For the weekend...

 A little something you might find valuable to take you into 2023.

Mercy

 "And so he went to the one in need and bound up the wounds, pouring in healing ointments, setting the victim on his own horse, and taking them to an inn". Luke 10:34.

Once, there was a Californian woman who was related to the owner of a popular social media app. All seemed well in her life until the day she found that she had been doxed on this very app, and she and her family were suddenly at serious risk.

Not knowing what to do or where to turn, she found herself being called by someone from the other side of the country who had heard of her predicament and was offering a lifeline.

Sounds to good to be true?

It happened in America this week - and the person offering this young woman assistance (in the form of giving her a place to stay in his own home) was none other than Florida Governor, Ron De Santis.

When the world becomes criminal in its actions and attitudes to others, the only answer is unmerited mercy.

That is why the answer to our troubles is the Good News of Christianity.

When Heaven Breaks In

 "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God". Luke 2:13.

The big moments in history are marked by something very unique - heaven truly breaks in.

Job tells us that when the Lord took of the mass that was darkness and began His masterpiece of creation, that the 'morning stars' sang for joy at what they beheld (Job 38:7). Equally, when God delivers Israel from Egypt, the angelic hosts are never very far away (Exodus 14:19), so it is no great surprise that when God comes amongst us, this same throng cannot but come down to revel in the hour.

Yet it is a marvel of that night.

A young couple being rejected by their own when the woman is pregnant and thereby facing difficult circumstances is an all too common story in our world, but as this new family face their night of such trouble, a group of local shepherds visit them and tell of the marvel they have witnessed which has brought them there - heaven has broken in to proclaim the wonderful news of this child's birth, because no child before or since was as unique or remarkable as the one resting in a animal trough that night in Bethlehem.

Such interventions are rare in the history of our little world, but when they happen, we should sit up and take notice.

Christmas marks the most important of these times since creation itself, because what happened around that birth brings the world into an eternal new day.

May that brightness truly resonate for each of us this holiday.

A bright Christmas to us all!

Seasonal Joy

 May this joy be ours this Christmas.

Piercing the new Iron Curtain

 "The things that the Lord hates - haughtiness, the lying tongue, the hands which shed the blood of the innocent, hearts which only devise wickedness, feet which run to action such evil, a false witness which promotes nothing but lies, and the one who sows discord upon the premise of all of these" Proverbs 6:16-19.

US Governor Ron De Santis initiated the first steps this week to bring about an assembly of a Grand Jury of Florida's Supreme Court to examine and judge on the issue of the suppression of vital information concerning the mRNA vaccination program and the promotion of false information by various official bodies and those who preside over them regarding the use of these same materials. He also announced a new Health directorate will be established in the state of Florida to replace these bodies and to prevent such astonishing circumstances from occurring again.

This is almost certainly the first official step of significance to seek to call to account those who have construed the poisonous narrative of the last two and a half years and to allow the public at large to be given the full facts regarding what has happened in respect to the impact (impairment and death) of millions, not from a virus, but from the authorised response to this.

In the UK this week, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen also sought to bring this matter to Parliament, providing in a speech some of the irrefutable data on this.

You can view a candid discussion and analysis of this here, in Andrew's latest interview on the matter with Irreverend's Reverend Jamie Franklin.

Please pray that these men will be heard, and the truth will prevail, and please give your support in prayer and by other means when possible.

A couple of things

One of things I love about the faith is that there's always more to learn, as is the case with these two fascinating videos.

The first looks at the issue of what exactly was the sin of Ham against Noah.

The second examines the fascinating issue of the actual birthday of Jesus, based upon John's astonishing vision in the book of Revelation.

Enjoy!

I N C A R C E R A T I O N

"Such things have the appearance of wisdom, promoting self-imposed religion in expressions of asceticism or severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh". Colossians 2:23.

"For creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of who subjected it, in the confident expectation of what is coming, when it is set free from such bondage". Romans 8:20,21.

How do we define virtue in respect to 'godliness'?

Christian piety is often misconstrued as a stringent form of total moral restraint - a wilful suppression of 'natural' inclinations that would keep any Fraudian analyst busy for many moons.

It is believed that such "behaviour" is the opposite of the licence of an amoral hedonism that intoxicates the modern world, but as two political extremes often meet, so these two approaches (hedonism and asceticism) are essentially expressions of the same malady.

In the present climate of immediate access to unceasing expressions of sexual gratification, many young men are now binding themselves to a chastity that relinquishes all and any relationship to sex. This is not happening out of an orientation towards previously held commonplace spiritual beliefs, but because these males believe their sexuality has been claimed by the crude forces of the present culture, and therefore needs to be taken back by them from such predatory means.

This is a highly significant trend - the 'ownership' of what, it is believed, fundamentally belongs to and defines you, because this mirrors what we have witnessed on other similar moments to what is currently in play.

Usually defined as Vitalism, we can find examples of this amongst Hellenic and Roman schools of thought (Philosophical schools), as well as in the various native "Volk" (life) movements in Germany and Austria which became popular after the great war. These notions were then politicised once more in a union with American political and economic pursuits which used the works of men like William Reich to promote the notion that a particular rendition of sexual promiscuity was to be deemed healthy in the modern world - a notion coupled in the sixties to the prescribed 'freedom' of the permissive society.

Which brings us back to the church.

Paul notes in his Colossians letter just how readily believers can fall into similar notions which inform them that various traits of external behaviour (abstinence from various behaviours) supposedly amounts to a modesty that dislocated them from society and therefore must be valuable in attaining godliness, but the Apostle warns us that such devices can readily become despicable dead ends for the faith. This is because they readily cause us to focus upon what we believe we achieve rather than the perfect work and merits of Jesus, which alone make us what God requires.

Paul tells us that both moral abandonment AND moral self-control, detached from God's saving grace, amount to the SAME end - unproductive beliefs that leave us empty of what is vitally needed - the truth that rescues and holds us.

When the Lord Jesus returns from the cross and the tomb to His friends, He has no problem allowing them examine His wounds, or allowing them see His bodily ascension. In like fashion, you and I are currently invited to participate in His blood and flesh when we attend His table, because these are the very means God provides for our vital, material redemption. Our faith, our life, needs to be folded into this rich and glorious reality, so what we believe and what we practice has to derive from our union - our marriage - to this eternal state, and not some contrived dualistic based folly.

The church historically fights hard to uphold a outward image of chastity (which is clearly far more mixed when you begin to examine the actual lives of believers - in keeping with Paul in Romans 7), but it has very little concern with the trouble Paul raises in passages like the one in Colossians, because this manner of flattering the flesh is more "moral" to our own self-reliance, yet the Apostle clearly notes it as dangerously seductive in its goals and where it leads.

True liberation for all of creation only resides in the blood-bought rescue of Jesus for us, so let us hang all our confidence in respect to the troubles of sin, death, the world and the devil on His atoning grace.