GOSPEL FREEDOMS

Arguably the Westernized nations are testimony to the success of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To cut the long story short, the freedoms we enjoy in the West came about after the Christianization of these nations. (An oversimplification, yes, but nevertheless true!) To be sure, some Western nations were/ still are more Christianized than others, but clearly the leaven of Christianity, ie, Biblical teaching, has permeated the West.

This is to say that God’s Ten Commandments along with the right spirit for keeping them are the foundations upon which Western societies are built. Loving God and others as yourself, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, is the application of God’s Law in the West.

However, God’s Ten Commandments for a lawful society are now being shunned by some in favour of a plethora of rules and regulations belonging to Secular Humanism – a movement which is trying very hard to assert itself in the West. Eg. in America they’ve been dragging out all reference to God’s Ten Commandments from Law Courts etc. In place of God’s Law, as a cat drags a dead animal into the house, so the Trojan Horse of Secular Humanism has been dragged into many American Institutions. Multitudes of blood-sucking, life draining maggots of death are pouring forth!

In the West we are losing our Gospel Freedoms to big government red tape. The West has now entangled itself in the sticky web of Political Correctness. The spider of thought-control is injecting its venom into and numbing the minds of the many peoples. The religion of Marxism is the new opiate of the masses!

Now people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, ie, no Gospel Freedoms. Now, we are being treated like little kids again: No Running, No Smoking, No Swearing, No Foods, No Drinks, No Tee-shirts, No This, No That, No the Next Thing! No, No, No. No… Rules, rules, and yet more rules! Oh, the burden is too great to bear! Bring back the TEN (10) Commandments and please get rid of all your millions of rules!

Neo-Darwinists, such as Richard Dawkins have the freedom to say what they like about Christians and the Triune God. Muslims also get to blaspheme Christ and the Triune God also with impunity. Yet, as soon as Christians say anything about neo-Darwinism we are ridiculed, expelled from science class, and made to sit in detention with the loony fringe! Any Muslim who hears the Good News of Jesus Christ, repents and believes it, becomes the target of death threats, if not death itself at the hands of a group of people who allege that Islam is a religion of peace!

Bring back the Gospel Freedoms that we in the West used to enjoy before those people started using their freedoms as licence to de-Christianize the West.

Islam sees the promotion of the homosexual lifestyle, pornography, prostitution, etc. as Christianity’s failure in the West. However, in many ways, when you really think about it, these things, although debauched in themselves, are evidence of the Gospel’s success! The West simply has to learn that with Gospel Freedom there also comes Gospel Responsibility. Just because we have the freedom to do a thing doesn’t make that thing the right and good thing to do!

God’s Ten Commandments and all their applications in Family, Church, and State keep us on the right track. So let’s get back to the Gospel Freedoms we once had. Otherwise Shariah Law (ie, Islamic law) will be the order of the day for the West (ie, for those who haven’t lost their heads!)


Click the following to find out about Francis Nigel Lee's excellent book "God's Ten Commandments": http://nordskogpublishing.com/

ALL IN THE MIND

 (Photos by Neil Cullan McKinlay - except platypus)

In a clash of confluence, the battle-cries of the Picton River were drowned out by the greater roar of the Huon River in spate. My friend and I could hear the watery commotion in the background as we walked through the peaceful rain-soaked undergrowth of the Tasmanian wilderness. It was as we forded a swollen Huon tributary that my eye initially saw it: ‘A beaver in Tasmania? Surely not!’ The curiosity slowly swam down the surface of the creek toward us: a duckbilled platypus!

Platypuses have webbed-feet with claws; the female lays eggs; the male has a poisonous spur on his hind legs; and they both have an electronic-receptor in their bills. When a (dead) specimen was taken to England in 1799 it was thought by some to be a hoax!

Dear reader, where does the platypus fit into your worldview? Do you hear the great commotion in the world today as Darwinism and Creationism clash? To suggest that these two opposing worldviews can be reconciled is like saying a duck can marry a beaver and produce a platypus!

Theories come and theories go, but the Word of our God stands forever. On the sixth day of creation God created man in His own image. ‘Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.’ Genesis 2:20. Adam studied and catalogued the animals.

We chuckle when we consider the platypus because it reminds us of a duck. We chuckle at gorillas and chimpanzees because they remind us of ourselves. My wife and I chuckle when we hear the word ‘primate’ used to refer to a Roman Catholic or an Anglican bishop (it brings a strange picture to our mind!) However none of this affects our worldview which has been build upon the infallible Word of God.

