forsake you," we are promised. "Be steadfast, immovable." "Let not your heart be troubled," said Jesus. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

"Let us hold fast our confession," says Hebrews. "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith." "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering." "Do not cast away your confidence." "Let us run with endurance that race that is set before us."

I love the story of Polycarp, the Christian in the 2nd century who had been a disciple of the apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. In his old age, Polycarp was the well known and well loved leader of the church in Smyrna, in present day Turkey. It was a time of Roman persecution, and Polycarp was going to be in trouble because he was not willing to burn incense to Caesar. His friends urged him to flee, but Polycarp refused. He eventually agreed to move to a small estate outside of town.

When the Romans found him there, they escorted him to the local proconsul. Told to curse Christ and offer a pinch of incense to Caesar, Polycarp replied: "Eighty-and-six years have I served Him, and He has done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my King who has saved me?"

It cost him his life. He was sentenced to be burned at the stake in the arena.

More than 50 years ago, I came to Christ and He took me in. I know my sins are forgiven. I know my future is secure. I have a home in heaven which He has gone to prepare for me. I have friends and relatives there waiting for me. Over the years I have failed Him, often. But He has never once failed me. So why should I believe He is going to start now?

Go on. . . laugh

2012-01-12T12:44:00.001Z

There's a need for laughter in this sad old world.

There's a little boy named Micah who really is the happiest little character. He just loves to laugh.

His grandfather, a retired minister who appropriately enough is an expert on relieving stress, says of him: "Baby Micah has brought our whole family hours of joy with his contagious laughter. He's a contagious laughing machine who enjoys life to the fullest, with a few whimpers sprinkled in to remind us that he's human."

When Micah was eight months old his parents made a video of him laughing fit to bust as his father tore up a letter advising him his job application had been turned down. They put the video on You Tube. So far it has been viewed 34 million times.

If you feel like a smile and would like to see Micah laughing his socks off, you can watch the video by clicking here.

"A merry heart does good, like medicine," the Bible says (in Proverbs 17, if you want to know).

So, go ahead. Take a minute off and give your laughter muscles some exercise.

Where owning a Bible can be fatal

2012-01-10T12:53:00.001Z

Each January the organisation Open Doors publishes its World Watch list of countries where Christians are the most severely persecuted.

On the 2012 list, North Korea is No 1 for the 10th successive year. The remaining nine in the top 10 - and a total of 38 of the 50 countries on the list - are all countries where Muslims predominate.

Nowhere in the world is persecution of Christians more fierce than in North Korea. (Kim Jong-Un recently replaced his late father, Kim Jong-Il, as the country's leader.)

Owning a Bible there could get you killed, or sent to a labour camp. In 2010 hundreds of Christians were arrested; some were murdered. Christians can't share their faith with their children until they are old enough to understand the dangers. Despite the risks, the church is growing: there are an estimated 400,000 believers.

Prayer is requested for an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Christians suffering horrific conditions in labour camps there.

The other countries in the top 10 are Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia, Somalia, Iran, the Maldives, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Iraq and Pakistan. Pakistan made the top 10 for the first time.

Nigeria remains the country with the worst atrocities in terms of lives lost. More than 300 Christians are known to have been martyred in Nigeria last year, though the actual count may be double or triple that number. (The total is probably greater in North Korea, but it is impossible to confirm the number killed in North Korea because of the country's isolation.) The extreme Islamist group Boko Haram has destroyed more than 50 churches and killed 10 pastors in Nigeria since 2009.

China still has the world's largest persecuted church - an estimated 80 million - but has dropped to 21 on the list, due in large part to house church pastors learning how to play "cat and mouse" with the government.

You can see more details of the list here.

While sitting in a pew or in a comfortable chair at home, free to believe what you want to believe, spare a thought for those laying their lives on the line for their Christian faith.

Assisted killing: Don't open the door

2012-01-05T14:50:00.000Z

The Independent Commission on Assisted Dying published its report today. It suggested the law in England and Wales should be changed to allow assisted dying for the terminally ill, with safeguards.

If you had asked me a year ago what the report would say, I would have told you it would suggest the law in England and Wales should be changed to allow assisted dying for the terminally ill, with safeguards.

How so?

The commission was a sham. Calling it a commission might suggest it was Government appointed. It wasn't. It was sponsored by Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, and financed by supporters of assisted suicide.

Its chairman was Lord Falconer, an advocate of assisted suicide. He chose the 11 members of the commission. Nine of them were known supporters of assisted suicide. Forty organisations - including the British Medical Association - and more than 40 individuals declined to give evidence to the commission because of its evident bias.

I expect the findings of the commission will now be trumpeted by proponents of assisted suicide as evidence that the law on assisted suicide needs changing.

They say it is unfair that 20 or 25 people a year should have to travel to Switzerland to have help to end their lives. There would be 1,200 a year having their lives ended if we had a law like that in Oregon, and something like 13,000 a year if we had a law like that in the Netherlands, according to a 2005 House of Lords report.

The law does not need changing. The present law, properly applied, is a safeguard against pressure on the elderly and the disabled to end their lives.

And please don't tell us about adequate safeguards. There wouldn't be adequate safeguards. When abortion was decriminalised, we were told it was for a very small number of people in desperate circumstances. Within a short time, we had abortion on demand.

The day the law on assisted suicide is changed in the UK, if that day ever comes, will be a sad day.

Critiques of the commission and its report can be found here.

It's a two-way business, Mr C

2012-01-03T11:06:00.002Z

A concerted programme is needed for religious literacy to be recovered in the Civil Service, Parliament and local authorities, says the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, writing in the Telegraph at the New Year:

In his recent speech on the place of the Bible and Christianity in our national life, David Cameron showed how the political development of the nation is inextricably bound up with Christian ideas. He challenged the Church, and specifically the Church of England, to provide moral and spiritual leadership. Such a challenge is long overdue, but the role of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in national life is more important than the status of any particular church. Whether or not this or that church provides what the Prime Minister is asking for, this tradition must remain central to our public life.

Much of what Mr Cameron said is music to my ears. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Many obstacles will confront him if he tries to give effect in legislation to things he has said in his speech.

One issue is religious literacy in the Civil Service, Parliament and local authorities. What Mr Cameron said about Christian ideas being embedded in our constitutional arrangements is no longer understood in the corridors of power. A disconnected view of history and the fog of multiculturalism have all but erased such memory from official consciousness. A concerted programme is needed if this literacy is to be recovered. Church leaders can help with remedial action, but this has to do with the place of Christianity in schools, and the teaching of history. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, knows that history cannot just be about dates and personalities, but must be a narrative of a nation's emergence from the mists of time. For such a project, the place of Christianity is absolutely central. Education on citizenship cannot ignore the fact that our cherished values have biblical roots. . .

The proper relation of religion to science is also vital. Young people must be taught to appreciate both the experimental methods of science and the ultimate values which religion offers. Such a conversation must take place in the classroom if we are not to continue being divided by "scientistic" and religious fundamentalists. . .

The Prime Minister is aware of the vast scale of social service, prison work, relief of poverty, and the like that churches and their agencies undertake. He is right to expect their help with his vision of citizens working for the common good. Churches will welcome greater participation in building up communities. But they cannot simply be surrogate service-providers. What they do springs from their beliefs; the authorities must respect these, if there is to be genuine collaboration. . .

Bishop Nazir-Ali has hit on a point that many others have missed: wanting Christian ideals is all very fine, but you can't have Christian ideals without Christianity, and the authorities, generally speaking, have not much time for Christianity.

Finding the solution to this problem is the challenge for the church - and, in particular, for Christians whose ministry is prayer.

Facts and figures

2011-12-31T15:20:00.000Z

Christians are by far the largest religious group on the planet, with nearly 2.2 billion followers, making up about a third of the world's population.

So says a study of global Christianity, based on data from 232 countries and territories, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. (The study does not mention practice or belief; it simply counts as Christian anyone who says they are.)

The percentage of the world's population claiming to be Christian is about the same as a century ago.

While approximately two-thirds of Christians lived in Europe a hundred years ago, Europe has only 26 per cent of the world's Christians today. More than a third of all Christians today are in the Americas.

The United States has the world's largest Christian population, with more than 247 million, followed by Brazil and Mexico. China is among the top 10, with an estimated 67 million.

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen the biggest growth in Christian population, from about nine million in 1910 to about 516 million today. That's nearly a quarter of the world's Christians. Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia are among the top 10.

According to the study, half the world's Christians are Catholic, 37 per cent Protestant and 12 per cent Orthodox.

Islam is the world's second largest religion, with about 1.6 billion followers - just under a quarter of an estimated world population of 6.9 billion.

The number of people in England and Wales calling themselves Christian dropped from 77 per cent to 70 per cent between 2005 and 2010, according to the Government's latest Citizenship Survey. It showed Christians were less than half as likely to attend a place of worship as followers of other religions.

The number of people saying they have no religion went up from 15 per cent to 21 per cent between 2005 and 2010.

The Citizenship Survey was introduced by the Labour Government in 2001. This one will be the last. The current Government considered the £4 million cost of each survey could not be justified.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL.

Hugs, kisses and tears

2011-12-27T12:44:00.000Z

Not everyone had a good Christmas. There were shells and bullets in Syria, bombs in Nigeria and bombs in Iraq.

Asia Bibi, a Pakistani mother of several children I wrote about a few weeks ago, spent her third Christmas behind bars. More than two years ago, Asia, who is a Christian, went out to work in the fields with some other women, who were Muslims. There was a discussion about the relative merits of Christianity and Islam.

The Muslim women claim Asia made a disparaging remark about the prophet Mohammed. Asia was hauled before a Muslim court charged with blasphemy, and sentenced to death by hanging. Sentence has not yet been carried out.

Earlier this month she had a visit by her husband and children, organised by the Christian couple who run the school attended by Asia's daughters. Asia is able to see her children only twice a year. Physical contact is not permitted, but the school director pleaded with the prison authorities until the family were allowed to meet in another room.

There were lots of hugs and kisses until it was time for the family to leave, when the kisses turned to tears.

Asia's husband Ashiq Masih is in hiding and unable to work: relatives of people accused of blasphemy are often targeted by Islamic extremists. Her daughters Sidra (18), Esha (13) and Eisham (12), who is disabled, have not yet given up hope that the family will be united.

The family is receiving support from the Christian community, but is still in great need.

Barnabas Fund is helping with provisions.

Look, there's your Dad

2011-12-22T12:17:00.001Z

I was bemused by people spending vast amounts of money on Christmas illuminations without any real appreciation of what it was they were celebrating.

I was bemused by people saying you musn't call Christmas Christmas in case it offended someone. Whatever in the world could they be thinking about?

I was blessed by the words of the angel to Mary (in Luke 1:31 - 33):

Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

I was blessed by the Christmas carol O Holy Night (beautifully sung here on You Tube):

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth. . .
Christ is the Lord!. . . .

I was blessed by the Christmas song This Little Child. Fellow blogger Denny Hartford points out that you can not only hear it here but also download it free of charge.

I was blessed by the story of airman Matthew Lancaster, who travelled from Kenya, where he was training for service in Afghanistan, and arrived to see his son's school nativity performance with just a minute to spare, with his wife and women in the audience in tears.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

It's OK to rejoice. It's Christmas

2011-12-21T17:42:00.003Z

Some people say Christians shouldn't observe Christmas because December 25 probably wasn't the date of Christ's birth and the festival on that date has pagan origins.

I disagree. There's nothing wrong with having a couple of days' holiday. There's nothing wrong with giving presents to people we love. There's nothing wrong with remembering the birth of the most wonderful person ever to visit the planet. And people have an openness to spiritual matters at this season. What a glorious opportunity to share the story of God's love.

As someone put it, "When God wanted to save the world, He didn't send a committee. He didn't write a book. He didn't send a substitute. He sent the best He had - His only Son.

"The Infinite became finite. The Immortal became mortal. The Creator became the created. The Almighty became a helpless baby. The Deity was wrapped in rags. The King of the Universe was born in a stable."

For unto us a child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon his shoulder.
And his name will be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6).

God created a beautiful world. We messed it up. God sent His Son. We stuck Him in a dirty stable. He did wonderful things. We crucified Him. And to cap it all, He rose from the dead. Only God could do that.

It's a personal thing. He didn't just come for the world. He came for me. He died for me, to pay the price for my sins. He rose for me, to prove that it was done.

We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that he, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone (Heb 2:9).

This Christmas there will be people in church who normally don't go to church. Many of them who go to cheer on their children as they act out the story of the Nativity. There's nothing wrong with singing a few carols and remembering the birth of a baby in Bethlehem a long time ago.

But will they know He grew up to be Saviour and Lord? Do they know He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Do they know that one day He will rule the nations? Will they realise that one day everyone will meet Him face to face?

My most memorable Christmas, without a doubt, was the Christmas before I was converted to Christ. God was already speaking to my heart. I had always gone to Christmas parties and sung a few carols; I thought it was the thing to do at Christmas. But I had begun to realise that God was interested in me. There was something about this that was real.

I didn't enter into the benefits until some weeks later. Christ is God's gift to the world. Like any other gift He has to be received.

As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God (John 1: 12).

There were two things I needed to do.

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.

For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on him will not be put to shame" (Rom 10:9 -11).

I believed. I confessed. Christmas (and the rest of the year) has never been the same since.

May you have a wonderful, real, God-blessed, old-fashioned Christmas.

Marriage is best

2011-12-16T16:54:00.002Z

Peter Saunders highlights a recent report by a group of 18 family scholars summarising new findings from the social sciences on the state of marriage and family life.

The report, Why marriage matters, published by the Institute of American Values, lists 30 conclusions about the positive benefits associated with marriage.

In the latter half of the 20th century, divorce was the greatest threat to child wellbeing and the institution of marriage in the US. Children, it says, are now more likely to be exposed to a cohabiting union than a parental divorce. But the intact, biological, married family remains the gold standard for family life. Children are most likely to thrive economically, socially and psychologically in this sort of family.

Peter Saunders says there were similar findings in the Centre for Social Justice report Breakdown Britain in 2006, which found the breakdown of marriage and the family was the key driver of Britain's collapse. (The percentage of children born outside marriage rose from eight per cent in 1970 to 46 per cent in 2009.)

"Many of the mental and physical problems that daily fill our GP surgeries, hospital wards and outpatient departments are symptoms of this. The main drivers, the five 'pathways to poverty,' are all correlated with the collapse of marriage: family breakdown, educational failure, economic dependence, indebtedness and addiction. . .

"Children from a broken home are twice as likely to have behavioural problems, perform worse at school, become sexually active at a younger age, suffer depression, and turn to drugs, smoking and heavy drinking. A parent who has a serious drug problem or is addicted to alcohol can exhibit destructive behaviour patterns which can destroy the quality of life for the other parent and for children, leading in turn to family breakdown. . .

"The church has at this time an amazing opportunity to model marriage and family to a society where alternative models have failed.

"Marriage is a virtually universal human institution because it was originally God's idea. . .

"Let's celebrate, demonstrate, promote and protect marriage as the vehicle of blessing that it is for husbands, wives, children, parents, extended family, community and ultimately the world."

When doctors disagree

2011-12-15T15:59:00.001Z

The medical profession seems to have shot itself in the foot. Part of it, at least.

There has long been argument about damage caused to women by abortion. The abortion industry refused to accept there was such a thing as post-abortion syndrome. A few women might get a little upset at first after abortion; most were relieved to be free from an unwanted pregnancy. If there were mental health problems after abortion, they would be problems that were there beforehand.

That was not the experience of counsellors who worked sometimes for months with women with lives torn apart by problems after abortion, usually caused by feelings of anger, guilt and remorse.

Research into abortion and mental health problems by academic Priscilla Coleman was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in September. It was based on an analysis of 22 separate projects which analysed the experience of 877,000 women, 163,831 of whom had had an abortion.

It showed that women who had had an abortion had an 81 per cent increased risk of mental health problems, a 34 per cent increased risk of anxiety disorders, 37 per cent higher risk of depression, 110 per cent higher risk of alcohol abuse, 220 per cent higher risk of cannabis use and a 155 per cent increased risk of trying to commit suicide.

Nearly 10 per cent of mental health problems could be directly attributed to abortion.

Which brings us up to recent events.

Now research undertaken by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, commissioned by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and funded by the Department of Health, says that an unwanted pregnancy does involve up to three times higher risk of mental health problems, but that the risk is no different whether the woman with the unwanted pregnancy has an abortion or gives birth.

According to the law, abortion is still illegal, but a person will not be guilty of an offence under the law if abortion is carried out on certain grounds. One of the grounds is that two doctors are of the opinion, formed in good faith, that the pregnancy has not exceeded its 24th week and that continuing the pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to physical or mental health than if the pregnancy were terminated. Ninety-eight per cent of abortions are carried out on this ground.

Dr Peter Saunders, chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship, points out that if there is no greater risk to health caused by continuing the pregnancy than by aborting the child, then 98 per cent of abortions carried out in Britain are illegal and doctors signing forms permitting them are likely to be committing an offence.

So will 98 per cent of abortions in Britain be no longer allowed to take place? I think not.

Doctors signing forms will still be allowed to claim, despite all the evidence, that there will be greater risk of damage to health by allowing the pregnancy to continue than by abortion, and doctors supporting the research will still be able to claim there is no greater danger to health caused by continuing pregnancy, and both will probably convince their respective audiences.

So long as they don't try to bring the two arguments together.

The amazing life of Alice Herz-Sommer

2011-12-09T17:46:00.001Z

Alice Herz-Sommer was one of five children born to a Jewish family in Prague.

She started playing piano at something like five years old. By the time she was in her teens, she was recognised as an immensely talented pianist.

In 1931, she met her husband, also a musician. They married two weeks later. In her 30s, she was known as a concert pianist throughout Europe.

In 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, and life for Jews became a nightmare. In 1943 she, her husband and son were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp, a "show camp" where artists, writers and musicians among the inmates were forced to perform for Red Cross inspections.

They lived on a little black coffee and a little watery soup. Mrs Herz-Sommer gave more than a hundred concerts for ill and starving inmates. "Music kept us alive," she says. "This was their food."

Her husband was sent to Auschwitz, then Dachau, where he died of typhus. Mrs Herz-Sommer and her son survived the war. Of 15,000 children sent to Theresienstadt, her son was one of only 130 who lived.

In 1949 she went to Israel and taught music. "It was a beautiful life in Israel," she says. "Inspiring. Musicians, scientists, writers - they all came and lectured. I was very happy."

Some 25 years ago, she and her son moved to London. "English people are so polite," she says. "They are cheerful and helpful and I admire their humour. Admirable people. I love them." Her son died in 2001, aged 65.

She attributes her long life to her optimism. "That is the reason I am still alive. I look at the good. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive." And despite her suffering, she has never hated. "Never."

"Life is beautiful, extremely beautiful," she says. "When you are old, you appreciate it more. When you are older, you think, you remember. You care and you appreciate, you are thankful for everything. For everything."

Mrs Herz-Sommer still practises piano for several hours each day.

She recently celebrated her 108th birthday. She is the oldest known Holocaust survivor. We wish her well.

Dangerous days

2011-12-08T14:28:00.001Z

It's been an open secret that Iran has been working to obtain nuclear weapons for long enough - but the International Atomic Energy Authority's report last month about its "serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme" had added to the pressure.

The problem is that Iran's leadership is driven not just by political ambition but by Shia Islamic "end times" theology. Iran's Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are followers of the Mahdi, or Twelfth Imam. Khamenei claims to have had a personal meeting with the Mahdi and to be his personal representative on earth.

Muhammed ibn Hasan ibn Ali, the Twelfth Imam, disappeared while a young boy hundreds of years ago. Shia Muslims like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad believe he will reappear in the last days, and all the world will then become Muslims. A way to hasten his return will be to destroy Israel and the United States.

Iran was expected to have nuclear weapons before now. Complex viruses planted on their computers, the assassination of nuclear scientists and sabotage at nuclear installations in Iran have delayed, but not ended their efforts. A recent forecast is that Iran could have five nuclear bombs by April, 2012 - four months away.

Respected commentator Joel C. Rosenberg points out that Iran calls Israel "the Little Satan" and the United States "the Great Satan." As long ago as 2005 Ahmadinejad forecast that there would soon be a world without the United States and Zionism.

Israel takes the threat to its security seriously. In recent days the Israelis have been moving weaponry around Israel - presumably in preparation for either a pre-emptive strike against Iran or for defence against a strike by Iran or its proxies. Israeli newspapers have been full of headlines about the threat of war.

The United States is taking the threat to its security not so seriously.

Scientists say the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear device exploded 100 miles above the United States could disable the US infrastructure, leaving the whole of the US without power, transport, computers, heating, water supply or sanitation. A nuclear missile fired from a ship up to 200 miles off its coastline could affect 70 per cent of the US population.

