The best gift of all

Lee Strobel is a well known American Christian writer. More than 30 years ago he was an atheist, working at that time as a reporter on the Chicago Tribune.

During his time there he wrote a series of articles about Chicago's neediest people. For one of them, he visited a 60-year-old grandmother named Perfecta Delgado, living in a tiny two-room flat with her granddaughters Lydia and Jenny, aged 11 and 13.

Their previous home had been gutted by fire. Here they had no carpet, no furniture except a small kitchen table, and just a handful of rice to eat. The girls had only one short-sleeved dress each and a thin sweater between them. When they walked in the bitter cold to school, one would wear the sweater half-way there, then hand it to her sister to wear the rest of the way.

Perfecta had arthritis and was unable to work. She did, however, have a faith in Jesus and spoke about Him often. She said she was convinced that He had not abandoned them. Though there wasn't much in the flat by way of material goods, there was, somehow, a gentle feeling of hope and peace.

Strobel talked with them, got the material for his article, and went his way.

On Christmas Eve he was on duty in the Tribune newsroom. It was a poor news day; nothing was happening. On a whim, he decided to go back to Perfecta's flat and see how they were doing.

One of the girls opened the door. He could scarcely believe his eyes. Inside the flat there were rugs, roomfuls of furniture, a Christmas tree, presents, piles of warm winter clothes and boxes and boxes of food, all of it sent by people who had read his newspaper article.

What surprised him even more was that Perfecta and the girls were preparing to give much of it away. Why, he wanted to know. "Our neighbours are still in need," said Perfecta. "We can't have plenty while they have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do."

Strobel asked her how she felt about the generosity of the people who had sent all the goods.

"This is wonderful," she said. "This is very good. We did nothing to deserve this. This is a gift from God.

"But it's not His greatest gift. We celebrate that tomorrow. That's Jesus."

Happy Christmas!

Legalised euthanasia 'a mistake'

While we are on the subject of euthanasia, Els Borst, who was Dutch Health Minister when the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia in the early Noughties, has now said that legalising euthanasia was a mistake, and they should first have focussed on palliative care.

Care for the terminally ill had declined, she said, since euthanasia became legal, and more should have been done to give legal protection to those who wanted a natural death.

In 2008, Dutch doctors reported 2,331 cases of euthanasia, 400 cases of assisted suicide and 550 deaths without request. There is, of course, no record of the cases that weren't reported.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Dutch Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said that even today effective palliative care was not in place in the Netherlands.

The country's politicians had denied there had been a "slippery slope." But how could you say that, he said, when euthanasia was originally only for the terminally ill and was now for the mentally ill and newborn babies?

A new turn in assisted dying battle

An unusual situation has occurred in the UK. For years, proponents of euthanasia have fought to have euthanasia made legal. For years, Parliament has refused to oblige.

Some few years ago, the euthanasia lobby changed tactic. It decided to press for assisted suicide to be made legal as a first step. Several bills were brought forward, but again Parliament declined to change the law.

Brits who wanted help to die travelled to an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland. Technically, relatives who accompanied them left themselves open to a charge of assisting a suicide. Police investigated the circumstances on their return, but none of the relatives were prosecuted.

Then a multiple sclerosis sufferer named Debbie Purdy, backed by the organisation that used to be known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society but changed its name to Dignity in Dying, went to the High Court requesting an assurance that her husband would not be prosecuted if he accompanied her on such a journey. Unsurprisingly, the High Court declined to give her such an assurance, and the Appeal Court agreed with that decision.

She appealed to the House of Lords. Lord Phillips, the senior law lord, announcing the Lords' decision, said the law was unclear and the Director of Public Prosecutions must state in what circumstances he would and would not prosecute. The DPP, Keir Starmer, did so, thus effectively allowing assisted suicide in some circumstances without a change in the law by Parliament.

Lord Phillips said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph: "I have enormous sympathy with anyone who finds themselves facing a quite hideous termination of their life as a result of one of these horrible diseases, in deciding they would prefer to end their life more swiftly and avoid that death as well as avoiding the pain and distress that might cause their relatives."

In the meantime, at very considerable expense, the position of highest court in the land was transferred from the House of Lords to the new Supreme Court, which has Lord Phillips as its president.

Entering into the story at this point is a remarkable lady named Alison Davis. She was born with severe spina bifida. She also suffers from hydrocephalus, emphysema, osteoporosis and arthritis. She is confined to a wheelchair, is doubly incontinent and sometimes has intractable pain. For 10 years she wanted to die and several times attempted suicide until friends persuaded her that her life was worth living.

She went to India to visit seriously disabled children and became "mother" to 130 of them. She established a charity to support them and learned Telugu so she could write to them in their own language. She is a committed pro-lifer and heads an organisation called No Less Human, which stands up for the rights of the disabled.

Ms Davis, backed by the Christian Legal Centre, is seeking to challenge the law lords' decision in the Purdy case in the Supreme Court. She said the DPP's guidelines not only are "unfair, unjust and fatally discriminatory against suffering people, who deserve the same presumption in favour of life as any able-bodied person would automatically receive," but have no place in a civilised society.

Her legal challenge says the "expression of the private 'political' view of Lord Phillips in the Daily Telegraph raises a question of apparent bias" and his personal sympathy invalidated the House of Lords decision. (A House of Lords judgment in a previous case regarding immunity of prosecution of Chile's General Pinochet was set aside because Lord Hoffman, one of the law lords, had links to Amnesty International.)

It further claims that "the decision of the former House of Lords is 'unconstitutional' and usurps the power of Parliament," and calls for the full Supreme Court to reconsider the Purdy case.

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court responds.

The problems with global warming (3)

I have said that I do not believe in man-made global warming. I appear to be in good company. There are many who claim that there is no hard evidence for global warming, and even if there were, for the fact that man is responsible.

Melanie Phillips, for instance, points to the 700-plus international scientists who are critical of global warming theory. They have variously said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is telling lies about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes, that its ice-core research is wrong, and that its statements are "all a fiction" and "the biggest scientific scam ever," with "no evidence to prove that current climate variations are not a natural cycle."

A couple of weeks ago hackers obtained around 1,000 e-mails sent to or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, and published them on the internet. The unit's work has been crucial in building the case for global warming.

The e-mails appeared to show that climate figures had been manipulated. What appeared to have happened was that scientists, rather than base their findings on the figures, had manipulated the figures to agree with what they thought was the case.

I am not an expert on climate. I want to make that quite clear. But there is one thing I do know.

Many years ago, after a worldwide flood, God said "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease" (Gen 8:22).

That's God's promise.

The trouble is there are a lot of people who think they know better than God does, and even more people who are ready to believe them.

The problems with global warming (2)

Some 15,000 delegates, 45,000 green activists and 5,000 journalists will be in Copenhagen for the UN's climate change conference over the next 11 days.

It is estimated that the Climate Change Act, passed in the UK a year ago, will already cost Britain £18 billion, or £720 for every household in the country, every year between now and 2050. But that, it seems, is not enough.

A few weeks ago British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said negotiators had until the Copenhagen conference to save the world from global warming. The alternative to united action was a catastrophe of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves. The cost of failing to address global warming, he said, would be greater than the impact of two world wars and the Great Depression.

You might have thought the purpose of the conference was simply to consider whatever was responsible. Not so. A treaty had been prepared for signing at the conference, we are told, which would create a new global organisation with power, under the guise of saving the planet, to transfer money from one nation to another, and to enforce the conditions of the treaty.

The goal of the environmental movement, we are told, was to use climate change to bring the nations under the umbrella of an organisation with global governance.

Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has argued that global warming hysteria was being advanced by the political left to impose global taxes on the United States in pursuit of international control of the US economy under a one-world government to be administered by the UN.

He told the Americans: "I read that treaty and what it says is that a world government is going to be created. The word 'government' actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.

"The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, 'climate debt' because we have been burning CO2 and they haven't. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement. . .

"Unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your humanity away forever."

It was reported that President Obama was "leaning toward not going" to the Copenhagen conference. Then that he would be there for the first days, but not at the end. Last week it was said he would not be there at the beginning, but at the end, when the decisions would be made.

So what will be decided at the Copenhagen conference? We shall soon know.

Christ is the answer

What an age we live in!

One afternoon this week I was looking at a few recent news items. The Bank of England had loaned £61 billion of taxpayers' money to two banks without Parliament or the public being told. Representatives of 192 countries were about to meet in Copenhagen to consider spending vast amounts of money to prevent predicted global warming that isn't happening.

In the UK, convicted murderers were being allowed to sleep at home, apparently because of a lack of prison places. People guilty of causing grievous bodily harm, sexual assault and rape, including child rape, were being dealt with by being given a police caution.

Schools were failing to provide adequate teaching. Vast numbers of youngsters were leaving school without an adequate mastery of the three Rs.

On the evening of that same day I attended my first Christmas carol service this year. Standing by a Christmas tree in the bitterly cold outdoors in the centre of a little community not too far from my home with Christians who were singing carols with infectious joy, it hit me afresh.

He came. He did it. He lived, He died and He rose again.

He's alive today. He's coming soon. "Be of good cheer," He said, "I have overcome the world."

If you don't know Him personally, make His acquaintance this Christmas season.

"Come to me," He said, "all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Five minutes to midnight?

Pressure on Israel has been increasing. And Israel appears to be ready to compromise on some important issues.

This week, following pressure from the US, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a total freeze on building construction in Judea and Samaria for 10 months.

The following day Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot announced that the US now wants Israel to release a thousand Palestinian terrorists from prison, allow Palestinian paramilitaries to operate in areas at present under Israeli control, and surrender land in the Jordan valley to the Palestinians - all this before starting talks with the Palestinians.

According to the newspaper, if those talks begin, the US will insist that Israel accept a Palestinian state in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza and ethnically clean those areas of Jews.

Recently US National Security Adviser General James L. Jones said nothing was going to stand in the way of the creation of a Palestinian state. The time had come, he said, to relaunch negotiations without preconditions to reach a final status agreement on two states. He emphasised President Obama's personal commitment to this resolution.

When he was campaigning for the top job at the White House, Barack Obama said "We must isolate Hamas [the Palestinian terrorist organisation in charge in Gaza] unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognise Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organisations."

That appears now to be forgotten.

Javier Solana, Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, was talking some months ago about imposing a Palestinian state by UN resolution, if necessary without Israel's consent.

Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper says that according to Israeli officials the US was considering adopting a unilateral declaration by the Palestinians of an independent state in the West Bank and Jerusalem, regardless of negotiations with Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is said to have had positive meetings with EU states, including France, Spain, Sweden and the UK, with regard to the plan for the unilateral declaration of an independent state, and he is reported to have said the US did not oppose his plan.

When Israel's Prime Minister visited the US earlier this month, he was granted a meeting with President Obama only at the last minute. He was transported to the White House in a van, instead of the official vehicle which normally takes world leaders to meetings with the US President, and the White House issued no official photographs of the meeting.

Meanwhile, Israel is still faced with the possibility of attack from Iran, whose leadership has promised to wipe Israel off the map. While Iran rushes to stock nuclear weapons, the US and the EU do nothing to prevent it except continue to threaten sanctions.

Says investors.com:

Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight.

Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the US and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. . .

The time for dithering on Iran is over.

Iran is currently engaging in large-scale military exercises to protect its nuclear sites from a possible pre-emptive strike by Israel, and trying to pressure Russia for delivery of promised

S-300 anti-aircraft defence systems, which will make an attack on Iran's nuclear sites so much harder.

Pressure on Israel will continue to increase as Bible prophecy continues to be fulfilled.

Getting answers to prayer (again)

The Bible tells the story of Hannah. Hannah was dearly loved by her husband Elkanah, but she had a problem. She was barren. She had no children.

Elkanah's other wife, Peninnah, who evidently had no trouble having children, used to mock Hannah until Hannah was throroughly miserable. Why was Peninnah allowed to mock Hannah in this fashion? Because, I would suggest, Hannah needed to get desperate.

When she got desperate, she went to the temple and prayed. She promised if God would give her a son she would give him to the Lord all the days of his life.

When Eli the high priest saw her lips moving and no sound coming out, he thought she had been imbibing a little too freely and told her to leave off the drink. Hannah explained she was not drunk, but had been praying from the anguish of her soul. Eli blessed her, and prayed her prayer would be answered.

When Hannah left the temple, she wasn't sad any more. She knew she had touched home. She knew her answer was on its way.

When the child was born, she kept the promise she had made to the Lord. When the boy was weaned, she took him to the temple and gave him to Eli. The boy, Samuel, became the prophet in Israel. (You can read the story in 1 Samuel.)

There are two lessons from the story of Hannah. The first is that sometimes an answer to prayer can be delayed until it fits in with God's plans and purposes. The second is that sometimes, instead of just putting up with a situation, we need to get desperate. When we pray like we won't take no for an answer, things begin to happen.

Is that OK?

Britain's conspiracy of shame

On the subject of abortion, Chuck Missler, of Koinonia House, suggests that after decades of battling for the hearts and minds of America, the effects of millions of prayers are being felt.

Between faithful crisis pregnancy workers, technology that allows us to look inside the womb, and mothers who have hope for a better way, the tide is turning against abortion in the United States, he says. There are now officially more people in America who call themselves pro-life than pro-choice. . .

Abortion is losing its appeal all across the nation. A Gallup poll in May found that more than half (51 per cent) of Americans polled described themselves as "pro-life" and 42 per cent described themselves as "pro-choice." The self-described pro-lifers outnumbered pro-choicers for the first time since Gallup started polling on this question in 1995. . .

It is good to see hope for America's unborn children after decades of fighting. But the battle is not over. There are still more people who need to come to truly appreciate the value of even the youngest human life. There are millions of little ones still waiting to be born, and there are millions of mothers who will be much better off finding help so they can joyfully hold their babies in their arms. Keep praying.

What we have here in Britain is a Government-led conspiracy to see that abortion is made available to anyone who wants it.

The Government will tell you that an abortion is allowed only "if two registered medical practitioners certify in good faith that continuation of the pregnancy would involve risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated." Doctors (some are more conscientious than others, it must be said) sign consent forms at random, sometimes without even seeing the patient - and get paid for it.

Recently the ProLife Alliance won a long, drawn-out legal battle to force the Department of Health to reveal details of abortions carried out between 24 weeks of pregnancy and birth ostensibly on grounds of serious handicap. The Department of Health tried practically every trick in the book to prevent the information being made available.

The alliance said in a statement:

The most significant aspect of the tribunal decision is not so much the ruling re the disclosure of statistics as the damning assessment of the Department of Health's failure to regulate abortion.

The Department bears the full burden of enforcing abortion laws in this country, yet the tribunal highlights the absence of any mechanism for rigorous scrutiny of abortion referral forms, with no audit, spot checks, outside opinion or quality control of the basis for the terminations. It expressed particular concern that decisions were not scrutinised clinically or substantively and that no witnesses were able to point to a case where the diagnosis of a certifying doctor had ever been checked by the Department of Health.

Whilst the alliance is opposed to all abortions, it says, it would argue that at the very least there should be mechanisms in place to ensure conformity with the existing requirements of the Abortion Act.

I look forward to the day when many more people on this side of the Atlantic become seriously concerned about the barbarous practice of killing unborn babies.

You can make a difference

Mrs Mary Fox lived with her 17-year-old son Raum in Bodmin, Cornwall. Raum, who had learning difficulties, was bullied by local youths - to the extent that his mother walked with him to and from school.

On Guy Fawkes night, some youth put a lighted firework through the letterbox of their home. The firework set the house on fire. Three youths were seen laughing and mocking outside the house as flames shot out from the front door two feet into the air.

Raum suffered minor injuries as his mother pushed him through an upstairs window. His mother died in the fire.

What happened to them brings to mind the case of 38-year-old Fiona Pilkington, whose teenage daughter Francecca had severe learning difficulties. Local youths made their lives a misery for years. They shouted obscenities and threw missiles at the house; I don't know what they didn't do altogether. Ms Pilkington made 33 separate complaints to the police. The police and the local council apparently did nothing.

Eventually Ms Pilkington decided she couldn't take any more. She put her daughter in her car, drove to a quiet spot, doused the car in petrol, and with both of them sitting inside, ignited the petrol. Both died in the blaze.

I don't blame the British nation as such for getting into the state that it has, although a nation is made up of individuals, and every individual must be responsible for his own conduct. I don't blame the Government for everything that happens, although the Government has done little to stop it, and much of what it has done has only made things worse.

In large part, I blame the Christian church. I think the Christian church - of which I am a part - has not been what God intended it to be and has not lived as God intended it to live.