God made each creature according to its kind (Genesis 1:25). That’s why not even an ape is comparable to man. A dog might very well be man’s best friend, a budgie might be good for company, but only a woman is comparable to a man. In marriage a man and a woman complement each other. Marriage doesn’t produce apes, dogs, budgies, or duck-billed platypuses for offspring Why? because God created each creature according to its kind.

When the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven opened up and the waters above collided with the waters beneath, Noah and his family, with all the air-breathing animals God had put on the ark, could hear the watery commotion in the background. They were on God’s life-raft, safe in the ark from the global flood of God’s judgment upon people who hated Him. There is evidence of the great Flood in many of the fossils and bones that keep being dug up. The Church on earth was caught napping when Evolutionists started dragging in bones of dead animals, such as their alleged ‘Dawn Horse’ (eohippus). But as with the platypus, one’s understanding of it is determined beforehand by one’s worldview: human speculation or Divine revelation? Did rock ‘rabbits’ breed horses into existence? And is a lizard able to sprout wings full of feathers and take to the sky? Can unthinking matter become thinking matter? Your answer to these questions will be influenced by your personal worldview. It’s all in the mind!

In some ways Darwin did Christians a favour. The Darwinist’s war-cries are being used by God to awaken us. And now their battle-cries are being drowned out by the greater roar of the outpoured Spirit speaking in the Scriptures! Do you hear the commotion in the background as you walk through life? Have you given any thought to what you believe? Have you considered the claims of Jesus Christ?

Christ believes in the fixity of kinds, (e.g., cows don't become whales or apes people etc.). He also believes He is God, the Middle Person in the Trinity, who is the Word become also flesh. Stand on Christ our ‘Rock,’ our firm foundation. Develop a worldview based on His Word. ‘And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ Romans 12:2a.

CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY Review

Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Penguin Press, 2019, 1152 pages.

Churchill: Walking with Destiny is well worth the purchase.

Love him or hate him, (and many do both at the same time!), this book will take you from Churchill’s birth in 1874 to his death in 1965 stopping at just about every station along the way.

Full to bursting with fly-on-the-wall observations and recorded quotes, Roberts tracks the victories and defeats, successes and mistakes, of this remarkable man. Disregarding the many lies and legends that have been told about Churchill, you will see why some people love him while others hate him. This is a “warts and all” biography.

From a young age, Churchill had many uncanny premonitions of his mission in life. Clearly, he was destined to greatness. Read the book to agree or disagree.

CHRIST FREELY OFFERED Review

 Christ Freely Offered, Tulip Publishing, 2020, 154 pages

Christ Freely Offered is a must read for all Hyper-Calvinists, Arminians, and Calvinists - indeed, all Christians.

(Caveat: A prior knowledge of theological terms and usage is essential for a comprehensive understanding.)

The subject matter is dealt with in a clear, concise, and systematic manner, with a plethora of dependable theologians consulted, interacted with, and at times, debated. But more importantly, the Scriptures are maintained as the chief source and supreme standard.

This short book will go a long way in illustrating what Calvinists believe regarding Christ freely offered in the Gospel.

STUART COMMENTS ON THE TIME HORSE

 Brother Stuart comments upon receiving a copy of The Time Horse:

Neil

Thank you for this magnificent memoir, brilliantly conceived and beautifully translated into a lasting family biography. It is a production immediately for the coffee table for sure, to catch the eye for frequent perusal, and more, for the book shelves, and for the attics eventually as a lasting illustration of who we are.

This pleasantly tactile volume contains not only the broader brushstrokes of life for each of us, suggested not only in the wider choice of subjects to illustrate the passage of time and the gist of life. It also holds tantalising clues, the telling minutiae, the fond trivialities, beguiling trifles of recollection that glint and dazzle. These are revealing pigments and shades in a mosaic of memories few others have an opportunity to share.

Just how little we know truly of the lives of our parents or grandparents, and others of their generation, is suggested by the comparatively revealing nature of this production, evidence of how much we are willing to confide of our own times. Yet, in turning our minds to this recollection for our own time-capsule, we redress at least some of the balance for them: this is a joint memorial of inestimable worth beyond our own day, reaching greatly back into theirs.

