Murder outside church points to fresh hope for London community

A fatal stabbing took place just outside a north London church only days before I spoke there about Pentecost last Saturday.

The young man’s family had left a floral tribute beside the pavement and were being comforted by passers-by as we came out of church. Barış Küçük had been taken to hospital after an attack in the early hours of 1 June, but had simply lost too much blood. A man has been charged with his murder.

As in the Days of Noah

The harrowing scene was a stark reminder of the suffering Jesus went through in order to bring us life. And our prayer was that life and peace would emerge from the ashes of this terrible tragedy, the latest in a string of such incidents across the capital where knife crime has reached epidemic proportions.

Political activists were quick to blame cuts to policing, but this is a shallow analysis of the situation. We are living in times of violence compared to the days of Noah, which Jesus indicated would be a sign of coming judgment and of his imminent return (Luke 17:26-30).

There are all kinds of reasons for the murderous mayhem we are witnessing, but chief among them is a turning away from God’s laws, which successive governments have encouraged.

Is it surprising that knives are used freely on the streets when doctors and nurses, charged with our care, are engaged in the legal butchering of unborn babies every single day! We are reaping what we have sown. We have also too often allowed the guilty to go free, with murderers serving ridiculously short sentences before returning to our communities to wreak further havoc.

There are all kinds of reasons for the murderous mayhem we are witnessing, but chief among them is a turning away from God’s laws.

Scene of Reconciliation

This latest outrage occurred just a ten-minute walk from the former Haringey Stadium¹ which, in 1954, witnessed the only significant post-war turnaround in the fortunes of the UK Church. Tens of thousands had their lives transformed by the message of American evangelist Billy Graham, including a young Jewish lady, Helen McIntosh, who later guided me through my early Christian discipleship.

Crowds gather for a vigil to mark the untimely death of Barış Küçük, the latest victim of London's knife crime epidemic. Photo: Charles Mugenyi.It was appropriate too, therefore, that the church I visited stands on the edge of Stamford Hill, home to many Jewish people, some of whom came to hear my talk on Shavuot (Pentecost), a thoroughly Jewish feast which empowered the first disciples of Jesus to ‘turn the world upside down’ (Acts 17:6) with God’s commandments written on their hearts and not just on tablets of stone (2 Cor 3:3).

Pentecost is still available to turn this tense and troubled community around, and I pray that my friends at the church will help to bring the resurrection life of Jesus to the streets of Tottenham and Haringey.

It would certainly be the perfect place to witness the reconciliation between Jew and Gentile the Apostle Paul talks about in his letter to the Ephesians (2:14).

In writing to the Romans, he says both groups are steeped in sin and, in quoting the Old Testament, writes: “There is no-one righteous…no-one who seeks God…their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:9-18).

A return of the fear of God that people felt at those Billy Graham meetings would bring new hope; I am told they used to arrive on train platforms singing hymns. So what is the remedy? How can such reverential fear be restored to communities that have forsaken God?

75 years ago a vicious enemy threatened our freedoms, but while our soldiers fought on the beaches of Normandy, much of the country fought on their knees as they responded to the King’s call to prayer. We must turn to God once more.

How can a reverential fear of God be restored to communities that have forsaken him?

True Freedom, New Life

Jesus, God’s Son, lived a perfect life on earth and was unjustly crucified. He became a substitute for us – for we have all sinned – and by trusting in his sacrificial blood, we are raised to new life and hope (Rom 3:23f).

Just as 33-year-old Barış bled to death through the cruel hands of his assailant, so Jesus bled, for us – and he was exactly the same age! In doing so, Jesus became the ultimate Passover Lamb, fulfilling the picture of how the enslaved Jews were freed from captivity in Egypt by daubing a lamb’s blood on the doorposts of their homes (as a result of which the angel of death ‘passed over’ them while striking the first-born of the host country who had stubbornly refused to let them go).

Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, freedom from sin and darkness comes by marking your heart, figuratively speaking, with the blood of Jesus – which shows that you are placing all your trust for escaping God’s judgment and inheriting new life in what Jesus has done for you.