Please don't be discouraged. Be encouraged. Decide you are going to be the person God intends you to be and live like God intends you to live, letting your light shine into this nation's darkness so that you will make a difference.

A word from Dottie Rambo

The other night when I tuned in to a Christian TV station there was a recorded interview with Dottie Rambo. Dottie Rambo was a gospel singer who wrote thousands of gospel songs.

She appears to have had some times of heartache in her life. Perhaps it was during one of those times that she wrote the particular song she was discussing. I don't know the title of the song; I'm not too sure of the words. But the theme of the song was this: you've come too far to turn back now. You've fought too many battles. You've seen too many victories. You've seen too many suns go down to think about quitting at this stage in the game.

When God had finished sending plagues on Egypt and that colossal number of Israelites was on its way to the Red Sea there was still time to turn back. When the Israelites were camping by the Red Sea and they found themselves trapped between the Red Sea in front of them and Pharaoh's chariots behind them there was still time to turn back. But once they had crossed the Red Sea on dry land and the waters of the Red Sea had closed behind them, there was no going back.

Ahead of them was the wilderness. It wasn't going to be easy. The difference was that now they had their freedom. In Egypt, their lives had been dictated by the slavemaster's whip. Ahead, their lives would be subject to God's promises.

The Christian life is something like that. When you became a Christian, Paul says, you were delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His Son. It isn't all easy, being a Christian, but it's all glorious. I don't know if it happened that way with you, but when you became a Christian, someone should have told you you were going to be in a battle. "Be strong," Paul told Timothy, "in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." The thing is you're on the winning side. "Thanks be to God," says Paul, "who always leads us in triumph in Christ" (2 Cor 2:14).

Starting the Christian life is not enough. We've got to run the race. We've got to finish the course. We've got to cross the line. That's the important thing: that we finish the course.

There may be a Christian reading this who has had a hard time and is feeling ready to quit. Don't do it. God knows where you live. He hasn't forgotten your address. He hasn't accidentally deleted your personal details off His computer database. He has a purpose for your life and He is preparing you for it. The most important deliverance of all may be just around the corner.

Besides, if you have experienced His deliverance and known His love, if you have, as it says in Hebrews, "tasted the heavenly gift. . . become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come," who are you going to go back to?

You mustn't give up. "He who endures to the end shall be saved." You might have a few bumps and bruises by the time you've done, but you need to reach the finishing line. You can't give up. You've fought too many battles. You've been delivered too many times. You've seen too many victories. You've come too far to quit now.

The problems with global warming (1)

There always seems to have been someone to tell us either that we are about to enter a new ice age and get ourselves frozen to death or that the ice caps are going to melt, the earth is going to become desert and we are all going to be roasted to a frazzle.

I am old enough to remember how around 1970 Americans like Paul Ehrlich were telling us quite clearly that by the year 2000 there wouldn't be enough food to eat or air to breathe on the planet.

The latest scare, of course, has been man-made global warming. Governments appeared to fall for it. Unfortunately for the environmentalists, the arguments in its favour appear to be losing their potency. The BBC now says that for the last 11 years there has not been any increase in global temperatures. Over the past 11 years, in fact, I believe global temperatures have dropped.

More and more people have begun to see that there is no concrete evidence for man-made global warming, to the extent that environmentalists are no longer talking about global warming, but about climate change. Climate change, of course, includes not only global warming, but global cooling.

An attendee at an environmental conference recently complained that in any other sphere, people wanted to see independent verification of scientific findings; but if environmental organisers said something, it was taken as gospel.

What he wanted to see, he said, was journalists treating "big environmentalism" the same way they treated big politics, big government and big business. By asking the same questions. Like where's the money coming from to promote all this about man-made global warming? And who's channelling it?

Now there are some interesting questions. . .

Some atheists are no longer so sure

Chuck Colson points out in Christianity Today that while Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are producing books promoting their atheism, other British atheists are reconsidering the matter and coming to different conclusions.

Anthony Flew has concluded that evolutionary theory has no reasonable explanation for the origin of life and that atheism is not logically sustainable.

A. N. Wilson noticed people who insist we are "simply anthropoid apes" cannot account for things like language, love and music. That and the even stronger argument of how the Christian faith transforms individual lives convinced him that the religion of the incarnation is true.

Colson, who says faith and reason are not enemies, gets students to write four basic questions on a piece of paper: Where did I come from? What's my purpose? Why is there sin and suffering? Is redemption possible?

On the other side of the paper, they list philosophies and religions and examine how each philosophy or religion deals with the four questions and which best conforms to the way things really are. Students quickly see that only Christianity teaches that humans are created in the image of God and it is no coincidence that Christians have waged most of the great human rights campaigns.

People have a caricatured view of Christians, seeing them as followers, often hypocritical and judgmental, of an outdated book. But an explanation of why Christianity is so reasonable, says Colson, will open the mind, if not the heart, of many a doubter.

A hope worth having

Hope is what keeps people going. People in the Holocaust who lost hope died quickly, they tell me. Countless thousands who continued to hope perished too. But some who dared to hope survived, often in incredible circumstances.

People like Ruth Dobschiner, a nurse in Nazi-occupied Holland who lost all her family in the Holocaust but survived herself as a result of what seemed like a series of miracles. She came to faith while hiding in a Dutch attic. After the hostilities she moved to Scotland, and lived and worked in Glasgow for quite some years.

A couple of years ago I came across a bench dedicated to her name in a National Trust sanctuary south of Oban. I never did find out how it came to be there. One day, perhaps, I will.

Christians who have trusted Christ for His salvation have a hope more certain than the ground beneath their feet. One day this old world might be rolled up like an old blanket, but the hope we have who have trusted in Christ extends clean out of this world into the next.

The book of Hebrews speaks of those

. . . who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the inner part behind the veil,

where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus. . .

This hope, both sure and steadfast, goes beyond the veil into the very presence of God. Jesus is the forerunner. He has entered for us. His presence there is proof that those who own Him will be there with Him.

Whenever I read those words in Hebrews (and sometimes when I don't) I have a picture in my mind. The details may sound a little ridiculous, but the picture as a whole so clearly illustrates the point.

With me is a rope, perhaps of the sort that mountaineers use, but absolutely unbreakable. The rope goes from me up into heaven and over the windowsill of God's throne room (I told you the details of the picture were somewhat unbiblical). At the end of the rope is an anchor, and one arm of the anchor is caught around one of the legs of God's throne.

In other words, only if God Himself is overthrown can the hope He has provided fail.

Now there is a hope worth having.

Middle East tensions increase

Israel's situation becomes more difficult as the days go by. This week the United Nations Human Rights Council discussed the Goldstone commission's report into the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. The report accused Israel of war crimes.

The council heard wildly antisemitic diatribes from Muslim nations. It also heard testimony that "the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare."

The council approved the Goldstone report by 25 votes to six.

To give you an idea of the impartiality involved here, the Human Rights Council, in setting up the commission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, had called for "an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the Gaza Strip."

In other words, Israel was condemned before the "independent, international fact-finding mission" began.

There has been rioting in Jerusalem in recent days.

In 1996 Israel decided to open an archaeological tunnel near the Western Wall. Palestinians claimed it was an attempt to attack a mosque on the Temple Mount and used it as an excuse for a season of violence, with Palestinian security forces, armed by Israel, opening fire on Israeli soldiers.

In 2000 Palestinians used the excuse of a visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon - a visit that had been agreed in advance with the Palestinian Authority - to start the second intifada, years of terror which left 1,500 Israelis dead.

This time Palestinian authorities claimed, without any evidence, that Israelis were seeking to worship on the Temple Mount and called Palestinians to flood the Temple Mount to protect the mosque there. Masked Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police; 18 policemen and 15 protesters were hurt.

Fatah leaders called on European governments and the US to condemn Israel's imaginary provocations. European governments - it would be funny if it weren't so serious - demanded Israel end its bad behaviour, and the US demanded that Israel explain itself.

There were claims that it was an attempt to start a third intifada. If it was, it doesn't seem quite to have caught on - yet.

The world has discovered that Iran had a further nuclear processing plant it hadn't got round to telling the International Atomic Energy Authority about. This was said to be proof that Iran intends to produce not nuclear energy, as it has always claimed, but nuclear weapons. Iranian president Ahmadinejad, who has promised to destroy Israel, remained defiant and Iran continued to test rockets which can reach Israel.

Israelis have said that if nothing is done to stop Iran producing nuclear weapons Israel will have to attack Iran's nuclear sites by the end of the year. No one seems to be doing anything effective to stop Iran's march to nuclear capability.

Meanwhile, Ray Gano provides more evidence of the Obama administration's pro-Arab sympathies and lack of concern for the Jews.

The Jews recently celebrated some of the most important days in the Jewish calendar - Rosh Hashanah, the 10 Days of Awe and the Day of Atonement. The United States Consulate in Jerusalem - Israel's capital - made no mention on its website of the Jewish festivals, but included greetings from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the US Consul General to the Muslims for the celebration of Eid.

Consulate staff explained that they are the US representative to the Palestinian Authority, while the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv is the US representative to Israel.

There is only one problem with that. The website of the embassy in Tel Aviv didn't mention the Jewish holy days either.

A tragedy 15 times over

According to the Daily Mail, a woman has admitted having had 15 abortions in a period of 17 years. The woman, an academic prodigy in her teens but from a troubled family, said the abortions were "an act of rebellion."

It's interesting that her abortions were punctuated by several attempts at suicide.

An abortion is decided on usually not to save the life of the mother, but for selfish reasons, like "My boyfriend told me I had to get rid of it," or "Having a baby now would ruin my career" or "This really isn't the right time for me to have a baby just now."

The tragedy is that each abortion takes a human life - a life given for a purpose. Each tiny person in the womb is a unique individual with a unique personality and a life never to be repeated.

While we are on the subject, if you would like to hear a magnificent pro-life song beautifully sung, click here. I really would encourage you to listen to this.

If you happen to be reading this and you are hurting or in need of help because abortion has touched your life, click here.

There's a reason for it all

People with a "Where did Cain get his wife from?" kind of mindset who like to try to disprove God's word point out that if Eve was the mother of all living, then in order for humankind to continue, one of her sons must have married his sister, which was a sin.

That's where their logic comes unstuck. It wasn't a sin.

When Adam and Eve were created, their genes were perfect. The genes of their children would be near perfect.

By Moses' time, hundreds of years later, some defective genes would have got into the gene pool. It was then that God decreed that a person was not to marry a near relative.

If I were to marry someone outside my own family, their genes would be different to mine. A defective gene in me would be likely to be overcome by a good gene at the same point in my spouse, so that our children would not be affected.

If I married a close relative, our genes would be similar. A defective gene in me would be likely to be matched by a defective gene at the same point in my partner, so that our children would be genetically defective.

The more you understand about creation, the more you see the wisdom of God.

A nation's children betrayed

You may forget all the splendid words about education from the Government. Britain's children have been betrayed.

I remember with affection some of the teachers I had as a youngster. Like the teacher in my last year of junior school. Not only was she the school's headmistress; she also taught singlehandedly all the subjects to all the pupils in their last two years of junior school all jammed into one class. She had a cane but never used it. Discipline was never a problem. The children in her care were taught, and she had the best exam results in town.

It was in the 1960s that teachers began to introduce ideas and methods of teaching that everyone seemed to know were crazy except the teachers. As a result, examinations had to be downgraded and three-year university courses extended to four.

We have now got to the point where 63 per cent of white boys from low-income families and 54 per cent of black working-class boys can't read or write properly at age 14. English grammar is not considered important. Children are not taught to spell. Schools are now getting young teachers who can't teach children to spell because they can't spell either.

A leading exam board found last year's GCSE candidates didn't know how to write a letter. Undergraduates are arriving at university unable to write an essay. A study of students at Imperial College, London, found the English of British students was worse than the English of overseas students. British students made three times as many grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors as students from Singapore, China and Indonesia.

According to Harriet Sergeant in the Daily Mail, a third of all 14-year-olds have a reading age of 11 or below. One in five has a reading age of nine. Cuba, Estonia, Poland and Barbados have higher literacy rates than Britain.

Education in the UK is based on ideology, not evidence of what works. School inspectors no longer concentrate on the basics, but have to check that schools are complying with educational ideology and the latest Government initiative.

Because there is little incentive to learn, almost 60,000 children in England skip lessons every day. Boys aged between 10 and 16 commit 40 per cent of all street crime, 25 per cent of thefts from properties, 20 per cent of criminal damage and one third of car thefts, and all of them during school hours.

The concept of sitting pupils in rows of desks facing the teacher is widely considered too didactic, Ms Sergeant writes. Now, most primary schoolchildren sit at tables scattered about the classroom, as I saw for myself when I sat in on one class for a week in the East End of London.

On my table, the three children giggled, kicked each other and chatted. Their attention lay on what was in front of them: themselves. Somewhere on the periphery of our vision, the teacher walked about, struggling to keep order. Somewhere else, behind our heads, hung a whiteboard with work upon it, gleefully ignored by my table.

When I blamed the children's poor discipline and concentration on the layout, the teacher looked at me with horror.

'The pupils are working together, directing their own learning,' she said emphatically. . .

Children are now expected, for example, to be 'independent learners' in charge of their own education. ('Why do teachers keep asking me what I want to learn? How am I supposed to know?' one boy asked me in exasperation.)

Something needs to be done before the next generation comes along. Among other things, beginning to teach five-year-olds and six-year-olds to read would be a good thing.

Grace, grace, such wonderful grace

Susan Atkins, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson who confessed to stabbing heavily pregnant actress Sharon Tate to death in 1969, has died after almost 40 years in prison. She was 61, and had brain cancer.

Her mother died of cancer when Susan was 15. Her father was said to be an alcoholic. While still in her teens, she was dancing in topless bars and using drugs. Then she met Manson.

Over the years she apologised many times for her actions and claimed to have found forgiveness in Christ. The last words she said in public were "My God is an awesome God."

Many people believe she did not deserve forgiveness. They are right. We are all sinners, and none of us deserve forgiveness. If we are forgiven, it is not because we deserve it, but because of God's wonderful grace.

Changed in the twinkling of an eye

It's remarkable how people will believe anything except the truth.

People who have no time for the Bible say they have discovered from a calendar of the ancient Maya civilisation of Middle America that the world is due to end on December 21, 2012.

Television channels are talking about it, books are being written about it, websites are discussing it and Hollywood is making a film about it.

I am told by people who study such things that the Mayan calendar does not say that the world will end, but suggests that because of the position of the planets in the solar system at that time there will be terrifying repercussions down here, with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and worldwide disasters. Some are now saying that life down here will end at that time.

Now I believe in Bible prophecy. After man first sinned, for instance, the Bible said that there would come a Saviour, divine, eternal, born of a woman, in Bethlehem, from the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of the tribe of Judah, of the house of David, at a time in accordance with the prophecy of Daniel. He would be despised and rejected of men, would die for the sins of the people, would be buried in a rich man's grave and would be resurrected. It happened. Other Bible prophecies have similarly been fulfilled.

Now does it not seem to you that if Bible prophecies that have been fulfilled have been fulfilled in such exact detail, then Bible prophecies which have not yet been fulfilled will be fulfilled in the same way?

There is one event prophesied in the Bible in greater detail perhaps than any other. (Whole chapters are devoted to it.) The Bible says that Jesus will come to earth a second time, not at the end of the world but at the end of this age, to deal will all those living who have not repented of their sins, to set up His earthly kingdom and to reign and rule, not just as King of the Jews, but as King of kings and Lord of lords.

We are not to set dates for His coming, but we are given signs of the time of His coming. There will be earthquakes, famines, wars and rumours of wars (Matt 24:6, 7). There will be signs in the sun, in the moon and in the stars, with men's hearts failing them for fear (Luke 21:25, 26). There is no reason to suppose this is countless years away.

The apostle writes in 2 Tim 3:1 - 5: "In the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power."

What period of time does that remind you of?

Now there is one thing that is to happen before Christ returns with His saints and His feet stand again on the Mount of Olives (He will return, the Bible says, to Jerusalem). He will take all those who belong to Him to be with Him.

This is described in 1 Cor 15:51, 52: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." We are told to be ready for that day.

It is described again in 1 Thess 4:13 - 18:

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you should sorrow as others who have no hope.

If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort one another with these words.

My favourite bit there is the last part of verse 17: "And thus we shall always be with the Lord."

What a prospect!

Wanted: a second William Booth

Britain, alas, seems to have done it again. The Daily Mail reports:

A vast study of youngsters' wellbeing in 30 industrialised nations ranked Britain among the worst for health, lifestyles and school standards relative to public spending levels.

Under-age teenagers in Britain are more likely to get drunk than those in any other country, and the proportions of teenage mothers and single-parent families are amongst the highest in the survey.

