Category Archives: News From All Points of The Compass

INTRODUCTION
It is my sincere wish that News From All Points Of The Compass will bring a modicum of sense and stability into our lives by placing the daily onslaught of bewildering news and shocking headlines under the spot light of the Bible in which we find out what our Creator has to say.
Do we believe what the newspapers tell us? Do we believe what we see and hear on television? Do we trust what our friends and colleagues believe?
Where do we find answers?
These are questions which demand an answer!
Without a shadow of doubt, the decisions we make in life regarding these issues, will depend on where we spend eternity.
Furthermore, it is hoped that these short articles will encourage you to think and ponder the issues of life that REALLY matter, and more importantly, consider just how close we are to the end times.
NEWS FROM ALL POINTS OF THE COMPASS is a publication by JAM PUBLISHING and is available by special request. Please use the drop down menu under the heading CATEGORIES to locate Publications by Special Reqest to place your order.
Below is a sample of the contents of the book.

IS EDUCATION THE ANSWER?

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IS EDUCATION THE ANSWER?

If I had to choose which topic has captured the headlines for the last few years, I would plump for Education. There isn’t a week that goes by without a Government minister bringing up this topic at every opportunity revealing how the system is failing youngsters and needs to be overhauled.

Within weeks of a new Minister for Education being appointed, there are threats of strike action by unions representing teachers and ancillary staff. The media are quick to pick up on these emotive issues and people from all walks of life are invited to take part in debates and panel discussions during which, everyone has a go at the supposed failings of schools.

The behaviour of children, both in and out of school, is high on the agenda with violence in classrooms taking the number one position. Reports have flooded in regarding assaults on Teachers with one particular incident hitting the headlines recently in which a child wielding a knife murdered his teacher. There was the usual hand-wringing and self-flagellation by the left-wing and do-gooders who insisted that better education was the answer.

One prominent government minister said that he had made it his business to ensure that from now on every school in the land would have lessons to teach students right from wrong! I am not sure which planet he was from because if this is the type of thinking that is going on in high places, we will have to face up to the fact that our leaders and the education system have lost the plot! Those who insist that children need to be better educated need to think again.

Bold headlines in a well-known newspaper tell us of 16-year-old twins from Manchester who, having 28 GCSE’s between them, ran away to join the Islamic warlords. They ran away from a normal life to join the fight which is plunging large parts of the world into anarchy. So much for education!

  • A society that has said in a loud voice that it can and will get along fine without reference to God is now finding that it cannot.
  • A society that has done away with Biblical Christianity and the teaching of Scripture in schools and colleges is now reaping what it has sown.
  • A society that has ignored the Message of the Cross finds life has been replaced with hatred and anger.
  • A society that has no fear of God and the concept of eternal punishment finds it has traded the truth for a lie and embraced great deception in its place.
  • A society whose mothers and fathers have ignored Biblical injunctions on how to raise their children find they are at a loss to know what to do or how to cope.
  • A society that has torn up the rule book of life now lives by rules of its own making.
  • A society that has embraced the new tolerance, which includes behaviour and lifestyles that, up until recently would have been soundly condemned, has brought absolute truth, honesty and integrity crashing down around our heads. They have thrown it into a pot, a cauldron if you like, to be stirred up and mixed together with every conceivable crackpot theory imaginable and then it has, to thunderous applause, dished up this toxic mixture to those professing to be wise and to all who do not want to know, see or hear the truth.

We should hang our heads in shame. We have been given the Rule Book of life by our Creator and we don’t even bother to open it.

LOST CHILDHOODS

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LOST CHILDHOODS

It is a sad situation when newspapers struggle to print news worth reading. It seems as though editors have worn themselves out trying to find articles that are of interest and even if they do, it is a half-hearted attempt because one gets the impression that a lot more could be done to encourage readers to live lives that actually mean something. My chosen article for today is one of alarm mixed with a large helping of dread for the future of our children.
As is normal with any report printed these days, the obligatory experts have been rummaging in the research cupboard for ingredients to dish up to the unsuspecting public.
Well, today’s menu is as follows:

  • Get £5 worth of points on luxury beauty.
  • Get your DAILY EXPRESS for half price – hand the voucher to your retailer.
  • Alarm at toll of lost childhoods as addiction to screens grows.
  • There are no prizes for guessing which one I have chosen.

Experts warn that digital distractions are harming relationships and stopping young people from developing face-to-face communication skills.

Here are some of their findings:

  • A study was carried out involving more than 2,000 parents.
  • They found that the average person uses their smartphones more than 240 times a day on emails, texts, chat apps. and social media.
  • The majority of children are using their phones for far longer!
  • More than half the families surveyed admitted this was how they lived their lives.
  • Most parents also admitted allowing their children to use their smartphones and tablets for more than an hour before they head out to attend school in the morning.
  • Almost half the parents admitted that they were extremely concerned about their children’s concentration levels, saying that it was a huge problem in the home.
  • A new word has surfaced, (as if we needed anymore!) and it is phubbing. My spell check is sulking now and refuses to budge until I change the word to plumbing.
  • For those who are flummoxed by this word, I can tell you with great authority that it means: to snub or ignore the person in front of you as you text and search your phone.
  • More than two-thirds of parents said that they were regularly phubbed by their children.

Enter Gemma Johnson, chief executive and founder of MyFamilyClub (where do they get these from?) who said:
The more I look around the more desperate I feel that our children are losing their childhoods. Gone are the days it seems, of being carefree and discovering the world around them and the beauty of human interaction and connection. Hours spent in front of a screen day in and day out are destroying not only our children’s minds, but also their bodies. When are we as parents going to take responsibility for our children’s health when it comes to too much screen time and the eroding of family values which are important for children to feel safe and secure?

Enter stage left: THE GREAT SOLUTION

As with most, if not all of these surveys and expert reports and findings, the solution to all the exposed problems is a huge disappointment. It is like waiting for Tom Cat’s carefully prepared plan which received meticulous attention to detail to finally corner his arch-enemy only to have a grand piano fall on his head.
Well this is no exception, because the hatched solution is to have a 24 hour National Unplugging Day. As the name suggests, all devices will be unplugged for 24 hours.

Sadly, nowhere in the report does it tell us when this momentous occasion will take place and who will shout SWITCH OFF! Nor does it tell us who is going to manage it and more importantly, what is going to happen when the 24 hours are up. It is at this point, I am certain, that news reporters will be sharpening their pencils in readiness for a follow-up article, which no doubt will take centre stage in upsetting another one of my morning breakfast sessions.

On a more positive note here are my thoughts on bringing up children and what parents should actually be doing if they are serious about properly bringing up the offspring they brought into this world. Please note, that as usual, I make no apology whatsoever for quoting from the Bible – the only Book in this world that contains the truth on what mankind should be doing during his sojourn (read; stopover) on planet earth. Yes it really is just a stopover, because we are all heading for another life in eternity, whether you believe it or not!

Without a shadow of doubt, society, as a whole, has turned its back on God, our Creator and His Holy Word, which, by the way, is our Instruction Manual for Life and has made up its own version of how we should live, interact with one another and bring up children. It makes me shudder to think of how many generations of adults have passed who pay no heed whatsoever to what the Bible has to say. Because after all is said and done, where have these Fathers and Mothers got their knowledge from? TV, books, magazines, what others have told them? No wonder they are all at sixes and sevens not knowing who to turn to and what to believe.

Most, if not all have given up thinking and merely react to circumstances thrown at them on a day-to-day basis. There is no proper order, no structures, no process to follow. Children need structure in their lives. They need discipline and love. They also need a safe environment where there is love and care provided by their parents. So much of this is missing in homes across our land.

I know this is  going to upset some parents, but it must be said. The Government has, in its wisdom, done away with corporal punishment and shoved aside God’s instructions on the value of punishment and how to deal with the foolishness that resides in a child’s heart. We are dealing with an epidemic of unruly behaviour in schools and homes across the land, this cannot be denied. Children can and do as they please and have little or no fear of punishment and accountability. In order for us to retain our sanity, this has got to be condemned as wrong – totally wrong! And something needs to change – urgently!

Children need Mothers and Fathers as God intended them to have. They need a Father who goes out to work to earn money so that the family unit can survive. They need Mothers who are at home when they leave for school and who are there to welcome them home after school. They need parents who take parenting seriously.

We ALL need to realise that the marriage relationship lies at the very root of the social system of the whole world. The public morality of a people and the private happiness of the families which compose a people, are deeply involved in the whole question of the law of marriage.

We all need to remember that true liberty depends on our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Whether we believe it or not, this is what the Bible tells us. If you would rather seek advice and instruction elsewhere – be my guest. God’s basic laws are stamped on our conscience, and we ignore them at our peril. Those who choose to ignore that inner voice will be left with the ever-changing values of an increasingly corrupt world system.

Parents have an enormous responsibility in firstly, bringing children into the world and secondly making sure that they grow up in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He did on the Cross of Calvary. Ensuring that they understand that it was sin that put Him there! Our sins and their sins and that God will and does punish those who ignore the message of the Gospel.
Parents must read to their children from the Bible, they must pray with them and never cease praying for them.
They must teach them to seek out God’s will for their lives.
This begins at the cradle!
It begins with earnest prayer by the parents for the young who are dependent on them. It is my sincere prayer that parents will take their responsibilities seriously and search the Scriptures which are able to make a person wise.
I am under no illusion that bringing up children is easy, because it is not! You will need all the help you can get.
Modern living is fraught with dangers as is the time spent texting, using smartphones, computers, tablets and phubbing!

SIR DAVID TAKES THE PLUNGE

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SIR DAVID TAKES THE PLUNGE TO SAVE PLANET EARTH.