It will surely open up the ‘Red Sea’ and lead you into the Promised Land of peace and purpose. Not just for this life, but forever more.

Perfect Peace

As well as Pentecost, I also led a session on Job who, in spite of terrible trials, refused to relinquish his integrity and trust in God. One dear woman in the audience confirmed the reality of Job’s experience in her own life. Tragically, she had lost three sons – all in their twenties – and yet, through her faith in Jesus, she had managed to maintain perfect peace through all her troubles!

The Prophet Isaiah wrote: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusts in Thee” (Isa 26:3 KJV).

Notes

1 Now a shopping centre, accommodating the new religion.

Charles Gardner reviews ‘A Better Story’ by Glynn Harrison.

The sexual revolution that has caught the Church napping is an opportunity to show that Christians have something infinitely more superior to offer…

…that love and sex is created by God for pleasure and purpose and is all the more enjoyable when following his guidelines. And that it is also a taster and picture of the beautiful intimacy of divine love.

This is the kernel of a thesis ably put forward by Professor Glynn Harrison in his excellent book A Better Story: God, Sex and Human Flourishing (IVP).

Worth Pursuing

Actually, it’s a great read – very well written, not too academic (the author, now retired, used to head the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Bristol), but scholarly nevertheless.

I’ll be honest; due to time constraints, I had intended to simply peek into sample chapters and so started somewhere in the middle. But I was eventually forced to go back to the beginning, and so ended up reading it backwards, in a sense.

But I got the picture. In expanding on an inspiring talk he gave at Keswick in 2016, which I reported on at the time, the professor contends that Christians have been caught off-guard by the revolution which began in the 1960s and which now offers a smorgasbord of sexual options.

Instead of retreating into our holy huddles and pointing fingers, we should have taken the opportunity of demonstrating how exciting, fulfilling and purposeful is traditional marriage – that it’s worth pursuing and waiting for because it is potentially far more rewarding, fruitful and loving than any other sexual liaison.

Instead of retreating into our holy huddles, we should take the opportunity of demonstrating how exciting, fulfilling and purposeful is traditional marriage.

Pride in Biblical Values

As homosexuals have promoted their movement with Gay Pride parades, so Christians should have been taking pride in the biblical call for purity and faithfulness.

As I recall the author saying at Keswick, God doesn’t do one-night stands; he is forever faithful and loves us totally and unconditionally. This is the sort of message married couples need to convey to the watching world – that the union is a beautiful picture of the Gospel, which tells the story of God seeking a bride…of a bridegroom who so loves his wife that he is prepared to die for her.

At the same time, the professor also points out that the sexual revolution has failed in its goal of freeing adherents from the stifling restrictions of earlier generations. For surveys apparently show that people are now actually having less sex.

Meanwhile, we need to prepare for ‘messy church’¹ where people in same-sex relationships, and others who are perhaps transgender, get converted. We will need to pray for a balance of grace and truth as we seek to minister effectively to broken people in these dark days.

The Holy Spirit’s Power

I felt there was something missing in the professor’s analysis, however, in that the book lacks an emphasis on the power of the Holy Spirit to help us live right and witness boldly to the truth, along with the vital need for spiritual warfare in the face of the powers of darkness that blind society (and believers too in some cases).

The Christians of 1^st-Century Rome condemned the debauched culture around them by their uncompromising, godly lifestyles, refusing to swim with the prevailing tide. No matter how many adjustments we make as we reach out to the sexually confused and wayward, at the end of the day we have to stand up to be counted and risk being thrown to wild animals, as our Roman brothers and sisters were.

Having said that, I highly recommend this book. May we not fail in rising to the challenge it presents.

'A Better Story: God, Sex & Human Flourishing' (192pp, Inter-Varsity Press) is available from Amazon in paperback, e-book and audio-book forms. Also available from the Evangelical Bookshop.

Notes

1 Not to be confused with the growing method of informal outreach used by many churches.

Will Britain stand?

Last Saturday, 11 May, two marches of quite different natures processed through central London.

