I came across two remarkable news items this week.British TV has a programme called Britain's Got Talent. Wherever the idea for the programme originated, the idea has been exported, even to China. China now has a TV show called China's Got Talent.
Liu Wei is a young Chinese living in Beijing. When he was 10 years old, while playing hide and seek, he was electrocuted. As a result, he lost both arms. That done, he decided he had two options: abandon all his dreams, leading to a quick, hopeless death, or struggle without arms, as he puts it, "to live life splendidly."
He learned to play the piano, and plays the piano on China's Got Talent - with his feet.
"It's my hobby, my passion," he told the programme's judges. "Whatever I want to do, I have to do it to the end." (You can see a video of his performance on the show by clicking here.)
And the second news item?
New research published in the Academy of Management Journal, led by Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the United States' University of Colorado Denver Business School, shows that failure is a better teacher than success. In other words, when we succeed at something, we tend not to pay too much attention to the mechanics of our success. When we fail, we learn lessons, and the knowledge that comes as a result stays with us much longer.
The professor cites the spaceflights Atlantis and Columbia. During the Atlantis flight, a piece of insulation broke off, but did not impede the flight. The flight was considered a success and there was little investigation.
During the Columbia flight, a piece of insulation broke off, and the shuttle and its crew were destroyed. The flight was a failure. Flights were suspended and a major investigation recommended 29 changes to prevent a repetition.
Have you ever failed at something? Maybe you felt God wanted you to do something, and when it came to it, you blew it.
When you fail, it's easy to decide you can't do it and you're never going to make it. Don't give in to despair. The one who loses out is not the one who fails, but the one who stops trying. When you fail, don't quit. Consider your failure a step on the way to success.
Israel has evidently decided not to attack Iran's nuclear installations, at least at the present time.Iran is rushing to produce a nuclear weapon. Its leadership insists its aim is to produce fuel for peaceful purposes only, but no one outside Iran believes that. Iran has a fundamentalist Islamic leadership which is considered unstable. It has promised to wipe Israel off the map.
A good number of countries would be unhappy to see Iran with nuclear capabilities. The US, which has the power to do something about it, has failed to do anything effective. Many people have expected Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. In an attempt to ensure its survival, Israel has bombed nuclear facilities in two other countries, Iraq and Syria, in time past.
Iran has said that an attack on Iran will start World War III. Israel has said if Iran attacks Israel it will get a response it will regret.
It was announced a couple of weeks ago that Russia would begin loading nuclear fuel at Iran's Bushehr plant last Saturday, August 21. For Israel to have attacked after that announcement would have risked killing Russian technicians and Russian dignitaries in Iran for Bushehr's opening ceremony. To strike after fuel rods were loaded into the nuclear reactor would release radiation into the air, not to mention the waters of the Persian Gulf.
It's interesting that Ezekiel's prophecy of the Gog and Magog War, which I mentioned in my last blog post, names one of the countries accompanying Russia on its invasion of Israel as Persia (Iran was known as Persia until 1935). Evidently Iran is not going to go up in smoke before then. And we know from Bible prophecy that Israel will continue.
Two terrorist organisations, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both of which have Iran pulling the strings, have stockpiled tens of thousands of rockets which they claim can reach anywhere in Israel.
Israel was almost plunged into a major war when two Israeli officers were shot by Lebanese Army troops on the Lebanese border in early August.
It's difficult to know what the next move will be. One thing is certain: Bible prophecy will be fulfilled.
Israel has struck oil. An estimated 1.5 billion barrels of oil has been discovered near Rosh Ha'Ayin. The actual amount that is able to be recovered will not be known until there are additional drillings.
Golda Meir, a former Israeii prime minister, is reputed to have said "When I get to heaven, I'm going to see that Moses and ask him why, when he left Egypt, he turned left instead of right and led us to the only place in the Middle East where there's no oil." People might not be able to say things like that for much longer.
Joel Rosenberg reported on his blog that according to a report by the US Department of the Interior Israel has reserves of 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as well as a further 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil, lying just offshore under the Mediterranean.
People have been prospecting for oil in Israel for some years, some of them claiming that Bible verses like Deut 33:24 ("Asher is most blessed of sons; Let him be favoured by his brothers, And let him dip his foot in oil") are an indication that oil is to be found there. Others say such verses are too vague to be taken as a reliable indication that oil exists.
Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 are a remarkably detailed prophecy of a war, which has come to be known as the Gog and Magog War, in which Russia, together with a number of other countries, will invade Israel and will fall on the mountains of Israel. This prophecy has yet to be fulfilled.
Ezekiel says Russia's purpose in invading will be "to take plunder and to take booty" (38:12). People have speculated about what sort of plunder might tempt Russia to invade. Some have suggested that oil will be the attraction.
Proponents of assisted suicide appear determined to have their way, law or no law.
The Dutch group NVVL are exploring the possibility of opening an assisted suicide facility for clients with psychiatric issues, Alzheimer's or dementia. "There's nothing in the law of the Netherlands to stop them from doing this," says Alex Schadenberg, of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. "The whole thing is sick from the beginning."
One of NVVL's leaders, Eugene Sutorius, is one of a group of academics who have been demanding the legalisation of euthanasia for people who are simply "tired of life." "Once a society decides that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering," says bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, "that which is deemed 'suffering' will continue to expand until just about any category of suicidal person will eventually qualify."
Switzerland became so concerned about its reputation as a destination for suicide tourism that it planned a tightening of the law. But now Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf wants the law extended to include chronically ill as well as terminally ill. Once the door to killing is opened, its scope may be increased, but is never likely to be decreased.
In the UK, Dr Michael Irwin, who admits having helped several people end their lives and has been dubbed "Dr Death" by a number of newspapers, is co-ordinating a new organisation advocating the legalisation of assisted suicide for people who are not terminally ill, but merely tired of life.
And Dr Libby Wilson, an 84-year-old retired Scottish doctor facing prosecution in an assisted sucide case, has had charges against her dropped. She is said to have given advice to an English academic who committed suicide. A Crown Prosecution Service spokeswoman said there was no evidence that the advice Dr Wilson gave contributed significantly to the outcome. "What jury would have convicted me?" said Dr Wilson. "I would not hesitate to provide information again if someone asked me."
Fortunately, there are still some voices crying in the wilderness. Like that of Baroness Campbell, who fights bravely for her fellow disabled. "Disabled and terminally ill people need help and support to live, not to die. We cannot allow others to speak for us; especially those who seek to offer us the choice of a premature death. It is not a choice - it is to abandon us."
