A LOUD WORLD WARNNG

It is almost exactly ten years ago (Spring 2001) that I was speaking at a representative gathering of praying people on the subject of national judgement. I remember it vividly, not only because of the strong prophetic impulse that I felt undergirded the subject, but also because on the day of delivering the message our nation was gripped by widespread foot and mouth disease. As I spoke thousands of carcasses were being burned on huge bonfires all across the country. I may add that the subject was chosen and the date of the gathering was fixed well before the outbreak of the disease. The bonfires seemed a clear vindication of the message.

My horizon on that occasion was our own nation, and the certainty and devastating nature of the judgement that lay before it. In the years immediately following, when I began to put the prophetic burden into writing, and eventually into this website, the horizon did not move very much; it remained essentially national. Perhaps that was appropriate.

I have to acknowledge some movement beyond the purely national horizon after the 9/11 event of 2001, though in retrospect I can see that my horizon ought to have moved much more quickly and strongly than it did. The 9/11 event struck me immediately as a judgement and made me begin to widen the horizon to the U.S. and then to Western Europe, where one could very clearly see the same kind of degenerate things that were calling for judgement on Britain. It became plain that our whole western society was blatantly under the word of Amos, “I will spare them no longer”.

However, it was the world-wide events of 2010 and particularly the relentless kaleidoscope of shaking events in the first 3 months of this year that have given the most severe jolt to my horizon and turned it into a world horizon. The Lord has a quarrel with the whole world, and is speaking to the whole world. The selfish venal, violent, sexually obsessive, arrogant, God-denying sins that brought condemnation on Amos’ generation abound in all corners of the earth, whatever the political or economic shape of each nation may be. They are not just in the Western world.

This year’s staggering onslaught of natural events, culminating in the unparalleled disasters in Japan, is shouting much more loudly than 9/11. The Japanese disaster starting with earthquake and tsunami has finished with equally devastating human threats and fears in the form of fresh world economic collapse and nuclear meltdown. It is undoubtedly the loudest warning blast that we have had in ten years, and there have been more than a few such blasts. It is contrived to leave us speechless and unnerved. It will have lasting consequences, though we are adept at forgetting.

It is not just natural catastrophes that are shouting at us; it is also the man made “shakings” that are resounding in our ears. The Japan tsunami has pushed to one side events which at another time would be absolutely at the forefront. Gaddafi’s fight for power and western intervention, coming on the back of Egypt’s revolution, are accompanied by a rather more sinister use of force by the Saudi Arabian rulers to maintain their dominance. All this is a huge threat to what has become the crucial life source of the western economy, namely oil. The stakes could not be higher.

The divine pressure on the world is getting bigger and louder at an increasing rate and the world seemingly takes little heed or note. Judgement, like most other issues, is now a global issue.
Pray! – “Lord, in wrath remember mercy”.


Bob

To print this column; Go to the Archive list of dates on right hand side of page and click on the date of this column. This will allow the printing of this column alone. This can be done for previous columns.

To make a comment: click on word “comments” below, write your comment in the white box which appears and add your name and e mail address (if you wish), choose “select profile”, click “anonymous” and then continue

NUMBERING OUR DAYS

“Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you. Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom”. Psalm 90:12

The earthquake and tsunami that have devastated parts of Japan are yet another huge reminder of our human predicament on this planet. They are a jolt to the whole world! The photographic coverage has been so wide and detailed that it has surpassed anything previous. We have all been visually right in the middle of the appalling chaos and destruction; cars, houses, ships, all piled on top of each other. Thousands of people swept away in minutes. Now Japan faces nuclear threats, and huge, widespread economic dislocation in the third largest world economy. All this happening in just twenty four hours or less!

One could put alongside this the wanton killing and destruction in Libya as Gaddafi holds on to an evil rule, and then add to that a whole string destructive events over the last few months, all of which have come to us with both the vividness and the speed of the technological age.
As I’ve thought over these events I have had very much in mind the words of Ps 46:8, “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth”. Not a popular scripture, I imagine, for many. Nor is it an easy one to process. But it’s there! It is not only astonishing that the psalmist unapologetically and directly attributes desolations to the LORD (the great I AM), but that he should also beckon us to “come and see”, to take note of them. The television screen has certainly made sure that there is no way we can miss those desolations!