One was a Palestine solidarity protest marking what Muslims worldwide call the ‘Nakba’ (the catastrophe), or the formal re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

The march attracted mainstream press attention and some 3,000 protestors, led by Palestinian activist and former convict Ahed Tamimi who proclaimed the genocidal slogan of Hamas and Hezbollah: “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” (i.e. Israel must be destroyed).

The other march, which attracted nearly 5,000 supporters but received no mainstream press coverage, was the March for Life. Standing up on behalf of the plight of unborn children, hundreds of thousands of whom lose their lives silently in the UK each year, the march celebrated and proclaimed the sanctity of human life.

Opposing Worldviews

Seeing these marches take place virtually side by side reminded me just how divided our country has become. Every month, all sorts of protests take place in our capital, each one claiming a just and righteous cause. Both the above marches purport to stand for justice on behalf of the oppressed. However, they are undergirded by vastly opposing worldviews.

The pro-life movement is rooted in a biblical worldview, in which human life - from conception - is divinely given, in the image of God, and innately deserving of dignified treatment. While not all within the pro-life movement are believers, the movement is grounded in an understanding that life and death are sacred matters, in which humans must defer to an authority and set of moral standards higher than their own. And so, the pro-life movement champions a culture of respect, non-violence and life.

The March for Life attracted nearly 5,000 supporters but received no mainstream press attention.

Palestine Solidarity March, 11 May 2019. See Photo Credits.By contrast, Palestinianism is rooted in a rejection of the God of the Bible: specifically, his choice of land and people, denying the covenant heritage of the Jews (and its basis in historical and legal fact). It leads people to believe gross distortions and slanders about Israel, regurgitate age-old anti-Semitic tropes and side with terrorist groups who seek to murder innocent Jewish civilians. The result, directly or indirectly, is the championing of a culture of violence and death.

The issues of Israel and unborn life, though seemingly unrelated, are two of the most defining battles of our time. Both are, I believe, particularly close to God’s heart. Both are also modern spiritual litmus tests: telling indicators of the spiritual condition of our nation before God. With this in view, pondering Saturday’s marches I was reminded of Jesus’ sobering words that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25; Matt 12:25).

A Nation at War

This coming week, Britain goes to the polls again for an election which many are calling a ‘second referendum’ on our membership of the EU. Current projections indicate that because the Remain vote will be split across several different parties, Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party will make considerable gains by mopping up the Leave vote, at the particular expense of the Tories. But this does not change the fact that the country is still split roughly 50/50 over Brexit.

Brexit has divided families, neighbours, co-workers and friends. As we have written elsewhere on Prophecy Today UK, these divisions are far more than superficial political disagreements. They are symptoms of an underlying spiritual battle raging for the soul of the nation.

Brexit did not create these divisions; it merely exposed them, albeit starkly and painfully. For this reason, those who hope that a political resolution (deal or no deal) will make everything ‘go back to normal’ are sadly mistaken.

Britain has apparently become a nation of polarised outrage, shouting about a plethora of issues electronically, on the street and at the ballot box. But whether Brexit, Israel, abortion, climate change, President Trump, feminism, LGBTQ+ pride or any number of other causes, follow them to their roots and you will find one single, simple battle over God and his truth, revealed in Scripture.

True Unity

A generation of rebellion against the biblical beliefs and values that once united our nation means that Britain’s social and moral fabric is now rife with division and discordance. While our political and religious establishment call for unity and bridge-building, we must stand back and ask whether unity is possible, or even desirable, in this context.

True unity is a blessing of the Holy Spirit for obedience to the Lord. God will not bless a nation that rejects him. But Britain is a house divided, not knowing whom she really serves. Any man-made unity foisted upon this spiritual backdrop will necessarily be a poor imitation of the real thing; at best a charade, at worst a forcibly-imposed regime.

Britain has become a nation of polarised outrage on a plethora of issues – but follow each to their root and you will find one battle over God and his truth.

The only real answer to our problems is repentance and a return to the Gospel. Thankfully, God desires to use the present division and instability to draw people back to himself. He wants people to come to an understanding that something has gone very wrong in Britain: we are broken, in so many ways, and in need of a Saviour. He wants us to “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27). As Christians, are we being faithful in praying and working for this end?

