1. The block of flats was run not by the Council but by Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO). This body is made up of 8 TENANTS, 4 councillors and 3 independent members.2 Labour hold the seat that the block is situated in.3 Labour run the London Council who manage the under-funded London Fire Service4 Emma Coad the sitting Labour MP for that ward also sat on the KCTMO.5 The advice to stay put which Sadiq Khan has been so vocal about was given by the London Fire Service.6 The decision to change contractors during the refurb was made by KCTMO.7 The decision not to spend an additional £138k on fitting sprinklers was again KCTMO.8 The decision to create Arms Length Management Organisatins (ALMO) such as the KCTMO was made under the Right To Manage legislation passed in 2002 as part of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act.9 This was put in place to give leaseholders and tenants a greater say and the ability to self manage, which in some circumstances has clearly proven to be flawed.10 Which Govt was in a charge when this law was passed? It was Labour.11 Sadiq Khan as mayor of London Produced a report to say that the fire service did not need further funding.12 Emma Coad elected Labour MP was on the board of the Tenant Management group who are being accused of not listening to tenants.Further, according to Christopher Booker (a strong advocate for Remain) in the Telegraph, when the Grenfell Tower was built, the cladding materials were glass-based and inert. Fire could not pass through or behind the cladding. Since then, authority for specification of construction materials has passed from individual governments to the EU. The EU has decreed, as part of climate change initiatives, that the main purpose of cladding is to provide insulation, thus reducing the need to burn fuel. When, three years ago, Kensington spent £10m on up-rating the Grenfell Tower it had no option but to use cladding permitted by the EU. Unfortunately, the cladding is not fireproof. I have not (yet) heard anybody accuse the EU of responsibility for the fire - though that is where at least part of the blame lies.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
The Grenfell Tower catastrophe
The following appear to be matters of public record:
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
*Why the Odds Favor Islam* _WILLIAM KILPATRICK_
On May 22, an Islamic suicide bomber detonated himself outside a pop concert in Manchester, England, killing and wounding dozens, many of them young children.
The terrorist was a 22-year-old named Salman Abedi. A few days after the attack, I was reading an article about the mosque he attended—the Didsbury Mosque. “That’s funny,” I thought looking at the accompanying photo, “that doesn’t look like a mosque, it looks like a church.”
Sure enough, as I discovered, the Didsbury Mosque was once the Albert Park Methodist Chapel. It had been bought by the local Syrian Muslim community and transformed into a Muslim place of worship.
Similar transformations have been taking place in other parts of the UK. St. Mark’s Church in London is now the New Peckham Mosque, St. Peter’s Church in Cobridge was sold to the Madina Mosque. The Brick Lane Mosque in London was originally a Methodist church. But church-to-mosque conversions are only part of a larger story. There are now 423 mosques in London, and the number is expected to grow. Meanwhile, 500 London churches have closed since 2001, and in all of England 10,000 churches have closed since 1960.
The transformation of the Albert Park Methodist Church to the Didsbury Mosque is emblematic of one of the most significant shifts in history: the transformation of Europe from a largely Christian continent to a largely Islamic one. The transformation is far from complete, and there’s an outside chance the process can be reversed, but time and demographics favor Islam.
In several of Europe’s cities, the Muslim population now hovers around the thirty percent mark. In ten years’ time, that will be forty percent. Of course that doesn’t mean 40 percent of highly committed Muslims facing 60 percent of deeply devout Christians. Both faiths have their share of half-hearted “nominals” for whom religion is more a cultural inheritance than a deeply held conviction. Still, the “nominal” problem is a much greater problem for European Christians than for European Muslims. In many European countries, Sunday church attendance is the 5-10 percent range whereas mosque attendance is very high in relation to the size of the Muslim population. In England, there are already more Muslims attending Friday prayers than there are Christians attending Anglican services on Sundays. A study by Christian Research predicts that by 2020 the number of Muslims attending prayer service in England and Wales will exceed the number of Catholics attending weekly Mass.
It’s also noteworthy that the expanding Muslim population in Europe is relatively young, whereas the declining “Christian” population is an aging one. Sixty-forty seems like good odds until you realize that the average age of the 60 percenters will be around 55 while the average age of the 40 percenters will be around 25.
