A clear and Present Danger

A Clear and Present Danger

If we face a clear and present danger from the “Beasts” of Revelation, what do they represent?



It would be easy, but I think wrong, to answer “Ah, of course, the Muslim Menace!”. Easy because Muslims are in the news in Western countries out of all proportion to their numbers. For a start here are the obvious Jihadist terror attacks throughout the West and the war with Islamic State. Then Islam is wildly over-represented in domestic non-terror related news. For example in Australia the latest census figures are just out and show that 52% say they are Christian, 30% “no religion” 2.6% Muslim, 2.4% Buddhist … Yet the media are for ever quoting Muslim spokespeople and affairs, but there are nearly as many Buddhists and they hardly aver get a mention.



For all that I believe they are not the present danger. Future – I fear they may indeed be; but not present. There are many “moderate” Muslim countries with whom we live and trade peacefully – and long may it remain so! But I certainly fear the probability that fanatic Jihadists may overthrow one or more of these governments. That would be a tragedy for the millions who live in that/those countries in so many ways. One tragedy is that such a government would very likely make war on a neighbouring Christian country. Then we would likely all be at war.



I for one pray this may not be! But given we do live in a fallen world where there will be wars until the end, I also pray that Western countries are armed and prepared so that should it happen, we will win. And for the sake of all, win swiftly.



However I believe there is a much more immediate threat. This threat comes from within, has been at work for decades but has just begun to visibly rear its ugly head. It is progressive ideology.



Progressivism is the new “religion”. Have you ever tried arguing with a progressive “true believer”? You can't. There is no discussion. They explode the minute you indicate any disagreement. Look at universities, they used to be places for free and fearless debate. Now they are filled with “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” and free speech is curtailed to the extent it disagrees with the progressive narrative. It is a while since we have seen in the West such intolerance of dissent. It reeks of dogmatic “human” religion. So it starts to fit the “Beast from the earth” of Revelation.



Another alarming, but not surprising result of our recent census is that in just 5 years people declaring as “Christian” (all denominations) fell from 60.1% to 52%. I think churches generally should take to heart Cardinal Woolsey's famous lament, amended to: “If we had preached Christ one half so much as we have preached politics, we should not be so afraid of dying now!”
Progressivism with its new morality of sexual licence – remember the '60s and 70's chant: “make love not war” - its promotion of the cult of “self” and destruction of the old morals and manners and pulling down of “authority” and even “honesty” is making our civilisation dystopian. More of that another time, my point just now is only that this “religion” promised freedom and fulfilment, but has delivered misery and destruction of all that is lovely.



Progressivism is fiercely anti Christ. It reviles all that God is and stands for. Yet for all this so many Christians have blindly accepted it. True it says it will achieve many things that a Christian would want to achieve. But its methods are human, not God's. It is humanity trying to be God. So, many Christians and most churches much as they may think they follow Jesus are in reality the spiritual equivalent of the Vichy French during WWII!



Muslims are the “darlings” of the progressives. You notice they would not and still barely can, tell the truth that the continuing terrorist attacks against the West are Muslim extremists. Part of the reason Muslim commentators are getting so much publicity is that they are being promoted by progressive media. Why? My answer it that consciously or sub-consciously progressives are using them as a stick to beat real Christianity with. That is one reason why I believe it is important to recognise that – at least in places like Australia and the U.S. - Muslim communities are not the present threat, they are just unfortunate pawns in the progressive agenda. They are doubly unfortunate in that having basked in such approbation by progressives, they are acting up just like spoilt children and creating a negative reaction in the community which was not there before.



In countries like Germany and France where progressive governments have flooded the country with Moslem migrants who are largely impoverished, uneducated and seeded with militant fanatics the situation is extreme and possibly threatens national stability.



An even more immediate threat to Christians by progressives is promotion of homosexuality and in particular “same sex marriage”. Once again the moderate “live and let live” homosexuals are in the unfortunate position of being used as pawns by fanatical homosexuals who “hate straight” and progressive manipulators in their fight against Christianity.



You think that is claiming too much? Look at some more census statistics. Only 0.72% of those describing themselves as “couples” listed themselves as “same sex couples”. You did get that – 0.72%.! Yet here, and in many countries the push for same sex marriage – and in Australia same sex couples already have all the legal benefits of marriage – would make you think that such a burning issue must affect a huge number of people. It doesn't! So why is it being pushed by so many with such vehemence? Can you think of any reason other than as a conscious or sub-conscious move to usher in a new persecution of Christians?



Let's look at that next post.

the Mark of the Beast

Coming to a church near you …

The Mark of the Beast

Actually I hope not! But the possibility of churches becoming infiltrated so that “even the elect” are led astray to worship the beast is becoming disturbingly high. Here is a link to a sermon expounding Revelation 13 which I gave four years ago – I came across it again recently and was amazed (besides thinking “Oh dear, do I really sound like that!”) how relevant it is today! (well, OK, I missed militant Islam as one example of the beasts, but the example I picked there is coming to pass in Australia before our eyes)



https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2m3pata6x270e3i/f_mwl13i9j?m=&preview=Sermon+280413+Revelation+13(After+normalize).mp3



The first beast is human government which has ceased governing under God and started governing as god. The second beast is the human “religion” that looks OK – even looks like Christianity – but is not. For instance ideology which is no longer under God but has started to be god and make its own rules as to what is “good” and “evil”. What is that today?

