Homosexual Hatred of Christianity
Something of the hatred of homosexuals for Christianity was seen recently in Palm Springs, California. A Christian Institute press release describes an angry crowd parading down a street protesting loudly against a vote in the State of California to prohibit marriage between same-sex couples and to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Some of the demonstrators spotted an elderly lady making a peaceful Christian protest by holding up a cross (a symbol which is not appropriate). In any case, the lady was suddenly surrounded by a group of sodomites who jostled her, yelled violent abuse directly in her face and smashed her cross. The ugly scene, including the fear of the terrified woman, was captured on film and posted on the internet.
This is just one of many such incidents in California, where there has been a spate of disorderly protests by supporters of “gay marriage”. Television cameras showed one protester jumping on top of a police car, and at least 14 protestors had to be arrested in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
These perverted people demand tolerance, and even approval, of their unnatural and destructive lifestyle but they will not tolerate opposition to it, especially from those whom they perceive to be Christians. The godly cannot but grieve because of the increasing and militant promotion of the sin of Sodom and of vicious attacks on Christian norms. It seems that the attitude of aggressive homosexual activists is similar to those who in the Psalmist’s day asserted, “With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?” The answer to their question is in the next verse: “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord” (see Ps 12:4,5). NMR
Britain Determined to Return to Religious Bondage
The document, “A Common Word Between Us and You”, signed by a large body of Muslim scholars two years ago, deceived many. They were led to believe that Islam is fundamentally a religion of peace, because the document claimed that Islam and Christianity are on the same foundation of love – love to God and love to our neighbour. Of course, the god of Islam is not the triune God of Christianity, nor does Islam teach Muslims to love their Christian neighbours. Nevertheless the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was among those who welcomed the document. Worse still (as Christian Voice reports) the present Premier Gordon Brown has stated recently his wish for “new facilities for multi-faith scholarship in Britain”, “inter-faith groups” in “every constituency of the country” and funding for “a European centre of excellence for Islamic studies” in Britain.
Shame on our nation for turning back from our Reformed Christian heritage to the darkness of false religions! When many of the Jews, on returning to Judah from captivity in Babylon, married heathen people and participated in their sins, Ezra the scribe was deeply grieved by their backsliding. His sorrow is seen in his prayer: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee. . . . O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Thy commandments” (Ezra 9:6,10). The Jews at that time were brought to repent of their declension (Ezra 10:1). May the Lord likewise cause us nationally to return to Him in penitence! NMR
“Why Would Anyone Believe in God?”
This question is taken from the title of a book by Dr Justin Barrett of Oxford University. It has received media attention recently on account of publicity given to his view that children “instinctively believe that almost everything has been designed with a specific purpose”. He asserts that “children’s normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds, relatively difficult to believe”. He claims that research, including his own, suggests that “children seem to have a predisposition to believe in some kind of god”, though the kind of god they believe in depends on their culture and, through what they are taught, their natural propensity to believe in a god may be overridden. He affirms that “belief in God is an almost inevitable consequence of the kind of minds we have. Most of what we believe comes from mental tools working below our conscious awareness . . . and beliefs in gods match up well with these automatic assumptions; beliefs in an all-knowing, all-powerful God match up even better.”
Our knowledge of Dr Barrett, his published work and his general religious and philosophical position is too limited to know the extent to which he accepts the Biblical account of Creation and of the reasons for man’s knowledge of God, and to what extent he rejects evolution as contributing to making man what he is. A professed Christian and graduate of Calvin College and Cornell University, he is engaged in research at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind and The Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. He believes in “an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God who brought the universe into being”. But he is also described as a “byproduct theorist” who considers “that belief in a god or gods is a byproduct of several cognitive tools our brain uses to help us survive”.