You may object that if there is any fighting to be done, most of the fighting on the “Christian” side will be done by the army, not by citizens in walkers and wheelchairs. But keep in mind that the military draws its recruits from the ranks of the young. As the population of the people that Islamists refer to as “crusaders” ages, European governments will be forced to draw more of their new recruits from the Muslim population. The same goes for the police forces. Many Muslims will serve their country or their city faithfully, but many will have divided loyalties, and some will have signed up in the first place with mutiny in mind.
Most likely, however, the transformation will be effected without major battles. It won’t be a matter of numbers or of military strength, but of strength of belief. Those with the strongest beliefs will prevail. Those who are not sure what to believe will submit without a fight.
Will Europe Defend its “Values”?
That’s the theme of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, a novel about the gradual Islamization of France. The protagonist, a middle-aged professor, has a number of qualms about the Islamic takeover of the university system, but nothing sufficient to resist it. The things he values most—literature, good food, and sex—are, in the end, no impediment to accepting Islam. True, he is offered several inducements to convert—career advancement, plenty of money, and several “wives”—but one gets the impression that, even without these incentives, he would still eventually convert. At one point prior to his submission, he thinks about joining a monastic order as his literary hero, J.K. Huysmans, had done, but he soon realizes that he lacks the necessary Christian conviction. Indeed, he has no strong convictions.
His plight is the plight of contemporary Europe in a nutshell. Many Europeans see no sense in resisting Islamization because they have nothing worth defending. To be sure, European leaders still talk about “our values,” but they can’t seem to specify what those values are, beyond appeals to “diversity” and “pluralism.” For example, after the Manchester massacre, British Prime Minister Theresa May stated that “our values—the liberal, pluralistic values of Britain—will always prevail over the hateful ideology of the terrorists.”
I’m not so sure of that. In an earlier era, Brits would have connected their values to God, country, family, and honor. In other words, things worth fighting for. But “liberal, pluralistic values”? That’s not very solid ground on which to take your stand. Who wants to die for diversity? Indeed, it can be argued that the worship of diversity for its own sake is what allowed terrorists to get a foothold in England in the first place. No one wanted to question all those diverse preachers spreading their diverse message about Jews, infidels, and homosexuals. The trouble is, unless there are higher values than diversity, there’s no way of judging between good diversities and bad diversities—between, say, honoring your wife and honor-killing her if she displeases you.
The same is true of freedom. Freedom is a fundamental right, but what you do with your freedom is also important. There has to be some higher objective value that directs our choices to good ends rather than bad ones. Otherwise, freedom becomes a license to do anything one pleases.
An Attack on Childhood
Here we touch on a very touchy subject. I would not like to be in Theresa May’s shoes when, after a horrifying attack, she has to come up with just the right words. But one thing she said struck me as not quite right. She said: “We struggle to comprehend the warped and twisted mind that sees a room packed with young children not as a scene to cherish, but as an opportunity for carnage.”
It’s possible to fully agree with May’s sentiments while, at the same time, noting that there once was a time when a room full of children watching an Ariana Grande concert would not be considered “a scene to cherish.” “Her dress, dancing, and song lyrics,” wrote one columnist, “are deliberately decadent and immodest.” And, after watching some YouTube clips of her performances, I would have to agree. I’m pretty sure that most of the parents I know would not want their children to attend one of her concerts.
While the world was justly outraged at Salman Abedi’s attack on innocent children, no one seems to notice the attack on childhood innocence that the typical pop concert represents. The two “attacks” should not be equated, of course. The producers of pop concerts are not the moral equivalents of a suicide bomber. Still, the fact that so many parents saw nothing wrong with dropping their children off at the Manchester concert suggests a great deal of moral confusion in the West.
Unfortunately, such moral confusion leaves people vulnerable to those who are absolutely certain about their beliefs. The moral relativism of the West is one of the chief reasons why the Islamic cultural jihad has been so successful. People who can’t see that the soft-porn style of Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and Ariana Grande is not good for children will have difficulty seeing the problem with polygamy, child marriage, and other aspects of sharia law. In a relativistic society, the safest default position is “who’s to judge?”