Why should he want us to take a long hard look? The answer to that question is given in the same book of psalms, in the prayer, “teach us to number our days”. God wants us to come to a sober recognition that life is very uncertain and always limited. This is not in order to depress us or make us morbid. It is simply to help us to face up to reality and to face the questions, “what is my life for?” and, “What am I doing with it?” He doesn’t want us to bury the questions and miss the point of life. Unhappily, humanity’s pleasure loving and selfish bias rarely allows us to address such questions unless some disaster or scourge breaks over us. The point of life is not in pleasure loving. The desolations have a remedial intent.

The point of life is to find wisdom and walk in it – something infinitely more satisfying than mere pleasure! It is again the psalms that tell us that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. Wisdom is in knowing God, what he is like, and walking in his ways of righteousness. Wisdom is godly living. The “fear of the Lord” comes from a recognition that a failure to love him and to love others will cause us to end up in desolation and judgement. A proper numbering of our days and an application to “wisdom” is, however, the pathway to life, both here and eternally.

For Chrstians the desolations are not a call to judge (that is God's prerogative), but to seek earnestly a deeper and more righteous life.


Bob

To print this column Go to Archive list of dates on right hand side of page and click on the date of this column. This will allow the printing of this column alone. This can be done for previous columns.

To make a comment: click on word “comments” below, write your comment in the white box which appears and add your name and e mail address (if you wish), choose “select profile”, click “anonymous” and then continue

NO FOSTERING FOR CHRISTIANS

The last day of February brought an astonishing ruling from the High Court. In the case of Eunice and Owen Johns the court ruled that they would not be allowed to foster a child because as Christians the couple would not be prepared to encourage a homosexual lifestyle. The court upheld the objection of Derby City Council which rejected their application despite a long record of previous successful fostering. The two judges involved thus determined that the equality laws could override Christian conscience and prevent Christians from performing a useful and helpful function in society.

This does not mean Christians cannot continue to apply to foster children, but it does mean that if objections are made to them doing so by any council there will be no redress for Christians at law. In practice this means there will be an increasing bar on Christians wanting to foster or adopt if they wish to adhere to Christian sexual ethics.

However, the judgement has gone much further than simply barring Christians at law, since the judges also said clearly that Christian beliefs on sexual ethics may be “inimical to children” (i.e. “harmful”). In this they were explicitly upholding a submission by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission that children risk being “infected” by Christian beliefs. They loudly endorsed the notion that we are now a secular society and the Christian religion had no part in the law of the land. This makes a very strong general statement that Christian parents with traditional Christian views are no longer suitable as foster parents.

This judgement, of course, is manifest nonsense; it simply reveals that the judges were making a political and ideological judgement in favour of one point of view on behaviour over and against another point of view which has had a very long history and still today commands the support of the vast majority of people. They have interpreted “equality” in the most bizarre of ways. What it will really achieve is that lot of children are going to be barred from good homes, and a lot of excellent people willing to foster are going to be disappointed.

It is probably one of the most pernicious and absurd judgements that we have yet seen. It steamrollers over a very crucial factor of real social freedom, namely the right of conscience. This is being done not on account of majority thinking but on account of a minority militant pressure group which not only wants the freedom for their own sexual morals but is demanding that all others fall into line. It has, unfortunately, become part of the very real destructive side of modern political correctness, under the specious cloak of equality.

The most helpful thing we have seen is the very large response to this from all quarters which has labeled this ruling as a disgrace. Many articles in the media have taken this stance. This has not come simply from Christians. Hopefully this may the beginning of a come back to real equality, and sanity.

We have so much to pray over in our nation! We have so much also to speak out about!

Bob

To print this column Go to Archive list of dates on right hand side of page and click on the date of this column. This will allow the printing of this column alone. This can be done for previous columns.

To make a comment: click on word “comments” below, write your comment in the white box which appears and add your name and e mail address (if you wish), choose “select profile”, click “anonymous” and then continue