ABSEILING TO SAVE THE PLANET - SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

Opening my newspaper the other day and being confronted with this image of David Attenborough put me right off my breakfast. I cannot believe for one minute, after performing this stunt, that he expects anyone to take him seriously. The article claims that he decided to take the plunge and abseil down a 50ft wall at his old university to draw attention to the greatest conservation challenge facing the world. Yes you have guessed it! Climate change.

One reporter remarked that the image reminded him of four large sacks of potatoes being hauled on board a ship bound for the West Indies, and that Sir David had done himself no favours, looking as he does, like a great buffoon trussed up in red ropes and wearing a crash helmet, and as a concerned citizen he demanded to be shown the risk assessment documents and a health and safety certificate giving the all clear for a 90 year old to undertake such a stupid and reckless pursuit.

The report goes on to tell us that the daring exploit celebrated the opening of Cambridge University’s David Attenborough Building and the creation of a global conservation hub.
It would appear that this initiative brings together the largest cluster of conservation groups and researchers in the world, in that, together, they would be able to tackle its greatest conservation challenges.
Sir David had this to say:

The future of our life on earth is dependent on the natural world:

  • For the air we breathe
  • For the food we eat
  • For the water we use
  • And for the feelings we have of awe and wonder at nature’s extraordinary riches.
  • We are learning more and more about the intricacies of our dependence on nature and yet our natural world is threatened as never before.
  • The threats are numerous and interrelated and no one institution can hope to address them all alone
  • And by bringing together leaders in research, practice and policy and teaching, we stand the greatest chance of developing the solutions required to save our planet.

After reading this report I have to say I get the feeling we are all having the wool pulled over our eyes.
By the way, to pull the wool over someone’s eyes means to deceive or fool someone, and is probably from when wigs were worn by judges. Someone who had succeeded in fooling a judge likened this to physically pulling his wig down until he could not see properly.
It also means to conceal one’s true motives from, especially by elaborately feigning good intentions, so as to gain an end;
He bamboozled his professors into thinking that he knew the subject well.

I don’t know about you but I like the second explanation because it seems to fit with Mr Attenborough’s credentials and intentions. So often Mr Attenborough displays an impressive intellect and knowledge of animals, birds, insects and all their habitats and habits and we marvel at the most stunning photography the world has ever seen of these creatures and what they get up to.
And yet, never does he acknowledge that there is a Creator.
Never does he speak about the fact that God made all of the things he marvels at and expects us to marvel at.
Almost without fail he will utter these preposterous words:
....this species or that insect, or that animal evolved over millions and millions of years into what we are looking at….without offering a single shred of evidence to prove it!
He goes on to tell us that the future of our life on earth depends on the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we use as if these things are new inventions, and it is he who has discovered them!

But then he goes and gives the game away by saying: Our future on earth depends on the feelings we have of awe and wonder at nature’s extraordinary riches.

What I find odd is that no-one has challenged him on what he says and what he believes. He has made it very clear that he believes in evolution and that there is no God and yet he sees nothing wrong in having one foot in the evolution camp and the big toe of the other in feelings of awe and wonder at nature’s (read God’s creation) extraordinary riches, which is rather sneaky to say the least!

I find everything about Sir David Attenborough rather sad, he is 90+ years old and for all intents and purposes he does not have long to go before he comes face to face with his Maker – but by then it will be too late.

Equally sad is that his articulations and beliefs will appear in school books across the world and millions will believe, hook, line and sinker what he believes. Likewise the leaders in research, practice, policy and teaching at this new hub of ‘learning’ will spread their twisted and distorted findings far and wide.

Finally, if you are serious about finding out what is really going to happen to the world in which we live, may I strongly suggest that you put down books written by those mentioned above and pick up the Bible where you will find the truth!

Perhaps Mr Attenborough and his cluster of conservation groups would care to consider the following verses of Scripture: I really pray that they do, because it would save them making complete fools of themselves!

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Psalm 19:1-2

Are we living in the last days?
You had better believe it!

GOODBYE ELIE WIESEL

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GOODBYE ELIE WIESEL

Daily Express – Saturday July 9th 2016 –
LIVES REMEMBERED

Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel passed away aged 87

ELIE WIESEL – STANDING AT THE FRONT GATE TO AUSCHWITZ

This is one man I wanted to meet face to face, if only to tell him how much I admired him. But sadly this will never happen, because he passed into eternity on July 2 2016 at the age of 87.

Elie Wiesel was a man who survived Auschwitz concentration camp set up by Adolf Hitler’s murderous regime to rid the world of Jews. Yes, as shocking as it sounds, this is exactly what the German Nazi party set out to do.

Elie lost his Mother, Father and Sister in the concentration camps and after he was rescued from Auschwitz, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to telling the world about the horrors he, and his family and millions of other Jews had to endure under Adolf Hitler’s murderous regime.
He was the author of more than 50 books on the subject starting with one entitled Night, which was a 1960 memoir of his experiences in the death camps. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. President Obama of the USA said that Eli Wiesel was one of the greatest moral voices of our time.
The Nobel citation read: Wiesel is a messenger to mankind and his message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity.

He was born and lived in Sighet, a small city in Transylvania with his parents and three sisters where they enjoyed an idyllic childhood and were educated in Hebrew studies. But in 1944 everything changed when they were all rounded up by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz. He lied to the guards, telling them he was 18 rather than 16, and was sent to a labour camp nearby called Buna, where he loaded stones on to railway cars.

His Mother and one sister were sent to the gas chamber almost as soon as they arrived at Auschwitz and soon after this his Father died of dysentery and starvation. He was later to learn that two of his sisters had survived and they were reunited after Buchenwald was liberated. Elie along with 400 orphans, was placed on a train for France where he was assigned to a home in Normandy under the care of a Jewish organization.

Whilst there he mastered French and supported himself by working as a translator, teaching and writing. It would take a further 10 years before Elie could speak or write about what he had experienced at the hands of the Nazis. In 1956 he produced his book entitled La Nuit and two years later it was finally released as Night, which did not sell well, simply because the Holocaust was not something people wanted to know about in those days.
However, that was about to change, because the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was captured in 1960 and the enormity of the German atrocities could no longer be ignored. His book went on to become an international best seller.

Elie continued to write well into his old age and undertook numerous engagements which involved teaching and talks all over the world. His message was the same everywhere he went:
…to keep the memory alive, and to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget we are guilty, we are accomplices.

Nazi concentration camp

Alone with my thoughts after learning of his passing, I fluctuated between great admiration and sadness. On the admiration side, he was labelled as a messenger to mankind with a message of peace, atonement and human dignity and I have no doubt whatsoever that he was sincere in all his efforts and I admire him greatly.
What he went through at the concentration camps, both physically and mentally is beyond comprehension and the fact that he suffered indescribable cruelty at the hands of other human beings brings me to tears each and every time I think about it.

My one sadness is that I did not get to meet him, however that is an issue that I can live with, but the second one is not so easy, because it is more serious. Let me explain:
After all his efforts over many years, Elie must have looked around the world and noticed that many people paid only lip service to his great message of peace and remembrance.
In living memory of thousands around the world, WWI was a war to end all wars! The slaughter of millions of soldiers from all four corners of the globe defies comprehension. Remembrances of this great conflict have been beamed around the world so many times and yet in just a few short years WWII broke out.
This was a war which introduced Nazism and death camps. Since the end of the Second World War in 1945 there have been 250 major wars in which an estimated 50 million people, and probably a lot more, have been killed, with tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved.
In the history of warfare the twentieth century stands out as the bloodiest and most brutal – three times more people have been killed in wars in the last ninety years than in all the previous five hundred years!
With nowhere to hide, no part of the world has escaped the scourge of war. There is nowhere that modern weapons or armies cannot reach. Anywhere in the world you can find people who will use guns to get their own way. From under the ocean a missile can fly out beyond the atmosphere and come down to destroy a city on the other side of the world; while a tiny butterfly like object (an anti-personnel mine) can blow up the child who picks it up thinking it’s a toy.
It’s all in a day’s work – as someone wrote.
Since the beginning of history people have got angry, had disagreements and punch-ups, and even killed each other. This we have in common with a few animal species. But in the case of War it is rather different, simply because war is an activity that needs preparation, organisation, planning and calculation, like farming, or education, or building a school or factory. It has little to do with aggressive moods or eruptions of anger.
There is no baring of teeth in the chemical weapons laboratory. Designing a nuclear bomb that can kill millions of people is a long-term project, requiring skill, imagination, quiet concentration, and a lot of taxpayers’ money. The hundreds of thousands of people employed in armaments factories all over the world, don’t go to work in the morning red with fury and ready to slay ‘the enemy’. Most of them are loving parents who take care of their children, seldom considering that the weapons they help to make might one day kill some other parent’s children somewhere else.

What about peace, then?
Rest in peace or RIP, is carved on tens of thousands if not millions, of gravestones around the world. People ask to be left in peace and insurance salesmen guarantee us peace of mind. The police attempt to keep the peace; there are peacekeeping forces dotted about the world in blue helmets, surrounded by the horrors of war. People on demonstrations demand peace now and peace with justice; some are accused of disturbing the peace. Some search for inner peace while others insist on peace with honour.

The Americans have named a nuclear weapon The Peacekeeper, and the US Airforce proudly boasts that Peace is our Profession.

Give peace a chance, is a song widely adopted by the peace movement; but it’s probably not sung during a peace process which is rarely a peaceful activity.
Over sixty years ago, people began to take a pledge for peace. Hundreds of thousands of organizations were formed by people who were, in all probability, sincere in their belief that peace is obtainable if only they could get enough people to believe in it.  Yet, despite the fact that everyone appears to want peace, it is still in very short supply.
It has been calculated that between 3600 BC and today there have been only 292 years of peace; that there have been over 14,500 major wars in which more than 5 billion people have perished. So if ever there was a punch line worth delivering loud and clear it is the fact that the war dead comes fairly close to equalling the total population of the world today!