The Christian will rejoice because he believes he knows who holds the world in His hand. We live, nevertheless, in dangerous days.

Euthanasia by the back door?

2011-12-06T11:42:00.000Z

A few years ago the UK's Department of Health approved the Liverpool Care Pathway - so called because it was developed at the Royal Liverpool Hospital - for use in NHS hospitals.

Patients can be placed on the pathway "in the last hours or days of life," enabling food and water and drugs treating their condition to be withdrawn "to avoid unnecessary and burdensome intervention," and if necessary the patient sedated.

Doctors say the pathway has prevented suffering for dying patients. Predicting the time of death is difficult, however, and some patients taken off the pathway have recovered and lived for a considerable period.

Critics say patients are sometimes placed on the pathway too early, and sedation can mask their subsequent condition. The pathway, they say, can be reduced to a "tick box" ritual, and there could be a refusal to take the patient off the pathway once placed on it. With food and fluids removed and the patient sedated, death would then become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Department of Health says doctors must always discuss with relatives whether to place patients on the pathway.

A report of an audit this year by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute, in collaboration with the Royal College of Physicians, just published - it says care of the dying overall was of high quality, but concerns remain regarding education and training - shows two things: the number of patients with terminal illnesses on the Liverpool Care Pathway has almost doubled in the past two years, and in one NHS trust where patients have been placed on the Liverpool Care Pathway, fewer than half their families have been informed.

Overall, where data has been supplied by hospitals, doctors discussed plans with relatives in 94 per cent of cases, but this still leaves thousands of families who were not advised what doctors were doing.

Why are families not told? Because it's easier not to? Because families might object? Because doctors think they know best? Or is this euthanasia by the back door?

We should be told.

Remembering to say thank you

2011-12-05T10:46:00.001Z

I remember a good many years ago the church I attended at that time often used to sing an old hymn with a chorus that went like this:

Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done;
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

After we had sung the chorus for the last time, the senior pastor would add a second chorus of his own:

Count your blessings, name them two by two,
Count your blessings, see what God can do;
Count your blessings, name them four by four,
And it will surprise you there are millions more.

In my mind's eye, I can see him still.

Broadly, there are two classes of people: those who see the negative in every situation, and complain; and those who see the positive in every situation, and are thankful. I know which group of people is the happier.

Gratitude needs to be expressed. "In everything give thanks," says Paul (1 Thess 5:18). Somebody said the saddest thing for an atheist is when he feels thankful and he has nobody to thank. I don't know about that, but I do know the rest of us aren't in that situation.

"Enter into his gates with thanksgiving," says the Bible, "and into his courts with praise" (Psa 100:4). So don't dash straight into God's presence with a shopping list. Thanks first.

The other day I was looking at the number of instructions there are in the Bible to give thanks. If you were to count up the number of exhortations to thanksgiving in the book of Psalms, I'm sure you'd soon lose count.

I have decided I want to recognise the things I have to be thankful for more readily and to express my gratitude more often.

How about the following?

There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people. - R. H. Blyth.

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? - G. K. Chesterton.

And this:

If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. - Rabbi Harold Kushner.

The Gog and Magog War (2)

2011-12-03T11:17:00.001Z

We were talking about the Gog and Magog War, a battle described in Ezekiel 38 and 39 which will take place, the Bible says, "in the latter days" (38:16).

A great army from a confederacy of nations will invade Israel "to take great plunder" (38:9 - 13). Plainly Israel will have something at that time other nations want. Chemicals? Oil? Natural gas?

The invasion will take place when Israel is dwelling in apparent safety (38:11), a condition which does not apply just now.

Hebrew words translated horses and bows and arrows could be used to describe tanks and present-day missiles. There will be such slaughter on the mountains of Israel that it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Does Ezek 38:20 refer to a natural disaster or a nuclear disaster? Ezek 39:12 - 16 possibly hints at nuclear warfare.

The result of the war will be that "the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward," and "the nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel" (38:16, 23; 39:6, 7, 21, 22, 28).

American Bible teacher Chuck Missler makes an interesting point. The nations mentioned in Ezekiel 38 will travel considerable distances to invade Israel: there is no mention of Israel's near neighbours. What will have happened to them?

In Psalm 83 the Bible prophesies another battle involving Israel in which Israel's close neighbours are mentioned. Many Bible commentators believe this battle will take place before the Gog and Magog War. Can it be that Israel's immediate neighbours will have been dealt with in that earlier war? It's impossible to say with certainty, but it's an interesting suggestion.

One thing is certain. When everything is finished and done, Israel will still be there. The truth of God's word demands it.

The Gog and Magog War (1)

2011-12-01T14:26:00.001Z

The Bible is a book of history. It is also a book of prophecy. It tells what happened, how it happened and why. It also tells of things that are yet to happen. The Bible is more up to date than today's newspaper. It is more up to date than tomorrow's newspaper, if you can imagine that.

Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 tell in graphic detail of a battle that is yet to happen; a battle that has come to be known by Bible students as the Gog and Magog War (38:2).

Magog, Persia, Cush, Put, Libya, Gomer, Togarmah, Meshech and Tubal, it says, together will invade Israel. The names of peoples and places change over time. These names describe what is now Russia, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Germany and Turkey.

The invaders will be a great army; so many that they will cover the land of Israel like a cloud (38:9, 16). There will be a great earthquake (38:19). God Himself will fight against the invaders with great rain, great hailstones, fire and brimstone (38:22).

The slaughter will be such that it will take seven months to bury the dead (39:12).

When will this war take place? What will be the cause of the war? Will nuclear weapons be involved?

'Hang on. I just shot someone'

2011-11-25T17:56:00.001Z

General Richard Dannatt, until his retirement Britain's Chief of the General Staff, is a committed Christian.

Writing in the Guardian, he says the military needs to have not only good leadership and sound morals, but a spiritual dimension to sustain the soldiers. He quotes a British private who had just shot his first enemy fighter in Afghanistan:

"Afterwards, I sat there and I thought 'Hang on. I just shot someone.' I had a brew and that. I didn't get to sleep that night. I just lay there all night thinking, 'I shot someone.' It's something strange. A really strange feeling. You feel like, you know, a bit happy with yourself - I've done me job, it's what I've come here for, know what I mean? He's Taliban and I've got one of them. You feel quite chuffed about it.

"Then you're feeling like, you know, well you know, sad. You're thinking. . . well, you know. . . you know, the, the geezer's another human being at the end of the day, like. Then you get the feeling, well, you know, it's either him or me. And then you're thinking. . .

"I think people get, like, you know, religious then as well. You're thinking, well, in the bigger picture, if there is a Geezer up there and a Geezer downstairs, what does that mean to me now I've just shot someone? Is that me done for? Am I going to hell or what? And all of that went through me mind that night, for hour after hour after hour."

Young soldiers may not understand the politics that led to war or the ethical considerations involved in their doing what they're doing. They may not have a Christian background, but they still have, it seems, an awareness of the value of human life.

The tragedy of Asia Bibi

2011-11-21T14:18:00.001Z

Asia Bibi lives in Pakistan. She is a wife and the mother of five children. She is also a Christian.

One day she went out to work in the fields with some other women, who were Muslims. She is said to have drawn water for them, which they refused to drink because they said it was contaminated by having been handled by a Christian. They tried to convert her to Islam, but she stood up for her faith in Christ. The women said she made a disparaging remark about the prophet Mohammed; this she denies.

Asia was taken to court, charged with blasphemy against the prophet, and sentenced to death by hanging.

The Muslim cleric in Asia's home town has promised if Pakistan does not execute her, he will kill her himself. Another cleric has promised a $6,000 reward to anyone who murders her. Asia is kept in solitary confinement in case she is attacked in prison. Her family is in hiding.

A government minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic, who spoke up for Asia, was shot dead by Muslim extremists. Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who called for a pardon for Asia, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards. The judge at the trial of the bodyguard had threats on his life and was forced to leave the country.

It is a year since Asia was condemned. She has appealed against the conviction, but it may be years before her appeal is heard. Her case became known abroad, and many outside Pakistan have complained to the Pakistani authorities. If her sentence is commuted, there will be uproar in Pakistan. If she is executed, there will be indignation abroad.

Meanwhile, Asia Bibi languishes in a tiny cell, still under sentence of death, a victim of Islam and religious hatred.

PVS patients are misdiagnosed

2011-11-18T17:26:00.001Z

Patients in so-called persistent vegetative state are awake, but according to doctors, unaware. (I dislike using the expression vegetative state. No human being is ever a vegetable. Vegetables are things you can throw away.)

According to a study published in the medical journal the Lancet, new research at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and University Hospital in Liege, Belgium, shows that despite rigorous assessment, many patients said to be in PVS are misdiagnosed.

Previous studies have shown that fMRI scans can uncover awareness in apparently vegetative patients, but such scans are not always available and can produce confusing results. The new research used "a considerably cheaper and more portable technique" - an EEG machine, which records brainwaves - on 16 patients diagnosed as being in PVS.

Although they were unable to move their limbs physically, the patients were told to imagine moving their right hand and toes. Three patients produced repeated and reliable brainwave patterns which showed they were aware of the commands and responding to them.

Judges in UK courts have given permission for food and water to be withdrawn from more than 40 PVS patients, causing their lives to be ended.

Here is the question: how many patients dehydrated to death have been aware but unable to respond?

And here is another question: will the knowledge that some patients are awake and aware prevent this happening in the future?

American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith agrees with me about the expression persistent vegetative state, which he says should be changed to "persistent unconscious state." The v-word, he argues, "demeans, diminishes, dehumanises and degrades the moral value of the patient."

And don't think, he says, that learning a patient is conscious will lead many to advocate against their dehydration. Although permission to dehydrate a minimally conscious patient was recently refused in a case in the UK, many have argued that someone being minimally conscious is even more reason to pull the plug because they will be suffering from the potential knowledge of their limitations.

"We really need to change our values," he says, "so that all of us are embraced and accepted as moral equals regardless of our cognitive states."

Words of wisdom?

2011-11-15T14:18:00.000Z

We've all seen signs outside churches bearing messages varying from "WHAT'S MISSING IN THIS CH__CH?" to "SEVEN PRAYERLESS DAYS MAKE ONE WEAK." (I would have thought it would have taken considerably fewer than that.)

Are such signs effective?

The Gadsden Times reports on one church that thinks so. The church is situated at the side of a busy road, and 32,680 vehicles pass by each day.

People to whom the church is mentioned say "Oh, I know your church. I read your sign every day." One man recounted with tears in his eyes how when he was getting a good old telling-off from his wife, he remembered reading on the sign "MEEKNESS IS NOT WEAKNESS" and managed not to lose his temper. A woman on her way to commit suicide read a message on the sign which said simply "HANG IN THERE!" and abandoned her suicide attempt.

If you wanted to have such a sign, where would you get all the sayings to put on it? Apparently if you google "church sign sayings," you'll get hundreds. One site here has more than a thousand. Enough to keep you going for ages.

How about "PRAYER IS THE PLACE WHERE BURDENS CHANGE SHOULDERS," "A BIBLE THAT'S FALLING APART USUALLY BELONGS TO SOMEONE WHO ISN'T," and "IT'S NOT TOO LATE. JESUS IS WAITING"?

If the wind isn't too strong

2011-11-12T07:19:00.003Z

Here's a story to encourage you. Or put you off your breakfast, depending how you're feeling this morning. To encourage you, I hope.

Everett Penrod is an American. He was ordained to the ministry in 1942, became a US Army chaplain, served in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the Korean war and the war in Vietnam.

He has written 13 Bible-based novels. He teaches a Bible class at a local church. He's a trained pilot. Flying, he says, is one of his favourite hobbies.

For 35 years he competed in athletics. He had to give that up while he had hip and knee replacements and recovered from a brain injury - a subdural haematoma - sustained in a car crash. He got back on the athletics track last year.

Last month he joined 10,000 others in the World Senior Games in St George, Utah, where he won four gold medals and set two new world records for his age group in the 50 and 100 metres.

By the way, he's 96 years old.

"Usually when a competitor sets a record, the judges will test you for steroid use," he says. "When I finished the race and set a record, the judges didn't test me." He asked them why. "They said at my age I needed steroids."

Everett intends to continue running, he says, "if the wind isn't too strong."

A poor choice, Mr C

2011-11-10T12:16:00.001Z

That doughty defender of marriage and the family, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, insists it is important that people understand the difference between living together and marriage.

He says a live-in relationship is more likely to break down than a marriage relationship. He blames broken homes for funnelling children into the gangs that ran rampant during the summer riots, and says failure to support marriage will lead to further social breakdown.

Research by the Jubilee Centre based on published data covering 14,103 households and 22,265 adults supports his view. That research showed couples who lived together before marriage were 15 per cent more likely to divorce, and those who had previously lived with a different partner were around 45 per cent more likely to divorce.

Although the average length of unmarried relationships rose from two-and-a-half years to three-and-a-half years between the 1980s and the 2000s, fewer than one in four unmarried couples lived together for more than six-and-a-half years. Couples living together at the birth of their first child were six times more likely than married couples to split up by the time the child was five and four times more likely by the time the child was 16.

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, says when a couple marry, they make a lifelong commitment to each other in the presence of witnesses. A "trial lifelong commitment," he says, is a contradiction in terms.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said he supports a change in the law to allow homosexuals to marry. ComRes, commissioned by Premier Christian Media, asked churchgoers at the end of October if they support or oppose the Government's proposal to legalise same-sex marriage.

The results show that of 544 interviewed, 11 per cent supported the proposal and 83 per cent opposed. Six per cent didn't know. Fifty-seven per cent indicated that as a result, they would be less likely to vote Conservative in future.

Commentators are pointing out that one per cent of the UK population identifies itself as homosexual, and some five million people are regular churchgoers. If David Cameron is risking alienating 57 per cent of them, they say, that's a pretty poor political decision.

Time for churches to wake up

2011-11-07T15:48:00.000Z

UK equalities minister Lynne Featherstone has announced that by the end of the year there will be a system in place to allow same-sex civil partnership ceremonies to be conducted on religious premises. There will be no delay, it seems, for the implementation of an item on the homosexual agenda.

The Church of England says it will not bless same-sex couples. The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to the move. Evidently a tiny minority of churches is to be used to set an example to the others.

Miss Featherstone says no churches will be compelled to perform same-sex services; to do so will be voluntary. There will be an "opt-in" system for churches wanting to take part.

No doubt when the system is in place homosexual activists will sue churches not willing to take part on grounds of discrimination and courts will be keen to uphold anti-discrimination laws.

Andrea Williams, of Christian Concern, puts it well: "We have no doubt about what will happen. Churches will inevitably be coerced into performing these ceremonies, and those who don't will be vilified and sued. Nobody will seriously believe the Government's assurances to the contrary, given the way in which previous assurances on civil partnerships have been shattered."

The day may not be too far off when ministers not willing to perform same-sex partnership ceremonies in church will have to resign - or face the full weight of the law.

Churches, wake up.

The Scottish Government has launched a consultation on the possible introduction of same-sex marriage and the possibility of allowing religious ceremonies for civil partnerships. It says that while no decisions have been taken, "The Government's initial view is that marriage should be open to both same sex couples and opposite sex couples. . . It is clear that some same sex couples would prefer marriage to a civil partnership, as the appropriate way to declare and formalise their commitment to each other."

The consultation closes on December 9.

Sexualising children in school?

2011-11-05T15:35:00.000Z

One of my daughters obtained contraception from the school nurse when she was only 14 after being heavily pressured by her then boyfriend, Jo Simpson writes in the Family Education Trust's Bulletin.

I knew nothing about this for over three years until she told me about it a few months ago. We have had numerous conversations this year, and my daughter (now 18) is convinced that making contraception available to pupils on school premises puts pressure on them to have sex.

If contraception had not been available at school, she feels there is no way she would have gone to the doctors or to the chemist to get contraception and therefore would not have given into the pressure she was under. She subsequently ended the relationship with her boyfriend and has carried the regret of not waiting ever since.

I am deeply concerned that people who are strangers to our children are able to give them contraception without the consent of their parents and without our children being able to fully understand the possible consequences of what they are doing. Sex is a life-changing and a life bringing act. There is no condom on earth that will protect a child from a bad reputation or a broken heart, or prevent regret. . .

Sex education in schools needs to be looked at in conjunction with the sexualisation of children. It amazes me how the government makes decisions that are only serving to fragment the family further and further, and destroying society's foundations.

Although the Government has said that it has no plans to change the law on sex education, it is under pressure from both MPs and peers to make sex education compulsory from the beginning of primary school and to remove or limit the right of parents to withdraw their children from sex education lessons.

People have just until the end of the month to take part in the Department of Education's consultation on PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education, including sex and relationships education. They can point out, if they wish, that sex education should not be compulsory in primary schools and all schools should be free to decide how sex education is provided in consultation with parents.

Details of the consultation can be found here. A briefing paper can be found here. Responses must be received by November 30.

'Instability and uncertainty' in the Middle East

2011-11-04T18:57:00.000Z

New rumours of an imminent Israeli strike against nuclear installations in Iran were flying everywhere this week, fuelled by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speaking to the Israeli Government about the threat from Iran, a rush of activity by Israel's military forces and the US publicly seeking to dissuade Israel from making the first strike.

Then it was said that the US was organising an attempt by the US, Britain and Israel to persuade Iran that an attack could become a reality if Iran does not give up its drive for a nuclear weapon. It is reported that soon Iran will have all its nuclear facilities deep underground where they will be invulnerable to attack.

Finally, it was suggested that Israel is preparing to defend itself against the fallout from a possible US-backed NATO attack on Syria aimed at deposing Syria's President Assad. Assad has threatened that if Syria is attacked he will attack Israel, creating a wider conflict that would make it more difficult to topple his regime. Syria has tens of thousands of missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon similarly has tens of thousands of rockets ready for use against Israel; Hamas terrorists, sworn to Israel's destruction, are armed to the teeth in Gaza.

"If I had to summarise what will happen in our region, I would use two terms: instability and uncertainty," Prime Minister Netanyahu told his parliamentary colleagues on Monday.

Palestinians in Gaza fired a barrage of rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel in the past week, with 35 missiles falling in one day. They were using a Grad multiple rocket launcher believed brought from Libya. They are reported to have obtained others from the same place.

From the time the alarm sounds, Israelis have just 15 seconds to find shelter. Young children are particularly liable to emotional damage from the constant threat of incoming missiles.

There have been some remarkable escapes from death and injury in rocket attacks. One school has been turned into a makeshift synagogue for Sabbath services every Saturday for 40 years. Last Saturday the man whose job it was to open up was in hospital, so there was no service. When it would normally have been busy, the empty school was hit.

"It was a miracle," said one congregant. "People should come to see what a great miracle it was."

Others were not so fortunate. One man was killed and others injured.

It will be worth it all

2011-10-27T15:33:00.000+01:00

Catalyst, a magazine published by CARE, the Christian charity, tells how Robin Mark, the Christian worship leader and songwriter, had a tough-looking character with a skinhead haircut march up to him at a Belfast conference.

Robin began to wonder if his number was up. "I honestly thought this was going to be an aggressive encounter," he said.

The skinhead demanded to know if he had written the song Not By Might. Robin admitted that he had. "I want to thank you," said the man. His wife had died and he had felt suicidal. The song had pulled him back from the brink.

"That song," he said, his eyes filled with tears, "has saved my life." Then he turned and walked off.

God wants to use every one who belongs to Him. Sometimes He lets us know when it's happened. Often He doesn't. That's a good thing; otherwise we would begin to think it was us, and it isn't. It's just God's grace working through us.

It's not easy being a Christian. There are a lot of hard things to go through. But one day, when we see it all and understand, we'll say "It was worth it. Oh yes, it was worth it."

It's a man's issue too

2011-10-22T11:37:00.000+01:00

The day my girlfriend told me she was three months pregnant I was absolutely devastated. She had already told her parents, now I had to tell mine. I made sure Dad wasn't around when I told Mum, hoping that she would understand. When Dad arrived home Mum told him my girlfriend was pregnant. By the time I got home they had already been to see my girlfriend's parents to discuss the situation my girlfriend and I had got ourselves into. Together our parents decided that an abortion would be the best for all concerned.

My girlfriend and I were both 17 years old and didn't have a clue what to do about the problem we had. My Mum assured me that it wasn't a baby but just a piece of lifeless tissue, shaped like a kidney. I now know that at three months the baby was fully formed in every detail, completely individual to any other human being, never again to be duplicated.

I spent the next few days convincing myself that my life would have been ruined if I had had a baby to support. Besides, I wanted a bigger and better motor bike than I already had. I had my whole life ahead of me. I wasn't going to let a baby spoil everything for me.

I don't think my girlfriend really wanted to have the abortion, but I talked her round to everybody else's point of view. Our parents made arrangements for the abortion at the Hazel Grove clinic.