And Alison Davis, of No Less Human, herself disabled: "Sometimes what desperate people, disabled or not, need is to be given hope. What they definitely don't need is to be told they are right to feel so unhappy and that they would be better off dead. This is simply the moral equivalent of the practical example of seeing a person about to jump off a high bridge and giving them a push."
Then you can thank God with me for the stand of Nikki Kenward, a British activist who once spent five months in intensive care and now uses a wheelchair: "So we lurch towards a world where getting rid of imperfection is seen as an 'act of love.' Where, to want to be alive, despite 'differences,' invites a comment of 'not keeping an animal in that state.' Where those who are just plain terrified of pain or even old age, seek 'mercy killing' for those who remind them of the arbitrary nature of being alive. Where loving and valuing someone like me. . . is described as some form of 'religious mania,' or just plain 'sick.'
"So I reject your sympathy, your human rhetoric, your selfish ideal of a 'brave death' and I choose life, with all its imperfections, loneliness, loss and pain. I choose to be alive, despite you, and for you. Because I know that one day in the depths of your pain, your despair, your overwhelming fear, you might still want to be alive, to live in some way, to be allowed to go on."
Christians in Egypt make up eight per cent or more of the total population - but they don't have equality before the law.
Converts to Christianity from Islam are threatened with death. Christians are unable to build, extend or repair churches without government permission, which is almost always refused, while mosques are built frequently, aided by government subsidies.
Christians are hounded by security forces and marginalised in society. They are in constant fear of attacks by Muslims: numbers of them have been shot dead.
Ephraim Shehata is an Egyptian Christian. He worked as a lab technician. In his spare time he ran a community centre in a rented apartment, providing job training, free medical services and free food for the elderly and infirm. He went door-to-door among Christians, seeking to encourage them in whatever way he could. His aim, he said, was to help Christians be strong in the faith.
One day he and his young wife Rasha were riding a motor cycle on a lonely road when a man forced them to stop. He told Ephraim he was going to teach him a lesson, beat him to the ground, took out a handgun and shot him in the back. Rasha screamed. The man shot her.
Three other men came to join the assault. Rasha threw herself on top of her husband's body, pleading for their lives. The men kept shooting.
Rasha heard her husband reciting Bible verses beneath her. Then he fell silent. She decided to play dead. One of the men said "Let's go. They're dead."
The village the attackers came from, according to Compass Direct News, erupted in celebration when they heard the pair were dead.
When the couple reached hospital, Rasha was found to have been shot in the arm, but Ephraim was not expected to survive. He had lost a tremendous amount of blood, a bullet had split a kidney in two, another bullet was lodged in his neck and his body was riddled with bullet fragments.
During 10 weeks in hospital, Ephraim had operation after operation to repair his wounds and remove infected tissue. He is now back home - with a bill for thousands of pounds for medical treatment - but essentially bedridden. He cannot walk or pull on underclothing without help. He faces further surgery.
Rasha thanks God for their deliverance. "There were lots of bullets being shot, but they didn't hit us, only three or four. Where are the others?" she said. "There is a great work the Lord is doing in our lives. We may not know what the reason is now, but maybe some day we will."
The couple's attackers were arrested by police and are in jail against the day when Ephraim is well enough to attend court.
The court case could be an embarrassment for the government. Ephraim has offered to allow charges to be dropped and offered not to testify against his attackers if the government will allow him to build a church building.
Duke Amachree is a Christian. He was a homelessness prevention officer with Wandsworth Council with an 18 years' unblemished record.
A client he was helping with her housing situation had been told by several doctors that she had an incurable medical condition. Out of compassion for her, he commented that sometimes doctors don't have all the answers and encouraged her to consider putting her faith in God. For this, he was investigated and sacked for gross misconduct.
Duke appealed to an employment tribunal. The tribunal has decided that the council had not discriminated against him on the basis of his religion and was right to sack him.
A few months ago a 21-year-old Muslim was in court for defacing a war memorial with graffiti proclaiming "Islam will dominate the world," "Osama is on his way" and "Kill Gordon Brown." The court was told his action had nothing to do with religious belief and he was given a conditional discharge.
It's a strange old world, isn't it?
The number of 11 and 12-year-olds on the contraceptive pill has increased fivefold in the UK in the last 10 years, the Sunday Times reports.
More than 1,000 girls aged 11 and 12 have been prescribed the pill by GPs, most without the knowledge of their parents. Although the age of consent is 16, doctors may prescribe for an under-age girl if they think she is mature enough to have sex. They are bound by a duty of confidentiality to the girl unless they believe she is being abused.
A further 200 girls between 11 and 13 have long-term contraceptive devices. At least 58,000 15-year-olds were on the pill last year, compared with 23,000 in 1999.
The figures come from a general practice research database, which collects information from 500 doctors' practices covering a representative sample of four million people.
"These figures illustrate the fact that the UK is facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an ever-younger age," said Dr Trevor Stammers, an expert on teenage sexuality.
The aim, says the Sunday Times in an editorial, has to be to change children's attitudes. "Smoking cigarettes used to be a rite of passage but that is slowly being educated out of youngsters. The same can happen with sex and the right kind of sex education. And so it should."
The powers-that-be in the UK have been educating children to have sex for long enough. A complete change in education on sexual matters would not be before time.
Jesus told His disciples "I am the vine, you are the branches" (John 15:5).
If you are one of His disciples, you don't have to strive to be a branch. You are already a branch. You don't have to strive to be in the vine; you are already in the vine.
The same life-giving sap that flows through Him flows through you. If He were to die, you would die too. But so long as He lives, you will live also. All you have to do is abide in Him.
You can draw everything you need from Him. If the sun of temptation shines hot, you can draw from Him all the liquid refreshment you need. If the sun of temptation shines twice as hot, you can draw twice as much refreshment, and your leaf will stay fresh and green.
Jesus said "He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit" (v5). The vine doesn't bear the fruit, it produces it. Its purpose is to draw the exact liquid refreshment from the soil to produce beautiful fruit. The branch's purpose is to bear the fruit. The branch doesn't produce the fruit; it bears it. If the branch abides in the vine, fruit-bearing is automatic.
What does it mean to abide in Christ? It means to live, to dwell, to remain, to stay, to continue. It means to stay within the boundaries that His love has drawn for you.
The branch will need to be pruned. If it isn't pruned, it will grow all over the place and have nothing but leaves. Pruned by the vinedresser (v1), it will bear fruit.
Jesus said "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you" (v16).