Relativism Leads to Islamic Dominance
Earlier I said that Europe is being transformed from a Christian culture to an Islamic culture, but that’s not quite accurate because it’s actually a three-stage transformation. Much of Europe has already transitioned out of its Christian stage and into a post-Christian or secular stage. There are still many Christians in Europe, but Europe’s Christian consciousness has been largely lost. The next stage is the transition from secularism to Islam. That’s not inevitable, but it’s likely because without a framework of Judeo-Christian beliefs, secularism becomes relativism and relativism can’t offer much resistance to determined true believers.
Back in 2014, Theresa May said “we celebrate different ways of life, we value diversity, and we cherish our freedom to lead our lives as we choose.” But if your culture stands for nothing more than the freedom to shop for different lifestyles, it won’t last long. The contemporary Western fascination with pop culture highlights the problem. Pop culture is by its very nature a transient phenomenon. What is pop today won’t be pop tomorrow. Indeed, the popular culture of tomorrow may very well favor burqas, multiple wives, and male supremacy. There may still be a place for singer-dancers like Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus, but that place would most likely be as a harem dancer in a Sultan’s palace or as entertainment for a Saudi prince who has bought up a country estate in Oxfordshire.
It’s hard to beat transcendent values with transient values. That’s especially the case when the transcendent crowd are willing to die (and kill you in the process) for their values. Most Brits, on the other hand, are not willing to lay down their lives for the sake of keeping bacon on the menu or porn on the telly.
Christianity vs. Two Forms of Totalitarianism
When I use the word “transcendent,” I refer only to a belief in an eternal life beyond this worldly existence. Quite obviously, as in the case of Salman Abedi, transcendent values can be twisted. The idea that God will reward you for murdering innocent young women in Manchester by furnishing you with virginal young women in paradise is a truly twisted concept. But apparently it is widely shared in the Muslim world. When, during a World Cup qualifier in Australia, a minute of silence was called to commemorate the London terror victims, the whole Saudi soccer team refused to observe it. As Sheik Mohammad Tawhidi later explained:
In their eyes the attackers are martyrs who are going to paradise. And if they stand for a minute of silence they are against their Muslim brothers who fought for jihad and fought the infidels.
As twisted as these values may be, it’s beginning to look as though secular values aren’t up to the job of opposing them. The trouble with secular values when they are cut off from their Judeo-Christian roots is that they are arbitrary. Autonomy? Dignity? Equality? Says who?
“If there is no God,” wrote Dostoevsky, “everything is permitted.” Secularism has no God and, therefore, no ultimate standard of judgment. The end result is that each man becomes his own god and does his own thing—even if that “thing” involves the exploitation of childhood innocence. Islam, on the other hand, does believe in God, but not the God Dostoevsky had in mind. The God of Islam is an arbitrary despot whose commands are not rooted in reason, love, or justice.
So we have two arbitrary systems vying for control of the West—the soft totalitarianism of secularism and the hard totalitarianism of Islam. Both are really forms of slavery. Muslims are slaves of a tyrannical God, and secular man becomes the slave of his own desires and addictions. It may seem unthinkable that the West will ever submit to Islam, but many Western citizens are already in submission mode. Submission to their desires has put them in a bad spot. As a result, they are looking for something bigger to submit to—something outside and above their own fragile selves. Some have already turned to Islam. Many more will unless…
Unless, that is, there is a recovery of the Judeo-Christian belief that God is a God of love, justice, reason, and goodness—and that we are made in his image (a concept which does not exist in Islam). In the context of that vision, belief in human dignity and the rights of man is thoroughly justified.
People who believe that they and their neighbor are made in the image of God will generally have a strong sense of their responsibility to act accordingly. Such people will be far from perfect, but they will at least realize that it is wrong to submit both to Islam’s warped image of God and to secularism’s degraded image of man.
In the end, the choice for the West is not between Islam and pluralistic secularism. A rootless secularism will almost certainly submit to Islam. The only real hope for the West is the recovery of the faith that once inspired Christians to build a beautiful church near Albert Park in West Didsbury, England.
The terrorist was a 22-year-old named Salman Abedi. A few days after the attack, I was reading an article about the mosque he attended—the Didsbury Mosque. “That’s funny,” I thought looking at the accompanying photo, “that doesn’t look like a mosque, it looks like a church.”
Sure enough, as I discovered, the Didsbury Mosque was once the Albert Park Methodist Chapel. It had been bought by the local Syrian Muslim community and transformed into a Muslim place of worship.