The day my girlfriend went for the abortion I was at work. I was feeling all kinds of emotions. I was feeling guilty, but at the same time relieved. To make matters worse, when my girlfriend got back from the clinic she went hysterical at me. She was feeling guilty and sick at what we had done. For months after she would break down with bouts of uncontrollable sobbing.

I had no answers for her; I felt as guilty as she did. She used to count the weeks and months up to the time when the baby would have been born. The week the child should have been born was the worst. We were sitting in my bedroom talking and she began to sob again, mourning the loss of our child.

I have a poem she wrote that night. Unknown to her I kept it and it haunted me for years.

THE POEM

I love my little baby,
But he's not here at the moment!
Because he's been dumped in a dustbin,
Somewhere,
Poor little thing,
He would have been born in about a week,
I wish I'd kept him.

There's nothing more I can say about abortion that the poem doesn't say; except that abortion is not just a woman's issue because it also affects men. It is only because of Christ's great love and mercy that I know I have now been forgiven and set free from the guilt I had suppressed for so many years.

Next Thursday, October 27, is the National Day of Prayer about abortion. Seven million babies have been aborted in the UK since abortion was decriminalised. Ninety-eight per cent of abortions are for social reasons. One per cent are because of suspected disability.

The day of prayer is organised by Image, a Christian pro-life organisation. While I was thinking about the day, I came across the testimony above in an Image publication.

People are asked to arrange some prayer on the day. Would you be able to do that?

Details of the day, free prayer guides and a PowerPoint presentation can be downloaded here.

'They won't communicate with me any more'

2011-10-18T16:12:00.000+01:00

Abby Johnson started work at an abortion clinic in America's lone star state because she cared about women in crisis and wanted to do the right thing.

She believed the purpose of Planned Parenthood, whose clinic it was, was to prevent unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing the number of abortions, and that the organisation saved the lives of women who otherwise might resort to some back-alley abortionist.

She worked there for eight years, eventually as clinic director. Then one day, because of a staff shortage, she was asked to assist in an abortion. Unusually, it was an abortion guided by ultrasound.

On the ultrasound screen she saw a 13-week-old baby - head, arms, legs, even tiny fingers and toes. The baby started kicking, as though trying to move away from the probe, struggling to turn and twist away. Then it crumpled. Finally, it was gone.

"Then it hit me. . . It wasn't just tissue, just cells. It was a human baby. And it was fighting for its life. . . What I have told people for years, what I've believed and taught and defended, is a lie. . .

"This thought came from deep within me: Never again."

Abby resigned from the clinic. Planned Parenthood went to court for a gagging order preventing her from speaking about her work at the clinic. The judge threw out the application. Abby is now a pro-life activist.

This month is the second anniversary of her leaving the abortion industry. She writes:

"I am a better mother, a better wife, a better friend, and a new creation in Christ. These two years have been the best of my life. . . My marriage is better than it has ever been.

"I never realized how the evil of my job had crept into my life at home. Now we are free of that. I value my daughter more than I ever have. I never really saw motherhood as a gift; now I am able to see that it is the greatest gift we are given as women.

"So many of my friends are still there, in those clinics. People that won't communicate with me anymore. Good people who are misdirected. I am now the enemy. . . I feel broken for all of those that are still caught in the justification of the abortion industry."

Militant Islam - and apathetic Christians?

2011-10-15T15:40:00.000+01:00

British Government ministers appear willingly blind to the threat from militant Islam.

A radical group, Muslims Against the Crusades, has launched a campaign to turn areas of Britain - Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield and Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets in London - into Muslim enclaves ruled by sharia law and outside British jurisprudence.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, intelligence chiefs have warned Government ministers that 2,000 extremists based in Britain are actively planning terrorist activity of some kind, and 200, at a conservative estimate, are planning suicide bombings in Britain.

While the threat from militant Islam grows, non-Christians seem unable to understand why Christians in the West provide so little support for persecuted Christians elsewhere. In countries under Islamic rule, countless Christians have been massacred or caused to flee while Western churches have stood by apparently unconcerned.

It was announced a few days ago that the British Government is cutting overseas aid to countries where homosexuals are persecuted. Persecuted Christians, apparently, don't count.

Respected Israeli commentator Caroline Glick points out that a decade ago there were 800,000 Christians in Iraq. Today there are 150,000.

When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, Christians made up 80 per cent of Bethlehem's population. Today they are less than 20 per cent. Since Hamas "liberated" Gaza in 2007, Christian churches, convents, book stores and libraries in Gaza have been burned and Christians killed and assaulted. No one has been arrested for anti-Christian violence.

In 1946 the majority of Lebanese were Christian. Today, less than 30 per cent are Christian. In Turkey, the Christian population has dwindled from two million at the end of World War I to less than 100,000 today.

In Syria, Christians once made up nearly half the population. Today four per cent of Syrians are Christian. In Jordan half a century ago 18 per cent of the population was Christian; today, two per cent.

"Sadly for the Christians of the Islamic world," she says, "their cause is not being championed either by Western governments or Western Christians. . . Aside from Evangelical Protestants, most Western churches are. . . uninterested in defending the rights of their co-religionists in the Islamic world. . .

"Instead, over the past decade these churches and their related international bodies have made repeated efforts to attack the only country in the Middle East in which the Christian population has increased in the past 60 years - Israel. . .

"It is unclear what either Western governments or Western churches think they are achieving by turning a blind eye to the persecution and decimation of Christian communities in the Muslim world. As Sunday's events in Egypt and other daily anti-Christian attacks by Muslims against Christians throughout the region show, their behaviour is not appeasing anyone. What is clear enough is that they shall reap what they sow."

A Muslim spring, and a Christian winter

2011-10-14T16:52:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday more than a thousand Coptic Christians dared to stage what was supposed to be a peaceful protest in Cairo. They were protesting violent state-supported attacks on Christians by Muslim groups and the recent burning of churches.

It was not long before they were attacked by angry Muslims and by the army. They were beaten, shot and dragged through the streets. Two armoured vehicles belonging to the army drove into the crowds of unarmed demonstrators, going backwards and forwards, mowing people under their wheels. What some eye-witnesses saw was so horrific that I would not want to repeat it here.

Between 20 and 40 Copts were killed and hundreds wounded. Some were dragged into dark alleys to be dealt with. One had his throat cut.

Egyptian authorities put out a report that soldiers were being killed by Copts. The report was later discredited. It was said that no soldiers had died.

The US President issued a statement expressing concern for "the tragic loss of life among demonstrators and security forces" and appealing to "all parties" to refrain from violence.

Said one commentator: "Perhaps I ought to join the president in his concern and call for restraint. I call upon the security forces to refrain from killing Christians, and upon Christians to refrain from dying."

As another pointed out, the Muslim spring in the Middle East is a Christian winter.

How could such a thing happen as happened in Cairo on Sunday? Mark Durie explains that Islam demands that a state be ruled by sharia law, which demands that non-Muslims live under dhimmi status.

"The 'crime' of the Copts in Aswan province was simply that they wished to repair their church. This is opposed by the (theological) logic of the dhimma pact, which states that non-Muslims are not allowed to repair places of worship, on pain of being treated as 'people of defiance and rebellion,' from whom 'safety and protection' have been withdrawn. In other words, such a person can be killed and their belongings plundered (because they are entitled to no protection under Islamic law).

"For some pious Muslims in Egypt today, the act of repairing a church is a flagrant provocation, a breach of the peace, which amounts to a deliberate revocation of one's rights to exist in the land. This becomes a legitimate topic for sermons in the mosque, as the faithful are urged to use their hands to defend the honor of Islam. It is seen as no injustice, and even a duty, to destroy the church and even the lives of Christians who have the temerity to repair their churches. Likewise those who go to the streets to protest church destruction are also rebels who have forfeited their rights to 'safety and protection.'"

Melanie Phillips wonders if Messrs Obama and Cameron realise what they have helped unleash by promoting the removal from office of Egypt's President Mubarak. It is hard to know, she says, which is the more terrifying - the malevolence displayed by the West towards Israel, or its sheer craven stupidity.

'Putting the fear of God' into atheists

2011-10-11T16:12:00.001+01:00

William Lane Craig is research professor of philosophy at Talbot Theological College in California. He is also a renowned Christian apologist who has debated some of the world's best known atheists. He comes to England this month to lecture on the rational grounds for the truth of Christianity and to debate the existence of God with leading atheists.

He will speak between October 17 and 26 in public meetings in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cambridge, Oxford and Southampton. You can find details of his meetings at www.premier.org.uk/craig.

Atheist Sam Harris describes Craig as "the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into my fellow atheists." Professor Richard Dawkins, arguably Britain's best known atheist, has declined to debate with him, and offered a variety of weak excuses for doing so.

(Newspaper columnist and president of the British Humanist Association Polly Toynbee agreed, to many people's surprise, to debate him in London, but later withdrew, saying "I hadn't realised the nature of Mr Lane Craig's debating style, and having now looked at his previous performances, this is not my kind of forum.")

The invitation to Richard Dawkins to a public debate in Oxford remains open. If he fails to turn up on the night, the meeting will go ahead, but an empty chair will be placed on the platform and allowed to remain there through the meeting.

You may remember that two years ago increasingly aggressive British atheists paid for posters on the sides of buses saying "THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE."

The organisers of the meeting in Oxford have now put posters on the sides of Oxford buses saying "THERE'S PROBABLY NO DAWKINS. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY OCT 25TH AT THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE."

I like it.

The king's song (2)

2011-10-08T17:15:00.001+01:00

Prayer is not just asking for things. Whatever else prayer is, prayer is also spending time with your closest, dearest Friend.

The Song of Solomon says (in the King James Version of the Bible): "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."

The Song of Solomon is a love story between the king and a Shulamite maiden. The king and the maiden have secret places on the stairs where they can meet to be together. He longs to see her and to hear her voice.

The Song of Solomon is also an allegory of the spiritual relationship between the Christian believer and her Lord. Imagine the Shulamite maiden is the believer and the king is the Lord Jesus.

If you are a believer, you have a secret place where you can meet with Him. The secret place is on the stairs. There may be steps to climb to reach it.

You may have family responsibilities which make it difficult. When you try to get there, the telephone rings, the baby cries and there's a knock at the door. Suddenly, you're desperately tired and your mind is filled with all manner of things.

You want to be there, because you want to be with Him. But did you know that He is longing to see you, longing to hear your voice? "Let me hear your voice," He says, "for your voice is sweet, and your countenance is lovely."

Here's the wonderful thing. He's the Creator of the universe. All things were made by Him, the Bible says; without Him was not anything made that was made. And you're just you.

But every time you go to meet Him in the secret place, He's there, waiting.

Choosing life or death

2011-10-07T14:28:00.001+01:00

A recently published study of the parents of Down's syndrome children revealed that:

* 99 per cent said they loved their Down's syndrome son or daughter

* 97 per cent said they were proud of their Down's child

* 79 per cent felt their outlook on life was more positive because of him or her

* 95 per cent felt their other children had a good relationship with him or her

* 84 per cent felt their other children were more caring and sensitive to others because of him or her

* Five per cent were embarrassed by their Down's child and four per cent regretted having a child with Down's.

One parent said: "I've learned the good lessons of patience and that its rewards are a smile - and that is always enough." Another said: "Our son is the greatest joy and motivation of our lives." Said a third: "What at first appears to be the worst possible thing that could be happening can turn into the best possible thing."

Of brothers and sisters (12 years old or older) of Down's syndrome children, 96 per cent said they liked their Down's sibling; 94 per cent said they were proud of him or her; and 88 per cent said they were a better person because of him or her.

But now note the following facts:

More than 90 per cent of unborn babies with Down's syndrome are aborted. To put it another way, three babies are aborted every day in England and Wales because of Down's syndrome. Tests now being perfected which will enable Down's to be identified in the early weeks of pregnancy simply by examining a blood sample from the mother are expected to increase the number of abortions of Down's babies still further.

There were 2,044 responses in the survey mentioned above. The study's authors, Dr Brian Skotko of the Children's Hospital in Boston, USA, and colleagues, concluded that the parents' decision to abort the Down's syndrome baby or to continue with the pregnancy can depend on the information provided by their health care providers. And mothers reported that the information they received was oftentimes inaccurate, inadequate, and in the worst cases, offensive.

Will somebody please take some notice?

A sensible answer required, please

2011-10-01T16:15:00.001+01:00

You may be aware that the BBC's religious and ethics department (whose head is a Muslim) has suggested broadcasters replace the terms BC and AD (Before Christ and Anno Domini), when referring to dates, with the terms CE and BCE (Common Era and Before Common Era) because it is necessary to avoid offending non-Christians.

You may also be aware that following a complaint by a customer at a Blackpool cafe, police threatened to arrest the Christian owner for displaying the words of the Bible, projected on a nice pictorial background, on a DVD screen on the inside wall of his cafe. It is suspected that the person who complained is a homosexual.

The majority of people in the UK are at least nominally Christian. When is someone going to be threatened with arrest for offending one of them?

Could someone please provide a sensible answer to the above question?

Judge stands up for right to life

2011-09-30T17:19:00.002+01:00

Since the Tony Bland case in 1993, UK courts have granted permission for food and water to be withdrawn from more than 40 patients in so-called persistent vegetative state, thus causing their deaths.

This year came an application for permission to withdraw food and water from a patient not in persistent vegetative state, but said to be "minimally conscious." The 52-year-old woman, referred to in court as "M" - it is not possible to identify her for legal reasons - was brain damaged by a viral disease in 2003. She is unable to breathe unaided or feed herself.

The application came from her family. Her sister told the Court of Protection "She can't move, she can't speak, she's fed through a tube, she can't even enjoy a cup of tea. She's got no pleasure in life. It's not a life, it's an existence, and I know she wouldn't want it."

Care home staff said M sometimes spoke, smiled and cried tears of emotion.

After a 10-day hearing, Mr Justice Baker this week refused the application. He said the preservation of life remained a fundamental principle of the law.

M did experience pain and discomfort, and her disability severely restricted what she could do, but she did have some positive experiences and there was a reasonable prospect those experiences could be extended. He urged the family to work together with doctors and carers on a revised care plan.

The judge's decision is the right one. Apart from the ethical problems involved in taking a human life, allowing the application would have been another step - and a big step - down the slippery slope towards random euthanasia.

The king's song (1)

2011-09-27T12:41:00.001+01:00

There is a little book in the Old Testament called The Song of Solomon. 1 Ki 4:32 says Solomon spoke 3,000 proverbs and his songs were 1,005. Of all the songs that Solomon wrote, this is apparently the song.

In the whole book the name of God is nowhere mentioned, and some people wonder what it's doing in the Bible at all. Examine it, and it's one of the most spiritual books in the Bible.

It appears to be a love story between the king and a Shulamite maiden. Consider it an allegory of the spiritual relationship between the Christian believer and her Lord. As you read it, imagine, if you will, that the Shulamite maiden is the believer, the king is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the daughters of Jerusalem are other believers.

In the first chapter, the believer is newly come to faith, aware of her love for the Lord but not even aware of where to go for fellowship with Him ("Tell me, O you whom I love, Where you feed your flock, Where you make it rest at noon").

By the second chapter, she is aware of her risen Lord, wonderfully victorious out there in the world ("Behold, he comes Leaping upon the mountains, Skipping upon the hills") but content to wait in her own home until He comes to her.

She has some difficult experiences, sometimes at the hands of those she would least expect ("The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; The keepers of the walls Took my veil away from me").

Through the book, you can see how her faith grows. In the second chapter, it's "My beloved is mine, and I am his." In the sixth chapter, it's "I am my beloved's, And my beloved is mine" - more concerned now that He should have all of her than that she should have all of Him. And in the seventh chapter, it becomes just "I am my beloved's, And his desire is towards me."

He invites her "Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, With me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, From the top of Senir and Hermon, From the lions' dens, From the mountains of the leopards" - to the spiritual heights, where together they can look out at all the Promised Land below.

Until eventually she can say "Come, my beloved, Let us go forth to the field; Let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; Let us see if the vine has budded, Whether the grape blossoms are open, And the pomegranates are in bloom."

God wants us to come to the place where we are concerned not just with ourselves, our own family, our own church, our own town (though certainly that), but where He is able to share His heart with us regarding all He is doing, everywhere.

More violent times to come

2011-09-24T16:32:00.002+01:00

Well, it happened. For a day or two it didn't seem certain what he would do. Then yesterday Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made an official application to the United Nations for a place for an independent Palestinian state as a full member of the UN.

The UN General Council - with one or two exceptions - gave him standing ovations as he made his case.

The trouble is that the Palestinians have refused to recognise Israel, whose territory they want to acquire, and have refused to negotiate with Israel. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the General Council that the Palestinians wanted a state without peace. They should first make peace with Israel and then get their state.

The General Council ignored him and voted for the Palestinians. The decision will need to be ratified by the Security Council. I understand they will discuss it on Monday. Full ratification is unlikely to be forthcoming. Either way, Abbas is now a hero among his supporters.

The decision is both a victory and a disaster. It achieves nothing on the ground and will surely lead to further violence. An appeal for peaceful demonstrations in Israel yesterday led to stone-throwing at Israeli soldiers. More violence is said to be planned.

Rockets from Palestinians in Gaza are continuing to fall on civilian populations in southern Israel. Esti Lehman, of Moshav Shuva, a mother of three children from five months to four years old, wrote in the Israeli media of having only seconds to find shelter after the alarm sounds and having to make, with three small children and only two hands, the terrible decision of who to grab first.

"They're shooting at me, at my children," she wrote. "This is war."

Will there be peace between the Israeli Jews and their Arab neighbours? I think not.

The Bible speaks of a time to come of terrible suffering for the Jews, but a time when many will come to faith.

It also speaks of a day when the curse will be taken from the earth, the lion will lie down (literally) with the lamb, and there will be no wars. But alas, not yet.

We live in momentous days

2011-09-17T15:21:00.002+01:00

Next week the United Nations will be asked to make a decision which is likely to have momentous consequences. The Palestinians will apply for recognition as a United Nations member state.

Israel has said it is willing to negotiate with the Palestinians, with no preconditions. The Palestinians are refusing to negotiate with Israel, or recognise Israel's right to exist. Instead, they will go direct to the United Nations.

Next Wednesday, September 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver a major address to the UN General Assembly, putting Israel's case (and challenging the nations to deal with Iran in Iran's bid for nuclear weapons).

Next Friday, September 23, the Palestinian Authority will formally apply for full membership of the United Nations. To succeed, it will need two-thirds of the votes of the General Assembly's 193 nations, which it is expected to get. For full membership, it needs the votes of five members of the UN Security Council. Of the five, Russia has agreed to support the Palestinians' bid. If France, China and the UK vote in favour, the United States will - reluctantly - veto the decision. This would leave the PA not a full member of the UN, but recognised as a nonmember state.

A decision at the UN would effectively tear up agreements previously made between Israel and the Palestinians, and could lead to violent conflict in Israel, even war.

Israel is a legally constituted nation, with its own sovereign territory. The Palestinians have been offered a state on more than one occasion, but have hitherto refused the offer. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, they do not want a state as much as they want to see Israel wiped off the map.

Most people either laugh at or choose to ignore biblical prophecy, which is perhaps strange in view of the fact that all biblical prophecy of events to date (including those which took place in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago) has been exactly fulfilled.

The Bible says that God gave the land of Israel, which He calls His land, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants for an everlasting possession. It says that eventually all nations will be gathered against Israel to battle. It says, what's more, that God Himself will bring all nations against Israel to battle, so that He can deal with them.

He will judge the nations, He says,
"On account of my people, my heritage Israel,
Whom they have scattered among the nations;
They have also divided up my land" (Joel 3:3).

If you would like to read of those days, start with Joel 3 and Zechariah 14. "The day of the Lord's vengeance" will not be a pretty sight.

No wonder the Bible instructs us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

The right idea - a little bit late?

2011-09-16T15:58:00.000+01:00

Basildon Academy in Essex, opened last year with almost 1,600 pupils at a cost of £45 million, was not doing well, according to this morning's newspaper.

Parents said graffiti covered the walls, there was little homework set, none of it was marked, and pupils would get up in the middle of class to go for a cigarette. Truancy, fighting, bullying and teachers unable to cope were commonplace.

Then a new headteacher took over.

On his first day he sent 109 pupils home for wearing wrong items of uniform. In three days he sent home 151 pupils. Scores were given detention and dozens put in an isolation centre.

Within 48 hours teachers reported they no longer had to practise "crowd control" and they had twice the amount of time for teaching.

Said the headteacher: "The change is just remarkable. The morale of the teachers is high, there is no bullying and the pupils are happy. And we are instilling good habits that will make them good citizens and employees."

Is it permissible to ask why someone didn't do this before?