A Hope and a Future

Credit: March for Life UK

I am thrilled by the growing strength of the pro-life movement in this country (and in the USA). But, while protests and goodly debate are vital, these alone will not win the day, because “our battle is not against flesh and blood” (Eph 6:12). As the Brexit polls indicate, Britain as a whole is still split right down the middle: not just politically, but spiritually.

Things cannot remain this way forever: they will tip one way or the other, unless the Lord intervenes in a more drastic and immediate way. Similarly, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted Mark 3:25 to the Illinois Republican State Convention, warning that America could not remain divided over slavery forever. He said: “I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”¹

When it comes to both Israel and abortion, I hope very much that we will see a turning of the tide, with hearts and minds changed nation-wide and righteous decisions at the very top. But the ultimate hope for Britain, including on these issues, remains the Gospel, accompanied by much prayer. That is the only thing that will unite our beleaguered nation and give her a hope and a future.

References

1 'House Divided' speech, Springfield, Illinois, 16 June 1858. Read the full transcript here.

Sharing in the joy of Jesus, the Jews and John Wesley

As Israel celebrates another independence day, I look forward to a special birthday of my own in a few weeks.

Yes, the magic milestone reached last year by the modern Jewish state means I was conceived in Cape Town just a few months after Israel’s re-birth.

My own re-birth came nearly 23 years later – on 20 May 1972, at around 10:30pm. And I remember how this rather precise dating of my encounter with Christ proved of great fascination to Labour peer (and former deputy leader of the Party) Roy Hattersley.

Identifying with Wesley

We were showing South African friends around the small Lincolnshire town of Epworth, famous as home of the Wesleys and only 13 miles from where we live in Doncaster, when I noticed a familiar figure striding up towards me.

I immediately recognised him as he was often rolled into TV studios for political comment, but I also knew him from way back, when, as Fleet Street correspondent for the South African Press Association, I would often report on his Dispatch Box statements about Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) or apartheid during his time as Foreign Office minister.

Although claiming to be atheist, Hattersley is a great admirer of Wesley, and of the Salvation Army founders for that matter, and has written biographies on both counts.

He was busy doing research for his Daily Mail column on why people like me made pilgrimages like this. I began by telling him that, though I was not a Methodist, I identified with Wesley in the sense that I had come into an experience of the risen Christ, just as he had done.

Though not a Methodist, I identify with Wesley in the sense that I have come into an experience of the risen Christ, just as he had done.

In fact, just as with the legendary preacher, I too could name the exact time and place where the change had taken place.

Furiously taking notes (as I used to do when he was speaking in Parliament), Lord Hattersley’s eyes grew wider with amazement. Like Wesley, I explained, I had felt my heart ‘strangely warmed’ as Jesus, at my invitation and at the prompting of another South African friend, came into my life in the north London home of my half-Jewish grandmother.

Great Awakening

Wesley’s re-birth took place on 24 May 1738 – also in London – after hearing an explanation of Luther’s introduction to a commentary on the Book of Romans. He was already a clergyman, as was his brother Charles, following in the footsteps of their father, who was rector of Epworth for some 40 years.

But now Wesley knew for sure that his sins were forgiven and that, by faith alone, he was accepted by Christ. The strange warming turned into a raging fire as he passionately proclaimed the Gospel for the next 50 years, riding a quarter-of-a-million miles on horseback in the process.

Historians are agreed that the subsequent awakening, also involving George Whitefield and others, averted a revolution of the kind that brought chaos to France.

My Own Testimony

Running with perseverance: Charles Gardner completes a 10K cross-country ‘trail’ around Yorkshire’s famous Castle Howard estate in 2010. Photo: Linda Gardner

Although I can’t claim a Damascus Road encounter of the sort that caused the Apostle Paul to fall off his horse, my own conversion was preceded, just seven days earlier, by an experience in which I was stopped in my tracks during a marathon race in Scotland – on the road to North Berwick, as it happened.

At 22 miles, the same point in the 26.2-mile race that Paula Radcliffe came to an abrupt halt in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, I too ‘hit a wall’, so to speak. But the disappointment paved the way for my greater openness when my friend, Brian Jackson (an accomplished athlete), challenged me to follow Christ.