In "risky behaviour" - a combination of drinking, smoking and teenage pregnancy - Britain's performance is worse than all nations other than Turkey and Mexico.

Educational achievement is low given the billions poured in by Labour, with more than one in 10 youngsters aged 15 to 19 not in school, training or work. This is the fourth highest rate in the 30 countries. Only Italy, Turkey and Mexico perform worse. . .

The report, published by the economic think tank the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, compared data from 30 leading countries on children's welfare. . .

Teen drunkenness, as measured by the number of youngsters aged 13 and 15 who have been drunk at least twice, tops the league table at 33 per cent.

By an apparent coincidence, the letters page in the same issue of the same newspaper contained a letter from a Derek Hanna, of Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim. It said:

One of the nation's greatest sons, William Booth, once said: "The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, politics without God, salvation without regeneration and heaven without hell."

No wonder the nation is in such decline and the future looks so bleak.

The only hope, the letter said, is that God will raise up another William Booth. Or another John Wesley.

May it be so.

No feet, no footprints

It would be difficult to find someone these days who hasn't heard of man-made global warming, polar bears under threat and the need to reduce carbon footprints to save the planet. Forgive me if I sound flippant in talking about it: frankly, I don't believe it. (Actually, I hear the climate is getting colder.)

A British population control group has had an idea: stop babies being born so they won't be able to produce carbon footprints. The Optimum Population Trust from the London School of Economics points out that a lot of births are unplanned.

A report commissioned by the trust claims that contraception is almost five times cheaper than conventional so-called green technologies, so the trust is calling for birth control to be included in funding for climate change in order to reduce the number of unintended births.

Said Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children: "Whatever the evidence regarding man-made global warming, the right to life and the right to found a family are fundamental, universal human rights enshrined in legally binding international conventions. Will the members of the Optimum Population Trust please tell us which of their children should not have been born in order to save the earth?"

That reminds me of a married mother of three children I knew of who became pregnant a fourth time. She went to see her doctor and explained that she didn't really want more than three children.

"Well, let's see," said the doctor. "Of the three children you have at home, which one shall we get rid of?" The woman was horrified.

"Well," said the doctor, "the one you have in the womb is just as alive as the other three, so why not get rid of one of the older ones?"

The woman put away all thoughts of an abortion. She is now an active pro-lifer.

Obama, Israel and the Palestinians

I understand that when Barack Obama became US President he gave himself two years to resolve the Israel/Palestinian issue. There's optimism for you.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who became Israel's Prime Minister not too long ago, was said not to favour a two-state plan. Israel was under pressure from the US to agree to just that.

After careful consideration, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would agree to two states on two conditions: first, that the Palestinians would recognise the Jewish state's right to exist, and second, that the Palestinian state would be a demilitarised state so that it would not be able to attack Israel.

The Palestinians' response was not long in coming. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas, said the Israeli leader's speech "torpedoes all peace initiatives in the region."

Another Abbas aide, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said recognition of Israel's Jewish character was a demand for Palestinians "to become part of the global Zionist movement." Hamas said the speech reflected Mr Netanyahu's "racist and extremist ideology."

Kifah Radaydeh, a Fatah official, rather let the cat out of the bag. She said the Palestinian Authority will resume violence and terror against Israel when Fatah is "capable" and "according to what seems right." "It has been said that we are negotiating for peace," she said, "but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; our goal is Palestine."

At its recent conference in Bethlehem, Fatah, the so-called moderate wing of the Palestinians - perhaps emboldened by encouraging sounds from President Obama - embraced the Aksa Martyrs terror group as a Fatah organisation, endorsed the use of terrorism against Israel, demanded that all terrorists be released from Israeli prisons as a precondition to "peace" talks and decided that their national enterprise would not be achieved until not only Judea and Samaria but the whole of Jerusalem was cleansed of Jews and under Palestinian sovereignty.

President Obama does not have much cause for optimism. There are 22 Arab nations surrounding Israel with a combined population of more than 300 million, compared with Israel's five million Jews - a ratio of 58 to one. The Arabs have 5,300,000 square miles of land, compared with the Jews' 8,000 square miles - a ratio of more than 660 to one. But they are not concerned with the land they have. They want the bit Israel has.

In considering the issue, there are a number of other things to think about. First, the US has placed extreme pressure on Israel to cease building of any kind on land it hopes will be given to the Palestinians for a Palestinian state. (Imagine being told by another nation when you are able and not able to build on your land). Such building is said to be a stumbling block to peace. The real stumbling block to peace, however, is not Israeli building but the fact that the Palestinians refuse to accept the right of Israel to exist.

Second, Benjamin Netanyahu is pressured to negotiate with the Palestinians. How do you negotiate with someone who refuses to accept your right to exist and is still sworn to destroy you?

The third and most important fact is one that politicians of all kinds appear either to deny or to ignore. In the Bible, God calls the land of Israel "my land," a phrase He does not use to describe any other portion of land on the planet. The Bible makes it clear that God has given the land for an everlasting possession to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants - in other words, the Jews.

Try Gen 17:7, 8, 19 -21; Gen 28:13 - 15 and Gen 35:9 - 15. Or 1 Chron 16:15 - 22. Or Psa 105:8 - 12.

Well done the NHS

Britain's National Health Service has had some criticism recently, and often deservedly so. But the NHS does provide free treatment where it's needed, and sometimes it does an excellent job. Where praise is deserved, praise, as well as criticism, is in order.

Scott and Michelle Stepney, who live in Cheam in Surrey, had a four-year-old boy when Michelle found she was pregnant with twins. At 19 weeks of pregnancy, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

Current medical practice was immediate surgery, which would end the lives of the babies but virtually guarantee the mother's long-term survival. Michelle was given a stark choice: choose between her life and the lives of the babies.

Scott and Michelle spent the next few days in a turmoil of indecision. Scott wanted his wife alive. Michelle was hysterical with grief.

"I had my son Jack, who I adored," she said, "but these babies were already part of me. I had seen their faces on the scan. I was their mother. I was meant to protect them. How could I agree to their deaths just to save me? It felt like agreeing to murder."

Michelle pleaded with her cancer nurse at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey for further help.

The Royal Marsden has an MRI scanner that is not only one of the most powerful in the country, but can provide clear close-up images.

According to the Daily Mail, 30 specialists, including obstetricians, gynaecologists, pathologists, surgeons, psychologists and a pioneering radiologist, armed with an extremely clear scanned image which showed where the tumour was and what type it was, met together to consider Michelle's case.

They devised a radical programme of low-grade chemotherapy which it was hoped would contain the development of the tumour without harming the babies until the babies were big enough to be delivered by Caesarean section. Michelle agreed to the programme.

At 33 weeks, Michelle went into premature labour and gave birth to twin girls, weighing 3lb 11oz and 3lb 5oz. She then had a hysterectomy.

Now two years later, the two girls are fine and Michelle doesn't have cancer. She is subject to six-monthly check-ups, but the cancer is gone.

Three lives saved, you might say, and a very grateful family.

Like I said, credit where credit's due.

Living with Big Brother

The United Kingdom is becoming more of a Big Brother state by the day. The Government has brought 3,500 new offences into law in the past 12 years.

Town hall officials, I'm told, now have a legal right to enter your home to see what you're up to. A request is made every minute to snoop on someone's phone records or e-mail accounts; laws designed to combat terrorism are being used by local councils to spy on people suspected of things like fly tipping; and CCTV cameras are everywhere.

Once upon a time, the local council removed your rubbish as a service to the public. Now householders appear to be here to serve the local council. We have four differently coloured wheelie bins at our home, and town hall despots have been issuing fines to old people for putting the wrong piece of rubbish in the wrong bin.

These are serious matters: something needs to be done. But it's important we don't become paranoid about it. So I was still able to enjoy the joke at Vital Signs' blog.

An old farmer named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in West Texas when suddenly a brand new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me one of them?"

Bud looks at the man quizzically, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and smiles. "Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone and surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an e-mail on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC-connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturised HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"Well, that's exactly how many animals I've got," answered Bud. "So I guess you can take one of 'em if you want."

He watches the young man select the animal closest to him and looks on with some genuine consternation as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back that animal?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a bureaucrat working for a government agency," says Bud.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered Bud. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; but you don't really know a thing about how working people make a living. You certainly don't know nothin' about cows, that's for dang sure."

"How can you say that?" said the exasperated politician.

"Well, you see, feller," answered Bud, "this here is a herd of sheep.

"Now, will you give me back my dog?"

A matter of definition

What is a Christian? A Christian is someone who goes to church. No, that can't be right. A Christian might well go to church, but going to church doesn't make someone a Christian.

Well a Christian is someone who lives a good life and tries to help others. No, that can't be right either. A Muslim could do that. Or a Buddhist. Or an atheist.

Then a Christian is someone who believes in God and believes the doctrine of the church. Well, not necessarily. Some people have been brought up in the doctrine of the church and they've not been Christians. They've been scoundrels.

Then what is a Christian? Here is a definition I like. A Christian is someone who knows Jesus, who loves Jesus and who serves Jesus.

Christianity isn't just a religion, it's a relationship. Before the Fall, Adam had fellowship with God in the garden. Then Adam sinned, and sin broke the connection. Jesus lived a perfect life and died to pay the price of sin, to make a way through Christ for man to come back into a personal relationship with God.

A Christian is someone who has realised that Jesus is alive. (Remember, the early Christians had trouble convincing people that Jesus was alive.) A Christian has had a meeting with Jesus in which he has given his life to Christ and Christ has changed his life, and continues to change it.

A Christian is someone who has realised he was a sinner without a Saviour, a sheep without a shepherd. A sheep who has chosen to come through the Door back into the sheepfold. A sinner who has come home.

The good news is that whosoever will may come.

Hoping for heaven?

I hear that some people around here are saying that it is impossible to know that you are going to heaven.

That's not true.

You can know that you are going to heaven without a shadow of a doubt. Not because of what you are or what you've done. Those things won't get you to heaven. But because of what Jesus did for you by dying in your place on an old rugged cross two thousand years ago; because you have believed it and received it and because you are trusting in His unshakeable promises. Look at the Scriptures, like John 3:36; 5:24; 10:27, 28; 14:1-3; Rom 10:9; 2 Tim 1:12; 1 John 2:3 - 5, and be encouraged.

I have a growing conviction that there two things that we ought to be doing in these days. The first is fulfilling the Great Commission: going into all the world and preaching the good news of the gospel.

The second is living in the light of eternity. It seems to me that there are a lot of Christians who know that their sins are forgiven, know that they are going to heaven, know that their future is secure, but who are living entirely for this life, with little or no thought of where they are going to be or what they are going to be doing in eternity. This life is short; eternity is a long time. This life is preparation for what's to come.

My friend Denny Hartford is an American, a Christian and a pro-life activist. He writes a regular blog. He gets more done in a day than I do in quite a bit longer than that (but then he's a few years younger than I am). Among other things, he helps out as a teaching pastor at a church in the city where he lives.

On Sundays, the church normally meets just once, as I understand. But recently he invited the congregation to join him on Sunday evenings in a series of studies based on a remarkable book called Heaven by an excellent Christian author named Randy Alcorn. What a wonderful idea for a church!

If there isn't anything like that at your church, why not start a similar study at home with your own family? I don't know if they will have the book at your local Christian bookstore, but I notice they have it at Amazon.

Some Christians believe that when they die, they are going to heaven for ever. Other Christians point out that there's going to be a new earth, and suggest, on the basis of Rev 21:1 - 3, that God's ultimate purpose is not to get people to heaven, but to get them to the point where He can come down to earth and dwell in the midst of His people. And where, they might ask, are you going to be when Jesus comes to earth a second time, as He promised (1 Thess 4:17; Jude 14)?

But if we talk about those things, it's going to have to be another time. . .

How you can prove the existence of God

When Frederick the Great asked for proof of the existence of God, someone said to him "Sir, the Jews." So the story goes.

The Old Testament tells how God made the Jews His own chosen nation. One thing He required of them was obedience. If they were not obedient, He said, He would scatter them through the nations of the earth. They were not obedient, and God kept His promise.

No other people have ever lost their nationhood and their land and retained their national identity. Within two generations, all the people who have lost their land have been assimilated into the nations around them. But after two thousand years of exile, the Jews are still Jews.

The same God who promised that He would scatter the Jews also promised in the Old Testament - not once, but multiple times - that He would bring them from the east, the west, the north and the south back to their own land.

The Jews are the only people in world history who, having lost their land and their statehood, have gone back to their own land and become a nation again, rebuilding the old cities, calling them by their old names, even speaking their own language. Israel became a nation again in 1948.

"Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once?" Isaiah asks in Isa 66:8. If it's Israel it can.

And how about this, in 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.

The surrounding Arab nations have made war against Israel in 1948, in 1956, in 1967, in 1973. Each time Israel has been completely, hopelessly, utterly outnumbered. Each time Israel has fought back and won.

You can't explain the Jews without God.

Now God Himself challenges you to prove Him. See Isa 44:6 - 8:

"Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel,

And his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:

'I am the First and I am the Last:

Besides me there is no God.

And who can proclaim as I do?

Then let him declare it and set it in order for me,

Since I appointed the ancient people.

And the things that are coming and shall come,

Let them show these to them.

Do not fear, nor be afraid;

Have I not told you from that time, and declared it?

You are my witnesses,

Is there a God besides me?

Indeed there is no other Rock;

I know not one.'"

Notice "Who can proclaim as I do? Then let him declare it and set it in order. . ." In other words, who can tell not only what has happened, but what is going to happen in the future, and be right every time? Only the One who can see the end from the beginning.

When He writes down centuries ahead of time what's going to happen and it happens just like He says, that's proof that God exists.

Another step towards assisted dying?

The battle to see assisted suicide legalised in the UK - a next step in the fight for the legalisation of euthanasia - rolls relentlessly on.

More than 100 Britons have travelled to Switzerland to end their lives at the Dignitas suicide facility. While suicide, or attempted suicide, is no longer an offence in the UK, assisting someone to commit suicide is. Any one of the people who accompanied their relative or friend to the Swiss suicide clinic could have been prosecuted in the UK for assisting suicide. No one was, because the Director of Public Prosecutions chose not to prosecute.

That was not enough for Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. She wanted to know for certain that if she went to Switzerland to commit suicide her husband would not be prosecuted if he went with her. Supported by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, now known as Dignity in Dying, she went to court seeking such an assurance.

Unsurprisingly, the High Court and the Appeal Court both refused to give her one. Rather surprisingly, the law lords, the highest court in the land, this week overturned the decisions of the lower courts and ordered the Director of Public Prosecutions to state specifically under what circumstances the state will act if someone helps a friend or relative take their own life abroad.

Ms Purdy's lawyers hailed it as a significant step towards legalisation of assisted suicide in certain circumstances.

Critics said the ruling "drove a coach and horses" through the Suicide Act 1961, as a decision that people could not be prosecuted under certain circumstances would effectively change primary legislation without reference to Parliament.

Christian Concern for Our Nation pointed out that the law lords had ruled that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to respect for private life, also covers a person's choice to end their life. They had ruled that a woman's right to decide when to end her life was protected in law.

Said CCFON: "The European Convention on Human Rights was originally drafted to enshrine the rights to live and be protected from abuse and harm by others. It has now been interpreted to protect the right to die - the very antithesis of the founders' intentions. . . Suicide was decriminalised in 1961, but that was very different from recognising a right to commit suicide as the House of Lords has done.

"It is the state's duty to protect God's creation and not to facilitate its destruction."

John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said on his blog that the judgment was dangerous because "It sacrifices the value of human life in the name of choice; it fails to balance sympathy for the relatives of a suicidal person with the need to affirm the worth of people with disability; and it discriminates against certain categories of vulnerable people."

He adds: "Assisting suicide is dangerous, unethical and unnecessary. It's dangerous because it sends out a signal to disabled people that they have less value than others. It's unethical because it is always wrong intentionally to kill an innocent human being. And it's unnecessary because medical treatment, good palliative care and/or personal support can overcome suicidal tendencies."

Labour MP David Winnick now says he hopes to introduce a bill to legalise assisted dying in the House of Commons.

Meanwhile, assisting suicide remains illegal in the UK - for now.

Christians needed: urgently

It's a sad thing to have to say, but the authorities in this nation appear to be determined that this nation's children will grow up to be sexually promiscuous.

The authorities don't care that children have sexual intercourse among themselves - even when it's illegal on grounds of age - so long as they use contraception. Free contraceptives, morning-after pills and abortions are readily available. Sex education in schools, which has little or no moral content, ensures that children know where to get free contraception and how to use it.