Antisemitism on the increase

2011-09-15T11:22:00.000+01:00

Antisemitism is on the increase in the UK. To the extent, writes Melanie Phillips in the Jewish Chronicle, that an increasing number of Jewish people are saying there is no future for Jews in Britain.

"Week in and week out, Israelis are blamed for defending themselves against mass murder. . . While atrocities by tyrannies and rogue states provoke almost total indifference, Israel is treated as a class apart: apparently the very worst country in the entire world, a kind of global blight which has to be expunged altogether from civilised society if not from the face of the earth. . .

"Few government ministers grasp the nature and scale of what is happening. Most don't think there is a problem, and many of those who do think it is Israel's own fault. . . While many Tory backbenchers support Israel, the government, with some very honourable exceptions, is hostile. . .

"The callow and opportunistic Cameroons are blank slates upon which can be written the fashionable bigotry and historical illiteracy of our times.

"The Cameron government did not create the madness now raging against Israel. It could, however, control it by standing up for truth and justice against lies and prejudice. Typically, it is choosing to fan the flames of ignorance and hatred instead."

One story that was not overburdened by media coverage in the UK: Thousands of demonstrators armed with sledgehammers broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo last week and sacked and set fire to the building, dumping the Israeli flag and hundreds of documents - some of them classified - through the windows as police looked on.

Israeli officials were unable to contact Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, head of the Supreme Military Council, currently the ruling power in Egypt, because no one knew where he was. Or so they said. It was only hours later, after the US intervened, that Egyptian security forces rescued a few Israelis who had locked themselves in a secure part of the building, evidently fearing for their lives.

It is suggested the field marshal delayed in order to demonstrate that a future administration would need the military to keep order. Instead, he appears to have demonstrated that it will be Islamic militants, not the military, who will control Egypt.

The Israeli ambassador and 80 staff and families were taken from their homes and lifted out of Egypt on two Israeli military planes. The Israeli Prime Minister said despite the attack, Israel would keep its peace treaty with Cairo.

Meanwhile, Israel has not forgotten how to defend herself. You will find an interesting insight into the work of some of the most important people in Israel's Defence Forces by clicking here.

Israel and 'absolutely clueless' students

2011-09-12T17:28:00.001+01:00

Increasingly in recent years universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism.

After Edinburgh University Student Association voted to boycott Israel because they decided it was an apartheid state, I was pleased to note that novelist and erstwhile academic Denis MacEoin wrote an open letter to the Association.

The letter is copied below, in full:

The Committee
Edinburgh University Student Association

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field.

I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a 'Nazi' state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha'is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran?

Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks could do in South Africa. Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. In the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak. I do not object to well documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens. Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (although they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha'is. . . Need I go on? The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott.

I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument. They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930s (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Of course he would, and he would not have stopped there. Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense to you. I have given you some of the evidence. It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Denis MacEoin

Preparing for the wedding

2011-09-10T15:48:00.000+01:00

When Jesus was down here, it was evident that He wasn't here for ever. But while He was here, there was one thing He made abundantly clear. He will return.

He spoke about it often. He told parables about it. Many books of the Bible talk about it. Some devote whole chapters to it.

The book of Revelation, speaking in prophecy about that time, says "Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready" (Rev 19:7). Jesus is the Heavenly Bridegroom; those who know Him are His bride. One day He will come to take them home.

Notice it doesn't say "will hope to be ready" or "will make herself ready," but "has made herself ready." For most brides, their wedding day will be the most important day of their lives. You can't just walk into a church and get married in your lunch hour. There are preparations to be made: the church to book, bridesmaids to be chosen, bridal wear to be selected and the reception to arrange.

So how do you make yourself ready for His coming?

You must make sure that Jesus has first place in your affections. Not your husband. Not your wife. Not your children. Not anything else. But Jesus. If you want to have a successful marriage, don't put your spouse first. Put Jesus first, and everything else will fall into place.

You need to have a longing for that day. Before you were married, do you remember how you counted the days to your wedding? Hebrews says He will appear a second time "to those who eagerly wait for Him." Those who love Him are strangers and pilgrims in this world. They have another home being prepared specially for them. And it's much better than the one they have now. Each day they spend here is one day less and one day nearer.

And then we need to be busy doing what we're expected to be doing. The Scripture in Revelation that says "the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready" goes on: "And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints."

Live today as though today is all you have. After all, we have no guarantee that we'll still be here tomorrow.

"Behold, I come quickly!" (Rev 3:11).

Sharia: A threat to British justice?

2011-09-09T17:12:00.003+01:00

There are an estimated 85 Islamic sharia courts in Britain. There is no objection to their providing mediation in religious matters, but there have been concerns that they should not deal with matters of family and criminal law, thus providing an alternative to the British legal system.

A UK Ministry of Justice inquiry into the operation of sharia courts in Britain was scrapped - because the Muslim courts refused to co-operate.

Jihad Watch says: "As has been the case in Britain, Sharia's proponents [in Germany] got their foot in the door with pleas for just a little Sharia, just for a few community matters. Then, the reality hits that Sharia is a package deal; as even Imam Rauf has noted, 'it is not possible in principle to limit the Shari'ah to some aspects of human life and leave out others.'

"And so commences a process of 'jurisdiction creeping.' There is no such thing as 'just a little' Sharia."

With regard to the situation in Germany, Jihad Watch quotes from an article in Der Spiegel:

In mosques or tearooms, Muslim elders dispense verdicts that keep their communities in line. They mediate between aggrieved immigrants, sometimes at the expense of German justice. Some say the arbitrations ease caseloads in court, but others see the creeping advance of Sharia law.

The men ambushed Fuat S. on the street, then locked him in a basement and tortured him. Fuat was later admitted to the hospital in Berlin's Neukolln district with gaping wounds, contusions and broken bones.

Police took his statement concerning the attack the same night. Fuat S., a gambler and a recipient of "Hartz IV" - Germany's social welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed - gave a detailed statement. He'd conned an acquaintance, Mustafa O., out of €150,000 ($217,000) and the man was taking his revenge, Fuat said, along with his three brothers. They hit his hands, arms and knees with a hammer and threatened to shoot him.

The public prosecutor's office in Berlin initiated proceedings against Mustafa O., a Palestinian man who had come to their attention repeatedly for violent acts. Police had investigated him in a number of cases, and now prosecutors saw an opportunity to convict a dangerous repeat offender. But when the case began, Fuat S., the principle [sic] witness, unexpectedly withdrew his testimony. It was not Mustafa who had tortured him, he said, but an Albanian man he didn't know. Mustafa, he said, wasn't even in the basement at the time. This was clearly a lie, as police analysis of telephone data showed, but the judge was forced to acquit the defendant due to lack of evidence.

The decision, in fact, was reached by a different judge. According to police, the victim's and the perpetrator's families had met at a restaurant in the presence of an Islamic "justice of the peace," an arbitrator who mediates conflicts between Muslims. The two families had reached a compromise: Fuat would drop the charges, and in exchange be relieved of part of his debt.

According to Bernhard Mix, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Fuat's false testimony was part of a deal between the families. "It's difficult to establish the truth using legal means, when the perpetrator and the victim reach an agreement," he says.

Politicians and social workers tend to focus on forced marriages and honor killings, but the baleful influence of these Islamic arbitrators has gone largely unnoticed by the public. Joachim Wagner, an author and television journalist of many years, has taken a closer look at the phenomenon in his book "Richter ohne Gesetz" ("Judges without Laws"). Reconstructing Mustafa O.'s case, he reaches the conclusion that "the Islamic parallel justice system is becoming a threat to the constitutional legal system."

These justices of the peace don't wear robes. Their courtrooms are mosques or teahouses. They draw their authority not from the law, but from their standing within the community. Most of them are senior members of their families, or imams, and some even fly in from Turkey or Lebanon to resolve disputes. Muslims seek them out when families argue, when daughters take up with unbelievers or when clans clash. They often trust these arbitrators more than they trust the state.

The late juvenile court judge Kirsten Heisig drew attention the the problem a year ago: "The law is slipping out of our hands. It's moving to the streets, or into a parallel system where an imam or another representative of the Koran determines what must be done."

The question is: are similar things happening in Britain? It's a question that deserves serious investigation.

'Stay smiling and keep running'

2011-09-08T11:09:00.000+01:00

Wilf Cooper, of Lockleaze, Bristol, gave his wife to understand that he was going to six half-marathon races to put up barriers and help with the race.

In fact, he was one of the runners. His wife found out when a neighbour spotted him on television. "He was in the doghouse that day, I can tell you," she says.

The reason for his subterfuge: Mr Cooper is 90 years old, and his wife worries about him. (They have been married for 67 years.) Despite having been found out, he wants to race one more time while he's able.

A marathon runner at 90, you say? What next! But wait.

The Daily Mail reports that the first person to sign up for the 2012 Edinburgh marathon is 100 years old.

Fauja Singh, who used to live in the Punjab but now lives in the UK, was born on April 1, 1911. He has run five marathons in London, one in Toronto and one in New York.

He is pictured with a long white beard, an orange turban - Mr Singh is a Sikh - sports gear and a massive pair of trainers.

The secret of a long and happy life, he says, is to be stress-free. ("Stay away from people who are negative, stay smiling and keep running.") And the diet he chooses to keep him running is plenty of ginger curry and copious amounts of tea.

Plenty of ginger curry and copious amounts of tea would probably spur me on, too. But not, I think, to running marathons.

A need for common sense here?

2011-09-05T12:05:00.001+01:00

What a commotion.

MP Nadine Dorries has proposed an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill to the effect that women considering abortion should be offered NHS-funded counselling by an independent organisation that does not itself provide abortions and does not have a financial interest in the women's decision.

Opponents of the amendment say the intention is to take counselling out of the hand of organisations like Maries Stopes and BPAS, who also do abortions (and profit handsomely from them).

Mrs Dorries, who says the abortion lobby has reacted with almost hysterical outrage, claims to have been subjected to constant vilification and near-daily death threats.

Pro-abortion campaigners accuse Mrs Dorries of "pushing things down women's throats." She says independent counselling would only be for women who wanted it. The independent organisation suggested to offer counselling would not be a religious-affiliated group, but the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

(Some pro-lifers have suggested such a move could save 60,000 babies' lives each year).

"All I want is for women to have more choice, more guidance, so they can make a well-informed decision. Why should all these campaigners be anxious about women being offered independent advice?" she says. "If they are really pro-choice as they pretend, they would support my proposal."

Prime Minister David Cameron is said to be sympathetic to pregnant women being able to have independent advice and counselling and he will grant Conservative MPs a free vote on the issue, but he will not vote for the Dorries proposal because he is concerned that it would prevent abortion providers providing counselling as well.

The BBC says the Government has written to all MPs to tell them that health ministers will vote against the Dorries amendment, but Downing Street said no pressure was being applied to Conservative MPs to vote in a particular way.

Archbishop Cranmer says that before the General Election Mr Cameron promised a free vote on the upper time limit for abortion, but said it must remain a conscience issue and a free vote. And when women are offered a free choice in counselling, says Cranmer, what does he do?

"He writes to every Conservative MP, putting pressure on them to vote against the amendment. . . He knows full well that a letter from Government to all his MPs functions effectively as a three-line whip. Those who seek favour and enhancement will cave in, despite 92% of them supporting the amendment in their consciences."

The 92 per cent he mentions refers to a ComRes poll sponsored by the Right to Know Campaign which said that 92 per cent of MPs supported the principle that women considering abortion should have access to advice from someone who had no financial interest in the outcome of their decision.

What a commotion, indeed.

The matter will be debated in the House of Commons tomorrow.

May common sense and righteousness prevail.

Terror attacks once again

2011-08-30T19:44:00.001+01:00

Twelve days ago 12 Arab terrorists - Palestinians and some Egyptians - crossed the Egyptian border into southern Israel.

They raked an Israeli bus with fire, wounding about a dozen passengers, including children. Miraculously, no one was killed. One terrorist rushed up to a second bus and detonated explosives, killing himself and the driver. Fortunately, the bus had no passengers. They opened fire on a car, killing its female driver. They fired at a second car, killing its four passengers - two married couples on their way to a holiday in Eilat.

Two members of the Israeli security forces were killed in a firefight with the terrorists. Five Egyptians, including members of Egyptian border patrols, were shot dead after they opened fire on the Israelis, resulting in large anti-Israel demonstrations in Egypt.

The Israeli air force responded to the terrorist attack with attacks on the terrorist organisation responsible in Gaza. The terrorist organisation Hamas, which controls Gaza, arranged a ceasefire with Israel, but rockets from Gaza continued to fall on southern Israel. (As the Israelis say, "We cease, and they fire.")

As a result of rockets fired from Gaza since the terrorist incursion, 10 were injured, two seriously, when a rocket hit a synagogue in Ashdod. A civilian was killed and nine were injured, some seriously, in Beersheva. A baby was among the injured in Ofakim. Families in southern Israel were warned not to go more than 15 seconds from a bomb shelter.

Some people suspect the rocket barrage was ordered by Iran (which is continuing its nuclear development programme), possibly as a trial run for a massive rocket attack on the whole of Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Yesterday a young Palestinian terrorist allegedly planning to kill teenagers at a nightclub stabbed a taxi driver, drove the taxi at a policeman and stabbed five policemen and a security guard in Tel Aviv, leaving several seriously wounded.

Palestinians, who refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist or to negotiate with Israel, are to go ahead in the next couple of weeks with an appeal for the UN to recognise a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state.

The media spotlight at the moment is on Libya. News reports in the last two days say Libyan rebels have freed 11,000 prisoners, but 50,000 locked up since the insurgency began are still missing. Mass graves have begun to be discovered around former detention centres. Rebels are currently united in the search for Gaddafi; how united they will remain after he is captured or killed no one knows.

Whatever happens in Libya, people should be aware that another serious Middle East conflict may be in the offing.

Paralysed - but life is still sweet

2011-08-27T12:40:00.002+01:00

From the day Matt Hampson was born, his mother knew he would be trouble.

There was the day he undid his baby seat, opened the car door and bounced down the road. They picked him up without a scratch. And the day he climbed scaffolding his father had erected to re-roof a cottage and launched himself on to the roof.

He started playing rugby at five and fell in love with the game. He played for England in their under-18s team and later for England under-21s.

One day during a training session he launched himself into a scrum and something went wrong. When he came round in hospital he was paralysed from the neck down and needed a ventilator to breathe. He was 20 years old.

I wrote about Matt two years ago. I mentioned how despite his disability he did charity work, coached youngsters, wrote a newspaper column and had his own website.

So why write about him again now? Because this week the Daily Mail printed an interview with him and his mother - an interview it called "one of the most moving interviews you'll ever read."

Today, six years after the accident, Matt is still paralysed. He is still on a ventilator. He still needs day-and-night care.

He has learned to write using a laser attached to his forehead beamed on to a computer screen. He has set up a foundation to support people injured through sport.

"I've never seen Matt despair," says his mother Anne. "Never. I have seen him tired and fed up, but he has always said life is precious. It's a different life now, but it's still precious. And I still have hopes for him; every hope that he will lead a happy life."

When Matt was in hospital, he would greet everyone with a smile. People would dread seeing him in hospital, but leave feeling uplifted.

"He's always had this instant effect on people," says his mother. "He makes them love him. He says life is still sweet.

"He has a plaque downstairs that says just that in Latin: omnia causa fiunt (Everything happens for a reason). That's what he believes. He thinks he's been put in this position to make an impact on the lives of other disabled people.

"He sees himself as privileged."

Down's syndrome babies may disappear

2011-08-23T16:00:00.000+01:00

Dr Alberto Costa was a research associate in neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. Hours after his wife gave birth to their only child by emergency Caesarean section, the hospital's clinical geneticist took him aside to break the news: his baby daughter had Down's syndrome.

Dr Costa held his daughter's hand and marvelled at her beauty. "We bonded immediately," he says. "Here was this new life in front of me and holding my finger and looking straight in my eyes. All I could think is, she's my baby, she's a lovely girl and what can I do to help her?" Shortly afterwards, he made a decision: he would devote himself to the study of Down's syndrome.

In the 16 years since his daughter Tyche was born, he has discovered that the drug memantine can help mice with the equivalent of Down's to overcome their difficulties and function normally. After countless experiments with mice, tests are now being done on young Down's adults, with encouraging results.

There are two problems with Down's research. The first is the limited amount of funding available. The US National Institutes of Health spends about $3,000 on research for every person with cystic fibrosis, but less than $100 for every person with Down's.

The second problem is more sinister. Soon there may be no Down's syndrome babies.

Hitherto in order to prove an unborn child has Down's, it has been necessary to take a sample of amniotic fluid, a procedure not without danger. Now scientists are perfecting tests which can prove if an unborn baby has Down's simply by inspecting a blood sample from the mother - tests which may become routine during early pregnancy.

You see, if an unborn child has something like Down's syndrome these days, it's so easy to have an abortion and try again.

You can read further details here. I'm grateful to Michael Cook, of BioEdge, for pointing out the story.

The courage of Leon Weinstein

2011-08-19T11:38:00.002+01:00

Leon Weinstein, a young Polish Jew, was living in Warsaw with his wife and baby daughter shortly after the Germans invaded. "We got no chance," Leon told his wife. "But the little one, she is special. She must survive."

He chose a new, Gentile name for his daughter Natalie, put a crucifix around her neck, wrote on a piece of paper that he was a war widow unable to take care of her, left her and the note on someone's doorstep and forced himself to walk away.

He wound up in the Warsaw Ghetto. He did amazing things, talking his way out of the ghetto and smuggling weapons back inside.

When the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began, he was one of the fighters. He remembers running along rooftops, shooting at Germans with a machine gun. "Every five minutes," he says, "I could have been killed."

When the Germans began to destroy the ghetto and everyone in it, he hid in the sewers, too weak to lift a manhole cover to escape - until he saw his grandfather in a dream, telling him "You must keep going. You must. Don't stop."

With new energy, he managed to open a manhole cover and climb out. Looking like he might die and stinking of sewage, he found a couple who would take him in.

When the war was over, surviving Jews began to leave the country. Month after month Leon, a widower now, pedalled a bicycle from convent to convent, looking for his daughter.

Finally he saw a nun carrying a little, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl. "That's my daughter," he said. How could they know she was his, the nun asked. "She has a little birthmark near her right hip," he said. She had. Leon had found his Natalie.

They later emigrated to the United States.

Leon is now 101. (You can read a little more of his story by clicking here.)

He is frail now, but still mentally alert. Scarcely two hours go by during the day without he telephones his daughter. Every Friday night, they have their Sabbath meal together.

She speaks affectionately of her father. "To have a father with such courage," she says. "I owe everything to him. I owe him my life."

Truth and the culture of death

2011-08-16T19:19:00.000+01:00

Last week I mentioned how pro-abortion activists were attacking pro-life crisis pregnancy centres in the UK. They mirror what is happening in the US.

The culture of death is getting desperate, American theologian Albert Mohler says on his blog. War, he says, has been declared on crisis pregnancy centres:

First in Baltimore and then in New York City, municipal governments passed laws intended to shut down or curtail the work of crisis pregnancy centers in their cities. The crisis pregnancy centers have been among the most important platforms for saving unborn human lives and reasserting human dignity. This is especially true in more recent years, as many of these centers have begun using sophisticated ultrasound imaging technologies in order to show pregnant women the unborn babies within them.

These centers are staffed by brave workers and an army of volunteers who are committed to counsel women against killing their unborn babies. The ultrasound images have been massively important in this counseling process. Once the woman sees the unborn life within her, the chances of that baby surviving to live birth are tremendously enhanced.

As one abortion rights activist famously declared "The fetus beat us." When the fetus is seen for what it really is, the mother has a much harder time deciding to abort it. Crisis pregnancy centers generally offer a variety of services, ranging from counseling and adoption services to medical care and support for new mothers. All this is too much for the abortion industry, which rightly sees crisis pregnancy centers as their increasingly powerful opposition. . .

Forty percent of all pregnancies in New York City end in abortion (and fully 60 percent of all pregnancies to African American women). Those horrendous and chilling percentages are evidently not enough for the abortion industry and its ideological supporters. They want to shut down crisis pregnancy centers or render them ineffective. . .

Now, city officials in San Francisco have launched their own effort to shutter crisis pregnancy centers, claiming the staff at the centers impose "anti-abortion propaganda and mistruths on unsuspecting women."

Albert Mohler concludes:

Crisis pregnancy centers deserve the support of all who cherish the sanctity of life, the defense of the unborn, and the right of free speech. As defenders of life, crisis pregnancy centers should be committed to nothing less than comprehensive truth-telling. It is the Culture of Death, not the Culture of Life, that fears the truth.

One further point: There is no doubt that ultrasound imaging equipment has been a valuable tool in the US in persuading women to keep their babies. Crisis pregnancy centres in the UK are generally staffed by unpaid volunteers and run by organisations not overburdened with cash. When are pro-life organisations in Britain going to be able to afford ultrasound equipment?