Which now brings me to what Mr Flood, my High School History teacher used to say: …the one thing we learn from History is that we DO NOT learn from History!
It is at this point that my sadness surfaces, because despite all his efforts over many years …to keep the memory alive, and to fight those who would forget, the very people to whom this message is directed at, have all but ignored him!
In fact, we are having to deal with barbarity on our very doorsteps in the form of mass suicide bombers and beheadings which threaten every country in the world, pitting as it does, the 21st Century with that of the 9th Century.

I am reminded of a South African newspaper article, some years back, in which the details of a brutal and grotesquely barbaric attack robbed the life of a young girl resulted in a rare outpouring of condemnation across society. I will not assault your senses with the gory details of this monstrous attack, but it had Politicians, radio hosts and even trade unions baying for blood and vengeance whilst demanding that the Government do something!
There was no doubt that this brutal killing stirred up the emotions of many people, but sadly they appeared to be at a loss to know what to do about a society that had lost its way and for all intents and purposes cared little for the suffering of others.
Whilst I have every sympathy for those who were affected by this murder and for those who were greatly angered by it, it has to be said that the sentiments behind the feelings or outrage were centred on calling everyone to confront and put an end to the daily horror of rape and murder, but if you stop and think about it, what was being suggested to fix things appears to provoke a sense of defeat because nobody can or is in a position to doing anything!
Just what does the ordinary citizen do? How do they act? What course of action do they embark on? How do they cultivate outrage that causes the perpetrators to run in fear of their own lives?

With the greatest respect and admiration for Elie Wiesel and all that he had done over the years, if I had to meet him I would ask him the same questions.

With the greatest of respect I would also point Elie to the Bible – God’s Word and point out to him that people do not change people. Holding hands at memorial services and laying wreaths for loved ones who have departed this world is one thing and very beautiful in itself, as is the singing of touching and emotional hymns, but to think for one minute that it is going to change human nature, is foolish in the extreme.
We have had ample proof of this throughout history. The feel-good factor after these gatherings and events lasts but for a moment, likewise the feel-bad factor after murders and rapes, such is the fickleness of the nature of mankind.

So this then begs the questions:

  • How are we to react?
  • What do we do?
  • Who do we turn to for help?
  • Who do we trust?
  • Who will provide the answers?

Perhaps the answers to these questions lie in looking at the past.

  • A world that has said in a loud voice that it can get along fine without any reference to our Creator is finding that it cannot.
  • A world that has done away with Biblical Christianity and the teaching of Scriptures in schools and colleges is now reaping what it has sown.
  • A world that has ignored the Message of the Cross finds life has been replaced with hatred and anger.
  • A world that has no fear of God and the concept of eternal punishment finds it has traded the truth for a lie and embraced great evil in its place.
  • A world that has torn up the rule book of life now lives by rules of its own making.
  • A world that has failed so miserably to realise that TRUTH is a PERSON and NOT a concept to be messed around with!
  • A world that has failed to recognise the fact that it is Jesus Christ that changes people – not man, has made a bed for itself so devious and deceitful that it will take the Lord Jesus Christ Himself to return to earth to put a stop to the madness man has created for himself.

It is my sincere prayer that you, the reader, will pause a while and consider what the Saviour of the world has to say, and if you need any help or guidance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

THE LONG AWAITED COOLING

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ARE THEY COOLING TOWARDS WARMING?

DAILY EXPRESS MARCH 20 2013 Page 13

Ann Widdecombe

I was shuffling through my newspaper cuttings last week and came across this report by Ann Widdecombe which I found very interesting. I like Ann very much and admire the stand she takes on many issues of life here in England.
I chose a particularly nice picture of her to show my readers who she is and what she looks like.
For those who would like more in the way of detail on Ann here it is:

         ANN WIDDECOMBE

Ann Noreen Widdecombe, DSG (born 4 October 1947) is a former British Conservative Party politician and has been a novelist since 2000. She is a Privy Councillor and was the Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1987 to 1997 and for Maidstone and The Weald from 1997 to 2010.
For those of you who are puzzling over the meaning of DSG after Ann’s name, I can put you out of your misery, because it stands for: Democratic Study Group and NOT direct-shift gearbox, as many automatically assume it means.

Ann’s political views are wide-ranging and the fact that she calls herself a committed Christian is why I like her and have chosen to write about her.

As an MP, Ann expressed conservative views, including opposition to abortion; it was understood during her time in frontline politics that she would not become Health Secretary as long as this involved responsibility for abortions. She was strongly against the ordination of women as priests and in her speech at a Conservative Conference in 2000 she called for a zero tolerance policy for users of cannabis and other drugs. This was well received by rank-and-file Conservative delegates.

She also stood her ground in opposing *LGBT equality and same-sex marriage which our recently departed Prime Minister, David Cameron, left behind as one of his legacies.
*LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.
She also opposed the repeal of Section 28 which banned the promotion of homosexuality by local governments.
She has strongly expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage.

She was one of five MP’s who voted against the Climate Change Act of 2008 and voiced the view that climate change money should go to armed services.
With much intestinal fortitude, Ann expressed her support for the reintroduction of the death penalty, which, by the way, was abolished in the UK in 1965.
This subject came to a head when in 2002, two 10-year-old girls from Soham were murdered and there was a great outpouring of rage from the general public and demands for something to be done. Ann supported her argument that the death penalty would indeed have a deterrent value, because within five years of its abolition the national murder rate had more than doubled.

Getting back to my newspaper article I just love her stand on Climate Change, because in 2009 she stated:
There is no climate change, hasn’t anybody looked out of their window recently?
For this and many other view points Ann took in opposition to the Global Warming issue, her and many other like-minded MP’s have endured insults and wholesale rudeness at the hands of those who have been sucked into this hysteria and which have led to some of the most venomous accusations against her and her colleagues, as if they were disputing the holocaust.
What this actually led to was that Global Warming became a religion and without a shadow of doubt, the warmers have stolen the limelight and all the headlines. Until now, that is!

The dissenters have now been proved right. Who knows how many billions of pounds have been spent on persuading the public that we are all to blame, when they have nothing to do with it.
The world is now being told that the warming is so far off those wild predictions and that all bets are off. In fact the world’s temperature is static or falling, so all those wind farms and carbon-saving measures imposed on the general public over the last few years have been a complete waste of tax payers’ money.
What is even harder to believe and accept is that our Met Office, Hadley Centre for Climate Science has known about this for a long time, and yet has chosen to keep its collective mouth shut!
It surely can’t be because of all that money they receive which is tied up in their research. Could it?

I am convinced that these headline grabbing news items are designed to fool the general public into believing that catastrophic things are going to happen, when they are not! There is nothing like a story that weaves a plot of cataclysmic consequences written by an ‘expert’ to excite the mind.
Night after night being bombarded with images of the streets of London under 20 feet of water together with flooding in other major cities, all because we flew to Paris instead of staying at home, or we took the bus to go shopping instead of walking.
Eat less meat! is the protest cry from the anti-methane group on loan from rent-a-crowd. Ban all motor vehicles! was the cry of the leader of the Carbon Foot Print Foundation before he was caught on camera driving all over the country in a posh car.

Designed to take our minds off what really matters – yes indeed!
Deliberate and calculated intentions to bamboozle all of us by trying to overwhelm us with so called facts and predictions, none of which have come true!
There are sinister plans afoot to get us to focus on things that we have no control over, when we should be concentrating on what our Creator has to say.
Satan is alive and well on planet earth and doing a jolly good job!
Throughout Scripture, Satan has been at the forefront of preventing people from paying heed to the claims of Jesus Christ, and coming to a knowledge of what He accomplished on the Cross of Calvary.
If you care to open your Bible – you can read all about it for yourself.

We ignore the message of Salvation at our peril. God has made it very clear that those who would rather become involved in things of this world to the exclusion of the Saviour, will not be invited to become involved with Him in the next world.

FORGIVENESS

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FORGIVENESS

DAILY MAIL SATURDAY
APRIL 25 2015, Page 37

AUSCHWITZ DEATH CAMP SURVIVOR EVAN KOR -1

The extraordinary moment when an Auschwitz survivor embraced death camp Nazi.
EVA KOR – RINGED – 10 YEARS OLD – A PRISONER AT AUSCHWITZ

This is an amazing story about a Holocaust survivor who waited 70 years in order to come face to face with a former SS man on trial for his alleged part in the slaughter at the notorious death camp Auschwitz. The extraordinary moment of reconciliation took place as the 93-year-old former death camp clerk – known as the Bookkeeper of Auschwitz prepared to listen to Mrs Kor’s evidence in a trial that could condemn him to die in jail.

When the two of them came face to face, it would appear that Eva Kor approached Oskar Groening before the hearing with outstretched arms and the two became locked in an embrace. She thanked him for having the decency to accept his responsibility for what was done at the camp and said that she forgave him.

Groening looked startled at first, smiled and planted a kiss on her cheek and as he listened to her words of forgiveness he became so overwhelmed that he promptly fainted, whereupon Eva screamed for help.

In her evidence, Eva said that Groening bore responsibility for helping run the wartime death camp – but urged him to spend the rest of his life warning and teaching others about the evil of Nazism. Groening’s job at the camp was to collect and tally money stolen from all new arrivals and then to send it on to Berlin. He denied being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews there, but begged forgiveness for what he called his ‘moral guilt’. In a moving interview with a BBC Radio programme, she said that Groening was 93 years old and putting him in jail is absurd, because out of it he could do some good.

AUSCHWITZ FRONT GATE

It was at the camp that Eva and her ten-year-old twin sister Miriam were singled out by Doctor Mengele who was known for his grotesque and barbaric genetic experiments on humans, especially twins. Both her and her sister were subjected to injections containing deadly germs and to this day she does not know what the syringes contained, but she does vividly remember Mengele standing by her bedside and laughing sarcastically after reading her fever charts and saying she had only two weeks to live.