It is important to recognise that there can be no compromise between accepting the Biblical account of creation as the work of God, by which He made “all things of nothing by the word of His power, in the space of six days, and all very good” (Shorter Catechism, answer 9), and some form of theistic evolution – or between the Biblical account of God’s creation of man “after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, with dominion over the creatures” (Shorter Catechism, answer 10) and the notion that God brought him to his present state by some evolutionary process.
Dr Alan Cairns, in his Dictionary of Theological Terms, has a succinct article on Theistic Evolution: “The theory that God, having performed the primary creative act, used the process of evolution to develop the universe over a very long period of time. The theory labours under the problems of seeking to force Scripture into the mould of current sceptical thought, of the intrinsic scientific impossibility of evolution, and of denying, or evacuating of their native force, the plain statements of Scripture on the subject of creation”.
According to the Bible, man was created with the knowledge or consciousness of God. That consciousness was part of the constitution with which God made man and it was instructed and informed by the revelation which God made of Himself to man in His works of creation and providence and in His spoken word. Since the Fall, in which mankind lost the knowledge, righteousness and true holiness with which He was created (and which are restored only in and through Christ and the work of regeneration), the human race has been unable to get away from what Charles Hodge, for example, describes as “the conviction that there is a Being on whom they are dependent, and to whom they are responsible” (Systematic Theology, vol 1, p 191). The human race is surrounded by facts which should prevent them denying that God exists and keep them from thinking “that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29).
But sin has corrupted the human mind, so that people resist the evidences of “His eternal power and Godhead”, suppress the truth concerning God and turn it into a lie, and they do so because they do not like to retain God in their knowledge. It is this fact – that mankind cannot get away from confrontation with the reality of God – which makes many atheists so violent in their opposition to the idea of God as the Bible and creation reveal Him. In order that sinners come to recognise the truth concerning God and give to God the place which is rightly His, it is necessary that they be confronted with God’s self-revelation in His written Word and in the Word made flesh, that their minds be enlightened about that revelation, and that they be made willing to accept the truth thus revealed.
Given the Biblical facts, it is no wonder that the human brain would be programmed to believe in God. That the belief results in such a diversity of religions and gods which are dumb and non-existent is fully accounted for by the Biblical account of the Fall. That the Biblical account of God fits in with all we know of reality is no wonder, seeing it is self- evidently true. May Dr Barrett’s question provoke many to seek the full answer given to it in the Bible!
HMC
Assisted Suicide
The pressure to legalise assisted suicide in Britain continues. Sky TV has shown the moment of death of a man with motor neurone disease who was assisted to commit suicide in 2006, while Margo Macdonald, an MSP suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is hoping to introduce a bill in the Scottish Parliament legalising suicide for the terminally ill. Meanwhile in a recent case in England, the Director of Public Prosecutions has decided not to prosecute the parents of Daniel James, a rugby player who broke his neck during training in 2007. After several failed attempts at suicide, his parents took him to a clinic in Switzerland where he was helped to kill himself. Mr James was not terminally ill. The Director of Public Prosecutions said that although there was “sufficient evidence” that the parents had broken the 1961 Suicide Act, it would not, on balance, be “in the public interest” to bring charges.
The Word of God condemns suicide, warning us with the examples of Saul and of Judas. By implication it also condemns the assisting of others to kill themselves. Suicide is the ultimate folly, and it is tragic to think of our fellow-countrymen precipitating their own souls, and the souls of their loved ones, unprepared into the eternal world. The Scriptures plainly declare that those who die without trusting in Christ, whether by ordinary death or by suicide, go to a place and state of eternal conscious torment, unspeakably worse than any suffering they may leave behind in this world. They do not, alas, “rest in peace”, no matter how their surviving relatives may comfort themselves with vain delusions.
DWBS
Woolworths Goes Bankrupt
After a long period of financial difficulty, the British high-street retailer Woolworths has gone into administration. This branch of the company was founded in 1909 by the businessman F W Woolworth. Many readers will remember the leading role played by Woolworths in the successful campaign to introduce Sabbath trading in Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s.
DWBS