'I had to watch my baby die'

2011-08-15T17:39:00.001+01:00

Sarah Capewell gave birth to her son in hospital. He was moving about, breathing unaided and had a strong heartbeat, his mother says.

But doctors wouldn't come and treat him because he was too premature. "They won't come and help, sweetie," the midwife told her. "Make the best of the time you have with him."

Miss Capewell watched her baby die less than two hours later. Staff at the hospital told her if her son had been born two days later, they would have tried to help him. She is now campaigning for a review of the medical guidelines.

Sarah Fisher was pregnant with twins. One of the twins, Emie, died when she was born at 21 weeks. Doctors told Miss Fisher she had an infection and the other twin would not survive. They recommended an abortion. Twelve hours before she had to give doctors her decision, Jacob put in an appearance at 23 weeks, weighing 1lb 4oz. Five months later, he has been allowed home - Britain's most premature surviving twin.

Mrs Emma Allen gave birth to identical twins at 23 weeks at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. There was no blanket policy at the hospital about resuscitating premature babies, so Mrs Allen was given the choice. She opted to go ahead. One twin died, but Charlie pulled through and is now five years old and thriving.

At present it is up to individual health trusts to decide whether to follow NHS guidelines on not resuscitating babies born before 24 weeks.

So should such premature babies be resuscitated?

London neonatal paediatrics professor John Wyatt, writing in Triple Helix, the magazine of the Christian Medical Fellowship, says estimates of gestational age can be inaccurate, and a number of factors can affect survival.

Doctors have a legal duty to do the best they can for each individual baby.

"These decisions are painful and difficult. But there is no reason for doom and gloom about premature babies. We should celebrate the successes that have been achieved, value the lives of those who have survived against all the odds, whether disabled or not, and look forward to future advances in the care of these vulnerable citizens."

Women and the need for truth

2011-08-12T16:59:00.001+01:00

The Right to Know Campaign has produced a report saying that abortion providers are not appropriate organisations to provide pre-abortion counselling for vulnerable women - and Education for Choice claims women visiting counselling centres provided by faith-based and anti-abortion organisations are met with "scaremongering, emotive language and inaccurate information."

Right to Know points out that in 2010 more than 100,000 NHS-funded abortions were performed by private providers such as Marie Stopes International and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, worth an estimated £60 million.

It says BPAS and MSI are strongly driven by financial motivations, see success in increasing the number of abortions they perform, employ business development experts to promote abortion services, and have business plan objectives and targets to increase the number of abortions they perform.

It says marketing techniques are used to promote abortion to women, and the independence of counselling is compromised by the drive to encourage a decision for abortion.

Right to Know is backing an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill proposed by MPs Nadine Dorries and Frank Field which would guarantee that women considering abortion would have access to independent advice from someone who had no financial interest in the outcome of their decision.

The Guardian recently published an article headed "Pregnancy counselling centres found wanting. Evidence of poor practice and factually incorrect advice discovered following undercover investigation." The article itself contained incorrect information about abortion and has twice had to be amended.

Women posing as women considering abortion had evidently made visits on behalf of Education for Choice - a pro-abortion organisation if ever there was one - to 10 counselling centres operated by organisations like Life and Care confidential. It claimed to have found in most of them poor practice and factually incorrect advice, but appeared to provide little evidence of either.

Education for Choice's website says "Several studies have shown that having an abortion does not lead to psychological problems." For some reason, it does not mention the many studies that do.

It also says "Contrary to belief, there are no links between abortion and breast cancer, and a straightforward abortion will not lead to infertility." The link between abortion and consequent breast cancer is well documented, and abortion can lead to consequent infertility.

Said Lisa Hallgarten, director of Education for Choice: "We strongly urge the Department of Health to think carefully about removing women from the professional decision-making support currently offered by abortion providers, while the current alternative is a network of unregulated individuals, many of whom are in breach of good practice."

Life said: "We are wholeheartedly committed to offering the best service possible to women facing crisis pregnancies by providing them with non-judgmental, person-centred counselling and skilled listening in line with guidelines set out by the BACP [British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy], of which we are a member."

England burns, and people wonder

2011-08-10T12:50:00.002+01:00

The banking system has shown itself to be concerned only with what it can get. MPs have fiddled their expenses. The press has been guilty of phone hacking. There has been corruption in the police. If young people had any respect for authority, most of them have lost it.

And as Britain burns, night by night, some people are still wondering what has gone wrong.

Archbishop Cranmer writes: "It is quite moving to read of Sikhs in Southall guarding their gurdwara, and of those three Muslims in Birmingham who died trying to protect their property and community. It is reported that some of those involved in the violence are as young as 10 or 11, and that it is principally being perpetrated by those in their late teens - early 20s. This is the price we pay for moral relativism. Parents and teachers can no longer instruct their children in the difference between right and wrong, and so there is no distinguishing between good and evil. If it feels right and good, do it: the moral course of action is what the individual determines. The truth is what you make it, for there is no universal law of morality; no absolute standard by which all may be judged. And so we must tolerate the beliefs and actions of others even when they impinge upon the rights and liberties of others.

"Our politicians have spent decades dismantling the foundations of our moral order; fracturing and fragmenting the culture that made England cohesive and the United Kingdom coherent. They have created a culture of rootless individualism, for which we are now paying the price."

The cause of the problem, top and bottom, is that we are a nation away from God.

This world runs on laws; natural laws that cause the sun to come up in a morning and go down at night. Laws like the law of gravity. They're called laws because they work every time. If you jump off a high building, you won't break the law of gravity; the law of gravity will break you.

There are spiritual laws which are just as unbreakable. Here's one: as a man sows, so shall he reap (Gal 6:7). This nation is reaping what it has sown. But it has not yet gone so far that it cannot come back.

Christian organisations are pleading this week for Christians throughout the nation to pray. Says the Maranatha Community, in its appeal for prayer: "The current riots across the land hold up a mirror to the moral and spiritual sickness of our nation. The issues facing us today are not primarily political or social but spiritual. This is yet another manifestation of the consequences of our nation turning its back on God and His ways. . .

"We believe that God, in His mercy, is shining the light of His Truth on to the ugly wound of our nation which is in need of cleansing and healing."

The opportunity to pray, Maranatha says, is a God-given opportunity to bring hope to our nation. It is.

When mourning will be turned to joy

2011-08-06T15:04:00.003+01:00

Next Tuesday, Jerusalem will come to a standstill. There will be no public transport. Shops will be closed. People will gather at the Western Wall to pray and to mourn. Next Tuesday is Tisha b'Av.

Tisha b'Av - the ninth of the Jewish month of Av - has been a remarkable day in Jewish history. (The Jewish calendar does not coincide with the Gregorian calendar, so Tisha b'Av falls on a different date on the civil calendar each year.)

On Tisha b'Av, according to Jewish tradition, the Israelites were forbidden to enter the Promised Land for a further 40 years after the 12 spies came back with a bad report.

On Tisha b'Av in 586 BC Solomon's Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian exile began.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 70 the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 135, the Bar Kokhba revolt ended when Betar, the last Jewish stronghold, was taken by the Romans.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 136, the Temple area was ploughed under by the Romans as Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 1290, the Jews were expelled from England.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain.

And Tisha b'Av in 1942 marked a mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, and the first killings at Treblinka extermination camp.

But Zech 8:19 prophesies a day when Tisha b'Av will be a day of rejoicing:

Thus says the Lord of hosts:
'The fast of the fourth month,
The fast of the fifth,
The fast of the seventh,
And the fast of the tenth,
Shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts
For the house of Judah.
Therefore love truth and peace.'

The whole chapter is about how the Jews will be gloriously restored in the Messianic age. Read it and marvel.

Something new inside

2011-08-05T16:56:00.002+01:00

When a man finds Christ and believes, something happens inside. He still has the same name. He still lives in the same house, wears the same clothes and works at the same job. But he's a new man inside. "If anyone is in Christ," the Bible says, "he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."

He has the same National Insurance number and gets the same bills. He still loves his wife and children (more than he did before). He still enjoys life (more than he did before). He knows he belongs in this world, but somehow he feels he doesn't belong to it.

If you take a fish out of water, it will die, because it's out of its natural environment. If you put a man underwater, he will die, because he's out of his natural environment. A diver can exist underwater, but that's because he has an airline to the surface.

A man (or a woman, or child) who finds Christ can live in this world, and live a successful life: but that's because he can breathe the air of heaven. If he doesn't feel completely at home, that's because he's the citizen of another country.

When I was young, I had to do National Service. The young man in the bed next to me was a Christian.

In the evening, I would go out to the pub. When I got back, he would be tucked up in bed already. Having had a few beers, I would sit on the end of his bed and persuade him to sing The Old Rugged Cross. I didn't understand too much about it, but there was something about that old song that I liked.

After we were both demobbed, I was on holiday one year near his home town, so I looked him up. He invited me to his home the following Sunday.

He and his young wife had a simple home, but there was something different about it. They said grace before meals. Somehow that spoke to my heart.

A few years later, in a different place, in different circumstances, I was converted to Christ. I wrote and told the young man. He was pleased.

A lot later, I found out that when he was 29 years old, he died from a massive brain haemorrhage, leaving behind a wife and young daughter, which was sad. But he didn't just die. He went home.

As you get older, one by one friends and family disappear. Some of them go to heaven.

One day there's going to be a tremendous reunion. I'm looking forward to that. It really is going to be something.

Inquiry into sharia courts scrapped

2011-08-02T16:36:00.002+01:00

A UK Ministry of Justice inquiry into the operation of Islamic sharia courts in Britain has been scrapped - because the Muslim courts refused to co-operate.

There are an estimated 85 sharia courts in Britain. The exact number is unknown. There is no objection to their providing mediation on religious matters, but there are concerns that they should not provide an alternative to British law.

Before last year's General Election the Ministry of Justice commissioned "an exploratory study of sharia councils in England with respect to family law." The Daily Mail reports that ministers have now abandoned the inquiry because the Muslim courts refused to help.

Justice Minister Jonathan Djanogly said the study "identified a number of challenges to undertaking robust research in this area. The study was therefore limited and adds little to the evidence base.

"The findings cannot be regarded as a representative assessment of the operation of sharia councils. Following expert peer review of the draft report, the Ministry of Justice decided not to publish the findings."

The Ministry of Justice said "The challenges to undertaking more robust research were that the councils are generally run on a volunteer basis, were short staffed and very busy, so there were practical difficulties in speaking with respondents.

"There was also reluctance to discuss the private work of the councils and respondents were wary of the stereotypical ways in which their organisations were represented in the media."

Jihad Watch writes: "Baroness Cox. . . noted the practice of rating a woman's testimony as half that of a man (from Qur'an 2:282, confirmed in Sahih Bukhari 1.6.301), and the gradual, unauthorised expansion of jurisdiction that saw Sharia courts ruling on 'family and criminal cases, including child custody and domestic violence.'

"To fail to follow through in this case is to concede that there are areas of Britain where British law is no longer supreme. And it will invite more stonewalling, more jurisdictional 'creeping,' and of course, more sharia courts doing all of the above, unless authorities throw down the gauntlet: If you cannot be investigated to authorities' satisfaction, you cannot operate.

"Most communities demand that much of their restaurants in some form - no inspection, no permit. That is also the least that should be expected of anything styling itself as a court, tribunal, arbitration board, and so forth."

Notices proclaiming "You are entering a Shariah controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced" have been posted on bus stops and street lamps in the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newham, and a group of Islamists marched on Saturday from Leyton to Walthamstow calling for democracy to be replaced by sharia. This is considered to be the work of an extremist minority - but a poll of Muslim families showed that 40 per cent supported the introduction of sharia in Britain.

Baroness Cox has introduced a bill in the House of Lords which would make it a criminal offence for anyone to take over the rights of the state's criminal or family courts. What progress the bill will make remains to be seen.

'All I knew was that I wanted to live'

2011-07-30T17:27:00.000+01:00

The family of a woman in her early fifties is currently pleading with the High Court for permission for her to be "allowed to die" - in fact, starved and dehydrated to death. The woman is brain damaged, paralysed, unable to communicate and totally dependent on nursing care. Her family believes it cruel to keep her alive.

UK courts have granted permission for food and water to be withdrawn from more than 40 patients in "persistent vegetative state," with fatal results, since the case of Tony Bland in the early 1990s - but this is the first time a UK court has been asked to give permission for food and water to be withdrawn from someone who is said to be "minimally conscious."

Nikki Kenward, who lives at Aston on Clun, Shropshire, and represents a campaign group named Distant Voices, is concerned. And she is qualified to express an opinion: hit by Guillain Barre syndrome in the 1990s, she was completely paralysed apart from her right eyelid. She was "locked in" for five months, unable to communicate and in terrible pain throughout her body.

It took years for her to fight back from total paralysis, and she still needs a wheelchair, not having recovered the use of her legs.

"I have lived that life, and I know how precious it is," she wrote in a national newspaper this week. "I will be grateful until my dying day that no one had the right to 'turn' me off.

"You might think that, if you were in my position, you'd have wished for death. Perhaps you have even spoken to your loved ones about your wishes, should you ever find yourself in such a situation. But all I knew in those dark days was that I wanted to live.

"I didn't care if this was all my life would ever be - forever lonely, frustrated and silent. I wanted to be here, living in whatever capacity I could manage, and I believe there are people lying in intensive care wards all over the country who feel exactly the same.

"I believe that every life that ends at Dignitas, and every dependent patient who is 'allowed to die' by starvation, erodes my right to live. It normalises this kind of death, and it sanitises what is an abhorrent practice.

"Death through the withdrawal of food and water. . . is, according to a doctor friend, about as painful and unpleasant an end as one can imagine.

"It is possible that many of those who have died this way have suffered extreme anxiety, burning sensations all over their bodies, and searing pain in their kidneys that even the strongest medication can do nothing to ease. And yet, this is the death that more and more believe is the 'dignified' way to go."

This week Nikki Kenward and fellow disability campaigners, out of concern, they say, for some 6,000 mentally incapacitated patients in the British health care system - and to draw attention to increasing pressure to allow the killing of incapacitated patients - staged the mock execution of a wheelchair user outside Parliament.

The Royal College of Physicians is undertaking a review of the care of mentally incapacitated patients. Professor Lynne Turner-Stokes, one of those involved in the review, is quoted as saying that "We need to take a deep breath and consider whether doctors are striving to keep people alive in inappropriate circumstances."

Nikki Kenward has been criticised for her performance outside Parliament this week. But does someone need to speak up for those who have no voice?

A colossal loss of human life

2011-07-29T15:57:00.004+01:00

More than 30 human embryos are created for every one baby born by IVF, according to Government figures.

The figures show that 3,144,386 human embryos have been created in British laboratories since the 1991 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. Of these, 1,455,832 have been thrown away ("discarded" I think is the official term), 101,605 have been given for research in destructive experiments and 764,311 have been frozen for future use.

The remainder - 822,638 - have been planted in the womb, but since the success rate with IVF is small, only 94,090 live births have resulted.

The figures were given by Health Minister Lord Howe in a written answer to a question by Lord Alton.

Lord Alton said he found the figures "staggering."

"We are creating and destroying human embryos on an industrial scale," he said. "I think the real work that should be going on in fertility treatment is to fund the development of implantation techniques which don't require the destruction of human embryos."

While we are on the subject of the loss of human life, Planned Parenthood, a giant abortion provider in the US, performed 332,278 abortions in 2009, compared with 997 adoption referrals - 333 abortions for every adoption referral.

By comparison, there were something like 203,000 abortions on UK residents in 2009, with only 91 adoptions of babies under a year old - 2,235 abortions for every baby adopted.

Meet Patches, the singing dog

2011-07-23T18:44:00.001+01:00

Just to point out that the world isn't all bad news.

Eddie Vassallo, an elderly Italian immigrant to Australia, used to spend hours with his dog Patches sitting on his knee.

Patches had a favourite song: Happy Birthday. When Eddie sang it, Patches would join in. When they finished, Eddie would say "Bravo, bravo, Patches."

"Patches just loved it," said Eddie's daughter Marie. "When it was anyone's birthday, Dad would telephone them and he would sing Happy Birthday to them with Patches singing along. It became a family tradition for Dad and Patches to sing it together."

Three months ago, Eddie died, and in the confusion, Patches disappeared. Marie was upset at the dog's loss - but she lived miles away in Sydney.

Kaye Grivec, a dog foster carer, agreed to look for Patches. She found him at a dog pound, due to be put down because no one could prove he belonged to someone.

Kaye was asked if she could prove he belonged to someone. "Only one way to find out," she said. She started to sing Happy Birthday.

"At first, he had a sad, faraway look in his eyes," she told the Melbourne Herald Sun, "just like he was thinking about someone or missing someone. Then he just put his head back and started howling along with me, and I just burst into tears of joy."

Marie is arranging for Patches to be sent to Sydney to spend the rest of his days with her family.

You can see a video of Patches singing Happy Birthday by clicking here.

The cost of believing

2011-07-23T15:05:00.003+01:00

The cost of converting to Christ for a Muslim, particularly in a Muslim country, is often a high one.

This month's edition of Open Doors magazine tells of 27-year-old Amouna Ahamdi, who lives in Sudan. When her brother found she had converted to Christ, he stabbed her three times in the stomach and broke her leg.

The local hospital was reluctant to treat her because of her conversion. She was discharged when she was partially recovered. At home, her torment continued.

Her father shackled her to a chair, locked her in a room, and beat her for a month. "They shaved all my hair and my father whipped my head," said Amouna.

Eventually she escaped, and married another convert her own age. Because of problems from the knife attack, she went to Khartoum for treatment.

After other relatives found out about their conversion, masked men burst into the house where they were staying and attempted to kill her husband. She was stabbed in the hand trying to protect him.

They had no money to pay for medicine and often went hungry.

"We cannot deny Christ," she said. "This is a big challenge for us, because we do not have a place to go. We have no food, and we are jobless. I am still in pain, besides having a two-month-old baby boy to care for."

Converting to Christ for the Muslim doesn't just mean going to church on a Sunday.

'I'll be so proud'

2011-07-20T16:10:00.001+01:00

Andy and Heather Skinner, from Darwen in Lancashire, were told that their unborn baby girl had a massive tumour covering the left chamber of her heart that was restricting blood flow. Specialists were convinced she would die in the womb and advised an abortion.

"I didn't want an abortion," said Heather. "I wanted nature to take its course. The thought of losing my baby was awful. I didn't know how to deal with it. We were left in a room and just cried."

Charley-Marie was born by caesarean section. Three days later, the couple were allowed to take her home. All they had bought for the baby were the clothes and a blanket to bury her in.

Charley-Marie is now 19 months old. She still has the tumour. Sometimes she gets out of breath, but otherwise she is like any other youngster.

"She loves Peppa Pig," says her mother, "and always has a cheeky smile on her face."

Says Peter Saunders, whose blog I can recommend: "I have lost count of the number of times I have heard stories like this. Why is it that the medical profession responds in this knee-jerk fashion recommending abortion for disabilities we would make every effort to treat or correct in a baby after birth?

"Why are not more parents given the opportunity, with proper support, to see their babies' births through? Why is it that offering surgery, other treatment, or if relevant, terminal care, to disabled, sick or dying babies seems no longer to be regarded as a serious option?

"Why has our society instead reached the conclusion that these most vulnerable members of the human race, because they are disabled, sick or dying, have lives that are somehow not worth living? That they are, in other words, better off dead?"

What do you think?

I have another question. What if the parents refuse an abortion and the child dies anyway?

Karen Palmer tells how ultrasound showed during her pregnancy that her baby had profound abnormalities and was not expected to live. She went ahead with the pregnancy. When the baby was born, the baby was peaceful and comfortable. She died just five hours after birth.

Karen and her husband evidently learned a great deal.

"What did we learn? We learned that God is intimately involved with us and with a tiny baby. We learned that even such a tiny, damaged life is precious to him. We learned better how to care for each other and our parents and friends. Our church learned how to care for us. We saw that terminating a pregnancy where there is an abnormality denies the parents and wider family the opportunity to grieve and remember a real and valuable member of that family. We learned that God answers prayer.

"After Jennifer's death, a steadfast friend said that when Jennifer arrived in heaven there would be great rejoicing and celebration because of all she achieved in her short life. I dream that when I arrive there people will say 'Ah! You're Jennifer's mother' and I'll be so proud!"

MPs to investigate discrimination against Christians

2011-07-18T12:13:00.002+01:00

Cases of discrimination against Christians at work and in public have led to concern about the erosion of religious freedom in the UK. Well, things are happening.

A select committee-style inquiry is to be held in Parliament this autumn to clarify how legislation on hate crime and equality affects Christians. Peers and MPs will be invited to consider whether changes to the law are needed.