The Christian Institute found the Primary School Sex and Relationships Education Pack, recommended by East Sussex Council, which includes explicit descriptions of anal sex, oral sex, homosexuality and bisexuality, for use with children from seven years old and upwards.

It discovered a video advising pupils to "try experimenting with other boys and girls and see who you feel most comfortable with," and teacher-led discussions with pupils on sadomasochism, bondage and sex toys.

An NHS leaflet called Pleasure advises school pupils that they have a "right" to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse ("What about twice a week?") can be good for their cardiovascular health. It uses the slogan "An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away."

Steve Slack, of NHS Sheffield, one of the leaflet's authors, said it could encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are sure they will enjoy the experience. What kind of twisted logic says that telling youngsters of the pleasure of sex will encourage them not to have it?

The majority of parents apparently have no idea what their children are being taught in school, and many of them are not concerned. Currently parents have a right to withdraw their children from sex education lessons, but the Government is considering making the lessons compulsory for all pupils from the age of five.

This, according to one pro-family organisation, would give parents less control over the content of lessons because schools, being compelled by law to provide sex education, would have less incentive to consult parents.

The Family Education Trust has produced a new 52-page booklet called Too Much, Too Soon: The Government's plans for your child's sex education. It tells parents what is happening in sex education, explains the law, and considers the Government's proposals for change. It argues that young people do not need to be presented with a menu of sexual options from which they can make "informed choices." It says the whole matter needs to be approached with honesty, modesty and within a clear moral framework that shows a proper respect for parents and for marriage.

I consider that it is a brilliant piece of work and that every parent ought to have a copy. Printed copies can be ordered from Family Education Trust, Jubilee House, 19-21 High Street, Whitton, Twickenham (telephone 020 8894 2525). Better yet: you can read the whole booklet and download it free of charge from the trust's website (www.famyouth.org.uk).

Some worthwhile things are happening. There is a great organisation named Challenge Team UK (www.challengeteamuk.org) which sends teams of well trained young people into schools with presentations promoting saving sex until marriage, and is looking for more volunteers for training. The advantage of these teams, it seems to me, is that this is not adults preaching at children but young people talking to young people. Some 75,000 teenagers have already been reached. An organisation called Lovewise (www.lovewise.org.uk) goes into schools promoting chastity outside of marriage, and is also looking for more presenters.

Children will follow an example, whether it's a good one or a bad one. Youngsters in this nation are being bombarded with sex from every conceivable angle. The great tragedy is that the majority of them are not being reached with a godly alternative.

Christians, where are you?

'One of the least of these'

Casper ten Boom repaired watches. He had a watch shop on the Barteljorisstraat in Haarlem.

He was an old man, with a long white beard. Every morning and evening he would read from the Bible and lead family prayers in his home above the shop.

When the Germans overran Holland and Dutch Jews began to be sent off to the extermination camps, the house became a hiding place for Jews. The Dutch Resistance built a wall in a bedroom at the house, behind which the Jews could hide if the house were searched.

One day Germans stormed the house and the old man and some of his children were arrested. The chief interrogator at Gestapo headquarters seemed to wonder about the necessity for the old man's arrest. "You, old man!" he said. "I'd like to send you home. I'll take your word that you won't cause any more trouble."

"If I go home today," the old man replied, "tomorrow I will open my door again to any man in need who knocks."

His imprisonment continued. Ten days later he was dead.

How much good was achieved by the old man's reply? What could one old man do against the might of the Nazi machine?

Not much. But what Casper ten Boom did will be remembered in heaven. "Assuredly, I say to you," Jesus said, "inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."

Contrary to what many believe, when Jesus spoke about "the least of these my brethren," He wasn't talking about Christians. He was talking about the Jews.

So which married lifestyle would you prefer?

I was reading an article by John Piper in which he described life in his family home as a boy.

I grew up, he wrote, in a home where my father was away for about two-thirds of each year. He was an evangelist. He held about twenty-five crusades each year ranging in length from one to three weeks. He would leave on Saturday, be gone for one to three weeks, and come home on Monday afternoon. I went to the Greenville airport hundreds of times. And some of the sweetest memories of my childhood are the smile on my father's face as he came out of the plane and down the steps and almost ran across the runway to hug me and kiss me (no skyways in those days).

This meant that my sister and I were reared and trained mostly by my mother. She taught me almost everything practical that I know. She taught me how to cut the grass without skippers and keep a checkbook and ride a bike and drive a car and make notes for a speech and set the table with the fork in the right place and make pancakes (notice when the bubbles form on the edges). She paid the bills, handled repairs, cleaned house, cooked meals, helped me with my homework, took us to church, led us in devotions. She was superintendent of the Intermediate Department at church, head of the community garden club, and tireless doer of good for others.

She was incredibly strong in her loneliness. The early sixties were the days in Greenville, SC, when civil rights were in the air. The church took a vote one Wednesday night on a resolution not to allow black people to worship in the church. When the vote was taken, she stood, as I recall, entirely alone in opposition. And when my sister was married in the church in 1963 and one of the ushers tried to seat some black friends of our family all alone in the balcony, my mother indignantly marched out of the sanctuary and sat them herself on the main floor with everyone else.

I have never known anyone quite like Ruth Piper. She seemed to be omni-competent and overflowing with love and energy.

But here is my point. When my father came home, my mother had the extraordinary ability and biblical wisdom and humility to honor him as head of the home. She was, in the best sense of the word, submissive to him. It was an amazing thing to watch week after week as my father came and went. He went, and my mother ruled the whole house with a firm and competent and loving hand. And he came, and my mother deferred to his leadership.

Now that he was home, he is the one who prayed at the meals. Now it was he that led in devotions. Now it was he that drove us to worship, and watched over us in the pew, and answered our questions. My fear of disobedience shifted from my mother's wrath to my father's, for there, too, he took the lead.

But I never heard my father attack my mother or put her down in any way. They sang together and laughed together and put their heads together to bring each other up-to-date on the state of the family. It was a gift of God that I could never begin to pay for or earn.

And here is what I learned - a biblical truth before I knew it was in the Bible. There is no correlation between submission and incompetence. There is such a thing as masculine leadership that does not demean a wife. There is such a thing as submission that is not weak or mindless or manipulative.

It never entered my mind until I began to hear feminist rhetoric in the late sixties that this beautiful design in my home was somehow owing to anyone's inferiority. It wasn't. It was owing to this: My mother and my father put their hope in God and believed that obedience to his word would create the best of all possible families - and it did.

Two minutes after reading John Piper's article, I picked up a newspaper and noticed that "a hardline feminist" had been appointed the UK Government's new chief spokeswoman on families. Dr Katherine Rake, the paper said, had long declared her intention not to support parents as they are, but to revolutionise their lives; wanting to change not just what child care the state provides, but who changes the nappies at home.

"It is only when men are ready to share caring and work responsibilities with women that we will be able to fulfil our true potential to form equal partnerships in which we have respect, autonomy and dignity," she was reported to have said. But a critic claimed that Katherine Rake's agenda was more about reversing sex roles than helping parents.

Dr Rake, said the paper, does not publicise her personal life, but is married. Her husband said he hoped he was a hands-on father, but refused to comment further on his wife's remarks. "I'll have to check with her," he said, "before saying anything."

Of the two married lifestyles - the married lifestyle described by John Piper and the one presumably recommended by Katherine Rake - which would you prefer?

Just for fun (1)

Did you hear about the plastic surgeon who sat in front of the fire and melted?

(If you don't appreciate this man's sense of humour, apologies.)

So do you believe it?

I expect you will have heard the suggestion. The suggestion, that is, that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God, and that the apostle Paul added all that later, turning a Jewish teacher into the head of a new religion.

So did Jesus claim to be the Son of God? Yes He did.

He forgave sins (Mark 2:5 - 12; Luke 5:20 - 25). He accepted worship (Matt 8:2; 14:33).

Remember when Jesus was with His disciples in Caesarea Philippi and He asked His disciples who people said He was? Some said John the Baptist, they said; some Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But who, said Jesus, do you say that I am? "And Simon Peter answered and said, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven'" (Matt 16:16, 17).

Remember when Jesus was talking with the unbelieving Jews about Abraham? Jesus told them "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM," using the name God used of Himself (Ex 3:14, 15). Some would dispute that Jesus was using God's name there, but the Jews understood what He meant all right. They took up stones to stone Him for what they saw as blasphemy. "But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by" (John 8:58, 59).

Remember when Jesus was on trial before the Jewish authorities, how the high priest asked Him specifically "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed"? He answered "I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:61, 62).

Jesus is eternal (John 1:1). He was there at creation (John 1:3; Gen 1:1; Col 1:16). He is one with the Father (John 17:11). He is the giver of eternal life (John 10:28).

Not only His words, but His miracles spoke of who He was. The Old Testament law, for instance, gave detailed instructions in Leviticus 13 and 14 of what was to happen if a Jew was healed of leprosy. But from the completion of the law of Moses up to the coming of Christ there is no record of a Jew being healed of leprosy. The rabbis taught that only the Messiah would be able to heal a Jewish leper. So Jesus healed one and sent him to the priest (Luke 5:12 - 16).

The very basis of the Christian gospel is that man, being a sinner, was unable to save himself, so God came in the form of His Son, lived a perfect life and gave His life so that man's sin might be forgiven.

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory" (1 Tim 3:16).

"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).

Tolerance isn't what it's cracked up to be

Tolerance once meant putting up with something you didn't particularly like. It meant bearing with other people's views without necessarily agreeing with them. The word has been redefined.

New Tolerance says that all values, all beliefs, all men's opinions about what is truth and all lifestyles are equally valid. To criticise any of them is to be "intolerant." So people who believe in New Tolerance think Christianity intolerant. But in calling Christianity intolerant, they are not being tolerant. Which means that all beliefs are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Tolerance, said James Kennedy, is the last virtue of a depraved society. When you have an immoral society, he said, that has blatantly, proudly violated all the commandments of God, there is one last virtue they insist on: tolerance for their immorality. (So if you say what they have done is wrong, they are not the villain: you are.)

There is a new civil right: a right for a person's feelings not to be hurt. If you criticise a person's conduct, you are hurting his feelings. You are intolerant. You are demonstrating hatefulness to him, and that is a "hate crime."

David Reagan says New Tolerance is not only turning society against evangelical Christians, but fuelling outright hatred and persecution of evangelicals.

The reason, of course, is simple, he says. Evangelicals stand on the word of God as their authority for all things, and because they do, they feel compelled to speak with moral indignation against the sins of society.

And society responds by shouting "Bigots!" Evangelicals are written off and publicly denounced as "Bible-thumpers," "red-neck zealots" and "self-righteous prudes."

Second, he says, New Tolerance has been adopted by many mainline Christian denominations, which has resulted in diluting their stand against the sins of society.

John 3:16 has been replaced as the central verse in these churches with Matthew 7:1, which says "Judge not, that you be not judged."

The result is. . . pastors are unwilling to denounce gambling, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, pornography, or any other societal evil.

Someone needs to point out to these preachers that Matthew 7:1 applies to motives - not to words and actions. God alone knows motives, but we can certainly judge words and actions against the standards of God's word. And, in fact, we are required to do so. The Bible tells Christians to test all things, ourselves included (2 Corinthians 13:5 and 1 John 4:1). And Jesus Himself commanded us to judge with righteous judgment (John 7:24).

Third, New Tolerance has resulted among mainline, liberal denominations in a growing acceptance of other religions as legitimate avenues to God and salvation.

The attitude is normally expressed in the following manner: "There are many roads to God because He has revealed Himself in many different ways." Because of this apostasy, many Christian leaders are now taking the position that it is wrong to send out missionaries because they violate the cultural sensitivities of foreign peoples and because they communicate the idea that there is something superior about the Christian message.

All of which makes a liar of Jesus, who said "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through me" (John 14:6). It also makes a liar of the Apostle Peter, who proclaimed in Acts 4:12 that "there is salvation in no one else [but Jesus], for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved."

Time, says Kennedy, to stand up for Jesus Christ and show some backbone while we still have a place to stand.

Household salvation (3)

I wrote (here and here) about how I discovered that "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31), with its "you and your household" bit, was not some sort of spare promise, but a promise that contains a principle that you can see right through the Scriptures.

Ah, you say, but can you show me that it works? Is this something that you have just dreamed up, or can you prove that it works from personal experience?

Let me tell you what God did for me.

When I was converted to Christ, I was still a bachelor, but I had a father, a mother, a sister and a brother. After I accepted Christ, I was the only member of my family who had a personal relationship with Jesus. I spoke to my family about salvation in Christ, but it seemed like they just didn't want to know. At that time, I honestly believed that my family were no more likely and no less likely to come to Christ than anyone else.

Twenty years later, I was still the only member of my family with a personal relationship with Jesus. It was about that time that I realised that "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" was a promise I could depend on. I thought about it until I was sure I had understood it, then I claimed my family by faith. I continued to pray for them, but from that time I never once prayed for their salvation. I believed I had the promise.

After I prayed, I wondered how God would do it. Needless to say, He didn't do it the way I expected. Two years later, my sister was gloriously converted to Christ and filled with the Hoiy Spirit in South Africa, where she lived.

As time went on, my father was turned 80 and my mother was pushing 80, but I honestly believed it was impossible for them to die unconverted. When my father was 82, someone led him to Christ. I wasn't there. It wasn't my doing. It was just God being faithful to His promise.

On New Year's Day, 1993, my sister led my mother to Christ. My mother died in October the same year. She was living in a nursing home in Leamington Spa. My sister, who was now living in the UK, and I each got a phone call one morning telling us that if we wished to see my mother we should come quickly. It was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. She was already gone, but we rejoiced that we believed we knew where she was.

That left my brother. He had his own business. He worked something like 16 hours a day and had time for nothing else. What happened to him was that he developed diabetes; then on top of that he developed kidney stones, to the extent that he was completely unable to work.

As he sat at home, he picked up a book of Bible readings that apparently I had given my parents as a Christmas present years before. It had turned up at his home because he had cleared up my parents' home when first they had moved to a care home. As he looked at it, he saw a verse describing Jesus as God's only begotten Son. Somehow he saw it, and believed.

"Well, I'm a Christian now, so I ought to go to church," he said. He went to a tourist information office near his home and asked for a list of churches in the area. He looked down the list, saw a Pentecostal church, remembered that my wedding had been in a Pentecostal church and he had been impressed by the pastor and the service, went to the church on the list and has been in fellowship there ever since.

(After he accepted Christ, he found his diabetes and his kidney stones were gone. Those were the things God used to bring him to Christ.)

One Friday morning the telephone rang at my home. It was my brother. "I just want to tell you I have found Christ," he said. That was my family complete. I can't tell you what a blessing that was.

Praying prayers that are powerful and effective

I was reading an excellent "how to" sermon on prayer. Said the author, Ray Pritchard:

We can talk about the content of prayer, such as adoration, thanksgiving, meditation, confession and petition.

We can talk about the posture of prayer, such as sitting, standing, hands uplifted, eyes open, eyes closed, walking, kneeling, and stretched out before the Lord.

We can talk about the associations of prayer, which means we can pray alone or in a small group or in a worship service or in a concert of prayer or over the internet or over the phone or by e-mail or in a handwritten letter.

We can talk about the style of prayer. It may be formal, informal, liturgical, written, recited, conversational, antiphonal, sentence prayers, "Thank you" prayers, "Lord, have mercy" prayers, short prayers, long prayers, prayers sung, prayers spoken, prayers written, prayers chanted, prayers offered spontaneously or prayers memorised.

We can talk about the places of prayer, such as in the morning, during your devotions, around the dinner table, in the car, on the phone, during a worship service, in the street, sitting in the pew, or at a ball game.

We can talk about the objects of prayer, such as confession and restoration, for physical or spiritual or emotional healing, for a financial need, for a broken relationship to be healed, for salvation, for spiritual growth, for the spread of the gospel, for a friend in need, for the leaders of our church, for the leaders of our nation, for our friends, and, yes, for our enemies.

Prayer may be as varied as the needs of the heart. The true measure of prayer is not its form or content or style or location or length or beauty of expression. The real question is, Does it come from the heart? Is it sincere? Are we truly seeking the Lord? If so, then we may claim the promise of James 5:16 that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective. . .

If we pray from the heart in Jesus' name, then the Father is pleased and he inclines his heart to hear us when we call on him.

Ray Pritchard has some good suggestions. He says. for instance, that some of us who know a little theology would do well to get an advanced degree in "kneeology." And a good question. What would happen in our churches if every day every member was prayed for by someone?

You can read the whole thing by clicking here.