It is also a fluent illustration of daily life in artless snapshots, those moments that tell others so much through expressions, attentive or wayward, and in background whether chosen for scenic beauty or just unregarded clutter. All of it is of its moment, the fashions, the furniture, the vehicles, the lighting, informative even in the enigmatic perhaps, sometimes the absence of someone or of some thing. Yet there are too statements of the abstract that frame personalities beyond physical impressions, of credos, religion, faith and philosophy, and clues to education, formal and inspired. It reaches beyond linguistic constraints in languages too, in the many alternative words of the inner soul, a pulse of encouragement for others.

This is also a simple thing of beauty, too, a photo album bound together with summaries, rubrics and inscriptions beyond cryptic captions. In short, a triumph.

Naturally, you will fret over imperfections in this, the first edition. In some of this you have had to experiment, and often blindly, and to persevere against the contrary, and to guess and to hope and suffer frustration. You can be sure we all know this and thank you for your patience and unremitting determination. Your generosity is unbounding.

I received my first copy from you today and it is with pride and pleasure I bother its pages with happy regard, not least for the tiny things we will all see with joy: my own forgotten mention of my cat Ruaridh leapt out to me in a distinct frisson of surprise: “Let’s go wee Ruri, More like a dug than a dug can be, Up the river and over the lea, That's the way for Ruri and me.”

This is the stuff of memories like no other.

Stuart 

THE TIME HORSE: Life, Laughs, Lows, & Literature

 

Three brothers doing their poetic and literary thing, with interaction between them. It is what they do.

The topic is time, as related to the process of being born, aging, and then dying.

Essentially, it is a poetic memoir of three brothers who display their literary talents throughout.

The Horse of Time being the general theme from beginning to then end. From go to whoa.

The reader is invited to join Fergie, Stuart, and Neil as they go on their “pony-trek” across time in their lives. Along the way, there will be lots of serious conversation, interspersed with light-hearted banter, interrupted by tongue-in-cheek craic, and punctuated by outright laughter – just as you would expect when travelling in the company of poets, artists, writers, authors, journalists, theologians, philosophers, satirists, linguists, humourists, Scots, Canadians, and Australians.

You may wish to start simply by looking at the pictures…

Three lives for three brothers:

Wit and wishful thinking

on a Scots-Canadian journey from here to posterity…

AMAZON: 

https://tinyurl.com/4dwe3tdu

EQUINOX

Equinox

An equinox is when the twenty-four hour period has twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light, as happens in March and September.

Beginning in darkness the earth progresses towards the light. How so? Note the Bible’s first and last chapters: ‘The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep’ Genesis 1:2a and ‘There shall be no night there’ Revelation 22:5a. Darkness, followed by light. In the time between creation and recreation there is a daily, i.e., a twenty-four hour pattern of darkness followed by light.

As God worked on the six days of creation, each workday ended with the refrain, ‘So the evening and the morning were…’ Scripture uses the word day to refer to twenty-four hours, or a daylight period, or a time period. Now, taken at face value, it would seem that the reader is to assume that day (Heb. yom) in each of the six days of creation means a twenty-four hour day. This is verified by the Fourth Commandment, the Sabbath Commandment, ‘…Six days you shall labour and do all your work … For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them…’ Exodus 20:8-11. Were each of these days equal in length? Were the periods of light and darkness equal in length? Christians continue to debate whether or not the Bible teaches the six days of creation were twenty-four hour days or six extended periods of time. However, the Atheist doctrine of Evolution simply disregards Christian cosmology and substitutes its own. Christians ought not import this Atheist philosophy. To be a ‘Young Earth Creationist’ or an ‘Old earth Creationist’ is to be open for debate. But simply to attempt to jam into the Bible some Atheist worldview is to be guilty of changing the Bible’s meaning and results in damaging Christians. It is a futile attempt to try to extinguish light with darkness. What does Christ Jesus have to say about all of this?

‘Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him’ John 11:9-10. If there are twelve hours in the day, then there is an equal amount of hours in the night: equinox! And, since Christ is the eternal Word, He was present in the beginning, when ‘God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years’ Genesis 1:14.

Equal periods of light and darkness in the six creation days? Perhaps. However, Jesus goes on to speak of people believing in the light, and becoming ‘sons of the light’, i.e., Christians (John 11:35-36). Jesus, of course, is the Light of the world. ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life’ John 8:12. This, of course, is so much mumbo-jumbo to the non-Christian. This is because the non-Christian dwells and walks in darkness (John 3:19-21). ‘But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God’; John 3:21.

In the equinox, which do you prefer? The period of light or the period of darkness? Are you a child of the darkness or a child of the light? Only those who have the light of Christ are true children of light.

Should we believe the Bible? ‘And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’ 2 Peter 1:19.