I used to wonder what the connection was between bearing fruit and answered prayer.
The answer, of course, is abiding in Christ.
I had tears in my eyes as I read the story of Kerry Pink. She was living with her adoring husband and two beautiful children in Cranleigh, Surrey, when she began to have splitting headaches. Then she was suddenly violently sick. After that, she had a fit. Doctors diagnosed water on the brain.
After several operations, she slipped into a deep coma. Doctors asked her husband if he wanted them to pull the plug. Much later, she came out of the coma, and for 18 months was in what has come to be known as locked-in syndrome - aware of everything going on around her, but unable to move or communicate.
Her family told her they loved her. She was unable to respond. Her children told her of their problems. She was unable to throw her arms around them and comfort them. Her husband read the newspapers to her each day. She was unable to tell him she would like to hear something other than the sports section.
She heard the doctors say she wasn't going to make it. "How dare they," she thought. She was determined she was going to go back home - and she wasn't worried about what might happen in the meantime. She knew her husband would never permit the doctors to allow her to die.
One day her sister offered her a biscuit. She put out her tongue to taste it. It caused a small sensation. Then one day her sister asked her if she would like a taste of wine. "Red or white?" her sister asked. "Red or white?" "White," she said. Another sensation. "She's spoken! She's spoken!"
Today, after extensive physiotherapy and speech therapy, Kerry is back home. She is still in a wheelchair, but she has recovered all her speech. She's happy being home with her family. Her life, she says, is rich with love and laughter.
You can read the full story by clicking here.
When Kerry read the story of Richard Rudd (I wrote about Richard here), she sent him a message of hope. If I had Kerry's address, I would write to her to encourage her too.
Life is inestimably precious, and it's here to be lived. The world needs more people like Kerry, who are willing to battle to enjoy it. And like her husband, who will fight the your-right-to-die-when-you-like characters so that she is able to.
You may recall the shocking case of Caroline Petrie, the nurse who was suspended from work not for praying for a patient, as some have said, but for offering to pray for a patient.
Peter and Catriona Waitt describe a very different experience in the summer edition of Triple Helix, a magazine of the Christian Medical Fellowship.
They were out of doors with their nine-week-old daughter Eva Grace, who had previously been healthy, when the baby's heart stopped. She was resuscitated and taken to hospital, where she was appropriately cared for, but her condition deteriorated and sadly, she died six weeks later.
The first night in hospital the resident doctor stayed with them through the night and prayed with them, which they said was a tremendous comfort. On several occasions members of the nursing staff comforted them with Bible passages and personal examples of God's faithfulness. When they had a neurological consultation with a professor at a teaching hospital, he encouraged them to see their daughter as God created her to be. We are body, soul and spirit, he said, and although Eva's body was broken, she was still the same child God had made her to be. This helped immensely.
All this happened in Malawi, where the Waitts were working, and later in Johannesburg. If they had been in the UK, they said, it would have been a different story.
They also said that through Eva's life and especially during her illness, many people came to hear about the goodness of God.
Attempts to nibble away at the extent of UK legislation on end-of-life matters are becoming ever more daring and more dangerous.
After attempts to legalise assisted suicide failed and campaigner Debbie Purdy wanted an assurance that her husband would not be prosecuted if he accompanied her to a Swiss suicide clinic, Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, required to state when prosecutions could be expected, announced prosecution for assisted suicide would be unlikely if it was "wholly motivated by compassion," thus permitting assisted suicide under certain circumstances.
Now the High Court is to be asked for a decision on what should happen where cases of murder are "wholly motivated by compassion."
Tony Nicklinson, a 56-year-old father of two from Chippenham, Wiltshire, has been paralysed for five years following a severe stroke. He is fed through a tube, is able to move only his head and his eyes, and communicates by nodding or blinking at letters on a perspex board.
He says he has no privacy or dignity left, is "fed up" with life and does not wish to continue living. He is said to be physically unable to commit suicide, and if his 54-year-old wife Jan did what was necessary to end his life, she would technically be open to a charge of murder. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence.
Mr Nicklinson, who is supported by the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society, is said to want clarity on how the law of murder applies in cases of genuine "mercy killing" so he can understand the implications for his wife.
His lawyers will argue that the law against murder interferes with his rights to autonomy under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Human rights legislation, originally intended to protect people's right to life, now appears to be being used to support a right to die.
Pro-lifers say weakening the law could leave vulnerable people without adequate legal protection. It could also lead to a belief that the lives of disabled people are of less worth than others.
Paul the apostle was a monster before his conversion to Christ, seeing Stephen stoned to death and dragging people off to prison. God changed him. He became a man who loved people and a man people loved.
The last time Paul saw elders from the church at Ephesus, he warned them that teachers of false doctrine would appear in their church (Acts 20:28 - 31). He wrote to Timothy, who was at Ephesus, warning him of false teachers in the church there and encouraging him to preach sound doctrine, resisting "profane and old wives' fables" and "useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds" (1 Tim 1:3 - 7, 18 - 20; 4:6, 7; 6:3 - 5; 2 Tim 2:14 - 18; 3:13, 14; 4:1 - 4).
It seems like the elders at Ephesus did a good job. Years later, when John the apostle had the revelation that became the book of Revelation, Jesus told him to write to the church at Ephesus, letting them know what He had to say about them: "I know your works, your labour, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them to be liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have laboured for my name's sake and have not become weary" (Rev 2:2, 3).
Unfortunately, something else had occurred that needed their attention: "Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love" (v4). Yet Jesus gave them a promise: "To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God" (v7).
Maybe a Christian is reading this just now who has battled for years against some particular thing and has won. But something else has cropped up and you feel it is all too much and you feel like packing in. Don't do it. Jesus says "I know your works, your labour, your patience. . . "
Jesus has a promise for you. "To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Stay faithful, and one day we will fellowship with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the angels and all the saints in the New Jerusalem, where righteousness rules and there is no sickness, no pain and no sorrow.
Keep on battling on. It will be worth it all.
The politically correct children-must-have-more-sex-education-at-all-costs brigade is still going full tilt.
(A report by Ofsted complains that schools are failing to consult parents about the content of lessons, teaching pupils all they need to know about the biology of sex but placing little emphasis on the importance of marriage, failing to discuss the possibility that children can say no to sexual intercourse, and exposing children to materials inappropriate for their age. About time too, you might think.)
Family and Youth Concern reports on the experience of Mrs Lisa Bullivant, a young mother from Lincolnshire. She received a brief letter from her daughter's Church of England primary school saying the children would be having sex education lessons but giving no details of materials to be used. Some of the children had recently turned seven. She assumed the materials would be appropriate for the children's ages.