A down side to her remarkable capacity to forgive was the enormous amount of criticism she received from fellow survivors. Not only was the criticism of her public forgiveness hurtful, she was also labeled as a traitor. In trying to make sense of this reaction she told the reporter that she, as a victim, had a right to be free, and that you cannot be free from what was done to you unless you remove from your shoulder the daily burden of pain and anger and forgive the Nazis – not because they deserve it, but because I deserve it!
She went on to say: When I talk to survivors, and I say;  why on earth does my forgiveness hurt you? They have no answers. I guess victims like to have more victims; the bigger the crowd, the better.
After 70 years since liberation the victims with 300 others were all talking about their experiences and were, at times, falling apart …. poor me …. what have they done to me? But I come to a different conclusion, I don’t forget what they have done to me. I don’t look at myself as a poor person – I am a victorious woman who has been able to rise above the pain and forgive the Nazis.

After reading this astonishing account of forgiveness in action, my thoughts dwell on another amazing story of mercy and compassion which happened over 2000 years ago. This account involves none other than the Creator of Heaven and Earth Himself, who came to remove our sins and present us clean, holy and acceptable to God the Father.

Yes I am talking about Jesus Christ who lived and died for us. He lived a sinless life doing good to all He came into contact with. He healed the sick. He restored the sight to those who were blind. He even raised people from the dead, such was His love, benevolence and forgiveness toward everyone. And yet it was not good enough, because no sooner did they want to make Him their King – they changed their minds and called for Him to be executed. He was tried by Pilate who found no fault in Him and who even wanted to release Him, but the people were so enraged that they demanded His execution which meant He would be nailed to a cross and left to die.

The Scriptures tell us of the most amazing love and compassion shown by anyone ever in this world, because as He hung on that Cross of shame he cried out to His Father asking for forgiveness for the people who put Him there.

I cannot even begin to imagine what Eva Kor and her twin sister Miriam went through at Auschwitz, nor can I imagine what the millions of others had to endure at the hands of the Nazis. All I can say is that my wife and I have visited both concentration camps in Poland and I would not be stretching the truth when I say that what we saw and heard from our tour guide, changed our lives! For ever! No description and no amount of tears from us or any other person comes close to describing what must have happened behind those wretched fences and inside those dreadful buildings. The hate of one human being for another defies description in any language. Just as the hate for the Saviour of the world defies description. Apart from the original sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden which led to man being banished from God, there is one thing that mankind did that changed the course of the whole world.

  • It changed mankind irrevocably.
  • It brought judgment upon the entire human race.
  • It was the most tragic and dreadful deed ever committed.

God’s monumental sacrifice for all of us was Jesus and if ever there was a display of the depth, breadth and height of love our Creator has for us, it is wonderfully portrayed in Him and yet He was taken by man, tried and convicted in a court of law on trumped-up charges in a complete and utter mockery of justice, and nailed to a cross and left to die.

The thought that no one ever was so shamefully treated, as the only Perfectly Wise, Holy and Beautiful Person that ever appeared on earth, MUST lead those who are serious about life, to have very strong views of man’s wickedness and enmity toward God. An enmity which has been played out in so much, if not all of mankind’s history, including the holocaust.

This document began with the word – FORGIVENESS and I would like to close by looking at the word – LOVE which makes the act of forgiveness possible.

  • LOVE led to the greatest gift being conferred on us by our Creator
  • This gift was Jesus.
  • Mankind revealed his heart by hating Him without a cause.
  • Jesus revealed HIS heart by loving them without a cause.
  • In their hating they gave HIM a cross.
  • They gave HIM a cross to remove HIM from this world.
  • In love, HE made it into a ladder to raise them up to heaven.
  • The removing and raising are two ways and two choices that each of us must decide on before leaving this earth’s shores. Which then begs the question – What will you do with Jesus?

There is a Hymn that comes to mind whenever the words LOVE, FORGIVENESS and MERCY are contemplated and it goes like this:

Years I spent in vanity and pride,
Caring not my Lord was crucified,
Knowing not it was for me He died
On Calvary.

Refrain:
Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary.

By God’s Word at last my sin I learned;
Then I trembled at the law I’d spurned,
Till my guilty soul imploring turned
To Calvary.

Now I’ve giv’n to Jesus everything,
Now I gladly own Him as my King,
Now my raptured soul can only sing
Of Calvary!

Oh, the love that drew salvation’s plan!
Oh, the grace that brought it down to man!
Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span
At Calvary!

Finally, there can be no doubt whatsoever that we are living in the last days. Man’s inhumanity to man knows no bounds. After the holocaust the words – NEVER AGAIN! reverberated around the world, sadly to no avail. The hatred and slaughter continues unabated – until that is, Jesus comes again, as He has promised. My heart and gratitude goes out to Eva Kor for showing us all that forgiveness is possible. What is so sad is that there aren’t more like her in the world

My sincere prayer is that you the reader will consider Jesus Christ and that you will trust Him with your life and your future – for eternity.

VICTORY! KEEPING THE CROSS

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VICTORY!

DAILY EXPRESS FRIDAY 2nd OCTOBER 2015

This report describes red-faced officials at Hyndburn Council who, in their wisdom, decided to remove a cross at Accrington Crematorium in Lancashire.
Before we go any further I know that many readers will be demanding to know where exactly Hyndburn Council and where Accrington is, should they wish to add their voices to the growing uprising. Well let me put you at ease.

Hyndburn Borough Council is located in Accrington which is in Lancashire in England.
For those of you who would like more details – here they are:
Scaitcliffe House, Ormerod Street, Accrington, Hyndburn, Post Code: BB5 0PF
Telephone: 01254 388111.
Opening hours: 09:00 – 17:00 Monday to Friday.

With that out of the way, this report comes to us from Chris Riches who tells us that a Labour council which removed a crematorium cross in case it offended non-religious mourners, had to make a staggering U-turn yesterday.

So that I could catch my breath I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to read this astonishing article. It would appear that members of the Council who happened to be members of the Labour party, easily identified, because of their red faces, had a meeting which lasted all of 30 seconds, at which it was decided that the cross which had stood outside the crematorium in Accrington, which, by the way, had been there long before any of the councilors were born, should be removed so as not to offend those of other faiths or no faiths.

A protest was launched, led by the DAILY EXPRESS and members of the public which gathered momentum to the extent that the council was forced to make a U-turn.
The Rt Rev Philip North criticised the move saying it is symptomatic of actions taken by secular authorities to strip away the signs of faith around us.
It was at this point that red-faced Councillor Ken Moss announced that he would take the blame for a misunderstanding after which he proudly proclaimed that a free-standing cross would be installed which can be removed at the request of mourners and funeral organisers.

I am trying to picture the face and expression of Councillor Ken Moss when he eventually comes face to face with Jesus, which he surely will. What excuse will he offer when he realises that Jesus really did die on the Cross for all of mankind, whether of faith or of no faith.
I find it staggering that highly educated men and women can decide that there is no God and then proceed to enforce their views and opinions on others. Where does this twisted logic come from and where does it end?
A verse of Scripture worth bearing in mind:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7

THE WORLD IS CHANGING

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THE WORLD IS CHANGING

THE WORLD IS CHANGING – So says the Huffington Post and most other newspapers across the globe. Something Extraordinary Is Happening in the World, And Most People Haven’t Noticed.

THE WORLD IS CHANGING

The world is changing in ways the British cannot comprehend. A lesson of the past few days is the danger of groupthink. Don’t worry I had never heard of that word either, anyhow it loosely means: The practice of approaching problems or issues as matters that are best dealt with by consensus of a group rather than by individuals acting independently. OR it can mean – the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group, resulting typically in unchallenged, poor-quality decision-making.

There are strong opinions across the political band that The EU is imploding, and that promises of long-awaited European reform are empty. Major institutions, including international ones were confident that the existing order in Europe would be preserved and maintained.
Until around 3am or 4am on the morning of the 24 June 2016, the pundits, the bookies, the authorities, the currency traders and many major institutions thought they had it all sewn up in a neat package after following the playbook they had been given. Then, in a succession of events of a kind that is becoming increasingly common, the script was abruptly torn up.
A clear majority of voters had reached to the heart of the situation and the players had to change direction sharply. The great unwashed, as one arrogant newscaster put it, have inflicted the biggest shock on the establishment since Churchill was ousted in 1945. Which brings me to my title:

THE WORLD IS CHANGING!

THE FUTURE - NEXT EXIT

Predictably, there was speculation that Brexit would not happen. But it did! What is Brexit? I hear you ask. It is a word that was thrust upon all of us here in the United Kingdom when we went to the poles to vote whether or not we should remain in the European Union or not, and it stood for: British or Britain’s Exit.
I thought it was a new breakfast cereal that was being advertised – but don’t tell anyone! Now that the vote is to leave, there are those who want the decision ignored or reversed, telling us more about their own state of mind than developments in the real world. Much like bedraggled courtiers fleeing Versailles after the French Revolution, they are unable to process the reversal that has occurred. Locked in a psychology of despair, anger and denial, they cannot help believing there will be a restoration of an order they believed was unshakeable.

As is so often the case, the downfall of the elite is that they forgot about the people they were supposed to serve. The ones who voted them in were ignored. Instead, those who shaped policies, made the rules and enforced the regulations, became so far removed and remote from reality and the ordinary men and women at whom they liked to sneer.
G.K. Chesterton, the author of the famous Father Brown detective stories, wrote a poem way back in 1907 which, for all intents and purposes, was penned for June 25th 2016.
The poem, entitled THE SECRET PEOPLE is a celebration of the stoicism and patriotism of ordinary people who have grown weary of being taken for granted, treated like cannon fodder and denied a voice in the corridors of power. His poem has 742 words in it and I have chosen this verse because it sums up what many people in our country think and feel:

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes ….. We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet, Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street …. ?