I have never looked back, and have become increasingly aware of our debt to the Jewish people, which is why, upon my retirement from full-time work in the newspaper industry, I began serving as a volunteer for the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people (CMJ).

Wesley passionately proclaimed the Gospel for 50 years, riding a quarter-of-a-million miles on horseback in the process.

I am also proud of my own Sephardic Jewish ancestry, and was especially helped in my early Christian life by a lovely Jewish lady called Helen Macintosh, who effectively became a spiritual mother to me.

Helen became a believer through Billy Graham’s 1954 meetings at Haringey in London and always afterwards described herself as a ‘completed Jew’. Like her, I long for the widespread spiritual restoration of the Jews promised in the scriptures (e.g. Zech 12:10; Rom 11:26) following their much-prophesied return to the Holy Land.

Beautiful Sound of the Gospel

To complete this season of birthdays, I will be heading for Epworth on Saturday 25 May at 2:30pm to watch a play on the Wesleys being performed by friends from Sheffield.

Oh that these islands would ring once again with the passion – in words and music – that awoke sleeping hamlets all over England to the beautiful sound of the Gospel!

For the next generation – and for this one.

The controversy begun by the remarks of Australian rugby player Israel Folau, supported by England’s number 8, Billy Vunipola, has caused a stir far beyond the game of rugby. Izzy Folau simply quoted the Bible in warning that those who practice homosexuality go to hell.

Biblical teaching says “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, that is detestable” (Lev 18:22). And the Apostle Paul states explicitly, “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10).

According to Paul’s teaching, practising homosexuals should be treated in the same way as drunkards, swindlers, slanderers in our society and not given preferential treatment or be allowed to promote their activities.

These rugby players are simply stating the obvious. It’s a bit like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone was simply copying everyone else in praising the Emperor’s non-existent clothes. It took an innocent child to state the truth: “The Emperor is naked!”.

The New Normal

Billy Vunipola is quite right in saying that “man was made for woman to procreate”.¹ Two men practising anal intercourse cannot create life any more than two lesbian women pleasuring each other can create a human baby. But our teachers are told to tell the children that these are normal relationships and that gay parents having children through adoption, surrogacy or artificial insemination creates ‘normal’ families.

We all know that the ‘new normal’ being taught to our children in state schools is a blatant lie! There is a mass of sound academic research to show that the only type of family that consistently produces good results for children is the happy, faithful, heterosexual married couple. But we have a Parliament that has passed a law forcing teachers to indoctrinate four-year-olds with the idea that it is quite normal for some children to have two mummies or two daddies, and that all forms of family are equal.

We all know that the ‘new normal’ being taught to our children in state schools is a blatant lie!

Slippery Slope

This is a reversal of truth, an utter lie that can only lead to the destruction of society. It is social engineering: trying to mould the minds of children to accept LGBTQ+ values before they are able to think for themselves. It was Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May who started us down this slippery slope, forcing the legalisation of gay ‘marriage’ through Parliament with the support of the Labour Party, against the wishes of more than a hundred Conservative MPs.

This virtually pronounced the death knell of the Conservative Party as the party of the family, and the party that works to conserve our heritage of biblically-based values - the Judeo-Christian foundation stones of Western civilisation.

It produced the Parliament that we have today consisting of 650 individuals who cannot agree on anything to give clear guidance for the future of the nation. The plain fact is that when they passed the Same-Sex Marriage Bill, Parliament brought judgment upon itself. It is, in effect, a Parliament doomed to fail, and no doubt that is how it will be known by future historians.

A Soulless Nation

Yes, of course we need to get out of the European Union, which is the most secular humanist political institution in the world. But leaving the EU will not solve our national problems or redeem our Parliament.

Indeed, this whole Parliament needs to be swept away and replaced by a new reforming group of politicians, not only with high moral principles but with an understanding of the Judeo-Christian spiritual convictions that have been at the heart of our Parliamentary system for hundreds of years and formed the bedrock of the British character that was admired by the world. We need a political revolution - and maybe, if we have to participate in the EU elections, we might just get one, as the result is likely to further shatter and divide our political parties.