Says Mrs B: "How wrong I was. My daughter came home and tearfully informed me that she had learned about sex and that it had frightened and upset her. . . The effects of what our children had been taught became alarmingly apparent. Children were found simulating sex on top of other children and some children were telling much younger children what they had learned, much to the horror of their parents. Still others were openly stating to their parents that they now wanted to have sex.
"Some children, including my daughter, became very upset and worried about the whole matter. She was not emotionally or mentally able to cope with this information. She would often burst into tears if she started to think about it and I had to spend a lot of time comforting her and talking to her, trying to repair the damage that this DVD had caused to her innocent young mind."
The DVD was Channel 4's Living and Growing.
"I managed to find out what DVD the school had used and I and other parents watched it on the internet in horror. It was so graphic and the narrative was appalling. It promoted sex as a wonderful feeling and exciting - no wonder some of the children now wanted to try it.
"A number of parents made formal complaints in writing to the governing body and the local authority. . . We were fobbed off at every point. Our request for a meeting with the school's complaints committee was not even acknowledged and a final letter I received was inconsistent and full of false claims. The local authority backed these claims and said they were satisfied that the school had acted properly."
Morally deformed individuals in positions of authority are messing up the lives of innocent children, which makes me very angry. And very sad.
Richard Rudd, a 43-year-old coach driver from Kidderminster, having heard that a friend had become a paraplegic after an accident, once told his family that he wouldn't want to be kept alive if that ever happened to him.
Nine months ago he was riding his motor bike when he was in an accident with a car. He was thrown 20 feet, suffered severe spinal injuries and later developed a blood infection and a bout of pneumonia. He lay in hospital unable to move.
His family, convinced there was no way he would want to live with his injuries, agreed that his life support should be switched off.
Then Professor David Menon, of the neuro critical care unit at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, noticed that Richard - the father of two teenage girls - could move his eyes. It became clear that he was aware of what was happening and that he could answer questions by moving his eyes to the right or the left.
Asked several times if he wanted to continue to be treated, he clearly indicated that he did.
Although he is not expected to recover completely, he can already move his head a little, smile and make facial expressions.
What a person says when he is fit and well and how he feels when he is in a life threatening situation are two very different things.
Richard's father put it well. "We all sit round and talk in the pub or at work and say 'If this happened to me, turn the machine off.' It's all hypothetical and you don't know until it happens to yourself.
"But now Richard's in the situation where that's actually happened. It's real life - it's not pretend. He is in that situation.
"Making a living will could be detrimental to your own health. Imagine if you changed your mind and you couldn't communicate it.
"If that person can't decide for themselves, sometimes you feel you can decide for them. You probably have no right to do that.
"For my part, I'm glad he's alive."
Richard's moving story, Between Life and Death, filmed by the BBC, can be seen on YouTube. You can watch it by clicking here.
An article about abortion in the Times has caused something of a storm.
Antonia Senior, who wrote it, was once out-and-out for abortion rights. A woman's body, her choice, end of story.
While pro-lifers, she says, insisted that a baby is a life, with rights, from the moment of conception, people in the pro-choice camp, like her, insisted that an embryo is not a person: we were talking only about a potential life, with no rights.
Then something happened to Antonia: a baby came along. And her moral certainty about abortion began to waver. Her absolutist position came under siege. "Having a baby," she says, "paints the world an entirely different hue. Black and white no longer quite cut it.
"What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a foetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person - forged in my womb, not by my mothering.
"Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life."
So far, so good. But then comes the shocking bit.
Antonia came to consider if there was any cause she was prepared to die for. She decided there was one: a woman's right to be educated, to have a life beyond the home and to be allowed by law and custom to order her own life as she chooses - and that included control over her own fertility.
"The answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it too."*
In other words, even if you believe the baby within you is a living human being, you ought to be prepared to kill it if convenience demands.
The article caused a stir because people are asking if this signals a change in the abortion debate. Are people who are in favour of abortion going to admit freely that the baby is a human person but that the woman has a perfect right to kill it anyway?
If this is the case, what, then, will be response of the pro-life community?
*There are in fact more than 200,000 abortions in the UK each year. The figure of nearly 200,000 is for England and Wales only.
I wrote here about Jack Kinsella's suggestion that if you are in conversation with an atheist, he is likely to challenge you to prove that God exists, lest he is asked to prove that God doesn't exist (because he can't).Jack Kinsella is at it again. Seeking to disprove atheists' arguments, that is. One of the most formidable obstacles atheism must contend with, he says, is the existence of its principal tool - the ability to reason.
Knowledge is attained by reasoned thought and by reasoned thought, the atheist has concluded that he knows there is no God. . .
What is the evolutionist's explanation for the ability to reason? They argue it is the result of chemical reactions in the brain. But chemicals react - they don't think, or reason, or plan.
It is a bedrock principle of science that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. A chemical reaction cannot generate morality, immorality, reason or rationality.
A reaction is the result of an action. Reason, on the other hand, is the analysis of that action. . .
The ability to reason can only come from one of two sources. It was either the product of intelligent design or it was the result of mindless chance.
Since the mindless cannot create the mind, there is only one reasonable explanation - that the mind was created by intelligent design and implanted with a divine moral code.
Just as a chemical reaction cannot explain reason, reason cannot explain a moral code. . .
If a deer population in a particular area grows too dense, conservationists will hold a 'deer cull' - a special hunting season on deer to reduce the population and ensure the survival of the species.
The morality of taking a deer's life is not at issue when the alternative is the needless suffering, starvation or death of the whole population. Why is it immoral to do the same with human beings?. . .
Even if a chemical reaction could explain how we know right from wrong, it doesn't explain why culling deer is right and culling humans is wrong.
What is the objective standard? Upon what basis do we form such profound judgments?. . .
If they are nothing more than the mindless product of random chance chemical reactions in the brain, how can we KNOW anything?
We can't. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. Knowledge is greater than random chemical reaction.
You can't be an atheist without having faith in your own reason and judgment, but the basis for your faith cannot be explained apart from the Creator God that you are sure (based on your God-given ability to reason) does not exist.
Of course, recognizing intelligent design is not the same thing as recognizing a loving God Who sent His only begotten Son to atone for the sins of mankind at the Cross.
But it's a start.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Recent news has not been good news for those people who want to see euthanasia and assisted suicide legalised in the UK.