The inquiry, which will be held in public and will take about three months, is the idea of MP Gary Streeter, who chairs Christians in Parliament. He said that while there was religious freedom in Britain, some groups were "whipping up an alternative view and generating fear" where there didn't need to be any.

"The outcome of our inquiry might be that the law needs to be nudged back in certain areas, and we won't shy away from saying so."

What's more, the Equality and Human Rights Commission appears to have done a U-turn. It says judges have interpreted equality laws too narrowly and should not have backed employers who pursued Christians for wearing crosses or refusing to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.

The way human rights and equality law had been interpreted was insufficient to protect freedom of religion or belief, it said. Christians who disagreed with homosexual equality rules should have the freedom to follow their conscience.

"The idea of making reasonable adjustments to accommodate a person's needs has served disability discrimination law well for decades," said EHRC legal director John Wadham. "It seems reasonable that a similar concept could be adopted to allow someone to manifest their religious beliefs."

The EHRC is to intervene - to call for more leeway for Christians to express their beliefs and live according to their consciences - in four human rights cases to come before the European Court of Human Rights. They are the cases of Lilian Ladele, a registrar removed from her job because she was not willing to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies; Gary McFarlane, a Relate counsellor who declined to give sex therapy to homosexual couples; Shirley Chaplin, a nurse who refused to stop wearing her crucifix; and Nadia Eweida, the BA check-in assistant who was told she could not wear a cross with her uniform.

As perhaps might have been expected, homosexuals and humanists have protested at the EHRC's decision. Ben Summerskill, of the homosexual activist group Stonewall, said he was "deeply disturbed" by the move. The British Humanist Association said the commission's intervention in these cases was "wholly disproportionate."

The battle for Christians' rights, however, is not yet won. Barnabas Fund reports that a Christian teacher in the UK has been ordered by her school not to talk about religion after answering a child's question.

The teacher was asked by a girl in her class whether the Christian God and the god of Islam were the same. When she said they were not, she was asked to explain how they were different. Following the discussion, the school department received a complaint from the Muslim parents of the girl.

"[The department] handled the situation well and stated that the child had asked the question and I had answered truthfully without giving or intending any offence," the teacher recalled.

But she has been told if children ask a question about any religious matter she must ignore the question or change the subject immediately.

Said the teacher: "I pointed out that Christianity was my life, not my religion. It was a living relationship with my Lord. I live it daily. I now feel I am being watched. I have always shared my faith with the children I teach whenever they ask me a question about my life, why I pray and do what I do."

A letter to Leyi

2011-07-16T15:22:00.001+01:00

After years of missionary endeavour, there were something like a million Christian believers in China when the Communists took over in 1949.

Foreign missionaries were expelled. The Communist government allowed some churches to remain open, but only under the control of the state. The state controlled church appointments; preaching was monitored; evangelism, Sunday school and the baptism of minors were forbidden.

Those who disagreed with such intrusion formed illegal unregistered house churches. Members of such churches were arrested, beaten, tortured and imprisoned.

Despite the persecution - or perhaps because of the persecution - such churches grew. Christians in China are now estimated at between 55 and 130 million. It is said that 10,000 Chinese are converted to Christ every week. Some say that that number are converted every day. (It should be borne in mind that the population of China is in excess of one-and-a-quarter billion.)

In recent years has come something new. In addition to the state-controlled churches and the unregistered house churches - the latter mostly in the country - have appeared churches of educated professionals - doctors, lawyers and government officials - who have come to faith in Christ in the cities. One such, Shouwang Church in Beijing, has been in the news in recent weeks.

Because its 1,000-strong congregation was too large to meet together in homes, the church met in rented premises for Sunday worship. Time and again it had to leave its rented premises because of pressure on the landlord by the authorities.

The church paid the equivalent of four million American dollars for its own premises in a Beijing office building. After the money was handed over, the landlord refused to hand over the key because of such pressure.

The church decided to hold its Sunday worship in public in the open air, leading to arrests and detentions each week. Police prevent members leaving their homes to get to the meetings. The entire church leadership has been under house arrest for three months. Still those who can manage to get there continue to meet.

One member of the congregation has suffered not only from police harassment. Recently his daughter, aged almost two, fell to her death from the upstairs window of the family's apartment. Perhaps to deal with his grief, he began to write letters to the dead girl.

One of them, A letter to Leyi (no. 11), has been translated into English and published on China Aid's website. It gives a remarkable insight into the harassment he suffers and his grief at the loss of his child. You can read it by clicking here. It may just touch your heart.

So will the Government have the courage?

2011-07-08T19:45:00.003+01:00

Joanna Jepson, a theological student who later became a Church of England curate, kicked up a fuss a few years ago because a baby was aborted at 28 weeks because of a suspected cleft palate - a condition that can easily be corrected by surgery.

Abortion can be obtained virtually on demand up to 24 weeks - usually because doctors are willing to certify that there is "risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the mother" - but abortions above 24 weeks are legal only - apart from when the mother's life is in danger, which practically never happens - if there is "substantial risk that the baby would be seriously handicapped."

As a result of the fuss, the Department of Health refused thereafter to publish medical grounds on which abortions over 24 weeks were carried out, claiming by way of excuse that small numbers could lead to the people involved being identified.

After a six-year legal battle by the ProLife Alliance, the High Court this year ordered the Department of Health to publish the data by July 4. This week the Department of Health published the information on its website - on July 4, you will notice, and not a day earlier.

The figures do not make pretty reading. Between 2002 and 2010, 1,189 England and Wales residents aborted their babies after 24 weeks; some because of such problems as spina bifida; some because of things like cleft lips or cleft palates; many because of minor deformities which could be corrected by surgery. Between 2002 and 2010 a total of almost 4,000 babies were aborted because of suspected Down's syndrome, 10 of them at over 24 weeks.

So now you know: cleft palates and Down's syndrome are "serious handicaps."

Martin Narey, the UK Government's new adoption czar, has suggested that women with unwanted pregnancies should be offered adoption as an alternative to abortion.

As abortions have risen steadily from 1968 to the present, a Government adoption figures website shows that adoptions in England and Wales have fallen, from 22,502 in 1974 to 4,725 in 2009. Women with unwanted pregnancies would rather kill their unborn baby than hand their baby over for adoption to a couple desperate for a baby to care for.

I remember a young woman I spoke to who had been to an abortion clinic to arrange to kill her unborn baby. I suggested adoption to her as an alternative. "Oh, I couldn't possibly do that," she said. What a selfish society we live in.

"Narey is definitely on to something," writes Peter Saunders. "But will the government have the courage to do anything about it? It will be interesting to see the response."

Turned out it was true after all

2011-07-07T11:30:00.002+01:00

Bob Williamson killed his pet rabbit when he was five. His parents took him to church, but the church was full of hypocrisy, so he didn't go any more.

At 15, he was an alcoholic. At 17, he was a drug addict. When he was 18, he was diagnosed as an incurable sociopath, without a conscience.

He practised witchcraft.

In hospital after a road accident which nearly killed him, he became friendly with a nurse, who gave him her own copy of the Bible. He read about Jesus, who he found was nothing like he had thought. He continued to read until he came to Phil 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

When he read that he slammed the book shut and called for the nurse.

"Your Bible is nothing but a lie," he told her. "I am a hardcore drug addict and less than two per cent of whoever puts a needle in their arm ever gets out of that alive. I had all kinds of friends die. I've seen people commit suicide, including my brother."

The nurse put her hands on her hips and told him: "Jesus is God and He can do anything He wants to do, and He can change your sorry tale."

Well, the nurse won the argument. Williamson never touched drugs or alcohol again and became a multimillion-dollar businessman.

Read the story in the Christian Post for yourself. It will do you good. You can do it right now by clicking here.

The problems with organ donation

2011-07-05T19:19:00.002+01:00

The British Medical Association decided last week to continue to support the idea of presumed consent for organ donation - so it would be possible to take organs for transplantation from anyone who had not "opted out" of the system provided their families did not object. At present, organs are taken from people who have "opted in" by volunteering to join the Organ Donor Register.

The Welsh Assembly is to consider legalising a presumed consent system for people in Wales.

Whenever I am asked to volunteer to become an organ donor, my reply is a definite No. I do not object to people donating their organs for use after their deaths if they wish to do so, but I am not willing to become an organ donor for two good reasons.

Up to the 1960s, the only criteria for diagnosing death were that breathing and heartbeat had irreversibly ceased.

In 1976, after ventilation had been developed to provide ongoing life support for brain-damaged patients, the conference of British Medical Royal Colleges decided that if a patient tested positive for death of the brain stem, then if life support were removed, the patient would be expected to die.

In 1979, when organs were beginning to be required for organ transplantation, the conference issued a statement saying that a patient who tested positive for death of the brain stem was dead already. Prognosis had become diagnosis.

A patient who tests positive for what has come to be known as brain-stem death will be breathing. His or her heart will be beating. Her body will be its normal colour, and warm. She can digest food, and given liquids, will urinate. If she is not turned regularly, she will develop bedsores. If she is young, she will come to sexual maturity. If she is pregnant, she can bring a baby to the point of birth. But the majority of doctors will say that she is already dead, and her organs can be taken for transplant.

(A leaflet for prospective organ donors published by the Department of Health says "Will I really be dead when they remove my organs? Yes.")

I do not believe that brain-stem death is in fact death. That is the first reason why I will not be an organ donor.

The second is this. Prospective organ donors and their next of kin are never told that the patient will still be breathing and his or her heart still beating when the organs are removed. (The only organs used for heart, liver and pancreas transplants are organs taken from patients whose hearts are still beating.)

Prospective donors and next of kin are led to believe that life support will be switched off and then the organs removed. This is not what happens. Any organs required will be removed, sometimes without anaesthetic, and then life support will be switched off.

For donors and next of kin not to be told that the patient will be breathing and the patient's heart still beating when the organs are removed is unethical and immoral.

Discovering the depth of love

2011-07-04T14:58:00.000+01:00

I commented two weeks ago on Terry Pratchett's appalling programme on assisted suicide on BBC TV. I'm sorry that I only just got round to reading the Rev Michael Wenham's comment on the programme in the Guardian's Comment is free.

Michael lives in Oxfordshire. He has motor neurone disease. You might think he would be a candidate for assisted suicide. But no. He doesn't want to die; he wants to live. ("Why is the universe so beautiful?" he says on his blog.) His comments on the programme are worth reading.

When he wrote them, he'd just had a visit from old friends Jill and her husband Dan. Jill, a keen horsewoman, was left a paraplegic after a motor cycle accident 52 years ago. Dan was given six months to live because of leukaemia more than 20 years ago and is still here. Both are living a full life and full of fun.

"They actually enrich you in knowing them. I expect that they would say that, having determined to live, their experiences have enriched them. It might have been so different."

And the programme? Pratchett's comment about one of the men who opted for suicide - "I've been in the presence of the bravest man I've ever met" - "left a bitter taste in my mouth," says Michael, "as if we'd been served a cocktail of death disguised as an elixir of life."

The candidates for suicide on the programme might have wanted to spare their families the pain of caring for them, but that didn't seem to be their motive.

"The repeated refrain. . . was 'It's my choice,' 'It's his choice'. . . My individual choice is sovereign. I want my kingdom. And the rest doesn't matter. The individual is the ace, trumping all else.

"Well, that's a pretty impoverished world. In fact, interdependence is the secret of society. We are dependent on each other, and that's something for celebrating, not fearing, for embracing, not avoiding. Perhaps the city is an image of heaven because community is the heart of human existence. The best thing in life is to experience the extraordinary depth with which one can be loved. It's to discover the utter disinteredness of those who love you, to find out when you can give nothing back, literally nothing but distasteful work and pain, they still want to look after you; they still care for you; yes, they still love you.

"The tragedy of Peter Smedley and Andrew Colgan [the men in the programme who chose assisted suicide], it seems to me, is that they didn't trust themselves to the journey their loved ones wanted to travel with them - because if they had, the road might well have been rough, but they would have discovered, hand in hand with them, beauties of the human spirit few of us ever glimpse."

Read the whole thing. To see it, click here.

A very remarkable lady

2011-07-02T14:29:00.000+01:00

Caroline Cox - Baroness Cox of Queensbury, to give her her full title - is, by any account, a remarkable woman.

A humanitarian activist, she is founder and chief executive of HART (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust), which helps oppressed people neglected by other organisations and ignored by the international media. She is president of Christian Solidarity UK, as well as supporter of countless other organisations.

She has entered war zones under fire. She has travelled secretly to countries where foreigners and aid organisations were not permitted. She has spoken up for persecuted Christians in Burma, Indonesia, Nigeria and Sudan. As a result of her work, she has received honorary doctorates from universities on several continents.

She has taken medical supplies to Communist Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union. She has made something like 60 journeys to Armenia with medical supplies, many of them in violent times when young men were being beheaded and little girls cut in half and left hanging on trees.

Despite being sentenced in absentia by the National Islamic Front for illegally entering Sudan, where more than two million people were displaced and an estimated 400,000 killed, she continued to make trips there.

On one visit, Islamists had passed through days before, killing unarmed men and enslaving women and children. Bodies were everywhere. She met a Christian whose farm had been destroyed, his church attacked, his brother and his brother-in-law killed and his sister captured as a slave.

"We feel completely on our own," he said. "You are the only Christians who have even visited us for years. Doesn't the church want us any more?"

"I sat under a tree," said Baroness Cox, "and wept."

Baroness Cox has now introduced a bill in the House of Lords which would allay fears that the estimated 85 sharia courts set up by Muslims in the UK are beginning to adjudicate in matters of criminal and family law. She has no desire, she says, to interfere with internal religious issues or prevent arbitration for people who want it. But the bill would make it a criminal offence to pretend to be able to adjudicate in criminal or family matters or to discriminate against women.

The Islamic Sharia Council has published a statement suggesting that Baroness Cox doesn't know what she's talking about.

Her bill will have its second reading in the Lords before very long. It is unlikely to become law. I would think that for it to do so it would need the support of some very principled politicians.

Whether Baroness Cox's bill reaches the statute book or not, I wish her well.

A new 'sanctity of life' challenge

2011-06-25T12:45:00.000+01:00

It began with Tony Bland, who suffered brain damage in the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster. He was diagnosed as being in what has come to be known as persistent vegetative state.

Doctors said he was unaware, but not in pain. He was not dying. He was not on life support. Cared for, he could have lived for 30 years. But in 1993 the law lords decided - though not in a unanimous decision, you may remember - that doctors could withhold food and water from him, thus causing him to die.

It was the first time in history English courts sanctioned causing the death of an innocent man who was not already dying.

Since then, it has been possible to apply to the courts for permission to withdraw food and water from patients in so-called persistent vegetative state, and numbers of patients have died in this way.

I am opposed to nutrition and hydration being withdrawn in these circumstances. I do not believe it is possible to prove total lack of awareness. I do not know how it can be said there is no possibility of improvement (some patients diagnosed as being in persistent vegetative state have recovered). And whatever you think of those two points, we are still taking innocent human life.

Now there has come another sinister development. A mother is applying to the courts for permission to withdraw nutrition and hydration from a patient said to be minimally conscious. The case comes before a court in the next few weeks.

If permission to withdraw food and water is granted here, we will have crossed another rubicon; taken another important step down the slippery slope.

109 years old - with a new nose

2011-06-23T15:34:00.003+01:00

Human life is precious.

Human life deserves care and respect, whether the person is newly conceived, nine or 90. Because this is a particular concern of mine, this blog carries stories about things like assisted suicide, which can be depressing. So here's a story to try to restore the balance.

Meir Korner lives in Haifa, in northern Israel. There's one thing you should know about him before we go any farther. He was born in December 1901. That makes him 109 years old.

He still has good health, a clear mind and a great sense of humour. His recipe for old age, he says, is simple: do what makes you happy.

His daily routine includes sleeping well, reading, resting, regular talks with the Almighty and going to the beach. For 60 years he didn't miss his walk on the shore, where he meets friends and enjoys the sunshine.

A few months ago, Meir discovered what turned out to be a tumour on his nose. Eventually it covered some 50 per cent of his nose. A few weeks ago, he had an operation to remove the tumour and reconstruct his nose, using a flap of skin from his forehead (forehead flap rhinoplasty, for the professionals among my readership).

Meir's nose healed in a very short space of time, IsraelNationalNews.com reports. "We are extremely satisfied with the results," said Yitzchak Ramon, the doctor who operated. "Nose reconstruction is a real challenge, yet just days after the operation, it looked like nothing happened."

Meir waits to return to the beach. "The doctors say this happened because of the sun, but I don't think I have to stop going to the beach," he said.

"I look and feel good because of the doctors and because I do what I love. The Almighty promised me many years on this earth, and the moment I can, I will return to the sea - with sunscreen."

So where are we going here?

2011-06-20T17:08:00.002+01:00

President Obama is being described as the most anti-Israel president in US history.

Hamas has been listed by the US as a terrorist organisation. It refuses to accept Israel's right to exist and is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Just a month ago, President Obama said Israel could not be expected to negotiate with Hamas until Hamas gave up its goal to destroy Israel. He told the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: "We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace, including recognising Israel's right to exist and rejecting violence and adhering to all existing agreements."

Despite the fact that Hamas has not changed its position, Obama now says that Israel must start peace negotiations with Hamas, now a partner with Fatah in Palestinian government, based on Israel's pre-1967 borders. This, it is suggested, would prevent the Palestinians' unilaterial declaration of a Palestinian state in September - a move which the US could prevent anyway if it had a mind.

Israel says it will not negotiate with Hamas so long as Hamas refuses to accept Israel's right to exist.

Iran, whose fanatical leadership has promised to wipe Israel off the map, has stockpiles of enriched uranium and is now said to be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb in about two months.

Hezbollah and Hamas are still backed by Iran. In Egypt, the radical Muslim Brotherhood is consolidating its position ahead of elections in September. The hand of al Qaeda is becoming increasingly evident in countries like Yemen. Muslims are talking about a Muslim caliphate with the former land of Israel at its centre.

When we talk about Israel, we are dealing not only with a geopolitical issue, but with an intensely theological and spiritual issue. The Bible speaks a great deal about Israel's history, Israel's present and Israel's future. There is not room here to quote large portions of the Bible, but consider, for instance, Ezek 28:25, 26:

"'Thus says the Lord God: "When I have gathered the house of Israel from the peoples among whom they are scattered, and am hallowed in them in the sight of the Gentiles, then they will dwell in their own land which I gave to my servant Jacob.

"'And they will dwell safely there, build houses, and plant vineyards; yes, they will dwell securely, when I execute judgments on all those around them who despise them. Then they shall know that I am the Lord their God."'"

And Amos 9:14, 15:

"'I will bring back the captives of my people Israel;
They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them;
They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them.

"I will plant them in their land,
And no longer shall they be pulled up
From the land I have given them,'
Says the Lord your God."

It's your choice

2011-06-18T15:10:00.001+01:00

When I saw the film version of C. S. Lewis' classic tale The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I was interested, but not tremendously impressed. Perhaps I had heard so much about it, actually seeing it was something of an anti-climax. On the other hand, when I heard the dramatised version of the story on the radio, I was almost in tears.

Why the difference? Perhaps because radio offers better opportunity for the imagination to function. A powerful thing, the imagination.

Someone said that the Bible doesn't tell us everything about heaven, but enough to allow us to imagine it. And look forward to it.

When God has finished what's He's doing down here, He's going to create a new heaven and a new earth. The new heaven isn't going to be up there; it's going to be down here. God Himself is going to come down to dwell among His people.

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God'" (Rev 21:1 - 3).

Words can't describe what a wonderful place it will be. There will be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. We will have fellowship there with some wonderful people, and with God Himself.

It's amazing how people imagine that everyone is going to heaven (except Hitler perhaps, and Saddam Hussein). Jesus said only a few people are going there.

And it's surprising how people believe we can get to heaven by being good. Or if the good we do outweighs the evil we do. Or if we belong to this church, or that church or the other church. Heaven is perfect; there'll be no sin in heaven. And we're all sinners, which is why we all need a Saviour. God's Son, born into human flesh, lived a perfect life and died in my place, so that He could take away my sin and give me His righteousness. He's the Saviour of the world.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

The reason so many people don't go to heaven is not because they aren't invited, but because they fail to take advantage of God's offer of forgiveness and a new life in Christ.

God's done everything He can to make it possible. The choice now is yours.

An appalling example of propaganda

2011-06-14T14:31:00.001+01:00

In a one-hour TV programme called Choosing to Die, the BBC last night showed a British man taking his own life at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

The programme was presented by Sir Terry Pratchett, a patron of Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) and a campaigner for the legalisation of assisted suicide in the UK. It was totally biased: little more than propaganda for the campaign. It is likely to encourage others to commit suicide. The decision to show the programme was appalling.