Of course we need to get out of the European Union, but leaving will not solve our national problems or redeem our Parliament.

Meanwhile, the whole world is viewing Britain with amazement! They simply cannot understand what is happening in our Westminster Parliament, which for centuries has been renowned as a model of democratic government. Even those who were not great friends of Britain admired our stability and reliability. Today that has been shattered – maybe irretrievably; certainly it will not be easily retrieved.

Winston Churchill, reminding the nation of the great Christian heritage underlying the British Commonwealth of Nations, rightly warned that “A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul, and a nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.”²

The Message of Good Friday

This is where the message of today, Good Friday, offers the only hope for our nation. On this day nearly 2,000 years ago, God carried out an act of divine intervention into human history by allowing his own Son to commit his life into the hands of violent, hate-filled, sinful human beings. He willingly sacrificed his own life to make possible a new relationship with God the Father, Creator of the universe.

Through faith in Jesus we all have the opportunity, not only of forgiveness of our sins, but of actually entering into a new relationship with God that transforms our sinful human nature.

This is the good news that Christians have to proclaim to the world: that God has done something for us that we could not do for ourselves, in overcoming our self-centred propensity to love the world and indulge in everything that is evil and corrupt, rather than things that bring health and happiness and put the welfare of others ahead of ourselves.

Hope for Britain

As any sociologist will tell you, all forms of social change tend to go to extremes: the pendulum swings too far one way and then the backlash begins. The rugby players who have dared to tell the truth, bringing on themselves the wrath of the secular humanist establishment, may be a little sign that the backlash has begun.

There are many other signs that young people are open to the truth: they are fed up with the mess that the older generations have created and they are looking for a new way. Last week Charles Gardner reported on evangelism happening in schools in Doncaster – and since then we have heard other reports from elsewhere in the country of hundreds of young people giving their lives to Christ.

There are many signs that young people are open to the truth.

There is a group of Christian rap artists, singers and dancers based in Manchester who are touring northern towns and cities and seeing hundreds of young people respond to the Gospel. Next month there is a great Christian gathering planned in Trafalgar Square on Pentecost Sunday, when thousands of young people are expected to fill the Square and demonstrate their faith in Jesus.

For those who have eyes to see and an understanding of the times, these may be little signs of the turning of the tide. The message of this Good Friday, that Jesus is the hope of the world, is our only hope for a turning point in the history of Britain. This is certainly something to which we should be directing our prayers!

References

1 The Times, 13 April 2019.

2 Sandys, J, 2015. God and Churchill. London: SPCK, p182.

Our spiritual enemy does not want the truth to be heard.

Some years ago I belonged to a church congregation in which some of us suspected the influence of witchcraft.

It was in an area of the country where witches’ covens met in secret. We believed that we had identified at least one person who belonged to such a coven who had also become a member of our congregation. We saw this as an attempt to infiltrate and bring down the congregation.

Strangling Prayers

I met regularly with a prayer partner to pray about many of the concerns of the day and for the witness of the Gospel to overcome the darkness all around. On one particular evening, we met specially to pray concerning the witchcraft that we perceived to be in the area.

As I began to pray, immediately I had a powerful sensation as if someone was seeking to throttle me. It was as if unseen hands took hold of my throat in order to prevent my speaking out the prayer. The pressure got more intense so that I could barely speak and the only way to utter my prayer was to attempt to shout it out at the top of my voice, thus overcoming the choking sensation.

It was only when I was able to verbalise my prayer in this way that the choking sensation disappeared. It was a real physical manifestation of the power of evil at work, linked to the witchcraft in the area.

As I began to pray, I had a powerful sensation as if someone was seeking to throttle me: as if unseen hands took hold of my throat to prevent my prayer being spoken out.

Shutting Down the Gospel

I remembered this last week when I read about the Australian rugby player Israel Folau being dismissed from the national rugby team, and being denied the completion of a prestigious and lucrative career. He is one of the foremost rugby players in the entire world. Nevertheless, he is willing to give up his career because he will not be quenched of his bold assertion about what the Bible says concerning the ultimate destiny of those in unbiblical sexual relationships.