Cases of euthanasia in the Netherlands have increased by 13 per cent in the past year, prompting the health ministry there to open an inquiry. In Belgium, where euthanasia is also legal, provided it is carried out by a doctor and with the patient's consent, 120 nurses admitted to researchers that they had taken part in euthanasia where patients had not asked for their lives to be ended.
Large numbers of urns containing human ashes were found dumped in a lake near the Swiss suicide facility Dignitas, where British people have gone for assisted suicide. A former employee said for Dignitas to dump human ashes there was common practice. Dignitas is under investigation for allegedly ignoring the mental condition of a patient - a paranoid schizophrenic - in helping him to die.
And an investigation by a Swiss publication has suggested that the assisted suicide business has made Dignitas' founder, Ludwig Minelli, a millionaire. He apparently claimed to have no taxable personal fortune in 1998, when Dignitas began, but was worth more than £1 million by 2007. Mr Minelli denied any wrongdoing.
In the UK, euthanasia and assisted suicide remain illegal, though it looks like prosecutions are increasingly less likely.
Michael Irwin, a former chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and a former GP, is said to have helped at least eight people to die. He was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council in 2005. He wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, admitting he had travelled to the Dignitas clinic with cancer patient Raymond Cutkelvin and paid £1,500 towards the cost of Mr Cutkelvin's death, and inviting the DPP to prosecute. He is not, however, to stand trial.
Despite the fact that there is sufficient evidence for a case, Mr Starmer says it would not be in the public interest to prosecute, evidently because the case does not fulfil enough of the criteria he has published under which cases will be brought.
Dr Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, writes on his blog: "This sort of 'legal sanction' is exactly what first happened in the Netherlands and led to an eventual change in the law in that country - legalisation by stealth."
The danger in the UK at this time, it seems, is not that the law will be changed, but that the law will be ignored.
John Wesley was the founder of Methodism; he and his brother Charles were the spiritual fathers of the Methodist movement. Both shared God's love for the Jewish people and believed the many Bible promises that the Jews would be restored to their promised land (including the area known today as the West Bank and East Jerusalem).They instructed the Methodists that they must speak tenderly to the Jewish people. The softest and gentlest prayers from Christians are the key, they said, for God to bring life from the dead to Israel, and through them to the church and the whole world.Charles Wesley, who had an almost incredible gift for writing hymns, some of which, like "And can it be that I should gain," "Hark the herald angels sing" and "O for a thousand tongues to sing" are still in use today, wrote hymns about God's heart for the Jewish people and about those Bible promises.One says, in part:Of all the ancient race
Not one be left behind,
But each, impelled by secret grace,
His way to Canaan find.
We know it must be done,
For God hath spoke the word:
All Israel shall the Saviour own,
To their first state restored;
Rebuilt by his command,
Jerusalem shall rise;
Her temple on Moriah stand
Again, and touch the skies.
Send then thy servants forth,
To call the Hebrews home;
From East, and West, and South, and North,
Let all the wanderers come;
Where'er in lands unknown
The fugitives remain,
Bid every creature help them on,
The holy mount to gain.
On June 30 this year the UK Methodist Conference discussed Israel. It was asked to approve the Kairos Palestinian document, written by Palestinian Christians,
which says that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity.
It says "fundamentalist Bible interpretation" supports unjust political options with regard to the Palestinian people, is used to deprive Palestinians of their rights in their own land, and brings death and destruction. It calls for liberation of Palestinian territories from Israeli occupation, which, it says, severely restricts religious liberty, disregards international law and violates human rights.
It claims that there would be no Palestinian resistance if there were no occupation, and that if Israel ends the occupation, there will be security, justice and peace. The Israeli occupation, it says, is an evil which must be resisted. Resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation is a right and duty for the Christian.
The conference decided to boycott all goods and services produced in Judea and Samaria (what today's media call the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the conference calls "illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories") and to encourage Methodists across Britain to do the same.
The Methodist Conference has never previously issued a boycott against a country. It is not now issuing a boycott against any other country. Just Israel.
The conference also called for a full arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. The secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, wrote to congratulate the Methodists on their decision.
If the Wesley brothers came back to the Methodist Conference, they wouldn't recognise it.
I am grateful to Avner Boskey, a theologian and director of Final Frontier Ministries, for pointing out Charles Wesley's hymns about Israel's restoration. In an attempt to draw a comparison between the revival spirit which accompanied Methodism's beginning and the state of the Methodist church today, he says:
Who will intercede with the God of Jacob so that "Ichabod" will not be written over the archways and entranceways of the churches of the United Kingdom?
Who will get up on the wall and pray that vintage evangelical fire, courage and commitment to biblical truth will again fall in power upon the pulpits and conference podiums of England?
Who will again raise up a Wesleyan standard of burning love, tender intercession, courageous vision and meaningful practice towards the Jewish people and their regathered state?
All right, who?
Christians make mistakes.
They are misunderstood. They are persecuted because of what they stand for. Apart from the usual problems and difficulties of life, it seems they have trials and testings all of their own.
The good news is that God can use them all. "We know," says Paul, "that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose" (Rom 8:28). For the Christian, God will bring good out of the worst situation.
Besides, the difficult things we go through equip us to empathise, to draw alongside, to help others going through the same sort of situation.
Selwyn Hughes describes it beautifully:
Christians are to follow in the steps of Jesus and turn their sufferings to good account. The way in which this is to be done is beautifully illustrated by the experience of the oyster, into whose shell there comes one day a grain of sand. This tiny piece of quartz lies there imposing pain and stress - so what shall the oyster do?
There are several courses open. The oyster could, as so many men and women have done in times of adversity, openly rebel against God. The oyster, metaphorically speaking, could shake a fist in God's face and say, 'Why should this happen to me?' Or it could say, 'It can't be true; this is not happening to me. I must not permit myself to believe it.' It could say also, 'There is no such thing as pain. It is an error of the mind. I must think positive thoughts.' But the oyster does none of these things.
What, then, does it do? Slowly and patiently, and with infinite care, the oyster builds upon the grain of sand layer upon layer of a white milky substance that covers every sharp corner and coats every cutting edge. And gradually. . . slowly. . . by and by, a pearl is made. The oyster has learned - by the will of God - to turn grains of sand into pearls. And that is the lesson we must learn along this pilgrim way. Surely it is something more than a simile when the Bible says that the entrance into the New Jerusalem is through a gate made of pearl. It is pointing out that the way into the city of God is through a wound that has been healed. Let God help you turn your pains into pearls, so that others can walk through them into joy and encouragement.[1]
[1] Selwyn Hughes. Every Day with Jesus, March/ April, 2010. Farnham, Surrey: CWR, 2009. Used by permission of CWR.