Well the referendum gave them a voice with over 15 million in England alone, voting to extricate themselves from the clutches of the EU. The grand totals, for those who want to know, was 17,410,742 voting to leave, whilst 16,141,241 voted to remain.

It was a triumph for the decent forgotten folk of Britain, the silent majority who form the backbone of the nation, who are the descendants of those who fought for freedom at the Battle of the Somme and the beaches of Normandy, not to mention in the skies above Kent.
Telling voters who were considering voting Leave that they were stupid, illiterate, xenophobic and racist was never going to be an effective way of persuading them to change their views. The litany of insults voiced by some leaders of the Remain campaign who expressed their sentiments towards millions of ordinary people was very upsetting indeed, illustrating just how far removed they were from reality, because it did not occur to any of these advanced minds that their contempt would be reciprocated.
Someone said that the resignation of David Cameron was typical of a spoilt child who could not get his own way and promptly threw all his toys out of his cot. Simply put, he saw himself as representing the interests of Europe in Britain rather than standing up for Britain in Europe
Another reporter had this to say of Cameron: These events have delivered Cameron from oblivion and have assured his place as the most spectacular bungler in British political history.
Yet another reporter had this to say: Since his resignation, there is no doubt that Mr Cameron has received several phones calls regarding furniture requirements, paint colours and decoration needs for his new office in Brussels. Watch this space!

The EU has changed beyond recognition. A United Federation of States set up to rival the USA has become a dysfunctional organisation with destructive policies which have brought about its own demise. Europe, instead of being a safe place for all to work and live, has become one of the most violent places in the world.
The migrant crisis has paralysed every single European institution, as has the financial situation with huge unemployment figures, the likes of which have not been seen since the Thirties. There is no doubt whatsoever that Europe’s image as a safe option has given way to the realisation that it is a failed experiment, a fact which the majority of British voters grasped and which none of our establishments, (read: advanced minds) have grasped let alone understood.

That there are dark forces at work in politics and indeed the whole world, cannot be denied. In parts of continental Europe, there are far-right parties with roots in the darkest years of the 20th century who have been inching their way towards government.
Nazism together with anti-Semitism is on the rise at an alarming rate. Many of the countries in Europe face growing challenges from these groups and fear that liberal freedoms can no longer be taken for granted. Strike action, for what ever reason, taken by disgruntled workers is common place, as is the violence and intimidation which goes along with the protests.

It’s what to do about it that grips people and sends shivers of fear down the spine, so much so that I make no apology whatsoever for attempting to steer readers to investigate what the Bible has to say. Yes, the most maligned, slandered and badmouthed book in the world. And yet in this Book we find the truth – the real truth! And we also find hope!

If you would rather look to politicians for answers – go ahead. If you would rather trust your own thoughts and judgements – be my guest, but be warned, God has much to say on these subjects and none of it is pretty!

Even though the world is changing, there are things that do not and will not change. In them, believe it or not, we can find comfort and consolation.
Here are some of them:

  • God – He is eternal – But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end. Psalm 102:27
  • The Bible – The Word of God – which lives and abides for ever – 1 Peter 1:23
  • The love of God – which is everlasting – Jeremiah 31:3
  • The heart of mankind – every imagination of the thoughts of the heart is only evil continually – Genesis 6:5

In Genesis we read of the Creation of the world and of man. Genesis 1:31 tells us that: God looked at Creation and saw everything He had made and announced it was very good.

And yet we do not live in a perfect world. When it was created, it was perfect, but not so today. Everyone will recognise the truth of this because we have wars, poverty, violence, famines and floods. Murder, rape, bombs, killings, hatred and greed are part and parcel of our daily lives. No-one in his or her right mind can say that this is what God intended for His Creation. Put simply, mankind’s reaction to God’s Creation is one of dissatisfaction.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve showed their dissatisfaction of perfection, by disobeying God’s explicit instructions not to eat of a particular tree. They could eat of everything else in the garden, but NOT of that tree!
Guess what? They disobeyed and were both banished from God’s sight. You can read about it in Genesis 2:16-17, where you will also discover the penalty for this disobedience. It was death. Everlasting separation from God, which, put very simply, is the answer to the question people have been asking for thousands of years – Why do we die?

  • In disobeying God, Adam and Eve became sinners and immediately God’s Word came to pass.
  • They disobeyed and committed sin.
  • They went beyond God’s instruction.
  • The lust of the eyes – Eve saw the fruit.
  • The lust of the flesh – The tree was good for food.
  • The pride of life – A tree to be desired to make one wise.

In their fallen state they were banished and it continues today. We are a fallen people, who have almost done away with God in our hearts and minds together with blocking any influence He could have on our lives. We have chosen to go our own way, forgetting that the very things that led to Adam and Eve’s downfall, are alive and kicking in today’s world – whether we wish to recognise them or not!

  • Temptation still comes through the eyes, the flesh and the desires of the heart – so no change there.
  • We are, therefore, all affected and infected by sin – Romans 3:23
  • We do not have to be taught to do wrong!
  • Sin has divided man from God – it is a barrier and it is insurmountable.
  • No human endeavour is sufficient to climb it.
  • We are all under the curse of sin and subject to God’s judgement.
  • Heaven is the dwelling place of God and it is closed to those who are alienated from Him.
  • In eternity it will be a great gulf which is fixed.
  • In our sinful state we have no prospect of entering Heaven.
  • We can only look forward to a destination of the uncleansed and unpardoned.

The Bible makes it very clear indeed that nobody will gain entry into Heaven unless they accept Jesus into their lives and this is where the shouting begins, because nobody wants anything to do with Jesus Christ! The closest anyone comes to Jesus is using His name as a swear word or as an expletive – how sad is that? Hardly anyone believes in Him let alone trusts Him.

The Bible tells us: Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6

From this we know that God has intervened directly into mankind’s history, for instance: On Mount Sinai – He gave the 10 Commandments, which were divided into two parts – Must Do and Must Not Do, and in the New Testament we read:

God, who at sundry times and divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom He made the worlds. Hebrews 1:1-2

Again we read:

For God so loved the world,  that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

God’s final statement has been made:

  • Jesus Christ came into this world, in person, over 2000 years ago.
  • He came to deal with the question of sin.
  • The very thing that separates us from God.
  • God has made a way that man can be reconciled and reunited to Himself.
  • We do this by accepting Jesus into our lives and by trusting Him.

If you feel your world is changing and you no longer trust politicians and governments to put things right including your own thoughts and opinions, and you find yourself apprehensive and worried about the future, take the Next Exit and put your faith in Christ. Acknowledge your sin before Him, ask Him into your life and begin to read and meditate on the Word of God.
We really are living in the last days, and time is fast running out – let no-one fool you into thinking otherwise.

Finally – How about this for change – REAL CHANGE!
Those who have accepted Jesus into their lives and live for Him and Him alone, can say with one voice:

  • Our faith is new.
  • Our life is new.
  • Our thoughts are new.
  • Our direction is new.
  • Our intentions are new.
  • Our hope is new.
  • Our walk is new.

If you need help and guidance – contact me and I’ll do all I can to assist you.

ELLY MAY DIES

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THE SUNDAY EXPRESS JANUARY 4th 2015
Beverly Hillbillies star, Elly May dies, aged 81.

I came across this newspaper cutting a few weeks ago and like a lot of things these days, it brought back memories of days gone by. Growing up in the 6o’s and having a black and white television set hidden in a beautifully crafted solid wood cabinet which could match any of today’s classy lounge furniture pieces, I vividly remember gathering around the box to watch episode after episode of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES which ran for nine years and became a world-wide hit.
The hilarious comedy centred on the Clampett clan who were a backwoods family who became millionaires after oil was discovered on their land. Every episode began with a song which we learned by heart. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the words or have forgotten them, here they are:

Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
And then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground come a bubblin crude.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

Well the first thing you know ol Jed’s a millionaire,
The kinfolk said “Jed move away from there”
Said “Californy is the place you ought to be”
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly

Hills, that is. Swimmin pools, movie stars.

The Beverly Hillbillies!

Believe it or not, there was a song sung at the end of each episode – and it went like this:

Well now it’s time to say good-bye to Jed and all his kin.
And they would like to thank you folks fer kindly droppin in.
You’re all invited back next week to this locality
To have a heapin helpin of their hospitality

Hillybilly that is. Set a spell, Take your shoes off.

Y’all come back now, y’hear?

Elly May, whose real name was Donna Douglas, played the daughter of widower Jed Clampett and one of the reasons I wanted to write about her was that behind the scenes, she was a very interesting person.
For starters she was a strict Christian and rejected roles for being too racy. Even though getting work in the acting profession was often very difficult, she stuck to her principles, turning down characters that could be considered lewd and indecent.
Her agent, Jacqueline Stander, said that Donna spent most of her time speaking at Church Services, youth groups, schools and colleges across the United States and just loved spreading the joy of the Gospel, so much so that she was known as a country angel.

During the intervening years, Donna moved back to Louisiana, where she launched a new career as a singer and made several recordings, beginning with Donna Douglas Sings Gospel (1982). She also published a volume entitled: Donna’s Critters & Kids: Children’s Stories with a Bible touch. 

A thoroughly decent person who made it through the acting and movie scene with her head held high, when it could, quite easily, have gone the other way. Inspiring and encouraging testimony, at its best, of the love and protection provided by the Holy Spirit to those who would put Jesus first and foremost in their lives.
Good on ya Ellie – I’m adding you to the list of people I want to speak to in Heaven!

WHAT A WASTE!

