Brexit
At the end of December 2020, Britain finally disengaged from the European Union and recovered much of her national sovereignty. When she joined the European Economic Community (EEC), as it was then called, on 1 January 1973, the fears were that Britain would be unequally yoked with predominantly Roman Catholic nations; that the EEC was already proving its inefficiency by the quantities of food being stockpiled (“the butter mountain”) or destroyed; and that the EEC was an opaque organisation, not answerable to any electorate, and issuing a plethora of meddlesome “directives” having the force of law.
During the 48 years of British membership of the EU, the Roman Catholic influence dwindled in the face of secularism, but a host of new evils emerged. As was mentioned in the May Free Presbyterian Magazine, Britain cannot blame the EU and associated bodies for many of these evils because Britain imposed them upon herself, but those promoting them generally found that the various European institutions strengthened their hands. In more recent years, the menace of Islamic immigration has radically changed the face of Europe and threatens the continued existence of almost all the European nations in their present form. The old EU confidence is greatly muted.
Through to the end of the twentieth century, the prospects of Britain leaving the European Union were remote. In the 1970s, Marie En dean’s “Newbury Anti-Common Market Campaign” represented the whole of West Berkshire, and comprised about 30 old folk, mainly eccentric and surprisingly many of them Roman Catholic. The 1975 referendum was 67% in favour of remaining in the EEC, and in the 1997 General Election the anti-EU “Referendum Party” received only 2.6% of the vote after an extensive campaign. In 2004, Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, signed the EU Constitution Treaty that was popularly supposed to lock Britain permanently into the EU. The mere holding of a referendum on the EU in 2016 was a victory, and the outcome a matter of astonishment. This was followed by a prolonged political campaign to obstruct Brexit, which collapsed with the conclusive General Election of December 2019.
Does the Lord have a purpose of mercy towards Britain in all this? We do not know. Britain has unexpectedly and undeservedly received back much of her freedom, but she is in a fearful moral state, has irreligious leaders and a rising Islamic population, has annihilated nine million of her children through abortion, and has now lost much of her wealth through Covid. The Lord has granted us an opportunity to take stock of our national situation, and to repent of our departure from Him. If we do so, He will have mercy. “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them” (Jer 18:7-8). DWBS
Creationism Better Than Evolutionism
The paradigm, or idea, behind Evolutionism is that everything in animal and plant life is explicable in terms of survival or dominance, and that anything not explicable in this way is a freak of chance. The paradigm behind Creationism is that everything in life serves to illustrate some aspect of the glory of God. Thus human beings have faces, voices, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, not merely for survival, but because these help us to think about and understand aspects of God’s Being and procedure. God has no feet but He lifts up His “feet to the perpetual desolations” (Ps 74:3) when He revisits and revives a spiritual work that He has long allowed to languish. Whatever other purposes human and animal feet may serve in this world, ultimately they were created to give us a language for thinking about God. Thus food gives us the idea of living in the closest dependence upon Christ, while waste gives an idea of sin as hateful and abhorrent to God (Gehenna or the Valley of Hinnom was the place for rubbish).
Apart from its truth, Creationism explains far more than Evolutionism. Evolutionism has no real explanation for basic things in human life such as love, religion, morality and beauty. Feeble and contrived attempts are often made to account for them in evolutionary terms, but consistent Evolutionism dismisses them as freaks with no coherent place in the ruthless struggle for survival. Little wonder that human societies which swallow the evolutionary dogma have little place for these things either. Creationism, on the other hand, seeks, and often finds, satisfying and edifying explanations for everything in existence. Why did God create snow, for example? Why did God create dogs? Why did God create children? For a Creationist, these are interesting questions, but the Evolutionist gets nothing from them. “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches” (Ps 104:24). DWBS
The Ozanne Foundation
Jayne Ozanne, a member of the General Synod of the Church of England who campaigns for homosexual equality within the Church and the wider Evangelical community, has attacked those who say that homosexual lifestyles are sinful. In an article for the website Gay News, she compared Christians who uphold biblical principles on sexual ethics to “Holocaust deniers” and “rapists”. In November 2020 the Church of England published a document, “Living in Love and Faith”, in which people of differing views are advised to “listen and learn” from “conservative communities of faith”. It was in response to this that Ozanne directed her inflammatory statement. On another occasion she was reported as saying, “Churches and individuals that engage in prayer, private conversation and teaching which does not affirm homosexual or transgender lifestyles should be held to account and face the full force of the law”.
Ozanne is the founder of the Ozanne Foundation, an organisation which affirms and celebrates LGBT practice and includes a call to ban “all attempts to change, suppress or erase a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression”. The chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation is Rev Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool. One of the first theological books the writer bought was Practical Religion, by the first Bishop of Liverpool, J C Ryle. One can only imagine what his response would have been to the behaviour of some of the bishops, clergy and laity in the current General Synod. He would, no doubt, have felt sympathy for those treated without Christian love and compassion, but he would never have countenanced the subversion and overthrow of the Word of God shown by those who accept and promote behaviour which is specifically condemned by it.
The members of this Foundation are amongst those who carefully select the parts of the Word of God of which they disapprove, and they would wish to have them expunged. They change the truth of God into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator. We are to love our fellow men, but to advocate approval of a lifestyle condemned by Scripture is not the love that we are required to show to our neighbour. FRD