Similar transformations have been taking place in other parts of the UK. St. Mark’s Church in London is now the New Peckham Mosque, St. Peter’s Church in Cobridge was sold to the Madina Mosque. The Brick Lane Mosque in London was originally a Methodist church. But church-to-mosque conversions are only part of a larger story. There are now 423 mosques in London, and the number is expected to grow. Meanwhile, 500 London churches have closed since 2001, and in all of England 10,000 churches have closed since 1960.
The transformation of the Albert Park Methodist Church to the Didsbury Mosque is emblematic of one of the most significant shifts in history: the transformation of Europe from a largely Christian continent to a largely Islamic one. The transformation is far from complete, and there’s an outside chance the process can be reversed, but time and demographics favor Islam.
In several of Europe’s cities, the Muslim population now hovers around the thirty percent mark. In ten years’ time, that will be forty percent. Of course that doesn’t mean 40 percent of highly committed Muslims facing 60 percent of deeply devout Christians. Both faiths have their share of half-hearted “nominals” for whom religion is more a cultural inheritance than a deeply held conviction. Still, the “nominal” problem is a much greater problem for European Christians than for European Muslims. In many European countries, Sunday church attendance is the 5-10 percent range whereas mosque attendance is very high in relation to the size of the Muslim population. In England, there are already more Muslims attending Friday prayers than there are Christians attending Anglican services on Sundays. A study by Christian Research predicts that by 2020 the number of Muslims attending prayer service in England and Wales will exceed the number of Catholics attending weekly Mass.
It’s also noteworthy that the expanding Muslim population in Europe is relatively young, whereas the declining “Christian” population is an aging one. Sixty-forty seems like good odds until you realize that the average age of the 60 percenters will be around 55 while the average age of the 40 percenters will be around 25.
You may object that if there is any fighting to be done, most of the fighting on the “Christian” side will be done by the army, not by citizens in walkers and wheelchairs. But keep in mind that the military draws its recruits from the ranks of the young. As the population of the people that Islamists refer to as “crusaders” ages, European governments will be forced to draw more of their new recruits from the Muslim population. The same goes for the police forces. Many Muslims will serve their country or their city faithfully, but many will have divided loyalties, and some will have signed up in the first place with mutiny in mind.
Most likely, however, the transformation will be effected without major battles. It won’t be a matter of numbers or of military strength, but of strength of belief. Those with the strongest beliefs will prevail. Those who are not sure what to believe will submit without a fight.
Will Europe Defend its “Values”?
That’s the theme of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, a novel about the gradual Islamization of France. The protagonist, a middle-aged professor, has a number of qualms about the Islamic takeover of the university system, but nothing sufficient to resist it. The things he values most—literature, good food, and sex—are, in the end, no impediment to accepting Islam. True, he is offered several inducements to convert—career advancement, plenty of money, and several “wives”—but one gets the impression that, even without these incentives, he would still eventually convert. At one point prior to his submission, he thinks about joining a monastic order as his literary hero, J.K. Huysmans, had done, but he soon realizes that he lacks the necessary Christian conviction. Indeed, he has no strong convictions.
His plight is the plight of contemporary Europe in a nutshell. Many Europeans see no sense in resisting Islamization because they have nothing worth defending. To be sure, European leaders still talk about “our values,” but they can’t seem to specify what those values are, beyond appeals to “diversity” and “pluralism.” For example, after the Manchester massacre, British Prime Minister Theresa May stated that “our values—the liberal, pluralistic values of Britain—will always prevail over the hateful ideology of the terrorists.”
I’m not so sure of that. In an earlier era, Brits would have connected their values to God, country, family, and honor. In other words, things worth fighting for. But “liberal, pluralistic values”? That’s not very solid ground on which to take your stand. Who wants to die for diversity? Indeed, it can be argued that the worship of diversity for its own sake is what allowed terrorists to get a foothold in England in the first place. No one wanted to question all those diverse preachers spreading their diverse message about Jews, infidels, and homosexuals. The trouble is, unless there are higher values than diversity, there’s no way of judging between good diversities and bad diversities—between, say, honoring your wife and honor-killing her if she displeases you.
The same is true of freedom. Freedom is a fundamental right, but what you do with your freedom is also important. There has to be some higher objective value that directs our choices to good ends rather than bad ones. Otherwise, freedom becomes a license to do anything one pleases.