Household salvation (2)

There was a time when I imagined that "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31), with its "you and your household" bit, was some sort of a spare promise in the Bible. But there came a day when I realised that it contains a principle you can see right the way through the Scriptures.

Jesus, after all, came to mend that which was broken. Not just broken individuals, but broken marriages, broken homes, broken relationships. His aim is not to see just isolated individuals who have a relationship with God, but families, loving and worshipping Him together.

When I seek to explain household salvation to people, they usually say something like "But it's not automatic, is it?" or "But people have to make their own decision, don't they?" Of course they do. A decision to follow Jesus is a personal choice.

But salvation is a gift. God can give it to whomsoever He will. The book of Ephesians says "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." No man can come to Christ except the Father draw him. If that is the case, then even the willingness to accept Christ comes from Him.

Plainly not all families are united in Christ. So if "you and your household" is a promise, can it be that there are conditions attached to the promise?

I believe that there are. First, it is necessary to believe the promise. Second, it is necessary to claim the promise. Third, it is necessary for the believer to remain faithful. Clearly, it is not reasonable, having accepted Christ, to live all sorts of a life and expect one's household to come to faith.

I have heard it suggested from the pulpit that Paul and Silas said "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" to the Philippian jailor as a result of a word of knowledge specifically for the Philippian jailor, and that believers shouldn't claim that promise lest they be disappointed.

But I want to suggest to you, in view of the Scriptures I pointed out here, that we should expect whole families to be saved, and that in "you and your household" there is a principle that God is prepared to stand by.

The Chinese Christian Watchman Nee believed in household salvation. He tells in one of his books how, when he visited England, he called to see George Cutting, a well known evangelical at that time, who also believed in household salvation.[1] George Cutting, then an old man, had more than 80 in his family - sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Every one was saved.

Is that coincidence, or what?

More soon.

[1] Watchman Nee. The Good Confession, vol 2. New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1973, p113.

Time to take a stand?

A time of anti-Christian persecution is at hand, says the Church of England Newspaper. "The Government had better start building more prison space - for Christians and moral conservatives generally," it said in a recent editorial.

People were used to hearing of Christians sacked for daring to air any view which disapproved of homosexual sex. But the new Equality Bill and a Government bid to delete a free speech protection from a "homophobic hatred" law would lead to more intolerance of Christian views, it said.

The Equality Bill placed a duty on public bodies, like schools and police, to promote homosexual rights and gave Parliament the opportunity to strip away religious liberty protections from various discrimination laws, it said.

Christians, and Muslims and others who disagreed with the homosexual line, the paper said, were being told "to shut up and get into their closet - the gays are not tolerant of dissent and have got the state to crack down."

Which brings me to the case of Anand Rao. Although it may have nothing to do with homosexuality, it certainly seems to have to do with Christian persecution.

Mr Rao is 71 years old and a committed Christian. He has been a nurse for 40 years, in recent years in hospitals run by the University of Leicester NHS Trust. He decided to go on a training course organised by the Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering, and found his own funds to pay for the course.

During the course, in a role play situation to do with palliative care, Mr Rao was placed with a couple playing the part of man and wife. He was told the wife had a serious heart condition, a doctor had told her she would not live long and this had caused her stress. How would he advise them? He suggested to the couple - in a role play situation on a training course, notice - that going to church might ease her stress.

The course directors were dissatisfied with this and the course organiser reported him to his employer. He was suspended and later sacked - apparently for breaching the Nursing and Midwifery Council's code of conduct respecting a person's dignity.

Mr Rao, who is considering taking legal action against his former employer for religious discrimination, said he is staggered that someone who has given four decades to caring for people can be treated in the way he has.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, said "How is it possible that a nurse who has served the public for 40 years should find himself dismissed because in a training session he advised someone to go to church? To seek to censor and suppress this kind of language and belief is the first fruits of a closed society."

Time to kick up a fuss?

Household salvation (1)

A well known Bible verse says "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31). At least, that's how it's usually quoted. But that's not what it says. Or to be more accurate, that's not all that it says. It says in fact "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household."

I suppose I used to think it was a sort of a spare promise in the Bible. But the day came when I realised that that promise, with its "you and your household," contains a divine principle that you can see throughout the word of God.

Consider. The Bible tells how mankind became so desperately wicked that God decided to put an end to it. But Noah found grace in His sight. God told him to build an ark. When it was time to enter the ark, God said to Noah (Gen 7:1): "Come into the ark, you and all your household." The Bible says that Noah was a righteous man. It doesn't say anything about his family being righteous - but because of Noah, eight people were saved.

Abraham was God's friend. God made a covenant to bless him. The sign of the covenant was circumcision. Circumcision was not just for Abraham, but for his sons - not just for Isaac, but for Ishmael - and not just for his sons, but for his servants (Genesis 17). In short, for Abraham and all his household.

When it was time for the last of the 10 plagues in Egypt, the Israelites were instructed to slay a lamb and put its blood on the lintel and doorposts of their homes. That night, the firstborn in every household in Egypt would die, but the firstborn in each house covered with the blood would be saved. They were instructed to slay a lamb not for each individual, but for each household (Ex 12:3. 7, 13).

Jericho was under condemnation. Everything in Jericho was to be destroyed. But Rahab sought the Lord. She was told that she and everyone with her in her house would be saved. It doesn't say anything about her household having sought the Lord. But because of Rahab, Rahab and all her household were preserved. You can see the promise in Josh 2:18, 19 and its fulfilment in Josh 6:17, 22, 23, 25.

Ah, you say, but all that was in the Old Testament. Come with me to the New Testament. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, and a money-grabber. When Jesus went to his house, something happened. "I give half of my goods to the poor," said Zacchaeus, "and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold."

"Today," replied Jesus, "salvation has come to this house" (Luke 19:9). What a strange thing to say. He didn't say that salvation had come to the man, but to the house.

Cornelius, a Roman centurion, saw a vision of an angel. "Send men to Joppa," said the angel, "and call for Simon whose surname is Peter, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved" (Acts 11:13, 14).

When Paul and his colleagues preached to Lydia in Philippi, Lydia and her household were baptised (Acts 16:14, 15). When the jailor in the jail at Philippi asked "What must I do to be saved?" Paul and Silas told him: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31 - 34). And so it happened.

There are other examples of households being converted, like the household of Crispus (Acts 18:8) and the household of Stephanas (1 Cor 1:16).

When Joshua was an old man, he called all Israel together and reminded them of all that God had done for them. It was time for them to choose whether they would serve the God of Israel or whether they would serve other foreign gods. "But as for me and my house," said Joshua, "we will serve the Lord" (Josh 24:15).

More soon.

Why are atheists so aggressive?

Why are atheists so aggressive these days, what with books by Richard Dawkins, posters on the sides of buses and the formation of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies to support atheist students?

I have some ideas on the matter, but not being totally convinced of the reason, I'd like to leave the question open. Somebody supposed it was because atheists, while content to pooh-pooh the idea of a God, were irked because they were finding it increasingly difficult to counter the claims of intelligent design. Proponents of intelligent design don't speak of a God, but do suggest that the physical and biological systems we see around us are best explained as having an intelligent cause.

Francis Crick and James Watson, the scientists who discovered the structure of DNA, were, I understand, both atheists. They had a desire to show that the mysterious phenomena of life could be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. In discovering the structure of DNA, which I understand is found in every cell in the body, they discovered something incredibly complex. So complex, in fact, that it must have had an intelligence behind it.

DNA contains information. Someone has said that in just a pinpoint of DNA you can find as much information as in four complete 30-volume sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Information, from where I'm sitting, can't come from evolution, but only from an intelligence.

So when they discovered something so amazingly complex, did Crick and Watson cease to be atheists? Evidently not.

I have a theory about atheists. I suggest that an atheist is not an atheist because he can't believe, but because he won't believe. I suppose that atheists are not atheists because of evidence or the lack of it, but because of hardness of heart.

Christianity and science are not necessarily opposed. Some Christians are scientists, and some scientists are Christians.

But beware. Some Christians believe in evolution. How can you be a Christian and believe in evolution? Only by disbelieving the account of creation in Genesis. Here's the problem: if you believe the account of creation in Genesis is untrue, how do you know the rest of the Bible is true?

Here's something to bear in mind as you think about these things. Mark 10 tells how the Pharisees were disputing with Jesus about the question of divorce. In verses 6 - 8, Jesus says: "From the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two, but one flesh." He was quoting from the first two chapters of Genesis.

Jesus believed in the Genesis account.

How about this for a church?

John the apostle says in his first epistle "By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (1 John 3:16). This is usually interpreted to mean that we ought to give our lives for the brethren if we are required to do so.

But it does not say that we ought to give our lives for the brethren if we are required to do so. It says we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. So here's the question: have you laid down your life for the brethren?

Selwyn Hughes writes that in Pusan, Korea, he came across the only church in all his travels where a commitment was made by every member to place the interests of the other members before their own.[1] The atmosphere in that church, he said, was the most wonderful he had ever experienced in over 40 years of ministry.

The minister there told him that whenever someone joined that church, either through conversion or moving into the community from elsewhere, all the other members gathered round the new member and together recited these words:

We covenant to love you with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ - the love that puts your interests as a priority. Nothing you do will stop us loving you. If your actions dishonour Christ, we will tell you so, but in a spirit of love. We will pray for you daily by name. Anything we have is at your disposal. We will honestly tell you how we feel about the level of your spiritual maturity from time to time. If this means pain for each of us, we will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, realising that in "speaking the truth in love we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head." We are committed to you because of what God has designed us to be in His loving creation.

Isn't that beautiful?

[1] Selwyn Hughes. Every Day with Jesus, January/February 2009. Farnham, Surrey: CWR, 2008.

Such amazing grace

When Jesus was arrested, Peter was afraid. So much so, that he denied that he even knew Him.

When Peter realised what he had done, he wept bitterly (Matt 26:75). He had meant to do so much for Jesus. Now he'd made a mess of it all. He wouldn't be able to do much for Jesus now.

When the women went to the tomb on the first day of the week after the Crucifixion, they saw an angel. "He is risen!" the angel said. "He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples - and Peter - that he is going before you into Galilee; there you will see him, as he said to you" (Mark 16:6, 7).

And Peter. So Peter wasn't discounted, cast away, forgotten. (Soon, at Pentecost, after his restoration, Peter would preach and see 3,000 converted. But Peter didn't know that yet.)

When the risen Jesus appeared to a group of the disciples on the shore of Lake Galilee, they ate with Him. When they had eaten, Jesus said to Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?"

"Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

"Feed my lambs.

"Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?"

"Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

"Tend my sheep.

"Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?"

"Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

"Feed my sheep" (John 21:15 - 17).

Why did Jesus ask him three times? Peter understood. He was asking him three times because he had denied Him three times. Peter had failed, and that failure had to be dealt with. But not a word of condemnation. Not a word of reproof.

Our failures have to be dealt with too. Sometimes it hurts. But not a word of condemnation. What grace.

Peace? What peace?

Barack Obama and Tony Blair both want Israel to accept the Saudi peace plan put forward by Saudi Arabia in 2002. This offered to recognise Israel in return for handing over Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and much of Jerusalem and accepting as immigrants millions of foreign Arabs who claim to be descendants of those who fled the Israeli state during the 1948 War of Independence. For Israel to accept this plan would be to commit national suicide.

Israel now has a new coalition government with Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister. The new Foreign Minister is Avigdor Lieberman, of the right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party. Lieberman has been called all sorts because of his right wing views, but seems able at least to speak good sense.

In his maiden speech, he pointed out that there was already an agreement on the table, a binding resolution known as the Road Map, which sets out the steps to peace.

Israel will adhere to every step, he said, so must the Palestinians. We will adhere to it to the letter, exactly as written. Clauses one, two, three, four - dismantling terrorist organisations, establishing an effective government, making a profound constitutional change in the Palestinian Authority. We will proceed exactly according to the clauses. We are also obligated to implement what is required of us in each clause, but so is the other side.

The Palestinians, of course, have not kept to the agreement. The Palestinians don't want to keep to agreements. They want more and more peace plans, in the hope of squeezing more concessions from the Israelis each time.

Many Israelis are weary of fighting for their existence. Many Israelis have come to think that if they give enough away, their enemies might - just might - leave them alone. They are mistaken.

Yet Palestinians are not the greatest of Prime Minister Netanyahu's worries at this time. Top of his list of concerns is Iran.

Israel has warned that it will attack Iranian nuclear sites if Iran, which has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, does not end its nuclear weapons programme. Israel has also let it be known that it is putting the finishing touches to its plans for a rapid strike. This week Iranian President Ahmadinejad let loose with a hate-filled tirade against Israel at a UN conference on racism.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psa 122:6)!

Do you believe in angels?

Do you believe in angels?

The Bible says they are "ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation" (Heb 1:14). Jesus said, speaking of little children, "in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt 18:10).

Because of these verses, some people believe in guardian angels; that is to say, angels who are specifically assigned to care for individuals.

Leonard LeSourd tells of Jack and Jenny Pate, who were decorating an upstairs room in their home.[1] It was a warm day, and the window was open. As they were busy paperhanging, their three-year-old daughter Peggy amused herself by taking leftover scraps of wallpaper, dropping them through the window and watching them float on the breeze to the ground below.

Eventually, she leaned out a little too far. Her father looked up just in time to see her disappearing through the window. Underneath the window was a concrete patio with three steps with sharp edges. If she hit one of those, it could be fatal.

Jack let out a single word of prayer. "Jesus!" He and his wife practically flew down the stairs and through the front door. Peggy was sitting on one of the steps, completely unhurt. "Don't worry," she said. "That big man caught me."

The house was in open country. They would be able to see anyone walking away.

They looked all round the house. There was no one there.

[1] Leonard LeSourd, ed. Love on its Knees. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998, p218.

The Pope, Tony Blair and a TV soap

Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, who converted to Roman Catholicism two years ago, said the Pope needed to rethink his views on homosexuality.

The Vatican needs to modernise, he says. Religions should follow shifts in culture rather than hold firm to their historic beliefs.

A born-again Christian character in the TV soap Coronation Street is to have a lesbian affair, probably with a friend at her Bible study group, the show's producers have decided. The move is designed, they say, to cause the programme to reflect modern British society more accurately.

A Belfast church is in trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority because of a newspaper advert it took out. The ASA said the advert, quoting biblical texts against homosexuality, was indecent. An independent review of the ASA's decision said it was reasonable for the ASA to conclude that codes of conduct and sanctions laid down in biblical works from several millennia ago may not be communicated verbatim and indiscriminately in 21st century advertising.

We are getting ourselves in a right old mix-up, aren't we?

Let me say this just once, and let me make it as clear as I know how: the Bible does not teach that homosexual practice is an alternative lifestyle, but a perversion of God's creation. The Bible teaches that God made one man and one woman to be joined together in marriage. The Bible says - in Lev 18:22 and Lev 20:13 in the Old Testament - that homosexual practice is an abomination, and - in 1 Cor 6:9, 10 in the New Testament - that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.

If anyone disagrees with that, they don't have an argument with me. They have an argument with the word of God.

Will you believe it?

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the best attested facts in history.

It is recorded in detail by the apostles. Ah, you say, but they were Christian believers. They were - but they were also eyewitnesses. And not only believers wrote about Him. He was also written about by people like Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger.

For 2,000 years people have been attempting to prove that the resurrection didn't happen: all of them without much success.

Some said the disciples stole the body. Despite a stone weighing several tons, a Roman seal and a guard of Roman soldiers? Why would they do that? Something happened to change them from a group of frightened, dispirited people into a fearless crowd that went everywhere preaching that Jesus was alive from the dead. If they had stolen the body, they must have known this was untrue. According to tradition, almost all those first apostles gave their lives for their faith. People may give their lives for something they believe to be true, but no one gives his life for something he knows is a lie.

Some have said that Jesus didn't die on the cross, but only fainted, and then came round in the cool of the tomb. Then moved the stone from the inside, dealt with the guards and walked miles with His flesh torn to shreds by scourging, holes in His hands and His feet and a wound in His side? Roman executioners were experts. They knew the penalty for letting a condemned man live. It was their lives for his.

Some said that those who claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus were hallucinating. Paul says that on one occasion 500 people saw Him at one time (1 Cor 15:6). People who hallucinate don't all see the same thing at the same time.

Some have said that the women went to the wrong tomb. If they went to the wrong tomb, why didn't the authorities go to the right tomb? The authorities were desperate to prevent Christianity going any further. All they had to do to kill it stone dead was to produce His body. Why didn't they?

Then there's the testimony of the millions down the centuries who have seen their lives changed by a risen Saviour.

Finally, there's my little bit of testimony. One night, kneeling at the side of my bed, I had an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself that changed my life for ever.