Did you read about the man who tried to train his budgerigar to eat through a straw?
It didn't succeed.
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Will you permit me to record another love story that will warm the cockles of your heart?
Vernon McAlister and Sue, who was to be his wife, met while both were working on Vernon's father's farm in South Carolina. They married when he was 20 and she was 15.
The years passed by. When he was 92 and she was 87, Vernon fell and broke his hip. Doctors at the hospice where he was taken said he would not live long.
Then Vernon had a dream. In the dream, his wife Sue was in a room decorated with lace. She stood near a window, bathed in sunlight, dressed in a lace gown and veil, waiting for him to marry her again.
He asked the nurses to help him stay alive a few more days, so he could celebrate his 72nd wedding anniversary with his wife.
The day after his anniversary, said IndependentMail.com, they had a second wedding ceremony. Vernon lay in bed dressed in a smart shirt and tie. His wife stood by the bed in a pink gown and white veil, carrying a bouquet of roses. With their five children looking on, they renewed their wedding vows.
Said Vernon: "My father told me she would make a good wife. I couldn't have imagined how right he was. She is just purely wonderful. She is a jewel."
Said Sue of her husband: "He has taken care of me my whole life. He has loved me and respected me and cherished me the way he said he would when I was just a young girl and he was just a young man.
"We have not always had an easy life. But if you put God first, you can endure and your marriage can endure."
Retired pastor Bill French, a friend of the family who conducted the ceremony, said they were an example to the world. "When you took those vows all those years ago, no one could have known how long that walk together would be. You have fulfilled your promise, and God is smiling."
A few days later Vernon McAlister died, his wife at his bedside.
Sex education is an ideological battlefield on which a war is being waged for the hearts and minds of children. Behind the innocuous-sounding words used by the sex education lobby, there is a definite agenda at work to undermine the role of parents and to tear down traditional moral standards. The need for parents to be alert and vigilant has never been greater.
Who says so? The Family Education Trust (otherwise known as Family and Youth Concern), whose aims are to uphold marriage and traditional family life and promote young people's welfare.
And with good reason. NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which advises on medicines and health issues - its chief role is to ration NHS drugs - has issued draft guidance on sex education suggesting that all children should be taught about sex and relationships starting at five and continuing into early adulthood.
The Labour Government legislated to make sex education part of the schools' national curriculum for the first time for pupils from the age of five upwards, but because of opposition Schools Secretary Ed Balls scrapped the sex education provisions in order to get the remainder of the Children, Schools and Families Bill into law in the limited time available before the General Election. Members of the sex education lobby were said to be furious, and attempts to reintroduce such provisions were expected.
The NICE draft guidance contains positive points, which might cause some people to be confused. But it also says
Research evidence does not support use of an approach to sex and relationships education that only teaches abstinence. Evidence shows that this does not help prevent the initiation of sex, or reduce the frequency of intercourse or reduce the number of partners a young person may have. Rather, such an approach may increase early sexual activity and its consequent risks.
(There is ample evidence that abstinence education is effective.)
It says school governors, teachers, nurses and community groups should
Reassure parents that sex and relationships education does not promote early sex, increase rates of sexual activity or increase the likelihood of sexual experimentation. Rather, it helps children and young people to resist pressure to get involved in activities that might damage their health. It also gives them the skills and confidence to delay sex until they are ready to enjoy a responsible and mutually loving relationship.
(Until they are ready?)
All involved in education should
Promote awareness of and sensitivity to diverse faith and cultural beliefs, and encourage understanding of different beliefs and practices, for example, in relation to alcohol use, sexual orientation and abortion. Discrimination and prejudices should be discussed and challenged.
(Prejudices against homosexual relationships and against abortion?)
It says that
A planned programme of sex and relationships education (SRE) that includes information and opportunities for discussion about sexual health, sexually transmitted infections, methods of contraception, pregnancy and abortion can help children and young people to delay sexual activity until they are ready. It does not cause them to have sex at an earlier age, or to have more sex, or sex with more partners, nor does it increase the number of unwanted or teenage conceptions and abortions.
(There is no explanation of why the more sex education there is, the more unwanted pregnancies and the more abortions increase.)
and
An overemphasis on concerns about the potential negative consequences of sex for young people, including teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, has sometimes led to an unbalanced approach to SRE that ignores the importance of consent and mutually rewarding sexual relationships for individual wellbeing.
(No mention, you will notice, of the context of sex within marriage.)
Norman Wells, of Family and Youth Concern, said "The team that drafted the guidance included lobby groups with an agenda to break down moral standards and redefine the family. Organisations with a commitment to marriage and traditional family values were not represented."
The draft guidance (you can read it in full here) is open for comment via the NICE website until July 15. Submissions will then be considered, and final guidance is expected in January.
Christian Concern for Our Nation is appealing for parents, teachers and school representatives to respond to the consultation.
Will you write and express your concerns? You should use the form here.
Famous Tuscan tenor Andrea Bocelli, who has sold 70 million records, interrupted one of his performances because, he said, he wanted to tell a little story.
A young pregnant wife had been admitted to hospital with appendicitis. After she was treated, the doctors suggested she abort the child. It would be the best solution, they said, because the baby would be born with some disability. The young woman decided not to abort, and the child was born.
"That woman was my mother," said Bocelli, "and I was the child. Maybe I'm partisan, but I can say it was the right choice."
Bocelli was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma as a baby, and has been blind since he was 12.
A video of Bocelli telling the story has been uploaded on www.youtube.com, and has had 150,000 viewings in three weeks.
While we're on the subject of abortion, the UK Government recently published figures for abortions during 2009. There were 195,743 abortions in England and Wales and 13,005 in Scotland, making a total of 208,748. After years of increasing figures year by year, the 2009 total was slightly less than the previous year - but it's still 16,000 unborn children killed each month. That's 4,000 each week. Or 600 each day.
In England and Wales, 34 per cent of abortions were on women who had had at least one abortion previously. In Scotland, 28 per cent of the women were having an abortion for at least the second time. Around half of all teenage pregnancies now end in abortion.
Meanwhile, a request under the Freedom of Information Act revealed an item of information that was not previously in the public domain: an average of 80 abortions are carried out in England and Wales each year on women who have become pregnant through IVF treatment.
It's hard to imagine how women who have undergone the stresses of IVF in order to become pregnant can then decide they don't want their baby after all. It shows, at the very least, a colossal disregard for human life.