Dr Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, wrote on his blog last week:

By putting their extensive public resources behind this campaign and by giving Terry Pratchett, who is both a patron on DID and key funder of the controversial Falconer Commission, a platform to propagate his views, the BBC is actively fuelling this move to impose assisted suicide on this country and runs the risk of pushing vulnerable people over the edge into taking their lives. It is also flouting both its own guidelines on suicide portrayal and impartiality.

The portrayal of suicide by the BBC, along with Pratchett's celebrity endorsement, breaches both international and BBC guidelines on suicide portrayal and risks encouraging further suicides amongst those who are sick, elderly or disabled. It is both a recipe for elder abuse and also a threat to vulnerable people, many of whom already feel under pressure at a time of financial crisis and threatened health cuts to end their lives for fear of being a burden on others. The dangers of portraying suicide on the media (Werther effect, suicide contagion, or copycat suicide) are well recognised in the medical literature.

The BBC's own editorial guidelines on portrayal of suicide are very clear and call for 'great sensitivity': 'Factual reporting and fictional portrayal of suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm have the potential to make such actions appear possible, and even appropriate, to the vulnerable.'

The WHO guidance on the media coverage of suicide is equally unambiguous: 'Don't publish photographs or suicide notes. Don't report specific details of the method used. Don't give simplistic reasons. Don't glorify or sensationalize suicide.'

The latest move by the BBC is a disgraceful use of licence-payers' money and further evidence of a blatant campaigning stance. The corporation has now produced five documentaries or docudramas since 2008 portraying assisted suicide in a positive light.

Where are the balancing programmes showing the benefits of palliative care, promoting investment on social support for vulnerable people or highlighting the great dangers of legalisation which have convinced parliaments in Australia, France, Canada, Scotland and the US to resist any change in the law in the last twelve months alone? One will not it seems, hear any of this from the BBC.

The BBC is in flagrant breach of both its own guidelines on suicide portrayal and also its public duty to remain impartial. This will inevitably lead to further criticism of bias and will only serve to place the lives of more vulnerable people at risk.

In a blog post published yesterday before the programme was shown, Peter Saunders prophesied that there were 20 things that would not be mentioned on the programme. He went on to list the 20 things. He was right on every one.

His full comments can be seen here and here.

A health service in crisis

2011-06-03T12:24:00.000+01:00

The National Health Service appears to be in crisis.

Despite billions of pounds having been thrown at it, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley says without urgent reform the NHS faces a £20 billion-a-year black hole in funding and a potential doubling of health spending.

Almost 4,500 patients are said to have been discharged from hospital severely malnourished last year, some having illnesses more commonly seen in famines in Africa.

Dehydration is said to contribute to the death of more than 800 hospital patients each year. A report by the Care Quality Commission said some doctors were having to prescribe drinking water for patients to ensure they were given enough to drink.

One, if not two giant care home companies are said to be facing financial meltdown, with the possibility of the Government having to provide a rescue package to save thousands of care home residents from being made homeless. Meanwhile there are reports of "barbaric" abuse of patients at a privately run care home, and a review of the Care Quality Commission itself following an apparent failure to act.

While all this is going on - and not necessarily in direct connection with the above - the Royal College of General Practitioners has drawn up a charter for the care of patients nearing the end of life.

GPs are to assist such patients to make a written record of their wishes, which will be kept on the NHS database of medical records now being developed. Ambulance staff and emergency doctors will then be able to know, for instance, as well as the GP, whether or not the patient wishes to be resuscitated. The patient's wishes will be binding.

The charter may have been formulated with good intentions, but I have serious questions about its implementation. What if the information is put on the computer database incorrectly? What if it is mixed up with another patient's records?

Patients are already able to sign an advance directive (also known as a living will) stating how they wish to be treated, including whether or not they wish to be resuscitated in a life or death situation. Doctors are obliged to follow such directives.

The whole idea of living wills is flawed. An incapacitated patient who has signed a living will is not able to change his mind. How he feels when illness strikes may be very different from what he said when he was fit and well.

I recently heard of a case where doctors dealing with a life and death situation were told there was a living will and allowed the patient to die. It was later found that what was in the patient's medical records was a blank living will form that had not been filled in.

My position regarding future treatment is clear: I do not wish to be allowed to die with dignity; I want to be allowed to live with dignity until death finally and naturally intervenes. Some people who feel as I do have made living wills saying they do want to be resuscitated. I would be most reluctant to do that. Suppose my instructions were misinterpreted or misunderstood?

A doctor's calling is to save life. Unfortunately, a patient's autonomy has become the be-all and end-all.

Number of abortions up - but with a ray of hope?

2011-05-31T16:05:00.000+01:00

The number of abortions in the UK is up again.

Government figures published last week show there were 196,109 abortions in England and Wales in 2010, compared with 195,743 the previous year - 189,574 of them on England and Wales residents, compared with 189,100 on England and Wales residents in 2009.

Figures for Scotland, published today, show 12,826 abortions in 2010, compared with 13,108 in 2009. That's a total of 208,935 abortions in England, Wales and Scotland, compared with 208,851 the year before.

Of the abortions on England and Wales residents, 96 per cent were funded by the NHS, and 59 per cent took place in private clinics, paid for by the NHS. A third of women having an abortion had had an abortion previously; 85 women had had seven previous abortions or more.

Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, described as the country's largest abortion provider, was quoted as saying what a splendid thing an abortion service was.

A spokesperson for the ProLife Alliance said sexual health education was clearly not impacting significantly on unplanned pregnancies. "Any abortion at whatever stage in pregnancy and for whatever reason represents the ending of the life of a developing pre-born child."

Indeed.

One blogger said what he always found astounding when the annual figures came out was the fact that they have ceased to shock us.

The Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health, which advised the Government on things like abortion, teenage sexuality and sex education and comprised organisations in favour of abortion and sex education for children as young as five, was disbanded last year.

Life, a pro-life organisation, has been invited to join the Sex Education Forum, which will replace it. Although it will be the single opposing voice on a panel dominated by pro-abortion groups, its inclusion has caused outrage.

Dr Evan Harris, former MP and a humanist, even suggested its presence may prevent the forum from functioning properly by preventing the forum from being given confidential information and preventing it from having frank and open discussions. What nonsense.

Could the inclusion of a pro-life group on the forum be an indication that the Government, having thrown millions of pounds at sex education, free contraception and abortion, is at last realising that the "do whatever you like, but do take precautions" approach has done nothing to reduce abortions and the sexual infection epidemic and a new approach is needed?

Losing the one you love

2011-05-28T14:35:00.000+01:00

Jessica Council was a beautiful redheaded American girl. She was 30 years old, with a husband and a two-year-old son. She and her husband Clint worked for a Christian charity, mentoring children.

She was always extremely healthy, took care about what she ate and exercised regularly.

Last August, she developed a sore throat. When it was still sore two weeks later, she saw a doctor. He had a test done, and said it was nothing to worry about. He had misread the results of the test.

In November, Jessica was having trouble breathing, and wound up in accident and emergency. The following day her throat closed up so tightly she couldn't breathe. Doctors managed to get a tube down her throat and put her on a ventilator.

The following day, they told her she had cancer. By then, she knew for certain that she was pregnant. Two days later, the hospital's obstetrician offered her an abortion. Jessica refused. For her, that was not an option.

Surgery for the cancer was not possible. The oncologist said chemotherapy would likely kill the baby. The obstetrician said the baby would probably survive, but would probably have brain damage. Radiotherapy carried similar risks. Jessica thought for a few seconds, then declined treatment.

One night in February, Jessica went to sleep and didn't wake up. Clint gave permission for a caesarean section.

The doctors thought Jessica was 25 weeks into pregnancy. When little Jessi was born, they realised she had been only about 23 weeks, the very limit of viability for the baby. Jessi weighed 1lb 3oz.

"Jessica knew she was going to die anyway," said Clint. "She didn't share that with me until almost when she died. . . But I think she knew, and she was going to give this baby every chance she could.

"I did struggle," said Clint, "because in the Bible the one person that we're commanded to love more than myself, this was her. Sometimes it's easier to be selfless as far as whatever happens to you, but when it comes down to losing the one you love more than anything else, it's very difficult."

For about a month after Jessica died, says Clint, "I could not - and I mean that as a literal inability - I could not read my Bible, I could not pray.

"I knew cognitively that the relationship was there, I knew [God] loved me. I accepted all these things from a mental standpoint. . . but the delight in God was gone for about a month. I was functioning solely on what I knew to be true from a mental standpoint."

Now he's busy working, caring for his two children - the doctors say the baby, though still in hospital, is doing well - and praying once more.

Less than two weeks after Jessica died, Clint wrote: "God is to be praised, my friends. Do not doubt God; do not be angry with Him for me.

"I am privileged to have had a wife who was so full of the love of the Father. Rejoice with me. . . God has blessed Jessica in taking her to a place of perfect peace and no pain. I must be thankful for the time that I had with her rather than ungrateful for all the things we never got to do together. We must give thanks in all things for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ.

"Grace and peace to all."

You can read the full story at LifeSiteNews.

A plan for genocide?

2011-05-24T16:53:00.000+01:00

So President Obama has suggested a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines, thus going back on what America had previously promised Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rather bravely and quite rightly told him it won't happen. And President Obama is now in London reportedly seeking a joint Middle East agreement with Prime Minister David Cameron based on those same 1967 lines.

Says Archbishop Cranmer:

While Israel remains surrounded by enemies - having ceded Gaza to Arab control from whence rain thousands of Katyusha rockets - David Cameron is now being asked to support the Obama plan to revert to the very partition which posed an existential threat to the only democracy in the region. The 'Arab spring' has not yet quite sprung enough to persuade Israel that a glorious summer lies ahead: Syria openly supports Hezbollah; Egypt now has the Muslim Brotherhood; Gaza has spawned Hamas; Lebanon hosts a plethora of anti-Israel terrorist groups and Iran is pledged to wipe Israel 'off the map': the whole of Arabia is intent on her destruction. And President Obama is here to persuade David Cameron to support a policy which will inevitably result in yet another attempt to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. This is not a peace process: it is a plan for genocide on a scale not seen since Auschwitz.

There will be those who consider that I spend too much time on this blog talking about Israel.

But God calls Himself the God of Israel, God calls that small sliver of territory in the Middle East "my land", and the Bible says (specifically in Zech 14:2 - 4) that the Lord Jesus Christ will return to this earth precisely when Israel is finally overcome.

Think about it.

British Christian antisemitism?

2011-05-23T16:09:00.000+01:00

The Methodist Church in Britain overwhelmingly agreed at its last annual conference to call for a boycott of goods from "illegal" Israeli West Bank settlements, blaming Israeli occupation as the key hindrance to Middle East peace.

On her blog, Daphne Anson has published a letter sent to the Methodist Church leadership as a consequence by a Dr Gerald Oberman, who I believe lives in Brighton:

Dear Sir,

In your annual conference you have passed a policy calling for a boycott of goods from "illegal" Israeli West Bank settlements. You claim this is not anti-Semitic. But how else do you explain this strange obsession with Israel? What about the Chinese occupation of Tibet, or the Sudanese slaughter in Darfur, persecution in Zimbabwe and elsewhere? Politically, one could probably compile a case for a boycott against just about every country on the planet, but the only country in the world being subjected to a call for a boycott is Israel.

The so-called West Bank has been Jewish for more than 3000 years. A large part was known as Judea. Jesus, a Jew, was born there. Who do you imagine lived in Judea, if not the Jews? Who lived in Hebron but the Hebrews? The name Bethlehem is Hebrew. Only the Jews, of all the people in the world, living in their own land, are besmirched by being called illegal settlers.

Israel is monstrously depicted as Apartheid, notwithstanding the fact that one fifth of her population is Israeli Arab with full rights. The Palestinians claim the West Bank as theirs and require the land to be Juden Frei.

And just who are the "Palestinians"? Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. There has never been a King of Palestine. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. The "Palestinian" leader Yasser Arafat was an Egyptian. They have no claim on the West Bank. Israel is not wrongfully "occupying" or "settling" anything.

Israel is currently the subject of a demonisation and misinformation campaign put out by Arab sources and propelled with a strong anti-Semitic undercurrent. The Arab world is spewing out anti-Semitism unequalled since the Hitler era. It is so pervasive, many Jews are being infected. Israel is portrayed as the most evil state on the planet. . .

Your boycott of Israeli "settlements" is, of course, the prelude to a boycott of all Israel. I trust you are preparing a complete boycott of everything coming out of Israel. . .

An Israeli company has developed a simple blood test that distinguishes between mild and severe cases of Multiple Sclerosis. . .

An Israeli-made device helps restore the use of paralysed hands. . . Your children with breathing problems will soon be sleeping more soundly, thanks to a new Israeli device called the Child Hood. This innovation replaces the inhalation mask with an improved drug delivery system that provides relief for child and parent. . .

A new research centre in Israel hopes to throw light on brain disorders such as depression and Alzheimer's disease. The Joseph Sangol Neuroscience Center in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer Hospital aims to bring thousands of scientists and doctors to focus on brain research. A researcher at Israel's Ben Gurion University has succeeded in creating human monoclonal antibodies which can neutralize the highly contagious smallpox virus without inducing the dangerous side effects of the existing vaccine. . .

Doctors Ciechanover and Hershko's research and discovery of one of the human cell's most important cyclical processes will lead the way to DNA repair, control of newly produced proteins and immune defence systems.

The Movement Disorder Surgery program at Israel's Hadassah Medical Centre has successfully eliminated the physical manifestations of Parkinson's disease in a select group of patients with a deep brain stimulation technique.

For women who undergo hysterectomies each year for the treatment of uterine fibroids, the development in Israel of the Ex Ablate 2000 System is a welcome breakthrough, offering a non-invasive alternative to surgery.

Israel is developing a nose drop that will provide a five year flu vaccine. . .

Most of Windows operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. . . The Pentium NMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor and the Centrum processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel. . . Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by Israeli scientists. . .

Israel has the highest concentration of high-tech companies outside of Silicon Valley. Israel has more museums per capita. Israel has the second highest publication of new books per capita. . . Israel is making a massive contribution to the world, including the Palestinians - and to you - in science, medicine, communications and security. Pro rata for population, Israel is making a greater contribution than any other nation on earth.

And what is the Arab world doing? Buying rockets and missiles and threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. The call by your church to boycott Israel, which is the intention, reeks of the stench of anti-Semitism. You should all hang your heads in shame.

Interesting.

A story of hope

2011-05-21T16:30:00.001+01:00

Kate Allatt's husband had never known her to be ill. She used to go to the gym. At weekends she went fell-running.

She developed a constant headache. A doctor said it was a migraine. Then she collapsed. Doctors said she had a blood clot in her brain stem and put her into an induced coma.

When she came out of the coma she had tubes everywhere, including a big one in her mouth helping her breathe. She could see, she could hear, but she couldn't speak. She was suffering from locked-in syndrome.

Kate wasn't able to move, not even her eyeballs. All she could move was her eyelids. Her husband and children talked to her, but she couldn't respond.

Doctors said she was brain dead.

Then her husband noticed she opened her eyes when there was an interesting programme on TV, and closed them when there wasn't.

"Kate," he said, "can you understand? Blink if you can." She blinked. "Do it again." She did it again. They had established a means of communication.

Even so, doctors believed she would never walk or talk again.

Within weeks, she moved her thumb. Within months, she managed to sit up. She spent a weekend practising mouth exercises given her by a therapist. When her favourite nurse arrived, she said "Morning!" The nurse burst into tears.

She began to use crutches. Three months ago, a year to the day after her collapse, she got on to a running track and ran 20 metres. It was only 20 metres, but she ran.

The Daily Mail recently told her story. As I read it, I had tears in my eyes.

Why? Some people said to be brain dead are having food and water withdrawn from them until they die. As funds become tighter and the number of patients increases, that sort of thing is likely to become more common.

Human life is inestimably precious. Human beings are not here to be disposed of. Taking innocent human life is wrong.

More difficult days ahead

2011-05-20T12:58:00.000+01:00

For Israel, the clouds continue to gather.

According to a poll, 54 per cent of Egyptians want to scrap Egypt's peace agreement with Israel.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised "a new Middle East" in the near future without the presence of Israel and its allies.

The Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah - which is refusing to negotiate with Israel - has signed a peace pact with Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organisation which refuses to recognise the right of Israel to exist, refuses to renounce terrorism and is sworn to Israel's destruction. The aim is evidently to declare an independent Palestinian state without agreement with Israel and ask the United Nations in September to recognise it.

Says American commentator Joel Rosenberg: "In reality it is a shotgun wedding, at best. Fatah and Hamas leaders have historically not only hated each other but gunned each other down in broad daylight. When Hamas took over Gaza in 2005 and 2006, it set into motion a bloodbath, killing scores of Fatah officials and party members, even throwing some off of high rise buildings."

The United Nations has declared that the Palestine Authority is capable and ready to function as an independent state and is only being held back by the "Israeli occupation," and a sizeable number of nations have suggested that they will support a unilateral declaration of independence.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said last week that if Israel fails to recognise an independent Palestinian state, which must include 100 per cent of Judea, Samaria and the entire eastern half of Jerusalem, Hamas will "add new cards to the resistance."

As Mashaal, who insists on the right of return for large numbers of "Palestinian refugees" while at the same time insisting that any Palestinian state should be Jew-free, continues to insist that he will not negotiate with the Jewish state, this would have to come about by Israel's unilateral surrender to Arab demands.

US President Barack Obama in a speech yesterday proposed a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines. Israel, as America well knows, is unable to accept a Palestinian state on 1967 lines because it would leave an Israel that was indefensible - which means that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be having a difficult visit to Washington today.

Whatever happens, Israel is likely to be blamed - by the increasing number of people like Tom Friedman, of the New York Times. He suggests Israel is an enemy of democracy because it does not "feel the joy of freedom being rung in across the Arab Middle East" - despite the fact that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East and the prospect of democracy resulting from the present turmoil in Arab countries is slim indeed. Strange that nobody calls for democracy among the Palestinians.

The stage is surely being set for the next military incursion into Israel. When that happens, those who invade will find, as others have found before them, that they have attempted something more difficult than they expected.

When you know that you know that you know

2011-05-14T15:57:00.003+01:00

Talking with a man one day about spiritual things, I mentioned the Bible. "Well, the Bible," he said, "is a book, just like any other book." He was mistaken.

On the night before He died, Jesus prayed for His disciples: not only for His disciples at that time, but also for all those that were to come. In His prayer, he told His Father "Your word is truth" (John 17:17).

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, reformer John Calvin tells how the Scriptures, although written by men, come to us with authority from God; he says, what's more, that every true believer will come to the certainty that they are in fact the word of God. This conscious realisation, he says, comes by what he calls "the inward testimony of the Spirit."

Says John Piper: "[The Holy Spirit] awakens us, as from the dead, to see and taste the divine reality of God in Scripture, which authenticates it as God's own Word. . . the witness of God to Scripture is the immediate, unassailable, life-giving revelation to the mind of the majesty of God manifest in the Scriptures. . .

"God witnesses to us of his reality and the reality of his Son and his Word by giving us life from the dead so that we come alive to his majesty and see him for who he is in his Word."

Theologian J. I. Packer explains it this way: "Calvin affirms Scripture to be self-authenticating through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. What is this 'inner witness'? Not a special quality of experience, nor a new, private revelation, nor an existential 'decision,' but a work of enlightenment. . .

"The internal witness of the Spirit in John Calvin is a work of enlightenment whereby, through the medium of verbal testimony, the blind eyes of the spirit are opened, and divine realities come to be recognised and embraced for what they are. This recognition Calvin says, is as immediate and unanalyzable as the perceiving of a color, or a taste, by physical sense - an event about which no more can be said than that when appropriate stimuli were present it happened, and when it happened we know it had happened."(1)

A few weeks before I was converted to Christ I moved to an area where I had not previously lived, but not far from the home of a committed Christian family I knew. I remember one evening I went out looking for a pub. I had difficulty finding one, and when I did, the beer tasted awful.

Almost without intending it, I ended up at the home of these Christians. The conversation quickly turned to spiritual matters. I started asking questions about eight o'clock, and I continued asking questions until midnight. That night I was given answers to my questions straight from the Bible. I clearly remember walking home in the early hours of the morning, saying to myself "Well, either the Bible is true or it isn't: one or the other."

I can't remember exactly at what moment I came to an incontrovertible conviction that the Bible is true, but one thing is sure: the revelation changed my life.

How about you?

(1) J. I. Packer. John Calvin: A collection of essays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966, p166

Truth, lies and safe sex

2011-05-09T10:29:00.000+01:00

Dr Miriam Grossman, a paediatrician with years of experience, has been invited to speak at a number of meetings in London on the subject of sex education in schools.