An Attack on Childhood
Here we touch on a very touchy subject. I would not like to be in Theresa May’s shoes when, after a horrifying attack, she has to come up with just the right words. But one thing she said struck me as not quite right. She said: “We struggle to comprehend the warped and twisted mind that sees a room packed with young children not as a scene to cherish, but as an opportunity for carnage.”
It’s possible to fully agree with May’s sentiments while, at the same time, noting that there once was a time when a room full of children watching an Ariana Grande concert would not be considered “a scene to cherish.” “Her dress, dancing, and song lyrics,” wrote one columnist, “are deliberately decadent and immodest.” And, after watching some YouTube clips of her performances, I would have to agree. I’m pretty sure that most of the parents I know would not want their children to attend one of her concerts.
While the world was justly outraged at Salman Abedi’s attack on innocent children, no one seems to notice the attack on childhood innocence that the typical pop concert represents. The two “attacks” should not be equated, of course. The producers of pop concerts are not the moral equivalents of a suicide bomber. Still, the fact that so many parents saw nothing wrong with dropping their children off at the Manchester concert suggests a great deal of moral confusion in the West.
Unfortunately, such moral confusion leaves people vulnerable to those who are absolutely certain about their beliefs. The moral relativism of the West is one of the chief reasons why the Islamic cultural jihad has been so successful. People who can’t see that the soft-porn style of Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and Ariana Grande is not good for children will have difficulty seeing the problem with polygamy, child marriage, and other aspects of sharia law. In a relativistic society, the safest default position is “who’s to judge?”
Relativism Leads to Islamic Dominance
Earlier I said that Europe is being transformed from a Christian culture to an Islamic culture, but that’s not quite accurate because it’s actually a three-stage transformation. Much of Europe has already transitioned out of its Christian stage and into a post-Christian or secular stage. There are still many Christians in Europe, but Europe’s Christian consciousness has been largely lost. The next stage is the transition from secularism to Islam. That’s not inevitable, but it’s likely because without a framework of Judeo-Christian beliefs, secularism becomes relativism and relativism can’t offer much resistance to determined true believers.
Back in 2014, Theresa May said “we celebrate different ways of life, we value diversity, and we cherish our freedom to lead our lives as we choose.” But if your culture stands for nothing more than the freedom to shop for different lifestyles, it won’t last long. The contemporary Western fascination with pop culture highlights the problem. Pop culture is by its very nature a transient phenomenon. What is pop today won’t be pop tomorrow. Indeed, the popular culture of tomorrow may very well favor burqas, multiple wives, and male supremacy. There may still be a place for singer-dancers like Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus, but that place would most likely be as a harem dancer in a Sultan’s palace or as entertainment for a Saudi prince who has bought up a country estate in Oxfordshire.
It’s hard to beat transcendent values with transient values. That’s especially the case when the transcendent crowd are willing to die (and kill you in the process) for their values. Most Brits, on the other hand, are not willing to lay down their lives for the sake of keeping bacon on the menu or porn on the telly.
Christianity vs. Two Forms of Totalitarianism
When I use the word “transcendent,” I refer only to a belief in an eternal life beyond this worldly existence. Quite obviously, as in the case of Salman Abedi, transcendent values can be twisted. The idea that God will reward you for murdering innocent young women in Manchester by furnishing you with virginal young women in paradise is a truly twisted concept. But apparently it is widely shared in the Muslim world. When, during a World Cup qualifier in Australia, a minute of silence was called to commemorate the London terror victims, the whole Saudi soccer team refused to observe it. As Sheik Mohammad Tawhidi later explained:
In their eyes the attackers are martyrs who are going to paradise. And if they stand for a minute of silence they are against their Muslim brothers who fought for jihad and fought the infidels.
As twisted as these values may be, it’s beginning to look as though secular values aren’t up to the job of opposing them. The trouble with secular values when they are cut off from their Judeo-Christian roots is that they are arbitrary. Autonomy? Dignity? Equality? Says who?
“If there is no God,” wrote Dostoevsky, “everything is permitted.” Secularism has no God and, therefore, no ultimate standard of judgment. The end result is that each man becomes his own god and does his own thing—even if that “thing” involves the exploitation of childhood innocence. Islam, on the other hand, does believe in God, but not the God Dostoevsky had in mind. The God of Islam is an arbitrary despot whose commands are not rooted in reason, love, or justice.