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A LESSON IN WASTING OUR TAXES

THE DAILY EXPRESS Friday July 31 2015

With the date for our tax returns to be submitted looming in the next few months allowing the Government to remove large sums from our pockets, it has got me wondering where all the money goes to. Well our newspaper report by Frederick Forsyth does not disappoint, because in it he enlightens us with some little known facts.

The Liberal Democrats did a deal in 2013 called The Green Deal whilst they were in power, joined at the hip, as they were, with the Conservative Party. We were informed sometime later that the deal was a monumental flop and had been shelved.
The idea, sold to the public as a win-win scheme, was that gullible folk would take out loans to upgrade the insulation of their homes, fit new energy-efficient boilers and seal draughts, with a promise that the savings on energy bills would  reimburse them.
If you know anything about *THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE, this particular deal is up there with it. It was riddled with scams and swindles but it made the Green Deal Finance Company an eye watering £59 million profit. Unsurprisingly, it also had a lot to do with a particular Lib Dem minister who was in charge of climate control. So much for squeaky clean leadership!
In another revelation, the Government signed a cheque for £500 million of our money and gave it to the Swiss-Based Global Fund, simply because they had that kind of money on their books only days before the expiry date to meet our Prime Minister’s obsession with giving away billions in foreign aid.
Just by the way, The Global Fund has 600 employees with an average salary of £130,000 per year, so you may well ask what the money will be spent on?

The Global Fund are trying to combat Malaria, (or so they say) by shipping out mosquito nets to plagued countries, but the trouble is that the locals use the nets as wedding dresses and to strain their rice. Someone has even spotted them using the nets to catch fish.

Another report which caught my eye was the great excitement which surrounded the discovery of Earth 2 or to give it its proper name – KEPLAR 452b, on July 23 2015.
It is known as an Exoplanet. What is an Exoplanet? – I hear you ask. Well it is a planet beyond our own solar system, and is one of many Earth-like planets known to date. Here comes the tricky bit – this planet is about 1,400 light-years away from the Solar System and travelling at about 59,000 km/h or 37,000 mph, it would take us, depending on traffic conditions, approximately 26 million years to get there. Yes, you have read correctly – 26 million years!
Now you will have to forgive me if I display a lack of imagination and excitement, but I am trying desperately to supress the urge to scream at the complete and utter waste of money this has incurred. We have hungry people, we have sick people, we have homeless people, we have dying children, not to mention many millions of people, in our own country, who would have benefitted greatly if even 20% of the money was spent on their plights, rather than sending a camera to film the remote chance that there may be a pond on Keplar. What is wrong with this world?
I think the answer to this question lies in the fact that greed is at the bottom of most, if not all, of the world’s problems, and the Bible is not wrong when it tells us that:

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10

He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
Ecclesiastes 5:10

Yes, many, many sorrows indeed!

*THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE – All through history, one subject appears again and again. How to make a lot of money quickly! In 1720 the whole of England became involved with what has since become known as The South Sea Bubble. In return for a loan of £7 million to finance the war against France, the House of Lords passed the South Sea Bill, which allowed the South Sea Company a monopoly in trade with South America. The company underwrote the English National Debt, which stood at £30 million, on a promise of 5% interest from the Government.
Shares immediately rose to 10 times their value, speculation ran wild and all sorts of companies, some lunatic, some fraudulent or just optimistic were launched. The country went wild, stocks increased in all these and other ‘dodgy’ schemes, and huge fortunes were made. Then the ‘bubble’ in London burst!
The stocks crashed and people all over the country lost all of their money. Thousands of people became destitute almost overnight. The Clergy, Bishops and the Gentry lost their life savings; the whole country suffered a catastrophic loss of money and property.
Suicides became a daily occurrence. The gullible mob whose innate greed had lain behind this mass hysteria for wealth, demanded vengeance. The Postmaster General took poison and his son, who was the Secretary of State, avoided disaster by fortuitously contracting smallpox and died! Later on the South Sea Company Directors were arrested and their estates forfeited.
We read about the South Sea Bubble today and wonder how so many people got involved in such a dubious undertaking. But it must be said, if something similar was to be launched today, who would not be tempted at the thought of a great deal of easy money!

 It would appear that this old Russian maxim has had little effect on man’s greed for easy gain.

It is best to keep one eye on the past
and the other on where you are going.
Rather than both on where you have come from
and be blind on where you are heading.

FORCING MOTHERS INTO WORK

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FORCING MOTHERS INTO WORK

DAILY EXPRESS Wednesday April 6th 2016, Page 13

I always enjoy reading Ann Widdecombe’s column in our Daily Newspaper because she seems to hit the nail on the head in most of her articles and she does not disappoint with this one where she deals with the problem of Mothers being forced to go to work.

She begins with comparing our Government’s vision of family life with that of autocratic countries where Mothers and Fathers are forced to work. Government Ministers now want state-subsidised childcare to open their doors at 06:00 and close at 20:00 so that Mums can drop their children off early to allow her to put in longer hours and to be able to pick them up later.
Farming out children before breakfast until bedtime each and every day is just not right. Why bother to have children in the first place, knowing that this is what would happen to them during the very years when they need the care and close connection to their Mother?

In fact it makes a complete mockery of parenthood! It is a full-time job being a parent and one parent should be available to their children around the clock. The political class hides behind giving women a choice when in fact they should insist that Mothers are at home caring for the very ones they bring into the world.
After all, they insist on just about everything else in our lives, so why not this? They should hang their heads in shame at the mess they have created and are leaving behind!
I worked at a large school for many years and during this time I learnt of hundreds of children who were labeled as latch-key kids by Teachers. What this meant was that the parents were out working and as a consequence of this, there was no-one at home every day of the week when school was out, so the child was given his or her own front door key to let themselves in. Well it does not take a degree in rocket science to know that children left on their own, without adequate supervision, leads to trouble, spelt with a capital T!

I remember a few incidents where trouble visited some of these homes simply because Mother was not there to meet and greet her off-spring. The police were called to break up a drug dealing den in the son’s bedroom.
The kitchen was ablaze when the daughter decided to make her self something to eat and failed to ignite the gas properly. Several groups regularly congregated at one particular student’s home to consume alcohol and look at videos of a very disturbing nature.

Children are a gift from God and there is no getting away from that! The birth of a baby is a miracle beyond comprehension, and the fact that statistics show a baby born every 60 seconds in the UK, does not in any way diminish this reality.

I was reading a book a few weeks ago about the deliberate steps taken in the 1930’s by Adolf Hitler in his quest to stamp out Christianity and quench the Bible based conscience many had, simply because it clashed headlong with his Nazi agenda. In one of his speeches he said:

Your child belongs to us already…. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the next camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this community. This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.

How sad it is that his words and predictions are being played out across the world. It may not be under the banner of Nazi Germany, but it is under a new guise and alive and well everywhere we look, because in the fading light of a Biblical conscience, our country is heading the same way.
It was not very long ago that when a man and woman got married they were given tax relief and awarded a marriage allowance. When they had children, as was expected in those days, they were entitled to claim tax relief for each child. Nobody is arguing that the relief did not fully equate to the salary a wife could bring home if she was working, but it went a long way to compensate a wife who chose to stay at home and look after the children rather than pay someone else to do the job for her.
And yet this is exactly what Mothers are being encouraged to do. The tax relief has disappeared and couples are taxed as individuals, with women being pressurized into working instead of nurturing their children, leaving the all-important job of bringing them up for others to do. Women are further encouraged to fulfil their dreams in glossy magazines where to stay at home and look after children is frowned upon, and those who choose to do just that are ridiculed and mocked.
In short, society as a whole has failed miserably to heed what God has to say about marriage, about having children and about how to bring them up.

The fact that the teaching of Biblical Christianity in schools and colleges has been replaced with social subjects, self-esteem, Humanistic and Atheistic ideas and the all-consuming fad of loving one’s self before you can love others, bares ample testament to the decline in morals and standards everywhere.
In former times, the Christian conscience played a leading role in our schools and families. Nowadays we live differently. We live in a new era. Some still point to a conscience, but most people redefine it to match today’s cultural values and personal predispositions. Parents seem quite content to consume parenting information from newspaper columns and glossy magazines and then wonder why behavioural standards are dropping by the day.
The Bible-trained conscience has largely been replaced by contrary guidelines that twist and scorn and deny God’s truth and redefine it to match whatever cultural value is in vogue at the time.

Just as a matter of interest, I have done a short study on the word conscience and have discovered that we all have a lot to learn! For instance, we have:

  • A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE – Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal truths. Unless we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ and learn from HIM, our conscience will for ever be plagued by our social life. New social conditions in which we find ourselves will mean changes in conscience.
  • NATIONAL CONSCIENCE – Unless we learn the eternal truth that Jesus died on the Cross of Calvary for everyone, our consciences will for ever be in turmoil, grasping at straws to appease those around us instead of obedience to God and His Holy Word.
  • BYPASSING THE CONSCIENCE – It has been said that: no art passes our conscience in the way books and film do, which goes directly to our feelings and into a deep dark room within us. Note the plethora of personal pronouns, so prevalent in our day and age, in direct opposition to the Scriptures which tell us that we are nothing outside of Jesus.
    John 15:4-5 tells us: Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches; He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth fruit, for without me ye can do nothing. 
  • MOCKING THE CONSCIENCE – Here author Helen Rowland puts it well when she, tongue-in-cheek, says: What a man calls his conscience is merely the mental action that follows a decision made on the spur of the moment; probably after too much wine.
  • THE CULTURAL CONSCIENCE – The conscience of ordinary people including children, is formed by the influences that surround them. Children who witness their parents fighting and arguing – will copy them.
    If they hear grown-ups swearing and cursing – they will grow up doing the same. If parents do not attend church or read the Bible, neither will the children. If the parents display a lack of moral principles and integrity, the children will exhibit the same mind-sets.