Marriage and Normality under seige

The LBGTI Lobby

This acronym sounds like a bacon and lettuce sandwich with the lot, but is the current flag under which lobbyists of every sexual orientation other than normal heterosexuality is fighting. And fighting they are.

Not that long ago homosexual acts were crimes. Then the cry went up “what place does the law have in private bedrooms” and homosexual acts between consenting adults was de-criminalised. Fair enough in a secular state if it had stopped there. But it didn't. Granted many – perhaps most of the small percentage of the population who defined themselves as “gay” were content to live quietly with their partner.
But there was a vocal group who were incredibly, almost impossibly promiscuous and who were far and away the major group affected by aids. They mounted a brilliant and unrelenting scare and propaganda campaign. (I even had 80 year old widows and single ladies in my congregation afraid they would catch aids!)
One of the claims of this propaganda was that the general heterosexual population was at risk. This was backed up by stories from Africa. But in a medical journal I read that this did happen in Africa because there was such a high rate of promiscuousness coupled with a low availability of medical treatment that untreated venereal disease was endemic and gave rise to running sores so that there was an easy entry path for the aids virus. This was not the case in developed Western countries.
When I wrote this my parish newsletter I the 80's I was reprimanded by the bishop. The Anglican church had already been infected by the homosexual extremist's campaign.
Since then anti-discrimination legislation has made LBGTI's one of the “protected species” of identity politics while Christians have been “fair game” for attacks and vilification.
The movement has not stopped there. Films at first showed the good side of homosexuality – who could not sympathise with the pair in “the Birdcage” and as I said there were many like that who were just living quietly as best they knew how. But for the extremists it did not stop there. More gay, lesbian and bisexual characters appeared in films – I suspect far exceeding their representation in the general population. One we were acclimatised to that, overt homosexual sex scenes appeared.
On the political front there was the push for “marriage equality” that is to say they wanted homosexual marriage instituted by law – curiously at the same time that a very large proportion of heterosexual unions were de-facto rather than legally instituted. So much so that laws were passed to give property rights to de-facto couples breaking up the relationship.
Laws were then passed giving that same property rights as marriage entailed to breakup of homosexual relationships. But that was not enough. It had to be “marriage”. In many jurisdictions homosexual marriage has been made law, in others lobbyists are still trying.
While all sections the community was extending a “live and let live” attitude to homosexuals, the LBGTI extremists and the social progressives who had taken up their cause had no intention of reciprocating in kind. Anyone who wanted the word and institution “marriage” to mean “between a man and a woman” was immediately howled down, called a bigot and a homophobe and excoriated in social media – which sometimes cost the victim of this attack their job. There was no tolerance now of the traditional view or of those who held it. Religious tolerance – a cornerstone of modern Western democracy was to be suspended towards a Christianity that did not espouse gay marriage. (Islam was naturally exempt because it was – at a distance – the darling of the progressive left).
But again that was not enough!
Now curricula are being forcibly introduced into Australian schools by government mandate teaching children from kindergarten up that gender is “fluid”. There are no longer “boys” and “girls”. All “hetero-normative” expressions were to be avoided. Children were to be trained to at various times to chose to be one, and then perhaps at another time chose to be another gender.
Even government departments were instructed to avoid all hetero-normative words!
Added to this the idea of constancy “till death do us part” (even to a same sex partner) is completely rejected. Sexual immorality is assumed.
Mercifully there has been some public outcry, and the few non-progressive media have severely criticised these and there are some signs that governments may back pedal. The frightful aims of these social terrorists have been exposed. They want to destroy the institution of marriage (legal and de-facto) causing catastrophic damage to our society and cause incredible psychological damage and long trauma to our children. They may indeed be far more dangerous than Islamist terrorists!



For the survival of Western societies these dangerous dogmas need to be defeated.
Certainly kindness and tolerance to those few who choose a same sex partner. But no quarter for the ruthless fanatics with their complete bigotry and intolerance of all that is good.
We must restore moral virtue and the social necessity for marriage to be “between a man and a woman for their mutual support and joy and the raising of children to the good order of society” to paraphrase the Anglican Prayer Book.

Homosexual Lobby

The Triumph of the Homosexual Lobby

Yet again I need to preface my comments by “Don't get me wrong” Though freedom of both speech and thought has been so curtailed in this area as in several others that I will still be branded a political heretic. 