Incidentally, His was a physical resurrection. The tomb was empty. When His disciples saw Him after His resurrection, they held Him by the feet and worshipped Him (Matt 28:9). He ate food with them (Luke 24:41 - 43). When He went to heaven, He took His body with Him.

And when He comes back, it's going to be a personal, physical return. A terrible day for those who are unprepared. But a wonderful day, says Paul, for those who believe in their heart that God has raised Him from the dead and have confessed Him as Lord (Rom 10:9)!

Shedding innocent blood

A terrible thing about abortion, apart from the fact that it takes human life, is that according to the Bible the shedding of innocent blood pollutes the land and brings judgment on a nation.

The Hatikvah Film Trust has produced an excellent documentary on DVD about abortion from a biblical perspective, called The Land Cries Out. I can thoroughly recommend it.

Copies of the DVD can be obtained free of charge (at the discretion of Hatikvah Film Trust) from Hatikvah Film Trust, PO Box 157, Llandudno, Wales LL30 9DE. The e-mail address is orders@hatikvah.co.uk.

Donations to help cover costs are welcome. Suggested amounts are £5 for a single copy and £3 each for multiple copies.

O what love is this?

Jesus died by crucifixion. But what was the actual cause of death? Have you ever wondered about that?

John, who was an eyewitness of the crucifixion, recorded something in his Gospel which is quite significant. After Jesus died, he says, a soldier "pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out" (John 19:34). The original Greek suggests that blood and water gushed forth.

It is a fact that blood does not flow from a body already dead. But even if there were an explanation for that, why blood and water?

There have been a number of theories about the cause of death. It appears that Jesus remained conscious almost to the moment of his death, which provides a clue. Around the heart is a sac called the pericardium, containing an aqueous liquid.

Some doctors suggest that Jesus died of heart failure. The soldier's spear pierced the pericardium and the heart, accounting for the blood and water which came forth. Others suggest that fluid would also have formed around the lungs, and the spear would have released this fluid also.

There is yet another theory which is worthy of consideration. According to this theory, after all the emotional, spiritual and physical suffering Jesus endured, His heart burst. The pericardium is capable of great distension. If the heart ruptured, blood would flow into the pericardium, blood pressure would drop and death would quickly follow.

Because of fibrinolysins in the blood as a result of the pain He had suffered, within half an hour the blood would separate into red cells and clear plasma. When the point of the spear perforated the pericardium, gravity would cause blood and water to rush from the wound.

If this last theory is correct, then the Lord Jesus during His passion suffered every known kind of flesh wound. Bruising, as His tormentors buffeted Him (Isa 53:5, 10; Matt 26:67); laceration, as they scourged Him (Psalm 129:1 - 3; Matt 27:26); penetration, as they gave Him a crown of thorns and hit Him over the head (Matt 27:29, 30); perforation, as they nailed Him to the cross (Psa 22:16; Matt 27:35); bursting, as His heart finally gave way (Psa 69:20); and incision, as the soldier pierced His side (John 19:33, 34).

That at least sounds right. He was spared no suffering as He paid the price for your sin and mine.

If this theory is correct, Jesus died literally of a broken heart.

There is a chorus we used to sing years ago:

He died of a broken heart for me;

He died of a broken heart.

Oh wondrous love, it was for me,

He died of a broken heart.

God so loved us that He was willing to give His only Son to bring us back to Himself. The Son so loved that He was willing to give Himself for us. May we be reminded afresh of the cost as we ponder that love this week.

A brave new world?

Leaders of the G20 nations meet in London next week to draw up a blueprint for a new global economy. Russia is calling for a new world currency. China is proposing replacing the US dollar with a new global system. Iran, Libya and Kazakhstan have called in recent weeks for a new single currency.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for "the biggest fiscal stimulus the world has ever seen," and the Bank of England is telling Gordon Brown that the UK cannot afford a new stimulus plan.

It is interesting that Bible prophecy speaks of a time when there will be one world economy (Rev 13:15 - 17). There will also be one world government (Dan 2:40 - 44; Dan 7:7, 8, 19 - 25; Rev 13:1 - 10) and a one-world religion (Rev 13:11 - 17). This will be a time when followers of Jesus will be martyred (Rev 17:5, 6), a time when the Jews will suffer as they have never suffered before, including the time of the Holocaust. The Bible calls it "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer 30:7).

All these things are not going to happen next week. Nevertheless, it is quite remarkable how quickly things are happening in these days. We are living in tremendous times. Times when Christians need to be living close to their Lord; times when they need to be busy in the Lord's service.

Speaking of how quickly things are happening, Khaled abu Toameh, the Palestinian Jerusalem Post journalist, writes just this week:

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the US, I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities. . .

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda”. . . these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.

When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.

On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. . . And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. . .

What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem. . .

The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimisation of Israel. . . What is happening on the US campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel. . .

What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence.

I have mentioned before that the Bible speaks of a day when all the nations will gather together to attack Israel. That day may not be too far away.

Christians, atheists and the Government

A Christian-run shelter for the homeless was threatened with the loss of £150,000 of funding unless it stopped saying grace at mealtimes and putting Bibles out for use by guests.

Teen Challenge UK, a Christian organisation working among drug addicts, is said to have lost £700,000 of funding rather than give up its Christian ethos.

Within days of her announcement that the Government was to fund a council of Muslim theologians to make rulings on controversial elements of Islamic doctrine in an effort to tackle Muslim extremism, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears announced a new white paper designed to encourage people, including faith groups, to work in the community.

But, she told the House of Commons, "I am concerned to ensure that if faith groups become involved, they do so on a proper footing - not by evangelising or proselytising, but by providing services in a non-discriminatory way to the whole community." She said she intended to work on a charter, similar to the one by the Christian organisation Faithworks.

I wrote to her, as follows:

Dear Mrs Blears,

I have been reading your white paper, Communities in control: real people, real power, in which you speak of making use of services from faith-based groups.

In the House of Commons, you said you were concerned to ensure that if faith groups became involved, they did so on a proper footing, not by evangelising or proselytising, but by providing services in a non-discriminatory way.

You spoke of drafting a charter along the lines of the one provided by Faithworks.

Principle 3 of the Faithworks charter speaks of "Never imposing our Christian faith or belief on others." This sounds reasonable. But principle 2 of the charter says "Acknowledging the freedom of people of all faiths or none both to hold and to express their beliefs and convictions respectfully and freely, within the limits of the UK law."

Does this mean that while people being served by Christian groups would have the freedom to express their beliefs and convictions, Christian groups providing services would not have freedom to express their Christian beliefs and convictions to the people they were serving?

I would be grateful if you would please let me have an answer on this specific point.

Yours sincerely,

I received no reply. I wrote again:

Dear Mrs Blears,

I wrote to you some time ago, but have not had a reply. I attach a copy of my letter.

I should be grateful if you would please let me have a reply to my letter, in particular to the point in the penultimate paragraph.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

This time I got a reply from her department. The letter is too long to reproduce here, but the relevant paragraph says

With regard to the specific question you have asked, it is important to make a distinction between the freedom of individuals and organisations to collectively express Christian beliefs and convictions. . . and the imposition of these same beliefs upon others dependent upon the services being provided.

The big question, of course, is what the Government defines as imposition.

MPs complained in a debate in the Commons last week that although Christians have made a vital contribution to British society, they are being marginalised by public bodies.

Andrew Selous MP called the debate following a spate of cases where Christians have been sidelined for expressing their faith. One Christian charity working in London to help single mothers, he said, was told by the local authority that its application for funding was refused because its assistance for single parents included "extending Christian comfort and offering prayer."

"If the faith institutions and churches disappeared from my constituency tomorrow," said Conservative MP Paul Goodman, "much of the tapestry of civil society would simply unweave."

This morning, the Daily Mail says £25,000 of taxpayers' money intended for faith groups, to be used to build "faith communities," has been given by Hazel Blears' Department for Local Government to the British Humanist Association to run local campaigns promoting atheism. Caroline Spelman MP, Conservative local government spokesman, called this "scandalous."

Meanwhile, the Government continues to say that it is preparing a charter for faith groups to sign up to before they are awarded public funding. We wait with interest to see what it says.

Oh that will be glory for me

Someone sent me the testimony of a man who claimed to have been in hell. It was not, he said, a dream or a vision, but an out-of-the-body experience, because he saw his body lying on the floor as he came back from the place where he had been.

His wife found him lying in the living room, holding his head and screaming. She said it took her 10 to 20 minutes to quieten him. He said it took him a year to get over the experience.

In his testimony, he described the things he had experienced in that place: the physical agony, the incredible heat, the smell, the darkness, the flames, the screams. He quoted Scripture after Scripture after Scripture to confirm the things he saw. He was a committed Christian, but he said that all knowledge of God's salvation was taken from him during the time that he was there. He believed there was no way out, and that he was there for ever.

After a time, he said, Jesus came to bring him out of that place. "Lord, why did You send me to this place?" he said. "Because people do not believe that this place exists. Even some of My own people do not believe this place is real. Go and tell them," Jesus said.

I was interested that the man said he had seen the Lord. But all he was able to see, he said, was the outline of a man, filled with brilliant light.

A short while later, a friend lent me a book called Journal of the Unknown Prophet.[1] It was prophecy, from start to finish. The part that particularly interested me was a vision at the back of the book described by the woman who had put the book together, a vision that has yet to be fulfilled.

In the vision there were millions of people from every tribe and nation, all of them dressed in white. In the distance was the Father, clothed in flaming light.

Then Jesus came. He greeted each one there, and called him "good and faithful servant." With some He wept; with some He laughed. Some He would take in His arms. With others He would hold their hands. With each one He would look deep into their eyes. You could imagine a face filled with indescribable love. Although there were millions there, the author said, it was as though it was just Him and you.

I long to see the Lord. It may not be in this life, but that doesn't matter. My deepest longing is to see His face.

There is a chorus we used to sing years ago:

It will be worth it all

When we see Jesus;

Life's trials will seem so small

When we see Christ.

One glimpse of His dear face

All sorrow will erase;

It will be worth it all

When we see Christ.

For the Christian, the one who has experienced forgiveness in Christ, death holds no terrors. When my time comes, I will be going home. It will be home not just because of the place it is, but because He lives there.

[1] Journal of the Unknown Prophet. Copyright Wendy Alec. Chichester: New Wine Press, 2002.

Sad news indeed

In 1999 the British Government pledged to cut teenage pregnancies by half by 2010. It has spent almost £300 million promoting sex education and handing out free contraceptives and morning-after pills. The result? Teenage pregnancies have increased.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that pregnancies in 2007 in girls under 18 were up. Pregnancies in under-16s were up six per cent. And the number of pregnant girls under 18 who chose abortion reached 50 per cent for the first time.

The Government's response? To announce the provision of a further £20 million to promote contraception. Every time more sex education, more free contraceptives and easier access to morning-after pills have failed to stem the tide, the Government has announced its remedy: more sex education, more free contraceptives and easier access to morning-after pills. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that by now it would have occurred to someone that something wasn't working. Alas, no. What we're dealing with here is not reason, but ideology.

The same week these figures were announced, the Government issued new guidance to parents. Parents should not teach their teenage children that it is wrong to have sex, the Government said, lest that discourage children from being "open." Instead parents should encourage children from the age of 13 - three years under the legal age of consent, mark you - to obtain contraception. Why not, says a new leaflet, offer to go with your daughter to visit a local clinic or GP so that she can make a choice that is right for her?

How dare they? How dare they tell parents how to bring up their children when their own teenage pregnancy strategy is such an abject failure?

If I am a parent - above all a father - it is my responsibility to bring up my children to be moral, God-fearing citizens who respect marriage and shun illicit sex.

When it comes to morality, the British Government has lost its way. Yet it still insists on telling parents how to bring up their children. How very, very sad.

Perseverance, that's the thing

How is it that sometimes prayers are answered immediately and other times we have to pray for years before we see the thing for which we are praying?

I don't know if I know the answer to that. Perhaps God wants to teach us patience. Or perhaps He needs to work changes in the lives of others before He can give us the thing we're asking for. One thing I do know is that sometimes it is necessary to persevere in prayer.

George Muller will be remembered for his life of faith and for the orphanages he built around Bristol. He was a man of prayer. He saw thousands of prayers answered. Many of the answers came on the same day he prayed - but not all of them so quickly.

"All the children of God," said Muller, "when once satisfied that anything which they bring before God in prayer is according to His will, ought to continue in believing, expecting, persevering prayer until the blessing is granted. . . When once I am persuaded that a thing is right, I go on praying for it until the end comes. I never give up.

"The great point is never to give up until the answer comes. . . The great fault of the children of God is they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God's glory, they should pray until they get it."

He practised what he preached. "I have been praying for 63 years and eight months for one man's conversion," he said. "He is not saved yet, but he will be. How can it be otherwise? . . I am praying."

Muller never saw the man converted. He died first. After Muller's death, the man came to Christ.

Difficult days

Two important things happened last month - things that passed largely unnoticed in some quarters.

First, the United Nations said that Iran now has sufficient material to build a nuclear bomb. Second, Iran launched its first domestically made satellite into orbit. This means that Iran can now reach Israel, the European Union or the United States with a nuclear weapon.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, of course, a Muslim. He is also a follower of the Mahdi. The Mahdi, a descendant of the prophet Mohammed and the 12th Imam, vanished in the middle of the ninth century with a promise that he would return. Mahdists believe that when he returns, all the world will convert to Islam. President Ahmadinejad is said to believe that he was appointed president by the Mahdi, and that his calling is to prepare the way for the Mahdi's return.

He is said to want to see the destruction of liberal democratic states and Western capitalism and an end to the United States as a superpower. In particular, he wants to see the elimination of Israel. He has promised publicly that Israel will be wiped off the face of the map, and he has said publicly that Israel's days are numbered.

The Bible says of Israel (in Jer 31:35 - 37):

Thus says the Lord,

Who gives the sun for a light by day,

And the ordinances of the moon and

the stars for a light by night,

Who disturbs the sea,

And its waves roar

(The Lord of hosts is his name):

"If those ordinances depart

From before me," says the Lord,

"Then the seed of Israel shall also cease

From being a nation before me for ever."

Thus says the Lord:

"If heaven above can be measured,

And the foundations of the earth

searched out beneath,

I will also cast off all the seed of Israel

For all that they have done,"

says the Lord.

So could President Ahmadinejad destroy Israel?

Yes, he could. The only thing is that he would have to destroy the sun and the moon first. Perhaps he doesn't know that, which is a pity. Knowing that could save him an awful lot of trouble. Having said that, there is no doubt that a nuclear attack against Israel could do incredible damage.

Mahdists believe that the Mahdi's return will be at a time of chaos, with wars, earthquakes, famines and floods, and that the creation of favourable conditions can hasten his coming.

Israel does not want war, but neither is Israel likely to sit and do nothing while Iran launches nuclear weapons. You will remember that when Saddam Hussein was preparing nuclear weapons in Iraq in the early 1980s, Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin sent aircraft to bomb his nuclear facilities. (That caused international outrage. When they told Prime Minister Begin about the protests, he said "Just tell them 'Never again.'" He referred, of course, to the Holocaust.)

A nuclear attack against Israel would cause chaos indeed. On the other hand, Iran has said that a pre-emptive strike against Iran would be the beginning of World War III.

A problem indeed for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Let's dare to hope

Life is cheap on Britain's streets. There aren't enough prisons to hold all the prisoners. The land is awash with drugs. The Government is mired in sleaze. The rate of unwanted teenage pregnancies is out of control. There is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases. Each year the number of abortions beats the previous year's record.

Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, appealed in the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago for England to wake up and remember how Christianity has been at the heart of the history of this nation.

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, said in the Sunday Telegraph: "It is time for a movement of Christians that will put the Christian case vigorously in public debate, that will remind the nation of its Christian heritage, that will make a difference where there is human need and, yes, that will commit itself to prayer in schools, hospitals, prisons, workplaces, Parliament and the streets so that people may experience again the blessing of God on this country."

Eighty Christian leaders met recently in the House of Lords to consider the moral and spiritual implications of the financial crisis. They felt strongly that the financial situation is primarily the result of the pursuit of moral choices and values that do not accord with the word of God; that God is calling all churches in Britain to a season of prayer and fasting for the nation; and that the Christian church should reach out to those who are already suffering as a result of the financial crisis.

Today, this very day, Christian leaders are meeting in Westminster to seek God for the way forward. It was hoped to have a thousand Christian leaders present.

A series of seven prayer nights have just been held across London to pray for the capital and the nation.

Can it be that something is beginning to happen? Turn off the television for a minute. Switch off the news bulletins on the radio. Listen carefully. Can you hear a rustling in the undergrowth?