Says Andrea Williams, reporting on her blog at Christian Concern on Dr Grossman's meeting in the Houses of Parliament:

Dr Grossman emphasised how sex educators usually claim to provide "non-judgmental" and "comprehensive, medically accurate information" in order to help children make their own informed choices and delay sexual activity - but this is all, in fact, a lie.

In reality, Dr Grossman emphasised, the priority of much sex education in the UK is to promote morality-free sexual "licence." Sex education programmes normalise premature sex and promote the idea that children have a "right" to make their own decisions. Abstinence from sex is not usually presented as an option and the health risks of early sexual activity are downplayed.

Both the general public and school children in particular are often misinformed about the effectiveness of contraception in preventing disease and pregnancy. . .

Young people are often told that using a condom reduces the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and reduces the risks of conception by 98%. However, the truth is that:

* The 98% figure only refers to the risk of pregnancy - not infection. Furthermore, it only applies to circumstances where condom use is "perfect." "Typical use" is more common, where condoms are worn correctly most of the time but are occasionally used incorrectly. In such cases, the risk of pregnancy is reduced by only 85%!

* Even perfect condom use only reduces the risk of herpes by 25 - 50%, chlamydia by 26% and gonorrhoea by 62%. That's little protection at all!

* Condoms have close to 0% effectiveness in preventing the transmission of HPV.

* A girl's immature cervix increases her vulnerability to genital infections. HIV aside, girls and women carry 80% of the burden of negative consequences from early sexual behaviour and multiple partners. . .

Dr Grossman warned that if sex educators continue to deny biological truths and encourage "exploration" (read promiscuity), then the health and well-being of our children will continue to suffer. The "safe sex" message endorsed by schools is offering children a false sense of security. This must stop. There is no such thing as safe sex, other than between two people who have saved themselves for marriage.

Christians everywhere should be teaching children that each one of them is a beautiful, unique creation made in the image of God. The way that our children can be safe and free is to truly know this and to keep themselves for marriage.

Let's do all we can to promote God's truth for the sake of our children. Let's claim back our education system; let's expose bad sex education, especially in the forthcoming national curriculum review. Let's bring to society the message of purity, faithfulness, love, truth and hope that is found in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

And a comment on Andrea's piece from a police officer:

We teach our kids not to play with matches, and don't claim "they will do it anyway," and we don't say "we teach them the dangers and let them decide." Sex is like fire, the context can determine if it is safe or destructive. Marriage is the only safe context for sex. Outside of marriage the dangers are there. . . but. . . educators and others refuse to tell the truth about it.

Can anyone say these things aren't true?

And the band played on

2011-05-07T16:49:00.001+01:00

Colne, a former mill town in Lancashire, is a rum place. As a rum place, it has form. On his several visits there, John Wesley always met opposition, sometimes violent. On one of his visits, one of his helpers was thrown to his death from a bridge.

But Methodism prevailed. At one time the town boasted the best part of a dozen Methodist chapels.

Wallace Hartley, born in 1878, went to the Methodist day school and sang in the choir at Bethel Independent Methodist Chapel, where his father, Albion Hartley, was choirmaster and Sunday school superintendent. Albion is said to have introduced the hymn Nearer My God to Thee to the congregation. Young Wallace learned the violin from a member of the congregation.

When the Titanic sailed from Liverpool on its ill-fated voyage 99 years ago this year, Wallace was leader of the ship's eight-piece orchestra.

When the Titanic was holed shortly before midnight, the orchestra, who would already have finished for the night, made their way to the first-class lounge. A survivor said one of them told her they were "going to give them a tune to cheer things up a bit."

It was commonly believed that the orchestra played until the ship went down, and that their last piece was Nearer My God to Thee.

Wallace Hartley's was one of only three musicians' bodies to be identified, and the only one to be returned home. A crowd of 40,000 - almost twice Colne's population - turned out for his funeral procession.

A recent book, The Band that Played On, by Steve Turner, speculates that it was Hartley's faith - and that of cellist John Wesley Woodward, a fellow Methodist from Hill Top Methodist Chapel in West Bromwich - that encouraged them to play to the last.

"My feeling is that he was a person of great moral authority as well as a born leader," says the author. "One of the most convincing accounts I read, by one of the sailors, was that at the end there was a lone violinist playing Nearer My God to Thee. I suspect that was Wallace Hartley."

Death of an icon

2011-05-05T14:00:00.001+01:00

David Wilkerson, a young pastor in rural Pennsylvania, used to watch television in the evenings to see what young people were watching. One day God led him to stop watching TV and dedicate his two hours' TV time to prayer.

That was how it all began.

One night he was sitting in his study reading Life magazine. "I merely turned a page, and at first glance, it seemed there was nothing to interest me. The page showed a pen drawing of a trial taking place in New York. . .

"I started to flip the page over. But as I did, something caught my eye. It was the eyes of a figure in the drawing - a boy. He was one of seven boys on trial for murder. I held the magazine closer to get a better look. The artist had captured a look of bewilderment, hatred and despair in the young boy's features. Suddenly, I began to cry."

Wilkerson drove 350 miles to New York, met violent youngsters on the streets and started Teen Challenge, a ministry for teenagers, including teenage drug addicts. His book describing his experiences, The Cross and the Switchblade, sold 50 million copies in over 30 languages.

In 1971, he founded World Challenge, which eventually covered ministry outreach, literature and video publishing, evangelism, feeding programmes, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres and an 8,000-member church in Times Square, New York.

On Wednesday last week he was driving in Texas when his car veered into the opposite lane and collided head on with a lorry travelling in the opposite direction. Wilkerson, who was 79, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The last blog post he wrote said this: "To those going through the valley and shadow of death, hear this word: Weeping will last through some dark, awful nights, and in that darkness you will hear the Father whisper, 'I am with you. I cannot tell you why right now, but one day it will all make sense. You will see it was all part of my plan. It was no accident.'"

Wilkerson's wife Gwen, who several times in her lifetime has beaten cancer, was with him in the car. She was taken to hospital critically injured. A report that she had died the following morning was incorrect. She is in hospital, and expected to recover.

Words to remember

2011-04-30T20:10:00.000+01:00

The royal wedding is over. Prince William and Catherine Middleton, now Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are man and wife. The rain stayed away. The dress was beautiful. Everything went well.

On reflection, one of the day's most evocative moments was the Bishop of London's advice to the couple, in the words of Catherine of Siena:

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

Could there be better advice to the newly-married pair than that?

Your part in the story

2011-04-29T16:14:00.002+01:00

A dear Christian lady named Ruth Wood writes a blog called Comfort Cafe.

In one blog post she remembers hearing Billy Graham say that history is really His story - and she recalls how God writes people into that story.

She considers one or two Bible characters - seemingly ordinary people whose influence did not become altogether apparent until after they were gone. And then one or two more modern examples. . .

"Oswald Chambers travelled and lectured, never famous during his lifetime. After his death, his wife spent the rest of her life publishing her husband's spoken words which she had recorded verbatim in shorthand. My Utmost for His Highest was published ten years after her husband died. During his lifetime, Chambers remained unaware that he had authored a classic that God would use in countless lives.

"Ever heard of Christian Wolfkes? This godly Rumanian cherished a fervent love for Jews and prayed for years that he might win one for Christ even though there were none in his village and he was too ill to travel. Around 1937 a young Jewish man and his wife arrived. The old carpenter prayed many hours for their salvation, gave them a New Testament and eventually won Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand to Christ.

"This couple later stood up to the communist government, and after suffering many years in prison for their faith, Richard wrote the well-known book, Tortured for Christ, and founded Voice of the Martyrs.

"Christian Wolfkes only saw himself as a carpenter who wanted to win a Jew to Christ. He never learned the impact his investment in the Wurmbrands had around the world."

Leaving God to decide where He fits us into the divine narrative, she suggests, gives us freedom from the stress of trying to be spiritually productive. And if we're stressed about how our life is turning out, it might be an idea to wait for the last page of the book.

So. Would you want to live a selfish life, taking every decision with an eye to your own benefit? Or would you prefer to yield your life to the Master Storyteller, allowing Him to fit you into the divine narrative in a way that will bring blessing to others and glory to Him?

It's the Biased Broadcasting Corporation

2011-04-26T17:03:00.003+01:00

As a publicly-funded public service broadcaster, the BBC is supposed to be impartial. The BBC claims it is impartial. How it manages to do that in view of the fact that its bias is so obvious is a little difficult to understand.

The corporation is notorious for its bias against Israel. It commissioned a study on its coverage of the Middle East conflict which resulted in the Balen Report. After chiefs read the report, the BBC refused to make its contents public, and is reported to have spent £200,000 in legal costs so far defying an order to make its contents public under the Freedom of Information Act. It is hard to imagine why it would do that unless it were that its contents condemn the corporation for its bias.

On another front the BBC has recently been accused of acting as cheerleader in the campaign to legalise assisted suicide.

On his website, Dr Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, gives the background to the charge. The BBC has recently filmed a man killing himself at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland for a documentary to be screened this summer. The programme will be presented by author Terry Pratchett, a patron of Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) and a campaigner for legalised assisted suicide.

The programme will be the fifth produced by the BBC in three years, says Dr Saunders, presented by a pro-euthanasia campaigner or sympathiser and specifically designed to portray taking one's own life in a positive light.

A BBC Panorama documentary fronted by Margo MacDonald MSP in the lead-up to tabling her euthanasia bill in the Scottish Parliament was screened four times. A 90-minute docudrama starring Julie Walters, telling the story of the death of Bath GP Anne Turner at Dignitas was screened seven times.

The 34th Richard Dimbleby Lecture featured Terry Pratchett making the case for assisted suicide for patients, like himself, with Alzheimer's disease. A hand-picked audience in the Royal College of Physicians signalled their approval as he described himself ending his life by nonchalantly sipping poisoned champagne in his back garden.

BBC East Midlands featured a confession by producer Ray Gosling to smothering a homosexual lover with AIDS. The story turned out to be pure fantasy - "but not until after the BBC machinery had blown it up into a massive international news story just prior to the Director of Public Prosecutions reporting on his assisted suicide prosecution criteria.

"I am also aware of a sixth 'documentary' currently being put together, again presented by a keen advocate of legalising assisted suicide, news of which has not yet entered the public domain.

"During this three year period there has not been one BBC programme presenting the opposite point of view. This is in spite of the fact that all three parliamentary bills attempting to legalise the practice in the last five years have been heavily defeated and despite the continuing robust opposition to legalisation from disability rights groups, medical professionals and faith groups. . .

"What is somewhat ironic about this whole process is the fact that there are strict codes about media coverage of suicide, not only from bodies like the World Health Organisation, but also from the BBC itself (on covering both suicide and criminal acts), which are constantly and repeatedly flouted . . .

"Concerns about the well-documented phenomenon of suicide contagion, especially following suicides carried out by celebrities. . . are simply not part of the narrative when the BBC covers these issues. Instead it has adopted almost a campaigning stance.

"No one is denying that the debate about assisted suicide is crucially important. This is a free democratic society and those who wish to see a change in the law are fully entitled to express their views in the public square. Furthermore it is to be expected that private media outlets will want to pursue a specific editorial line.

"But with an issue as important as this one, campaigners should not have the added advantage of being able to spread their propaganda by using the publicly funded national broadcasting corporation effectively as a private public relations company and press office."

The BBC spends an almost incredible amount of money. In these days of economic difficulty, perhaps something needs to be done about that too.

Just one word made the difference

2011-04-22T18:52:00.000+01:00

When Mary Magdalene went to the tomb on the morning of Christ's resurrection and found it empty, she was distraught. Rough hands had taken Him and killed Him; now someone had even taken His body.

Mary stood in the garden, weeping. Through her tears, she saw a man she supposed was the gardener. "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." The man spoke just one word: "Mary." That one word changed everything.

First, Christ's resurrection is not just a fairy tale. It's one of the best attested facts in history. The Jewish leaders would have loved to have disproved His resurrection. All they had to do to disprove it was to produce His body. They didn't, because they couldn't.

Jesus appeared to His disciples numerous times after his resurrection. On one occasion He appeared to more than 500 people at once. His disciples travelled the world preaching His resurrection, and lost their lives because of their preaching. You don't give your lives for something you know isn't true.

Second, Jesus isn't alive in a general sense. He's alive personally. He knows you by name. If you don't know Him - personally - make His acquaintance. Invite Him into your life.

You may have a problem. Grief, disappointment, rejection. Perhaps more than one. Just remember. One word from Him can make all the difference.

His death and subsequent resurrection is the ultimate proof that God cares.

"If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation" (Rom 10:9, 10).

"As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name" (John 1:12).

"Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt 11:28).

A question of days

2011-04-21T17:15:00.000+01:00

Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. It's interesting that every one of the four Gospels makes the point that it was early on the first day of the week that the women came to the tomb and found it empty. The first day of the week, of course, is Sunday.

Jesus had to rise from the dead on a Sunday. He couldn't have risen on a Monday, or a Tuesday. In the beginning, God created the universe in seven days. He worked six days in creation, and rested on the seventh. Jesus rose from the dead on the eighth day: the first day of a new creation.

It is pretty certain though that Jesus was not crucified on a Friday. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that He was crucified on a Friday. People assume that it was Friday. The Bible says it was the day before the sabbath: His body had to be taken from the cross and buried hurriedly because the sabbath was approaching. But there were two sabbaths that week. It was Passover.

Passover always began on the even of the 14th of the Jewish month Nisan, irrespective of what day of the week that date fell. The following day was always a sabbath, in which work was forbidden (Ex 12:16; Lev 23:5 - 8; Num 28:16 - 18). John 19:31 makes it clear that the day following Christ's crucifixion was a high sabbath: the sabbath in connection with Passover.

We could perhaps work out on what day the 14th of Nisan fell in that year - but we don't know for sure in which year Jesus died.

The Old Testament contains many prophecies about the death of the Messiah. They were all fulfilled in exact detail. Jesus Himself prophesied of His death. He told the scribes and Pharisees: "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt 12:40). If you count the first day and the last day, you can call Friday to Sunday three days. But there is no way you can fit three nights in between Friday and Sunday.

Some Bible scholars believe Jesus was crucified on a Wednesday. The women rested on the Passover sabbath on Thursday, bought spices and ointments to anoint Christ's body on Friday (Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56), rested on the weekly sabbath on Saturday, and went to the tomb early on Sunday.

Others prefer to believe that Jesus was crucified on Thursday, with the Passover sabbath on Friday and the weekly sabbath on Saturday. That way, Christ's body would be in the tomb for three days - from Thursday to Sunday - and three nights - Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday night.

Although the Passover lamb was not killed until the 14th of Nisan, it had to be chosen on the 10th of Nisan and examined to see that it was without blemish (Ex 12:3 - 6). Jesus, our Passover lamb, was presented to the people as He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. After examination by the Jews, Herod and Pilate, he was crucified four days later.

So what day of the week did Jesus die? I don't know. The Bible doesn't say. It isn't important. If it were important, the Bible would say. What is important is the fact that He died.

We were all sinners. We had all fallen short of God's standard. We were separated from God. God needed someone who would live a life without sin and give that life in our place, that God's righteousness and God's justice might be satisfied as well as His love. That need was met in Jesus.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

"Scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:7, 8).

There's love for you. When I didn't know Him and didn't want Him, He died in my place.

Giving in to tyranny

2011-04-16T20:19:00.000+01:00

Last year a Florida pastor named Terry Jones planned to hold a burn-a-Koran day on the anniversary of 9/11. After leaders the world over condemned the idea, he agreed he would not burn copies of the Koran, then or later.

Not so long ago, however, he supervised the burning of a Koran by another pastor, one Wayne Sapp. Afghan president Hamid Karzai denounced the incident and called for the pastor to be brought to justice. Following Karzai's announcement, riots erupted all over Afghanistan.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, a mob of 3,000 protestors overran the United Nations compound, killing Gurkha guards and shooting dead and slitting the throats of UN staff. As a result, the Florida pastor faced widespread condemnation.

I do not agree with burning copies of the Koran. Before joining in the condemnation, however, there are a couple of things to be borne in mind. First of all, the people murdered were not only innocent of burning a Koran, they were not even Americans. "For radical Islamists," said the New York Daily News, "anyone will do. The randomness of the crime underscores the utter irrationality of those who committed it, not to mention the masses that tacitly lend them support. . .

"It is one thing to say that Jones' Koran-burning was a stupid and offensive thing to do. . . It is another thing entirely, however, to move to the accusation that Jones is culpable for the murderous acts of people half way around the world. People who riot and murder at the burning of a book do not need a pretext to act like savages. That's exactly what they already are."

Enraged over the burning of a Koran in Florida, wrote Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Muslims have murdered about 20 people in Afghanistan and five in Pakistan - none of whom ever burned a Koran or had any acquaintance with the men who did.

These killers are monstrous. They have assassinated innocent people for something they couldn't conceivably have had anything to do with. And yet instead of calling them monstrous and demanding that Islamic leaders stop inciting and approving of such behavior, Western government and media elites are blaming not the murderers and rioters, but the man behind the Koran-burning. . .

Thus Guardian editor Matt Seaton explained that Jones was to blame because his Koran-burning was "done knowingly involving reckless endangerment, and quite possibly wishing for this kind of bad result." This assumed that the Muslims who were rioting and killing over the burning of a book half a world away had no control over their reactions, and thus could not be held accountable for them. . .

Barack Obama reacted the same way when Jones threatened to burn a Koran last year. He said "this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform. Look, this is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda. You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan". . .

Obama could have said "While I disapprove of this Koran-burning, in America we believe that freedom of expression is a fundamental bulwark against tyranny and the hallmark of a truly free society, and it requires us to put up with things we don't like without responding with violence". . .

He could, in short, have used Jones' barbecued Koran as a teaching tool to demonstrate why free societies are preferable to sharia states. But instead, Obama and the media are effectively reinforcing the principle that violent intimidation works. . .

Those who censor themselves today to keep from offending Muslims may wish in the not-too-distant future that they had stood up more robustly for the freedom of speech when it was threatened. But by then, there might be no chance to get that word out.

Giving in to tyrants never was a good idea.

So will the NHS survive?

2011-04-07T16:15:00.000+01:00

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley wants a revolution in the way the National Health Service is run - and he is meeting opposition. Left unreformed, one newspaper says this morning, it is impossible to see how the NHS could survive. But would a change in the way it is run alter the disasters routinely occurring throughout the service?

According to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, serious complaints about nurses have doubled in two years. The eighth annual staff survey of some 165,000 employees showed widespread concern about standards of care.

A Daily Mail review of a book shortly to be published - How We Treat the Sick, by Michael Mandelstam, said to be an expert on the NHS - provides a litany of neglect and abuse in hospitals.

A 17-year-old with meningitis was moved to two different wards by bed managers until the doctors treating her couldn't find her. She died. One woman died after being treated for six days with drugs meant for another patient. Twelve doctors failed to pick up the error.

Once upon a time patients didn't have bedsores. Now they are endemic. Between four and 10 per cent of patients develop at least one; with elderly patients with mobility problems, the figure can be as high as 70 per cent. An 86-year-old ex-serviceman was left screaming in agony in a Leeds hospital with multiple bedsores, one the size of a fist. His hip bone was exposed.

At least 400, possibly 1,200 patients at the mid-Staffordshire Foundation Trust died through lack of care.

Matrons have been abolished; ward sisters, whose word once was law, have lost their authority. The problem, suggests the reviewer - himself a doctor - is not doctors and nurses, but chief executives carrying out Department of Health orders about finance.

Would someone please come along and save our NHS?

Better dead than old?

2011-04-05T15:50:00.002+01:00

Nan Maitland travelled from Britain to Switzerland, it transpired this week, to avail herself of the services of a suicide clinic. She was 84. She was not terminally ill. She suffered from arthritis, but was active. She decided to kill herself to escape the "horrors" of old age.

She was one of the founding members of an organisation called the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide.

Accompanying her to the abortion clinic was Dr Michael Irwin, another founder of the society. He was struck off the medical register six years ago for attempting to help someone commit suicide. He is said to have helped nine people kill themselves, and appears to have done everything he can to push the limits of current legislation.

Campaigners would have us believe they want assisted suicide to be legalised in Britain to help people with terminal illness who are in intractable pain. Not so. They want assisted suicide for whoever wants it, whenever they want it.

It's not too long since America's Washington state legalised assisted suicide. BioEdge reports the results of the first year under the state's Death with Dignity Act - and some concerns that the law is not operating with the safety and true voluntary choice that were promised.

Of those who died in the first 12 months, serious pain did not seem to be a great concern. Ninety per cent were concerned about lack of autonomy, 64 per cent about lack of dignity and 87 per cent about losing the ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable.

No doubt the number of people taking advantage of the law and the reasons they are permitted to do so will both increase, because that's what happens.

Which is why - as well as the fact that vulnerable old and sick people would feel pressured to opt for their lives to be ended - that the legalisation of assisted suicide must not happen here.