Returning to our subject regarding forcing Mothers into work, it has to be said that what has happened over the last 30+ years in this country of ours is wrong and we are paying the price for the decisions made by officials who have pushed for this to take place. Children need Mothers and Fathers as God intended them to have. They need a Father who goes out to work to earn money so that the family unit can survive.
They need Mothers who are at home when they leave for school and who are there to welcome them home after school.
They need parents who take parenting seriously.
We ALL need to realise that the marriage relationship lies at the very root of the social system of the whole world. The public morality of a people and the private happiness of the families which compose a people, are deeply involved in the whole question of the law of marriage.
Parents need to realise that true liberty depends on our relationship with our Heavenly Father. When He draws us to Himself and fills us with His Spirit, His guidelines are stamped on our conscience as we feed on His Word and heed His voice. But those who ignore that voice will be left with the ever-changing values of an increasingly corrupt world system.

Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. 1 Timothy 1:19

LAZINESS

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LAZINESS IS THE NATURAL ORDER

DAILY EXPRESS WEDNESDAY 16th SEPTEMBER 2015, PAGE 15

It always amuses me when newspaper reporters start their articles with: SCIENTISTS say they have discovered…….
Well our report does not disappoint because this one tells us that SCIENTISTS have DISCOVERED that we are born naturally lazy. Well, I for one, do not believe it for one minute! Nor would my late Mother take that lying down.
If ever there was a person who could do five things at the same time and use the eyes she had in the back of her head to keep an eye on us – MY MOTHER was that person! She could; carry on a conversation with her best friend who was sitting in the dining room, whilst she was in the kitchen, whisking up the batter for a cake she was baking, set the oven to the correct temperature, cut and spread out grease proof paper in a baking tray, chop up the remains of last nights dinner for our two dogs and a cat, putting it in separate bowls, whilst watching us play outside in the garden.
No Sir! – she would have something to say about these scientists! But then I suppose we will have to give these boffins a little latitude, seeing that they appear to be scratching around for something to write about.

The report goes on to inform us of the following:
wild animals hunt, eat and sleep. Lions stretch out under trees all day. Deer graze unhurriedly and the domestic cat spends most of its life in the land of nod. Our far-off ancestors stirred themselves only when hungry. Then as man developed so did the need to have things, to achieve, to amass money. At first it was all about enough to eat and ways to keep warm. Now it is about designer goods. Today’s competitive roar in which we all live and strive is not natural. We were designed for a more relaxed life.

So there you have it. The experts have spoken. Although it remains a puzzle as to who they are, or just how they discovered all this information, so I can only guess that they are figments of the newspaper reporters vivid imagination, or they are out-of-work story writers, simply because they have absolutely no proof whatsoever that what they tell us is in fact true.
I would strongly suggest to anyone who wants to know the truth that they look at what the Bible says, in particular the Book of Genesis. Yes indeed, probably the most criticised and ignored source of factual evidence ever written. In this BOOK you will read of the beginning of time. The beginning of the human race. The banishment of our original Father and Mother and what their descendants got up to.
You will also read of the death of Abel, Cain’s brother, and gain an insight into society developing, after which I would pose the following questions:

  • Does this sound like ‘stone-age’ man developing?
  • Does this sound like some primitive way of life?
  • Does this sound like our ancestors stirring themselves only because they were hungry?

No! to all three questions! There is no such thing – that is the fairy story of the evolutionists. How many of us went to school where we were taught all about primitive man and his way of life? How he grunted until he could evolve a distinctive language of his own to communicate to others and lastly, how that he lived in a cave.
It is interesting that the expert ends off his report with the words:

We were designed for a more relaxed life.

Hold on! I thought he said we evolved? So how can we be designed if there was no designer? Well, the Bible gives us factual accounts of:

  • Creation.
  • The creation of mankind.
  • Where they lived.
  • What they did.
  • The result of disobedience to the Creator.
  • The first record of man building a city.
  • The first mention of people having cattle.
  • The first mention of the musical skills they had, which were innate and natural.
  • The first mention of the metal working skills they had, which were innate and natural.
  • Note these skills were already inherent in them. They did not evolve!

Reading in Genesis 4:16, we are told that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. He shook his fist at God, as it were, and departed from Him and went his own way.
He built a city. His sons and their descendants were skilled in farming cattle. Another branch of the family were skilled in manufacturing musical instruments and making music and another part of the family were skilled in metal work, indicating the beginnings of industry.
This is a far cry from grunting, cave paintings and laziness! This is, in fact, a picture of society moving forward with the necessary skills to manufacture things, to produce food, to compose music, to live with enjoyment and pleasure. Everything one would need for a happy successful life?
Well not really, because if the truth be known:-

  • We drift toward disobedience and call it freedom.
  • We drift toward superstition and call it faith.
  • We drift toward unruliness and a loss of self-control and call it relaxation.
  • We drift toward a life without prayer and meditation of the Word of God, and delude ourselves into thinking that we have escaped legalism.
  • We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
  • We then employ EXPERTS to write useless articles for newspapers telling us that laziness is the natural order of things, together with editorials like this one, which appeared in The Daily Express on 20th July entitled:

LIFE SHOULD BE LIVED IN THE MOMENT

In this report we are told that multitasking is so last century. If we want to do anything really well, with a new spiritual dimension and with a deeper meaning, then we must do whatever we do with 100 per cent attention.
It goes on to tell us that we must listen wholeheartedly to others. That we must go for a run without music, we must wash the dishes with intent or do our gardening with focus on the myriad textures and colours of nature.
When petting our dog or cat, instead of distractedly tapping their coats, we must really concentrate on their texture, warmth, smell, and reactions. Animals give 100 per cent to whatever they do.
Let’s give some of it back and see the difference it makes.

After reading this report by Carole Ann Rice, a leading Life and Happiness coach, I feel rather inclined to believe that it was written by one of the experts mentioned above, who disobeyed instructions in the classroom and was banished to the naughty corner.
How sad it is that such drivel occupies space in our local newspaper. How depressing it is to realise that there will be gullible people up and down the country who will do exactly what this report tells them to do, rather than what our Creator tells us to do. (So much for listening wholeheartedly to others).
I can just imagine a husband coming home in the evening after a hard day’s work and asking where his dinner is, only to be told by his wife that she forgot because she was concentrating on the texture and smell of Brutus, their pet Pekingese.
The phrase: exchanging the truth for a lie, springs to mind.
Are we living in the last days? Without a doubt!

NEWS FROM ALL POINTS – ANATOMY OF TEEN EVIL

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ANATOMY OF TEEN EVIL

Every now and again you read a report in the newspaper of something so shocking that you are stunned. You are unable to speak for several minutes with thoughts and images spinning around in your head as you slowly but surely begin to digest what you are reading. Your eyes begin to fill up with tears as the horror of what has happened mounts an assault on your senses and grips your emotions to such an extent that you wonder when will it end? How low do people have to go before someone stands up and shouts:

  • Enough is enough!
  • No more!
  • It has to stop!

This report by Rebecca Evans was printed in the Daily Mail on Saturday, April 9th 2016 and tells us that a frail 39-year-old alcoholic by the name of Angela Wrightson was held captive in her own home where she was beaten, brutalised and defiled by two jeering teenage girls who had befriended her. For eight hours this feral pair, who were aged just 13 and 14, rained blow after blow upon her. Mid-slaughter they paused to pose for giggling selfies, which they uploaded onto social media while dancing to music videos and joking with their friends on mobile phones. She pleaded for mercy as the blows rained down on her, but it never came. She was battered with household items she owned: a ceramic vase, TV set, printer, picture frame, shovel, a glass ornament and a kettle. When there was nothing else to use, the two girls finished her off with punches and kicks.
The casual way Angela’s brutal murder was carried out together with moral indifference at the hands of such young girls, has sent shock waves across Britain, and questions are being asked how it is that in 2016 moral vacuums exist where young children can degenerate into savages who casually kill for kicks?

Investigators have decided to try and understand this appalling event by examining the two girls and their backgrounds which has brought to light the following:
One girl was from a highly dysfunctional family which was unloving and where violence in the home was common place which seems to have left her full of murderous rage.
The second girl came from a stable caring family with loving parents.

Shockingly, it was the second girl who instigated the attack and whose savagery defies explanation. The two of them grew up together and became firm friends from primary school days. As they reached adolescence their lives spiralled out of control and into violence, alcohol and drug taking. They frequently ran away together.
A senior Police Officer who was involved in the case said the following:
In his 25 years of service, the case was the most brutal murder he had ever come across.

Both girls were found guilty of murder and each given life sentences with a minimum of 15 years behind bars.

What are we to make of this tragic incident? Here we have two young girls who will have to live the rest of their lives knowing they murdered a defenceless person and they will, in all probability, spend 15 years in jail for their crime. What has gone wrong? What can we do? What should have been done to prevent this happening?

Whilst pondering over this terrible report, my mind goes back to the first murder recorded in history, where one man decided to kill his brother. In Genesis 4:8 we read:

And Cain talked with Abel, his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

What is clear in this report of Abel’s murder is that there was deceit in Cain’s make-up, as well as malice and murder. These three grew out of pride, self-will and carnality and I have always wondered whether Cain would have killed his brother if he knew it would send Abel to heaven and himself to hell? Well it would appear that Cain did not know this, nor did he want to know, because we read in the Scriptures that:

For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. 1John 3:11-12

Even the second last book in the Bible speaks of Cain, for in Jude we read:

Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of *Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of *Core. Jude 11

*Balaam – a soothsayer or magician hired by the king of Moab to curse the Israelites.
*Core/Korah – A grandson of Kohath who incited a rebellion against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. Korah and his followers were swallowed by the earth as punishment for their sin.