Can it be that God is not finished with the homeland of John Wesley, George Whitefield, William Carey, David Livingstone, Florence Nightingale, Lord Shaftesbury and William Wilberforce?

Millions of Christians are not yet marching in Britain's streets. But then, it might not take millions. The Bible is full of stories of a valiant few who, under God, "subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

Can it be that the tide is beginning to turn?

Pray with me and dare to hope.

A tale of Bury Bob

Stacksteads, near Bacup in Lancashire, England, is not, if it will forgive me for saying so, the most imposing of places. But it once had a revival.

Sam Chadwick, born in 1860, was later principal of Cliff College and president of the Methodist Conference. He was brought up in a tiny, two-roomed house in Back Hammerton Street, Burnley. He was converted to Christ when he was 10 years old. He had little education - he started work when he was eight years old - but felt a call to preach, and studied all the hours he could find.

His biography tells how his first appointment was as lay evangelist at Stacksteads Methodist Church, where he upset all the local brewers with his temperance preaching.[1]

Living in Stacksteads was a man named Robert Hamer, known to everyone in the town as Bury Bob. He was a notorious drunkard. It was said he had committed every crime in the book except murder, and it was only by God's grace he hadn't committed that. He had fought a bulldog with his hands tied behind his back, worried rats with his teeth, eaten glass, swallowed knives, smashed furniture, wrecked public houses, mauled policemen and fought all comers.

One day he walked into a meeting and signed the pledge (a pledge, that is, to abstain from alcohol). The next Sunday he was converted to Christ. The following morning he arrived early at the quarry where he worked and told the men one by one as they arrived what had happened to him.

The men laughed and jeered all week (something they wouldn't have dared to do before), until Friday. On Friday, a huge piece of rock trapped his finger. Before he knew it, he let out a great oath. The men laughed. "Ah," they said, "where's your religion now?" To their surprise, he fell to his knees and with the blood dripping off his elbow, cried out loud to God for forgiveness until peace came. When he got up, every man was standing with his cap in his hand.

The following Sunday the town turned out to see Bury Bob go to church. In the following weeks and months, hundreds were converted to Christ.

[1] Norman G. Dunning. Samuel Chadwick. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933.

One boy's dream

Brenden Foster had leukaemia. He had had all the chemotherapy and all the transfusions he could have, and he still had leukaemia. Now all the doctors could do was to try to make him comfortable. He was weak, and he could no longer walk. He understood from the doctors that he had only a short time left.

He and his mother, who looked after him, had worked out a routine together. Every night they would think of three positive things that had happened during the day, and they would have a laugh together. "A chuckle will do," said Brenden, "but a fake laugh will never do."

According to his mother, Brenden never complained about his condition. Ever. "He's always thought about others," she said.

One day, on his way home from a hospital appointment, Brenden saw a camp of homeless people, and decided he wanted to help. "They're probably starving," he said.

There wasn't much he could do from his bed, but others decided they wanted to help him. People started to gather together to make sandwiches for the homeless folk. After his story appeared in the media, a woman and some friends collected more than 20,000 cans of food in his name. Schoolchildren collected food. A war veteran who lost a leg wanted to give his bravery award to help.

Brenden was thrilled. He began to urge others to follow their dreams. "Follow your dream," he said. "Don't let anything stop you. Mine already came true."

Brenden died in his mother's arms. He was just 11 years old.

Did you have a tear or two in your eye as you read about Brenden? I confess I had a tear or two in mine as I read about him.

The point of Brenden's story, it seems to me, is this. You might be only 11 years old. You might be sick. You might be weak. You might not have much time left to live. But you can still make your life count.

Two (dis)similar stories

Daniel James, described as a "larger than life" character, was a former pupil at Worcester Royal Grammar School and an undergraduate at Loughborough University. He had played rugby for England under-16s and England Students.

He was in a training session at Nuneaton Rugby Club when a scrum collapsed on him. He suffered a collapsed spine and was paralysed from the chest down. Numerous operations brought little improvement.

Eighteen months after the accident, accompanied by his parents, he went to a suicide clinic in Switzerland and took his own life.

A British doctor, asked his opinion, thought it a tragedy and suggested Daniel might still have been suffering from depression after the accident. But Daniel's mother was adamant.

"He couldn't walk, had no hand function, but constant pain in all of his fingers. He was incontinent, suffered uncontrollable spasms in his legs and upper body and needed 24-hour care.

"What right does any human being have to tell any other that they have to live such a life, filled with terror, discomfort and indignity?" she said. "This was his right as a human being. Nobody, but nobody, should judge him."

Shortly after Daniel's story appeared in the media, the Daily Mail published the story of Matt Hampson. Matt Hampson started playing rugby at five, became a star player at Syston Rugby Club in Leicestershire, joined Leicester Tigers Academy, and played for England under-18s and England under-21s.

He had his neck dislocated and his spinal cord trapped in a training scrum. He has no feeling from the neck down, lives in a wheelchair and needs a ventilator to breathe. Teams of carers look after him round the clock.

"I'm a much nicer person since the accident," he says. "More compassionate."

He writes a newspaper column, coaches youngsters, has his own website, and watches rugby home games. In recognition of his charity work, he was invited to London to meet the Queen.

"I forgot my nerves because she seemed quite awkward," he said. "A lot of people don't know what to say to me when they meet me because of my situation, and I think the Queen was the same. It was almost as if I had to put her at her ease."

Two similar stories with different endings.

Some people would say people's lives are their own, and they have a right to do what they like with them, including ending them at a time of their choosing. Others would say that our lives are not ours by right, only on loan, and one day we'll have to give account for them.

Things happen. Sometimes you wish they didn't. But personally, I think life is for living.

Christianity and the politically correct

News of perhaps the craziest example of politically correct tomfoolery comes from Brighton, on England's south coast.

Pilgrim Homes, a 200-year-old Christian charity, runs a care home there for elderly Christians. The home's residents, 39 single Christians aged over 80, include former missionaries and a retired minister.

Brighton and Hove Council, who provided £13,000 of funding for the home, wanted the home to use images of homosexuals in its promotional literature, show a presentation about homosexual rights to staff, ask the residents if they were (a) lesbian, (b) homosexual, (c) bisexual, (d) heterosexual, or (e) unsure, and repeat the questions to residents every three months.

Residents at the home felt the questions were inappropriate and intrusive. Managers at the home said to comply with the demands would unduly distress the residents and undermine the home's Christian ethos. Council officials withdrew the council funding and accused the home of "institutionalised homophobia."

After months of attempts to resolve the matter, Pilgrim Homes told the council it intended to take action against the council for religious discrimination. The Christian Institute was consulted. Lawyers were advised. I waited with interest to see the result.

The matter has now been settled out of court. The council funding is to be restored and the allegation of "institutionalised homophobia" is to be withdrawn, together with the requirement that residents should be asked about their sexual orientation four times a year.

Pilgrim Homes' chief executive said they were willing to ask potential residents about their sexual orientation when they applied for a place at the home, "on the understanding that they have a right to refuse, and that we will not be required to act in a way which goes against our doctrinal beliefs."

Tom Ellis, a solicitor representing Pilgrim Homes, said the council had shown "a total disregard and lack of respect for orthodox Christian beliefs and values" when it decided to cut the funding. "Pilgrim Homes has a right to provide its services within the context of its doctrinal belief without interference from the council."

The battle against bureaucracy is not all lost, it seems, so long as Christians are prepared to stand up for what they believe.

When does life begin?

When does life begin? If you had asked me that question some years ago, I would have said at birth, never having really thought about it. If I had been a woman with a baby kicking in my womb, I would have known that life begins before that.

In fact, life begins at the moment of fertilisation. Neither the male sperm nor the female ovum have life in themselves. But when the two come together, you have a single fertilised cell. Every cell in the human body contains 46 chromosomes. The male sperm has 23 chromosomes and the female ovum has 23 chromosomes, so when the two come together, you have a single fertilised cell with 46 chromosomes, 23 from the father and 23 from the mother.

Shortly after fertilisation, that cell begins to divide and multiply. One cell becomes two, two cells become four, four become eight. Nothing is added to that single cell except food and water until it becomes a mature adult.

Three weeks after fertilisation, the baby's heart begins to beat. Six weeks after fertilisation, electrical impulses from the brain can be recorded. By this time, the baby has eyes, ears and internal organs.

During the second month, the child begins to move and responds to touch. Facial features are forming. At two months, the baby can swim vigorously in the fluid which surrounds it. He, or she, has fingers and toes.

During the third month, the child has fingerprints. He can turn his head, curl his toes, open and close his mouth and make a tight fist. Fingernails and toenails appear. He drinks, digests and urinates. Sexual differences can be distinguished.

It is obvious the baby is alive. As someone pointed out, if he weren't, there wouldn't be need for abortion. That's why abortion is such a terrible thing: it deliberately ends a human life.

Those words in Psalm 139 are so profound:

For you have formed my inward parts;

You have covered me in my mother's womb.

I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Marvellous are your works,

And that my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

When I was made in secret,

And skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.

And in your book they were all written,

The days fashioned for me,

When as yet there were none of them.

Thank God that there is forgiveness available in Christ.

Caroline Petrie: A misunderstanding?

Caroline Petrie is a 45-year-old mother of two children. She is a nurse, employed by North Somerset Primary Care Trust to visit patients in their homes. She is also a committed Christian.

In December she visited a 79-year-old woman patient and spent 20 or 25 minutes attending to her needs. Before she left, she asked the woman if she would like her to pray for her. The woman declined, so Mrs Petrie said "OK," and left.

She was later suspended without pay, accused of "failing to show a commitment to equality and diversity," and required to attend a disciplinary hearing. "I knew I hadn't done anything wrong," said Mrs Petrie. "I only offered to pray for her because I was concerned about her welfare and wanted her to get better."

Mrs Petrie was reprimanded in October after she gave a small home-made prayer card to an elderly male patient. He happily accepted it, but someone who was present raised concerns. She has not given out prayer cards since. Her superior told her then "You must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity" and "you must not use your professional status to promote causes that are not related to health."

Andrea Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, said it was extraordinary that equality and diversity policies which purported to ensure tolerance were ushering in censorship and intolerance.

This week Mrs Petrie was waiting to be told the decision of the disciplinary hearing.

After a national outcry, the NHS asked her to return to work. Mrs Petrie said she wasn't sure if she would. "I should not have to choose between being a Christian or being a nurse," she said.

Last month the Department of Health published a document titled Religion or belief: A practical guide for the NHS, which says: " Members of some religions. . . are expected to preach and to try to convert other people. . . To avoid misunderstandings and complaints on this issue, it should be made clear to everyone from the first day of training and/or employment, and regularly restated, that such behaviour, notwithstanding religious beliefs, could be construed as harassment under the disciplinary and grievance procedures."

The document does not make clear the limits of acceptable discussion about religion - which means that action could be taken against anyone who talks about their beliefs to patients or fellow workers.

Said Dr Peter Saunders, secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship: "We're seeing a culture of thought police emerging where it seems no longer acceptable to express what are really just orthodox Christian beliefs or the exercise of Christian conscience."

In countries once unashamedly Christian, there is now a serious move to shut Christians' mouths.

Getting answers to prayer (4)

There is a third condition to answered prayer. It is obedience.

The Bible says in Psa 66:18: "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear."

On the other hand, it says in 1 John 3:21, 22: "Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence towards God. And whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight."

This doesn't mean to say that we have to be perfect. If it did, there wouldn't be many people seeing answers to prayer. What it does mean is that if we are looking for answers to prayer, we shouldn't have any contentions with the Lord. If we have any known sin, it should be repented of. Ask God to forgive you on the basis of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. When it's under Christ's blood, it's washed away, forgiven, forgotten.

(The Bible says some interesting things about prayer. Take for instance 1 Pet 3:7. "Husbands, dwell with them with understanding, giving honour to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered." Did you know that the way you treat your wife can hinder the answers to your prayers?)

Psa 37:3, 4 says "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart." God is faithful. He will fulfil His promise there. But if we want God to fulfil the last bit, we need to fulfil the first bit. A continued walk of obedience is the key to continued blessings - and it's a key to answered prayer.

Jesus put it like this: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you." To abide in Him is to live in Him, to dwell in Him, to remain in Him, to stay within the boundaries His love has set for you. But notice the result. "You will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you."

Some years ago, I was living in two rooms in a small house in a foreign land with no telephone, no television and plenty of time to pray. I used to pray in general terms: "Lord, bless him," "Lord, bless her." We do that because we are afraid that if we prayed in specific terms, God wouldn't answer.

One day I said "Lord, I'm tired of praying in general terms. I want to pray specific prayers and get specific answers. If I don't know how to do that, I want you to show me. And if I'm not in the right place for that, I want you to bring me to that place." There were no sudden flashes of lightning or voices from heaven, but I reckon you can't pray prayers like that and have them go unnoticed.

A couple of weeks later I was reading Isaiah 58. "Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer," it said. "You shall cry, and he will say, Here I am." That's it, I said. That's what I want. I looked at the conditions listed in those verses. "Share your bread with the hungry. . . bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, that you cover him." I can do that, I said. But I still didn't have it.

Then one morning, as I was thinking about it, it suddenly hit me. The things that God was speaking about there were the things that He wanted those people to do at that time. What God was wanting me to do might be something different. What God was talking about here was obedience.

God had begun to teach me the conditions for answered prayer.

So see if it isn't so

When somebody says the Bible is full of contradictions, I have learned now to say "Have you read the Bible?" You'd be surprised at the answers I get.

Usually it's something like "Well, I've read bits of it."

"How long ago?"

"Well, it's some years ago. But. . . the Bible does have contradictions in it. . . doesn't it?"

Well actually, no. If you looked, you might find something that looked like a contradiction to someone who didn't understand what he was reading and was only looking for an excuse not to believe. The remarkable thing is that the Bible was written by about 40 different people in different places and different walks of life over a period of something like 1,600 years, and it all agrees.

You can see the Persian empire, the empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman empire, the coming of Christ, all prophesied there many years before they happened. You can see prophecies in the Old Testament fulfilled in the New Testament in exact detail. In the Old Testament, written hundreds of years before Christ came, there are hundreds of detailed prophecies about Him in His life and His death.

Psalm 22 foretells His physical suffering on the cross; how His hands and His feet were pierced; how He was mocked and insulted, even to the words of His mockers; how they cast lots for His clothing. Psalms 22 and 31 foretell the words He spoke on the cross. Psalm 34 tells how none of His bones were broken. Psalm 69 tells how in His suffering they gave Him vinegar to drink.

Zechariah tells how He would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Isaiah 53 tells in advance how He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, how He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, how after His death He was placed in a rich man's grave.

But don't take my word for it. The Bible doesn't need me to defend it. Check it out for yourselves.

Getting answers to prayer (3)

There is a second condition to answered prayer: that you pray in faith. In other words, you believe when you pray that God will answer. God wants you to trust that He will do what you ask.

Heb 11:6 puts it like this: "Without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him."

Remember the woman with the issue of blood (Matt 9:20-22)? She'd been like that for 12 years, but she just knew if she could only touch the hem of His garment, she would be healed. She believed it when she went to meet Him, she believed it as she touched Him, and she continued to believe it after she touched Him. Jesus said to her "Your faith has made you well." Strictly speaking, you might want to argue, it wasn't her faith that had healed her, it was Jesus who had healed her. But it was her faith that enabled her to receive her healing.

The Bible is full of promises. It is faith that turns God's promises into personal experience. Faith is simply believing that God will do what He has promised to do. Faith is believing God's promise, despite the circumstances.

It's as though God looks for faith. It can be the faith of the person concerned; the faith of the people who are concerned about that person, like the people who brought the paralytic to Jesus (Matt 9:2); or the faith of others who pray, like the elders who pray for the sick person in Jas 5:14, 15. Where there is faith, miracles can happen (Acts 14:8 - 10; Mark 9:23).

Matt 21:22 says "All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive." Notice that "believing." Faith must be based on God's word. It's not faith in our faith, or faith in ourselves. Faith comes through God's word. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom 10:17).

Notice how faith works. "Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them" (Mark 11:24). According to that verse, when do we believe? When we pray. We believe that we receive the things we ask for, even though we don't see them yet. If we believe we receive them, that verse says, we will have them. In other words, we don't receive in order to believe, we believe in order to receive.

It is here that people miss it. They think about the need, say "Oh, I don't have faith for that," and don't pray. Don't do that. You may not have faith to begin with. Remember Rom 10:17. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Faith comes. Faith isn't something you work up yourselves. Faith comes from above. Pray about the situation and continue to read God's word until faith springs up in your heart. Then you can ask and know you have the answer.