Nevertheless I will say it: Don't get me wrong; I am not judging nor censuring those few who actually practice homosexuality, any more than I do adulterers, gossips & slanderers, drunkards, or the avaricious or power-hungry – just to name a few. We are all sinners. I had in one parish a young men's group of new believers who were able to support each other precisely because they were dealing with different life-controlling behaviours – a homosexual, a promiscuous heterosexual, a drug user, a thief …

However there is, here and in most Western countries, a powerful homosexual lobby

I first noticed it when the AIDS epidemic became a constant news item. I had folk in my congregation which at that stage had an average age of 60 or so years, afraid that they would catch AIDS. So I read through my wife's medical journals and found that in first world countries, transmission was basically by anal sex. (sharing needles was there but comparatively rare. In Africa AIDS was also transmitted by vaginal sex because, as the journals explained, much higher rates of promiscuity, and poor medical treatment led to a large proportion of sexually active African women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases which produced open sores – so that there was semen-to-blood contact – a perfect transmission rout for AIDS. This was rarely the situation in first world countries. Sorry about the gory details; but deceptive and unremitting propaganda by the homosexual lobby hid these and other facts from us.)

So in my little parish newsletter I told some of these facts. I copped a furious response from the Bishop for my intolerance, bigotry and lack of Christian compassion towards homosexuals!

The brilliant tactics by which a lobby group managed to convince an entire population that the problem of a tiny minority, caused by their own chosen behaviour pattern (epidemic needed male homosexual activity and promiscuity) was everyone's problem! It was a conjuring feat par excellence!

Then there was the “Gay Pride” movement with its marches through the streets. Marches that attracted official support, marches that seemed to be well attended by heterosexual families as well.

There was the “inclusiveness” dogma. Particularly in churches it became an article of faith that certain sorts of people must be “included” if one was to be truly “Christian”. So self-advertised homosexuals had to be welcomed. (I didn't actually have any problem with doing this part – after all I welcomed my “Ladies' Guild” members and most of them were unrepentant gossips and slanderers! Also most of the actual homosexuals I have dealt with were pretty decent human beings.)

Inclusion of one special category of people as an essential article of faith whilst happily excluding other categories of people is just plain unjust, and the slippery slope to heresy.

It is just a matter of history that this is precisely what has happened. We have had Anglican Bishops who were not merely unrepentant, but proud of the fact that they were engaging in homosexual acts. In Australia we had a public case where a Bishop accosted a young policeman in a public toiled and solicited sex! The policeman wanted the bishop charged with assault, but the case was quashed by his superiors because of the high profile of his assailant. The Bishop excused himself saying he “had a complex sexuality” and went on to greater things.

Rewind that! If that had been a heterosexual case the Bishop would have been out on his ear! Suddenly homosexuality has become a protected activity!

Can I pause here and make two important points:

1. It is the sex acts, not the orientation towards homosexuality that the Bible lists as a sin.

2. We are all sinners. But in the Christian church the idea is to be fighting the particular sins that haunt us. Priests, and above all bishops should exhibit progress towards godliness in their lives.

Marriage “Equality” Don't you just love the clever “newspeak”. Equality is Good, therefore by inference anyone opposing marriage equality is bad!

Not just 2,000 years of Christianity. But another couple of millennia of Hebrew culture and worship from which Christianity and modern Judaism sprang. And indeed the entire recorded history of every known culture is suddenly swept aside! It is a breathtaking occurrence! What was once banned has now not just become normal but sacrosanct.

In Tasmania the Roman Catholic Bishop issued a pastoral letter – just to congregants - outlining the historic Church and Biblical teaching on marriage. That is still (for the moment!) the law of the land: it is not lawful for two people of the same sex to marry. That Bishop is now having to defend himself in court after an “equal opportunity” tribunal found he had a case to answer for teaching against same sex marriage! Unbelievable? Yes, but true none the less.

Marriage is a social institution. Change it and you change society. How society will change is unknowable, but on the law of unintended consequences it will likely be bad. We have had quite a few examples of this in Australia in the world of nature. For instance: Early settlers though introducing rabbits would be a good idea – but the rabbits bred here to plague proportions and every measure to contain them has eventually failed.

Sexualising Children: of course it is not called that, but school programs are being funded and enforced by governments to make children of a tender age think in explicitly sexual terms, to think gender is a matter of choice not biology, and enlisting them to homosexual practices!

In my state the government – ater banning Christmas carols and religious education in schools has introduced such a syllabus. It is called by the Orwellian name of “Safe Schools”, ans its excuse is that homosexuals are being bullied at schools so such an awareness program right throughout the school life is necessary. This is patently a lie. This generation of school children have grown up with the political correctness that discriminates for not against homosexuals.

It is a big bad lie because bullying is indeed a problem at schools – but the choice of victims has little do do with their sexual orientation (if they are even old enough to know there is such a thing!)victims are mostly heterosexual). It is bullying however and to whomever it occurs that does need confronting – but this program is not interested in that.

It is simply a flimsy excuse for tearing down the traditional mores – regardless of the hurt it causes individuals. I was about to say “or the harm it causes to the social fabric” but that is of course precisely the aim. One of the formulators of the program admitted to being a Marxist and that the program was part of the Marxist agenda of destroying our society and replacing it with the Communist utopia. Perhaps the 34 or so million who starved in Mao's Communist utopia would should, if they could, from their graves not to go there!