He said that his Christian belief was more important than his career when it became a matter of asserting the truth. A second rugby player, who plays for the England team, Billy Vunipola, was given a formal warning for speaking in support of Folau.

This is a very prominent case of the way the powers ruling this world are seeking to quench anyone speaking against the new unbiblical norms that have crept into society. We hear, for example, of street preachers being confronted by police in the UK, accused of disturbing the peace, this being a false accusation to prevent the speaking out of the Gospel message.

There are spiritual powers behind these world systems that are seeking to quench the word of God, subtler but equally as powerful as that choking grip that I experienced to prevent my prayer against witchcraft.

Fearing to Prophesy

It is not my purpose here to discuss the merits of any individual case, but to highlight a growing trend. We have entered an age in which there seems to be a move towards the one world system spoken about in the Book of Revelation, which will seek to quench any dissenting voices that speak against the system or speak truth within the system.

This is truly a spiritual battle that is intensifying daily. We will be left alone only if we compromise to the system, and at a time when believers should be speaking up on many vital issues of the day, the Christian voice has indeed become muted.

The spiritual battle is intensifying daily – and at a time when believers should be speaking up, the Christian voice has become muted.

It says in the Book of Zechariah that a time will come when there will be fear among those given to prophesy. In Zechariah 13:3-5 the picture given is of those who are given prophetic words but who are afraid to speak them and end up pretending that they are not prophetic at all. The context of this happening is the soon return of the Lord, the time-frame that we believe we are in, in our day.

A Time to Speak

On our yearly calendar, this is the season of Passover and Easter, a time to remember when there was a mass turning against the Lord Jesus. Why? Because for corrupt reasons they wanted silence him, by taking his life. They could not silence him, because he left both his words and his witnesses – people like you and me – to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

What, then, shall we do in this day with the signs of powers, both spiritual and temporal, increasingly seeking to quench the word of God through compromise, exclusion or legal action? Now, more than ever, it is time to seek the Lord for what he would say to the world around us and to carry that message fearlessly to whom it is being sent, not fearing to speak up against the tides of wickedness rising around us.

And, of course, this weekend we celebrate not only his death but also his glorious resurrection! Jesus lives, and all our efforts are focussed on bringing his own living word to this generation. More than that, he will return: the Word of God incarnate will come back to judge the living and the dead. All truth and holiness, embodied in him, will be alive and supreme for all eternity.

Let us take courage from this when we, as he commanded, use bread and wine like he did at the Last Supper to remember his death until he comes.

Testimony: The harvest is ripe in our schools. Following Charles Gardner’s report last week on the positive response of schoolchildren in Doncaster to the Easter story and the Gospel message, we copy below a testimony from David and Jean Foster at the Manor Park Christian Centre in London, celebrating a similar openness in schools in Newham.

From David and Jean Foster

On the same note as Charles Gardner’s article, we have been astounded at the openness of the primary schools here in Newham to hearing about Christianity and the Gospel. Back in December, we had a primary school contact us (Manor Park Christian Centre) about sending 180 children before Christmas in order to share with the children the story about why Christians celebrate Christmas.

At the end of each two-hour session (the children were split into two groups of 90), we presented every classroom a copy of ‘The Christmas Story’ by J. John and gave every teacher a copy of the Gospel tract ‘Why Christmas’. During both of the sessions, I clearly explained the Gospel to the children and then prayed for them.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we had 300 children come from three different primary schools over a two-day period to do ‘The Easter Experience’, promoted by the Christian organisation Faith in Schools. We offered six workshops for the children, all of which told the reason that Christians celebrate Easter. In one workshop, for instance, the children made an Easter garden while two of our ladies told them about the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus. We gave all the classes a copy of ‘The Easter Story’ by J. John and every teacher and many of the children took away the Gospel tract ‘Why Easter’. At the end of each of the four two-hour sessions (75 children in each), I clearly explained the Gospel to the children and then prayed for them.

98% of the children coming have never been inside a church building. The majority of the children come from families of Muslim backgrounds. I had one Muslim trainee teacher come up to me after I had prayed for the children and beg to also have a copy of ‘The Easter Story’ by J. John that I had given to every class.