What is abundantly clear is that in Cain’s case, there was deceit, murder and malice in his make-up. His way was the broad way, of self and self-will which interestingly begins at the cradle – which brings me to the two girls featured in this report of shocking brutality. The enormous responsibility parents have in firstly, bringing children into the world and secondly making sure that they grow up in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He did on the Cross of Calvary. Ensuring that they understand that it was sin that put Him there! Our sins and their sins and that God will and does punish those who ignore the message of the Gospel. Parents must read to their children from the Bible, they must pray with them and never cease praying for them. They must teach them to seek out God’s will for their lives. This begins at the cradle! It begins with earnest prayer by the parents for the young who are dependent on them.
Would these two girls have done what they did if they knew they would face eternal punishment? Would they have committed such a crime if they knew that one day they would come face to face with Jesus?

If I had my way in this land of ours I would ensure that the teaching of Biblical Christianity is brought back into all schools and colleges across the country. The fact that the subject has been consigned to the dustbin of life and of general education, speaks volumes, pointing, as it does, to an almost complete collapse of morals, where children are bought up to believe there are no absolutes and no punishment for wrong doing. They are taught that no one religion is more right than another, when nothing could be further from the truth! We can thank the liberals who have high-jacked the education system for that. Be under no illusion that we are reaping what we have sown.

  • The details of what happened to Cain in the Scriptures are there for our learning.
  • What God requires from Mothers and Fathers who decide to bring children into this world are to be found in the Bible.
  • Lessons of what happened to those who refused to acknowledge God in their lives are there as a warning.

Sow a thought – reap an act;
Sow an act – reap a habit;
Sow a habit – reap a character;
Sow a character – reap a destiny.

This tragic case of the two girls and the woman they murdered, will no doubt haunt many for a long time, especially those closely involved. It is my prayer that Mothers and Fathers across the land will pay heed to the warnings in Scripture as they see the consequences of ignoring them played out in daily lives. We are all without excuse!

NEWS FROM ALL POINTS – SEDUCING MYTHS

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SEDUCING MYTHS

Daily Express Friday April 8 2016. An article entitled Nessie, Yetis, UFO’s… the myths we still believe in, caught my eye simply because I had been reading up on how the Gospel is being watered down for consumption by the people of this wonderful and beautiful country in which I live. The Presbyterian Church, for instance, got themselves into a right froth recently over a word, yes a single word, in a beautiful hymn written by two Christians. The Committee for the new hymnal to be produced for the church decided, in their wisdom, to ask the writers of the hymn to change the word Wrath to Love which actually meant that the whole sentence had to be changed. The Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song were not too pleased with the original wording and wanted the changes made because they felt that there were far too many references to wrath in the hymnal already and that it was not in keeping with a God who is love.

Our newspaper report under review written by Natalie Chalk, tells us that belief in the weird and wonderful is alive and well in Britain. Millions of us, so we are told, are firm believers in all manner of myths, from the mere workaday to the plain wacky, according to a study. It always amuses me that there is always an obligatory study that has been undertaken, presumably, to give some credence and authority to the report, and we are never told who these people are or what credentials they have, nevertheless we are told, with authority, that three out of ten of us believe aliens exist. One in ten of us claim to have witnessed a UFO. One in ten believe the Yeti prowls the Himalayas and one in five Scots believe the Loch Ness Monster is real. Touching wood is also a widely spread superstitious habit carried out by millions of people, as if what they don’t want to happen, will happen, if they don’t immediately find a suitable piece of timber to make contact with. Just how the piece of lumber could halt the perceived impending doom, is anyones guess. Nevertheless countless numbers act out this bizarre charade every single day.
As it is mandatory to have a spokesman in matters like these, one is provided for us in our report who tells us the following:

It is fascinating to see many Brits believe they’ve seen an alien spacecraft and are open to the idea that they are real. There are a significant number of Britons who believe that Elvis Presley is still alive and that Paul McCartney is dead.

To come back down to earth takes some doing when our heads are up in the clouds pondering and worrying about superstitions, myths, fables and fakes, but down we must come if we are to retain our sanity, and to do this, I find turning to the Bible does it for me. Simply because it is in the Bible where we find the truth. All else is opinions, opinions and more opinions, so much so that mankind is awash with what people think, and has given up thinking and pondering the REAL issues of life for themselves, as the following verses tell us:

…in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils. Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their consciences seared with a hot iron. 1 Timothy 4:1-2

Given what we see and hear of what is going on in our wonderful country and indeed across the world, we cannot, by any stretch of the imagination think that man has not given up and departed from the faith and gone his own way. The lies we hear out of the mouths of those who are supposed to lead us by example are from those who have had their consciences seared by a hot iron! In other words they have no conscience at all! Note the verse speaks of the latter times and if you ask me if we are living in the latter times, my answer would be YES!

  • Misplaced trust concerning the supernatural leads to irrational fear.
  • Misdirected reverence leads to false religion and magic.
  • Improper thoughts and habits bring down upon us the judgement of God.
  • The Scriptures warn us against this and condemns such things.
  • Myths are harmful to the body of Christ as is superstition.

The study of the stars and planets, based on the pagan assumption that they exercise a decisive influence over human destinies are totally rejected by the Scriptures. Yet millions fear to start their day unless they have read their horoscope.

They should be called Horror Scopes! 

NEWS FROM ALL POINTS – I’M IN HEAVEN – DAVID BOWIE

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LOOK UP HERE – I’M IN HEAVEN

DAVID BOWIE

The news of David Bowie dominates every newspaper headline. His face stares out from the front page of every national newspaper as they mark his death at the age of 69.

David Bowie was born in Brixton, South London, England, on January 8, 1947.

Out of fear of being confused with Davy Jones of the group called The Monkees, David changed his last name to Bowie, a name that was inspired by the knife developed by the 19th century American pioneer Jim Bowie.

David Robert Jones was born on 8th January 1947 and passed away on 10th January 2016. He was a singer, songwriter, actor and record producer and was a very popular figure for over five decades with record sales estimated at 140 million worldwide which made him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. His work in the 1970’s in particular brought him enormous fame and fortune with his reinvention and visual presentations. His music and stagecraft significantly influenced popular music across the globe.

Since his death, his lyrics have been used to accompany poster style front pages with tributes appearing in news pages, editorials and several special pull-out editions. Writers have focused not just on his music but the huge influence he has had on society. As the star’s biographer Dylan Jones puts it in the Sun: He didn’t just create a huge body of music, he didn’t just release a bunch of singles and albums which influenced people at formative stages of their lives, he also influenced how they looked, what they read and how they lived their lives.

He exited the music world for a brief period after recording an unsuccessful solo album and like so much in his life he experimented with many things, with religion being one of them. In 1967, he lived at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland for a period of time. By early 1969, he had returned to full-time music and released the single Space Oddity which was a rather confusing song about him sitting in a tin can, which presumably was his spaceship, talking to a ground controller as he floated far above the Moon and the Earth.

He claimed that the song came to him after seeing a film directed by Stanley Kubrick entitled: 2001 A Space Odyssey. Bowie stated that he went stoned out of his mind to see the movie and that it had freaked him out. It would appear this film had a dramatic influence on his life as it dealt with existentialism, human evolution, technology and artificial intelligence, amongst other things and if you are anything like me, when I read a word I don’t understand, I dive into the dictionary to find out its meaning. This time it was the word, Existentialism, which means:

A philosophical theory which emphasizes individual freedom and choice. It is a philosophy that views humans as defining the meaning of their own lives by acts of will, where they determine their own development and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe.

I have always found it rather strange that Pop Stars find the need to explore these things and I find it interesting to read what they do when they are confronted by the reality of life. Like so many, David Bowie thought that he would find the meaning of life in philosophy, mind-bending drugs and visits to people of dubious learning, who also made use of hallucinogenic substances, in an effort to find out what he was supposed to be doing here on earth. We are told that he employed acts of his own will in an effort to find himself by determining his own growth and improvement.

If only he had turned to the Bible and read the most maligned story in the Scriptures, which describes what happened when Adam and Eve decided to define the meaning of their own lives and to exercise their own free will and disobey God. The entire downfall of mankind is there for all of us to read about. It is there for our learning. Sadly many refuse to believe it and rush head-long into their own downfall with disastrous consequences. The Bible teaches us that there are only two ways, two wills and two ends and every person has chosen one or the other. We are either with God or against Him. To be with God means the divine will is paramount. To be against God means that any other will takes precedence. Therefore we have before us:

  • The broad way and the narrow way.
  • The human will and the divine will.
  • The results of philosophy and the results of faith.

Sadly we know which direction David Bowie chose.
Believing in evolution also has its pitfalls because those who do, have no right whatsoever to blame God for anything that happens in this world. Simply because evolutionists believe there is no God! And what’s more, there is no such thing as freewill! It does not exist! How could it? It is the survival of the fittest and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the niceties of determining our own development and discovering the meaning to life, and this is because evolution is a blind, pitiless black hole of a belief system devoid of consciousness and any meaning at all!

David Bowie went on to produce and release his final album called Blackstar on January 8th, 2016, his birthday. It was described as a very strange and daring work which encompassed a mood darkened by bitter awareness of mortality. He also released a video for a final song entitled Lazarus just three days before his death, which showed him trapped in a hospital bed, his frail body shaking beneath the covers with bandages covering his eyes, as he sang: Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen, I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen, everybody knows me now. It also included several references to death, crucifixes and burials.

DAVID BOWIE - 2

I know many will not agree with me when I say that the life of David Bowie was wasted. He had opportunities to read and study the Scriptures, just like all of us, and yet he decided not to. He had chance after chance to find out the truth about his existence and what God intended for him during his years on earth, and yet he chose to waste them. A wonderfully talented man with God-given musical abilities that many can only dream of having, who decided, of his own free will, to ignore his Creator and the message of the Gospel. Sad, so sad!