"God is not a man, that he should lie," the Bible says, "nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good?" (Num 23:19). God is faithful to fulfil His word. Can you believe it?

Obama and Eugene Robinson

American Christian journalist and author Bill Wilson has some strong words to say about Barack Obama's choice of homosexual bishop Eugene Robinson to pray at one of his inauguration events.

Sunday, January 18, says Wilson, marked the beginning of the US presidential inauguration. Kicking off the ceremonies at the Lincoln Memorial was homosexual activist and false minister of the gospel "Vickie" Eugene Robinson, the apostate Episcopalian. Robinson was charged with opening the event with a prayer. He began his prayer for the new administration at the White House with these words, "O god of many understandings. . ." From then on, Robinson called on this pagan god to "bless" America, but each "blessing" was actually a curse pronounced over the nation, a prophetic call from the abyss to the one world order and the encoding of the true gospel into words that tickle the ears, but destroy souls.

Robinson asked god to bless our nation with tears, anger and discomfort so that we might not accept: poverty around the world; women being raped because they seek an education; the discrimination of homosexuals, transgender people, immigrants and people of color; simplistic answers rather than the truth about ourselves as a nation. Robinson then asked for the blessing of patience to understand that our problems will not be fixed anytime soon; with humility to embrace with respect our differences and to know that our national needs must be balanced with the needs of the world; and compassion, "remembering that every religion's god judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable."

It is with these curses embraced by the new administration that our nation begins another chapter in its history, a chapter that when it is written will say that Americans stepped outside of its underpinnings as a Christian nation and its leadership fell apostate to a strange word. Even the man who claims to lead evangelical Christians served as an apologist for the apostate. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and pastor of Saddleback Church, praised the choice of Robinson to pray, saying that the president elect "has again demonstrated his genuine commitment to bringing all Americans of goodwill together in search of common ground."

Warren could not be more incorrect. Robinson is not a man of goodwill. He is an apostate that mocks the word of God. And in lacking discernment by promoting common ground with such a man, Warren is deceived and is deceiving others. What has occurred is the cursing of our nation and its leadership with heresy. And it is a sad day that Christian leaders would embrace such compromise.

You can read the whole piece here or here.

Getting answers to prayer (2)

The first condition to getting answers to prayer is that we pray according to God's will.

The idea of prayer is not that we should twist God's arm up His back to try to persuade Him to do something He doesn't want to do. That's not the idea at all. The idea is to pray for what He wants to do so that He can do it. We are asked to pray Your kingdom come. Your will be done (Matt 6:10).

(If you wonder perhaps why God doesn't just go ahead and do what He wants to do without waiting for us to pray so that He can answer, there are two things that might be useful to think about. When He created this earth, He intended us to rule down here in obedience to His will, so He gave man dominion over the earth. He's never taken that dominion away. Secondly, He gave us a free will. He's never taken that away either. God doesn't impose Himself on people. He will wait for people to call on Him so that He may respond.)

God is willing to supply our needs, but unwilling to pander to our lusts. "You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures," says James in Jas 4:3. When we pray, Jesus said, we should pray in His name. In other words, on His behalf. It wouldn't make much sense to pray for something in Christ's name that was contrary to God's will.

So if we pray for something that is not God's will, God won't give us the answer we're looking for (unless perhaps we want it so badly or pray for it so long He lets us have it to teach us a lesson). But praying in accordance with God's will is a different matter. Pray in accordance with God's will and we can expect an answer. "Now this is the confidence that we have in him," says 1 John 5:14, 15, "that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him."

How do we know what God's will is? The Bible makes it clear what God's will is on a lot of things. He is "not willing," for instance, "that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Pet 3:9). If we're walking with Him, if we have His word and His Spirit, we will usually know what His will is. There are some things, granted, that the Bible doesn't tell us. There will be some things on which we don't know God's will. What do we do then? Ask. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (Jas 1:5). Pray until you know what God's will is, and then pray for God's will to be done.

God doesn't make prayer difficult. There are conditions that need to be met. But remember, God asks us to pray because He wants to answer.

Getting answers to prayer (1)

Some people imagine that prayer is something of a hit-and-miss business. A bit like throwing snowballs at the moon and hoping something will stick. Really, prayer is not like that at all.

The fact is that God promises to answer prayer. Consider the seven occasions in the Gospels where Jesus promises answers to prayer.

In Matt 7:7, 8 Jesus says "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." The promise is repeated in Luke 11:9, 10.

John 14:13, 14 says "Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it."

If you had been in His shoes, would you have made a promise like that? Neither would I. But He did.

John 16:23, 24 says "In that day you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."

In Matt 21:22 Jesus promised "All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."

In Mark 11:24: "I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them."

Finally, John 15:7. "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you."

So, when I pray, can I ask for anything?

Yes, you can.

Two private jet planes and a billionaire lifestyle?

Well, no.

But you said. . .

Yes, I know what I said. Look at it like this. The Bible is full of promises. Most of the promises have conditions attached to them. Fail to fulfil the conditions and you won't see the promise fulfilled. But fulfil the conditions, and you will see the promise fulfilled certain sure.

So do the promises to answer prayer have conditions attached to them?

Yes, they do. Would you like to know what they are?

So it's Israel's fault?

How is it that whatever happens, it's Israel that's to blame?

I did not intend to write so often about Israel, but with so much Hamas propaganda coming out of Gaza and so much anti-Israel feeling in the media, justice demands some attempt to put the record straight.

Israel is a sovereign state, with a right to defend its territory and a duty to defend its citizens. Hamas is a terrorist organisation sworn to the extermination of Israel. Over the past eight years, more than 8,000 missiles fired from Gaza have landed in Israel. What other nation, asked former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would have waited eight years before retaliating? What other nation, he said, would have waited eight months?

Israel is said to have started the conflict. Israel didn't. Israel is said to have refused to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza to help the suffering. Israel hasn't. Not only has Israel allowed humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, Israel has brought injured civilians from Gaza to be treated in Israeli hospitals.

Hamas has targetted civilians with the rockets it has fired into Israel, but that fact is carefully ignored. Israel's Foreign Ministry has issued videos showing Israel aborting missile strikes because Hamas targets were suddenly approaching civilians. Yet Israel is accused of deliberately targetting women and children. Hamas's figures of killed and wounded are trumpeted, while Israel's version of the figures is ignored. (The figures issued by the UN, I inderstand, were given to the UN by Hamas.)

Venezuela has broken off diplomatic ties with Israel because of its offensive in Gaza. Bolivia has done the same, accusing Israel of genocide. The Canadian Union of Public Employees, who apparently had nothing to say when battles against terrorists in Russia, China and Sri Lanka had a far greater civilian toll, wants Israeli academics banned from Canadian campuses unless they explicitly condemn the assault on Gaza.

When the situation is discussed in the British Parliament, Israel is accused of war crimes. Francesca Segal tells in the Observer how antisemitic incidents have suddenly quadrupled in the UK and the graffito "Kill Jews" is appearing in North London. Starbucks cafe bars are being smashed up in London because Starbucks' CEO is Jewish, and Tesco stores are being targetted because Tesco's founder was a Jew.

Some people won't have anything to do with Bible prophecy. This is a pity, for two reasons. First, God didn't put it in the Bible because He wanted people to ignore it. Second, every Bible prophecy that has been fulfilled to date has been fulfilled in exact detail. This is reasonable ground for supposing that any Bible prophecy not yet fulfilled will be fulfilled in the same way.

There is a prophecy in the Bible, beginning at the first verse of Zechariah 14, which has still to be fulfilled. It speaks of a day when all nations will be gathered in battle against Jerusalem - with surprising results.

That day may not be as far away as some people suppose.

And the fighting goes on

The fighting in Gaza continues. There are said to be 800 dead and many more injured.

Hamas, a terrorist organisation which is sworn to Israel's destruction, has fired more than 6,000 rockets and missiles into Israel from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. There seemed to be little concern outside Israel. But now that Israel has decided to retaliate, out pours the Jew-hatred and the antisemitic rhetoric. Since Israel began its offensive, the number of antisemitic incidents has risen across Europe.

Part of the problem is Hamas' lack of concern for the lives of its people. It uses its men, women and children as suicide bombers. It deliberately places its ammunition dumps and military command centres in the middle of civilian populations. It uses women and children as human shields. It appears to fire on the Israeli army from inside or in front of UN schools, so that when Israel returns fire it will be able to use pictures of the dead and wounded to influence world opinion for the Palestinian cause.

Alan M. Dershowitz, writing in the National Post, says the number of civilians killed by Israelis is almost always exaggerated.

There is much more protest - and fury - directed against Israel, he says, when it inadvertently kills approximately 100 civilians in a just war of self defence, than against Arab and Muslim nations and groups that deliberately kill far more civilians for no legitimate reason. . . more Arabs and Muslim civilians are killed every day in Africa and the Middle East by Arab and Muslim governments with little or no protests. . .

Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing civilians - if for no other reason than that it hurts its cause - while Hamas does everything in its power to force Israel to kill Palestinian civilians by firing its missiles from densely populated civilian areas and refusing to build shelters for its civilians. . .

Hamas and Fatah have killed far more Palestinian civilians over the past several years than have the Israelis, but you wouldn't know that from the media, the United Nations or protesters who focus selectively on only those deaths caused by Israeli military actions.

Said Daniel Finkelstein, writing in the Times:

The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. For they do not want the Jews. Again and again - again and again - the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. It is difficult sometimes to avoid the feeling that Hamas and Hezbollah don't want to kill Jews because they hate Israel. They hate Israel because they want to kill Jews.

MP Michael Fabricant said he has been "horrified and angered" by the BBC coverage of the conflict, and will be making a formal complaint to the chairman of the BBC Trust about it.

BBC TV featured an interview with a Norwegian doctor from Shifa hospital in Gaza, Mads Gilbert. He painted a horrific picture of death and destruction in Gaza, claimed Israel was operating contrary to international law, using unconventional weapons and deliberately targeting civilians, and said he had seen only two Hamas "fighters" in hospital; all the rest of the injured had been civilians.

What the BBC failed to mention - something that is fairly common knowledge - is that Mads Gilbert is not just a doctor, but a longstanding activist in the Palestinian "solidarity" movement viscerally hostile to Israel, a former member of the Norwegian "Red" Party and a supporter of the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11.

Says Melanie Phillips, writing in her blog at the Spectator:

It is beyond appalling that the BBC should have presented this apologist for Hamas as a dispassionate first-hand observer. . . Whether it is cynical, malicious or just plain incompetent, the BBC's coverage of Gaza is a national disgrace. Given that such propaganda will invariably incite people to hatred, hysteria and even violence, the case for Parliament debating the BBC's performance is overwhelming.

The great tragedy is that a people who not too long ago lost six million of its number, including a million-and-a-half children, in a deliberate attempt at extermination should still have to fight for its existence.

God has a purpose for your life

Do you know that God has a purpose for your life?

Consider the Bible verses at Eph 1:3, 4: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world." God knew you, you see, before the world began.

In Matt 10:30, it says that "the very hairs of your head are all numbered." In some translations of the Bible it says the hairs of your head are all counted, but in the King James Version of the Bible it says the hairs of your head are all numbered. So you can't comb your hair in a morning and a couple of hairs come out in the comb without God knows about it and has allowed for it. That's the measure of his concern for you.

Now look at 2 Tim 1:9. "Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began." Not only did God know us before the world was created, but He both had a purpose for our lives and gave us the grace to fulfil it, even then.

Finally, look at Eph 2:10. "For we are his workmanship," it says, "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." God has prepared things for us to do, things that no one else on earth can do but us. Every one of us has a gift, a ministry to fulfil. I often think of Dorcas, who was "full of good works and charitable deeds which she did." When she died, "all the widows stood. . . weeping, showing the tunics and the garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them." She might not have been a great preacher, but she had a ministry, something given her to do that would bless others and affect the world for good.

It's a sad thing, but many people never find the ministry that God has for them, because all their lives they make their own decisions and go their own way. If you want to find God's purpose for your life, repent of your sin and yield your life to Christ. Then He will begin to lead you into a life that is fruitful and wonderfully satisfying.

Perhaps you are a young Christian, and you have not yet found the ministry that God has for you. Don't worry. Pray. Read the Bible. Join a Bible-believing church. Begin to do the things that are at hand for you to do, and be faithful in them, and God will lead you into the life He has prepared for you. He will not fail, for He is faithful.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem

This week Israel has been fighting Hamas, the Islamic terrorist organisation in Gaza, and Hamas has been fighting Israel. The cause of the conflict: Hamas, or people controlled by Hamas, have been firing rockets from Gaza into Israel for years, and are continuing to do so.

Israel is in a difficult position. Hamas has been arming for war, via Egypt, for long enough. Hezbollah, in Lebanon, in the north, has thousands of rockets able to reach Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona. Iran, who has promised to wipe Israel off the map, will have enough material for an atomic weapon any time now.

Israel is a small country, with a piece of land about the size of Wales. She is surrounded by Islamic nations who together have more than six hundred times the amount of land Israel has, much of it undeveloped. The Islamic nations aren't concerned about the land they have: they want the bit that Israel has.

In the Bible, God calls the land of Israel "my land." In the midst of the land is Jerusalem, where God promised to place His name forever. One day the Lord Jesus Christ will return to earth to reign and rule, not just as King of the Jews, but as King of kings and Lord of lords. When He comes back, He is coming to Jerusalem. That's why there's all the trouble in the Middle East.

After God brought the Israelites into the Promised Land, He told them that if they were disobedient, He would scatter them through the nations to the four corners of the earth. They were disobedient, and He kept His promise. The same God also promised He would bring them back to the land. He has done that too. The Bible promises in both the Old and New Testaments that after they are returned to the land, they will have a spiritual restoration through the Jewish Messiah.

The last few verses of Matthew 23 tell how Jesus grieved over Jerusalem.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," He said, "the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

"See! Your house is left unto you desolate;

"for I say to you, you shall see me no more till" - Notice, He didn't say you shall see Me no more; thank God, there's an "until" - "till you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!'"

"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" in Hebrew is Barukh haba baShem Adonai. In modern Hebrew, barukh haba, or if you are particularly Orthodox, barukh haba baShem Adonai, simply means "Welcome."

The enemy of souls doesn't want that spiritual restoration to happen. If it does, then Christ can come.

We are instructed to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Under His wings

My grandfather kept hens. Sometimes one of them would go broody. When that happened, he would make a nest for her in an old wooden box, put a dozen eggs in the nest, and put a piece of sacking over the front of the box so she could sit on them undisturbed. Three weeks later, she would have a dozen tiny chicks.

If the weather was good, Granddad would put her box out of doors with an enclosure of wire netting around the box so the chicks could run on the grass. The hen would sit watching her brood, every inch the proud mother. If danger approached, she would call to the chicks, and one by one they would run under her wings. She would be sitting there looking just like she did before, but the chicks were now out of sight, safely protected by her wings, warm against the side of her body. Except perhaps for one who would be too clever to come in, and was still playing about outside.

Did you know that God has wings? Well, apparently He does. In the beautiful 91st Psalm there's a precious promise: "He shall cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you shall take refuge." Imagine being safe under the wings of the Creator of the universe.

Ruth knew something about that. She was a girl from Moab who decided to trust the God of Israel and go to live in Israel with her mother-in-law, Naomi. Boaz, who later became her husband, had some kind words for her. "The Lord repay your work," he said, "and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge."

King David had the same idea. In the 17th Psalm, he says to God "Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me under the shadow of your wings." In the 57th Psalm, when he was on the run from Saul, who was out to kill him, he says to God "In the shadow of your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by." And in Psalm 61, he says "I will abide in your tabernacle for ever; I will trust in the shelter of your wings." The word in the original Hebrew translated shelter there is translated elsewhere a secret place, a hiding place.

Jesus knew about it too. In the last week before He died, as He thought about Jerusalem, the city and the people that He loved, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," He said, "the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" He had a place for them. Safe in the Saviour. What a wonderful place to be!

I remember the first time I heard the gospel, in a little church one Sunday evening. After the service, some folks from the church took me to their home. A neighbour who also belonged to the church sat there and told me what Jesus had done for her. There was a happiness on her face that I could see. Yet it didn't occur to me it was for me.

God continued to speak to my heart until four months later I gave my life to Christ. Can you imagine it? The Creator of the universe wanted me to accept His call to a personal relationship with Him. All He wanted to do was bless me, give me His forgiveness, His love, His joy, His peace. And it took me four months to decide I was willing. Sometimes we're a bit like the chicken who thinks he knows better. Don't you be like that. When you hear the call to be safe under His wings, come running. You'll never regret it. Not for a moment. I never have.