So we have two arbitrary systems vying for control of the West—the soft totalitarianism of secularism and the hard totalitarianism of Islam. Both are really forms of slavery. Muslims are slaves of a tyrannical God, and secular man becomes the slave of his own desires and addictions. It may seem unthinkable that the West will ever submit to Islam, but many Western citizens are already in submission mode. Submission to their desires has put them in a bad spot. As a result, they are looking for something bigger to submit to—something outside and above their own fragile selves. Some have already turned to Islam. Many more will unless…
Unless, that is, there is a recovery of the Judeo-Christian belief that God is a God of love, justice, reason, and goodness—and that we are made in his image (a concept which does not exist in Islam). In the context of that vision, belief in human dignity and the rights of man is thoroughly justified.
People who believe that they and their neighbor are made in the image of God will generally have a strong sense of their responsibility to act accordingly. Such people will be far from perfect, but they will at least realize that it is wrong to submit both to Islam’s warped image of God and to secularism’s degraded image of man.
In the end, the choice for the West is not between Islam and pluralistic secularism. A rootless secularism will almost certainly submit to Islam. The only real hope for the West is the recovery of the faith that once inspired Christians to build a beautiful church near Albert Park in West Didsbury, England.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
There is a new heresy
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In a time of depression, a prayer.
Lord, Thank You even for this time when my mind and spirit are depressed, feeling low, and dull to the things of God and joys of life. Use this darkness so that I can see light. Use these depths so that I can see heights. Use this time as a mirror into my own soul's need for grace. Use the hollow echoes as a resounding reminder of Your presence. Let this be a time of sanctification and growth in grace. Lead us not into despair, but deliver us from the evil one. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Monday, June 26, 2017
I am an unrepentant militant extremist
A recent article in Evangelicals Now reports on Christanophobia in the media during the recent election.Candidates for public office were pilloried for holding various views which I hold unashamedly.
1. Homosexual acts are sinful. Tim Farron was pressured to deny this. He is a member of a church which believes this as does my church which teaches what the Bible says. 1 Corinthians 6:9 - Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
2. God can answer prayer for healing in a miraculous way. God usually heals by normal medical means but he may heal miraculously.
3. I oppose all abortions except where the mother's life is in danger. 'Thou shalt not kill'. I support pressure to change the law to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks and to stop the present law allowing abortion at any time when the unborn child is deemed handicapped.
For good measure let me add two more extreme beliefs not covered by the article.
4. Jesus Christ the only way to know God as Father. John 14:6 - Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
5. Mohammed did not teach the true way to follow God. He was a false prophet.Read the Koran. It contradicts the truth of the Bible.Sadly the only place in England where one can proclaim this in public is Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park. Preach it in public elsewhere and you may be arrested as a hate preacher.I am not usually an open air preacher. I admire those who are and am prepared to do so myself.
I used to think I lived in a free country with freedom of speech. It is no longer so.
'Anyone rejecting an ideological shibboleth is vilified as racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, climate-change denier and so on.Such people aren’t being shamed over what they do but what they are. The aim is not to change their behaviour but to disbar them from the community of right-thinking people. In the interests of making a kinder, gentler, nicer world we have become tyrannical.'- MELANIE PHILLIPS, june 27 2017,the times, How we’ve turned into a shameless society
1. Homosexual acts are sinful. Tim Farron was pressured to deny this. He is a member of a church which believes this as does my church which teaches what the Bible says. 1 Corinthians 6:9 - Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
2. God can answer prayer for healing in a miraculous way. God usually heals by normal medical means but he may heal miraculously.
3. I oppose all abortions except where the mother's life is in danger. 'Thou shalt not kill'. I support pressure to change the law to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks and to stop the present law allowing abortion at any time when the unborn child is deemed handicapped.
For good measure let me add two more extreme beliefs not covered by the article.
4. Jesus Christ the only way to know God as Father. John 14:6 - Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
5. Mohammed did not teach the true way to follow God. He was a false prophet.Read the Koran. It contradicts the truth of the Bible.Sadly the only place in England where one can proclaim this in public is Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park. Preach it in public elsewhere and you may be arrested as a hate preacher.I am not usually an open air preacher. I admire those who are and am prepared to do so myself.