In case you haven't heard, the UK's National Secular Society has instructed lawyers to take Bideford Town Council to the High Court. The reason: the council begins its council meetings with prayer, and the NSS doesn't like it.
The society says it has had a complaint from a Bideford councillor, one Clive Bone, who is an atheist. He says the prayers are "embarrassing," and he knows people who might have become council candidates, but are put off by prayer.
The society says it wrote to the council without satisfactory result, and it wants a judicial review of the situation. It will argue that prayer at the beginning of council meetings contravenes human rights legislation.
Keith Porteous Wood, the NSS's executive director, is reported as saying that the majority of people in this country do not enter a church, except perhaps for weddings and funerals, from one year's end to the next, and it is not appropriate in modern-day Britain for councillors to be put in the uncomfortable and embarrassing position of being subjected to "this archaic practice." The council's purpose was to provide local services, not church services.
George McLaughlin, clerk to the council, said the issue of prayers at the beginning of council meetings was a national one, not a local one. He did not know why the NSS had picked on them. In fact, the society, or its supporters, has approached some 140 councils regarding their habit (or not) of opening proceedings with prayer. The case, if it comes to the High Court, could set a precedent.
The council, which has been opening meetings in prayer since the days of Queen Elizabeth I, has voted by a majority to continue to open its meetings with prayer in the meantime.
A holiday is indicated. For this reason, there will be no new additions to this blog for a short time.
Please do continue to call by. Normal service will be resumed, as they used to say, as soon as possible.
Israel maintains a naval blockade of Gaza to prevent arms being delivered by sea to the terrorist organisation Hamas, which is now in control in Gaza, and which is sworn to Israel's destruction.
A "freedom flotilla" of six ships, carrying aid for Palestinians in Gaza and 600 passengers, at least some of them political extremists with terrorist connections, sailed for Gaza in an attempt to break the blockade.
Israel said the ships would not be allowed to go to Gaza, but offered to let the ships dock at Ashdod and offered to transport the aid overland to the Palestinians. The offer was refused, and the ships continued to sail to Gaza, evidently intent on confrontation.
On Monday, when Israeli naval commandos boarded one of the ships, they were attacked by a waiting group of men with iron bars, knives and at least one pistol. Some of the commandos were badly injured. Only when their lives were threatened did the commandos open fire.
The cry went up from the ship: "As soon as the Israelis landed on the ship they began to fire indiscriminately at unarmed civilians." One passenger said the Israelis began firing while still in helicopters hovering over the ships.
A number of lives were lost. But the activists obtained something they wanted more than they wanted to deliver aid to Palestinians: an opportunity for Israel to be vilified across the world.
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan said the assault was a "bloody massacre" and must be punished. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel. There were accusations of massacres and genocide. Politicians around the world called for the blockade to be ended.
A resolution presented to the UN Human Rights Council called for an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law. Israel was guilty of "violations of international law," you will notice, before any fact-finding mission began.
Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and a former adviser to Israel's Prime Minister, said that the Free Gaza website published a list of some 222 organisations from the four corners of the earth that endorsed the Gaza-bound "freedom flotilla." It is hard to think, she said, of any cause other than Israel-bashing that could unite such disparate forces.
And last Friday at the UN's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, 189 governments from 189 countries came together as one to savage Israel. There is, she said, no other issue that commands such unanimity. The conference demonstrated that the only way the international community will agree on anything is if its members are agreeing that Israel has no right to defend itself.
Israel, she added, is the target of a massive information war that is unprecedented in size and scope.
According to Bible prophecy, the world's final battles will be fought in Israel. Perhaps that's why the Bible also says "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psa 122:6).
The New Yorker, of all things, has published an article about Jesus.
Its author, Adam Gopnik, essayist, commentator and New Yorker staff writer, appears to be an outsider looking in. He comments on recent books published by Diarmid MacCulloch, Paul Johnson, Paul Verhoeven, Bart Ehrman, L. Michael White, John Dominic Crossan, Philip Jenkins and Philip Pullman, almost all of whom delight in rubbishing the gospel record.
"The more one knows," says Gopnik, "the less one knows." Scarcely surprising, after reading books like that. Mark's Gospel, he says, makes intolerable demands on logic.
His conclusion seems to be that after this length of time, Jesus' life, if not a myth, is a mystery "never to be entirely explored or explained."
Albert Mohler points out that it all depends on whether you hold to the divine inspiration of the Bible. If you don't, then the Bible is just a piece of ancient literature, and you can believe or disbelieve which bits you choose.
Either the Bible is just an ancient book and we have no real knowledge of Jesus or the Bible is the word of God and the Bible demonstrates a Jesus who can give forgiveness of sins and life everlasting.
C. S. Lewis, who was a believer in an inspired Bible, puts it rather well in Mere Christianity: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
The only observation I want to make is this. Is it not interesting that people who do not believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be are still fascinated by Him? Is it not remarkable how people who don't believe in His deity still can't leave Him alone?
I have one or two heroes, and one or two heroines. One of my heroines is a lady named Ilora Finlay. Please don't tell her. She would probably be embarrassed.
Ilora Finlay is a member of the House of Lords. A baroness, no less. She opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia, and argues eloquently against their legalisation.
What some people didn't know as she vigorously opposed an assisted suicide bill in the House of Lords a few years ago was that her 84-year-old mother, who had advanced breast cancer that had spread to large areas of her pelvis and lower back, was lying in a hospice wanting to die.
The old lady didn't want to be dependent. She didn't want to be a burden. And if assisted suicide were legal, it was clear, she would go for it. The situation, Lady Finlay said, was tearing her in two.
I'm a professor of palliative care. I have dedicated my career as a physician to improving the care of the terminally ill - and yet here was my dreadfully sick mother, stopping just short of asking me to help her die. . .
It was the hospice chaplain who unlocked the door. Wise enough to realise there was no point talking about God to this agnostic lady and experienced enough to know we all have a story, he quietly and patiently asked Mum to tell him hers.
And so he sat, this quiet, unassuming man, and listened, soaking up the years, as she told him her views and philosophy on life.
And it was in this telling that it dawned on Mum that her decrepit body still held an active mind. Suddenly, she realised that if she wasn't going to be allowed to kill herself, she had better make the most of what time remained. . .
Day by day, she took more pain relief, which first enabled her to get out of bed and then to take a few tentative steps with a Zimmer frame. Every day, she tried to take a few steps more. . .
And then, almost miraculously, the radiotherapy began to work, her pain disappeared and she was able to leave the hospice and go home.