I used to think I lived in a free country with freedom of speech. It is no longer so.
'Anyone rejecting an ideological shibboleth is vilified as racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, climate-change denier and so on.Such people aren’t being shamed over what they do but what they are. The aim is not to change their behaviour but to disbar them from the community of right-thinking people. In the interests of making a kinder, gentler, nicer world we have become tyrannical.'- MELANIE PHILLIPS, june 27 2017,the times, How we’ve turned into a shameless society
Friday, June 23, 2017
June 23: Rev. James Caldwell
by archivist |
The Rebel’s High Priest
On this day of June 23, 1780, an American Revolutionary Battle took place in Springfield, New Jersey. Ordinarily we might think that this has no place in a historical devotional, but it does, because of the presence of the Rev. James Caldwell, pastor of the Elizabethtown Presbyterian Church.
Rev Caldwell was known as “the Rebel’s High Priest.” His congregation in present day Elizabeth, New Jersey, had provided forty line officers to the American Continental army. And Caldwell himself was the chaplain of Col. Elias Dayton’s Regiment in George Washington’s army.
This military campaign by the British and their German Hessian compatriots was a major push into New Jersey. They had a total of 6000 men. George Washington’s army, faced with diminishing supplies and desertions of men, had only about 3500, and not all of them at Springfield, New Jersey. So they were outnumbered 5 to 1 in their battles.
At the key point outside of Springfield, N.J., the American troops were out of wadding, the paper necessary to fire their muskets accurately. All along the line, there came cries of “Wadding! Give us wadding.” Rev. Caldwell was then riding up on his horse to encourage his men when he heard the cry for wadding. Riding back to the Springfield Presbyterian church and manse, he gathered the psalm hymn books, and threw them to the men. Referring to English hymn writer Isaac Watts, he called out “Give ’em Watts, boys, give ’em Watts boys.”
That line of “given them Watts, boys” has become the symbol of the forgotten battle of Springfield. The British eventually retreated from the battlefield, making the battle of Springfield an American victory. British troops never again entered New Jersey, with this battle being the last one up north in the Colonies.
Rev. Caldwell would be killed a little over a year later, just as his wife had been killed at this battle.
Quotes for Brexit day 2017
On this day in 2016 the UK voted to leave the EUSSR.
The common law will remain the basis of our legal system, and our Courts will continue to operate as they do at present..- British Government White paper 1971 on the effects of the proposed entry into the European Common Market,, quoted in Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p210
We've been invaded without a shot being fired. It's been an absolute waste of time going to war in 1914 and 1939. Millions of people died who didn't want a federal Europe and now Tony Blair's surrendering it. If you live in South Africa and you're a patriot, they give you the Nobel Prize, If you live in England and you're a patriot, they call you a bigot. Nobody represents us. ----Tom Bromley, Daily Telegraph (UK), November 8, 2000
We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not comprised. We are associated but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us and say, 'Shall we speak for thee?', we should reply, 'Nay Sir, for we dwell among our own people'. --Winston Churchill - 1953
European integration was a noble idea, born of the desire that France and Germany should not go to war again. - Boris Johnson, Lend Me Your Ears p296
Until the last 50 years the most prominent enthusiasts for a single European state were Napoleon and Hitler --Rod D. Martin, 8 October 1998. Vanguard
I was born a Tory, am a Tory and shall die a Tory. I never yet heard that it was any part of the faith of a Tory to take the institutions and liberties, the laws and customs which this country has evolved over centuries and merge them with those of eight other nations into a new-made artificial state, and what is more to do so without the willing approbation and consent of the nation. --Enoch Powell February 1974
To pretend that you cannot exchange goods and services freely with a Frenchman or an Italian unless there is an identical standard of bathing beaches or tap water in the different countries is not logic. It is naked aggression." --Enoch Powell Article, May 1990
This is not economic. It is a pure political process.-Romano Prodi, 31 Dec 2001, on the launching of the Euro currency.
In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations of the world -Baroness Thatcher at the Conservative conference , The Times, 9.10.99
I am not a Europhobe, afraid of Europe, I am a misEU, believing the EU to be a bad thing.- GJW
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