My mother would go on to live for another four years and it's no exaggeration to say that those four years were almost more precious than the 84 that had preceded them. . .
Carers came every day. Friends visited, took her out, shared meals, laughed with her as she decided to get out of her wheelchair, using it as a walker and then dispensing with it altogether. She remembered that she had a story to tell, and began to tell it to her children for the first time.
She saw the birth of her first great-grandson, and relished playing with him. She was determined to stay involved, reading story books to him about steam engines and teddy bears. Then she cradled her second great-grandson in her arms.
Eventually illness came back, and she had to return to the hospice. But this time there was a difference: While she did, on occasion, long for the end, Mum did not ask for help to end her life this time. Any anger at her dependence and illness had gone and now 'Thank you' was her most uttered phrase.
Eventually death came. Says Lady Finlay: Of course, there are regrets - of times not spent together, of disagreements, of unappreciated times, of failing to call, of speaking in anger and in haste.
But I will never regret that our law protected her; preventing her from ending her life when she was vulnerable to despair.
Those four years we shared were the most precious gift. Without them, Mum would have missed what she described as some of the richest times in her life and we would have missed understanding just what an amazing person she was.
I'm so grateful for the fact she was 88 when she died and not 84. But best of all? So was she.
You can read the full account, originally published in the Daily Mail, right here.
It used to be called Whitsuntide, and it used to be a public holiday. The UK Government did away with the name and they did away with the holiday. But they can't do away with its significance. Tomorrow, 49 days after Easter Sunday, is Pentecost Sunday, when we remember how those early Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit.
On the evening of the day Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord (John 20:20). Thomas wasn't there on that occasion, but he was there a week later.
Then he said to Thomas, "Reach your finger here, and look at my hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing."
And Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed" (vv27 - 29).
What does the Bible say are the things necessary for salvation? 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 (Rom 10:9). Can anyone doubt that those disciples were believers at that point?
But they did not yet have all that they needed. They were to tarry in the city of Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high (Luke 24:49), for, said Jesus, you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now (Acts 1:5).
They waited from the days of the Jewish feast of Passover, when Jesus died and rose again, to the Jewish feast of Shavuot, or Pentecost. And when the day of Pentecost had fully come. . . and they were all in one place. . . there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind. . . and forked tongues, as of fire. . . and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1 - 4). Frightened believers were transformed into believers ablaze for God.
Peter explained that the promise of the Holy Spirit is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call (v39) - not just to the disciples there at that time, but to future generations, to people in other places, to every one who is called to God's salvation.
Some say that you have everything when you are born again, regenerated, come to faith in Christ. Don't believe that.
There's more. Oh yes, there's more!
There are people in the UK who are continually pushing for the legalisation of euthanasia. Whenever they speak of legalising euthanasia, they say there would, of course, be adequate safeguards.
On the subject of safeguards, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith points out on his blog Secondhand Smoke two things that are happening in Belgium, where euthanasia is legal. First, only something like 25 per cent of cases of euthanasia are being reported, as the law requires. Second, last year there were 40 per cent more reported cases than the year before.
He says:
This is what happens when a country jumps off a vertical moral cliff.
First, the euthanasia numbers are climbling dramatically. Secondly, the guidelines become virtually meaningless. As we have seen in the Netherlands, once a society countenances medical killing by doctors, the [doctors] tend to do anyone they think should be euthanized regardless of the guidelines, and then just don't report their own lawbreaking.
We are told that legalizing euthanasia makes it all so transparent. We are told it will be strictly restrained by legalization to only the most intractable cases. The pretense is clearly not working in Belgium. But will that cause the country to backtrack? Not on a bet. Once medicalized killing is accepted, the details cease to matter.
So much for adequate safeguards.
The Bible tells (in Gen 25:27 - 34) how Esau fell to temptation:
Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the field: but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents.
And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary.
And Esau said to Jacob, "Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary." Therefore his name was called Edom.
But Jacob said, "Sell me your birthright as of this day."
And Esau said, "Look, I am about to die; so what profit shall this birthright be to me?"
Then Jacob said, "Swear to me as of this day." She he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.
And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.
The stupid man, you might say. How ridiculous! Fancy going and doing a thing like that!
Esau's thought at the time was probably something like "I'm dying of hunger here. I've got to have some of that, and we'll worry about the consequences later."
(There were consequences, of course. You will remember that the Bible says later of Esau, in Heb 12:17: You know that afterwards, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.)
We need to understand a little about temptation. Can we say that temptation is a deliberate attempt to entice us to do something that we know God does not want us to do? The enemy will carefully arrange a time when we are not at our best, place something in front of us, perhaps unexpectedly, which is very attractive to our carnal nature, and ask for an instant response.
Says Selwyn Hughes: "Temptation involves a definite enticement to immediate self-gratification. The dictionary says 'To tempt someone is to beguile them to do wrong, by promise of pleasure or gain.' Temptation motivates a person to be bad by promising something that appears to be good."
You don't want to fall for that? Decide you are going to hate sin because God hates sin. Make a firm decision that you are going to produce a loud and definite "No!" when temptation comes. And here's an important key, in the words of Rom 13:14:
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.
Don't let yourself get into a state where you're likely to be tempted. Don't allow yourself to be in a situation or a place where you're likely to be tempted.
Remember that what the tempter tempts you with is never worth a fraction of what he's trying to get from you.
And don't be too quick to condemn Esau. There's a bit of Esau in us all.
The Christian man arrested in Workington, Cumbria, and charged with a public order offence for saying that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin - about whom I wrote here and here - has had some good news.
The Crown Prosecution Service has written to Dale Mcalpine (and his name is spelled Mcalpine and not McAlpine - newspapers please note!) saying the case has been dropped because of a lack of evidence. Mr Mcalpine says he is relieved.
Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute, which has been assisting Mr Mcalpine, says the police must be held to account.
"Cumbria Police can't just walk away from this," he said. "They have arrested and charged an innocent man for no other reason than that he has peacefully expressed his Christian beliefs. And it's happened in other parts of the country too, so there is clearly a problem with the system, and it has to be put right."
There are a number of questions still rolling round in my mind. Like - for example - would the case have been dropped if Mr Mcalpine had not had an organisation to fight for him? And would the case have been dropped - and so promptly - if details of the case had not been all over the media on both sides of the Atlantic?
Christians have been everybody's Aunt Sally for long enough. That Christians are beginning to fight back is nothing if it's not good news.
I came across two remarkable news items this week.
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