Last week I had another primary school ‘begging’ me to allow them to bring their children to hear the stories about Jesus. So on 8-9 May we will be having another 90 children coming to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is quite obvious that the Lord, in his timing, is at work across the UK amongst the children and planting a hunger within their teachers to find out more about Christianity and this Jesus whom we worship.

God bless,

David

Please keep David, Jean and these school visits in your prayers.

Primary pupils awestruck by popular Easter project

It was an awesome privilege once again this Easter to find myself sharing the Gospel message with many hundreds of primary schoolchildren here in Doncaster.

With regard to the commandments of God which formed the bedrock of our national life today as well as that of Israel long ago, we are told: “Teach them to your children and to their children after them” (Deut 4:9).

As for keeping the Passover (fulfilled at Easter), we are similarly urged to pass on the message to the next generation: “In days to come when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery’” (Ex 13:14).

The Easter Journey

Though much of what we share is unfamiliar to this new generation, many schools warmly welcome our so-called ‘Easter Journey’ project. This involves a group of volunteers virtually taking over school premises for a morning, during which the children are invited to explore the meaning of what Christians believe.

With the aid of scenery, props, costumes and key roles being acted out, pupils are imaginatively transported to Jerusalem as they travel from Palm Sunday to the Passover meal known as the Last Supper, followed by the Garden of Gethsemane and the Good Friday crucifixion, before finally witnessing the wonder of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

With regard to the commandments of God, we are told: “Teach them to your children and to their children after them”.

In setting the scene for the Upper Room meal, it’s been a sheer delight to explain the significance of the occasion to so many children over the past ten days. Most of them are polite and well behaved – and some of the schools are in quite tough areas.

Volunteers work hard to get the right table setting for the Last Supper for each of up to nine groups of children. Photo: Charles GardnerJudging by the wide-eyed attention of these seven to eleven-year-old pupils, the words and pictures conveyed will no doubt have found much good soil for seeds of faith to germinate.

The Fields are Ripe!

This is the tenth year of the project, for which schools are queuing up; unfortunately, we have to turn down invitations for lack of resources. The feedback from teachers accompanying the groups on the journey is invariably upbeat, speaking of the sense of wonder being captured.

Indeed, the fields are ripe for harvest, yet many Christians are under the mistaken impression that schools are closed to the Gospel. We know there are aggressive atheists working towards that end, but the national curriculum still encourages Christian visitors to share what they believe in the classroom.

Linda Gardner, who became a Christian herself through a Gideon Bible received in school, has been engaging Doncaster’s primary pupils with the Gospel message for the past 24 years, through assemblies and RE lessons as well as special projects such as Christmas and Easter Journeys.

Employed by a trust¹ supported by churches, her diary is bulging with appointments at schools straddling a wide geographical area. About half the borough’s 100 primary schools have been reached on a regular basis over the years, while Linda’s colleague Dan Budhi is making an impact in the secondary schools.

Many Christians are under the mistaken impression that schools are closed to the Gospel, but the fields are ripe for harvest.

The message – particularly of the Easter Journey – is of a loving God who has come to rescue us from slavery to sin and degradation, and whose sacrificial blood cleanses and sets us free. It’s a message that brought freedom to an ancient people who had been slaves for 430 years, and that brought freedom to us in Britain as we turned from paganism to the living God and became world leaders.

Linda Gardner, heading up Christian work in Doncaster’s primary schools. Photo: Charles GardnerMost importantly, in the schools, it’s a message that can change lives. And we pray they will never forget it. This is, after all, why we are urged to celebrate the major festivals – for the crucial lesson they teach us to remember about the path to freedom.

Remembering Hope

Young people have never been so helpless, fatherless and without love, care and discipline. My prayer is that – should darkness, despair or loneliness threaten to lead them astray – these children will remember the lesson of the rescuing servant King who died because he loves each and every one of them; and how, like the Red Sea opening up to let the Israelites cross to freedom, he was raised from the dead to be with us forever.

I pray also that, if ever any of them should be caught up in a web of violence, drugs or sexual abuse, they will recall the hope we shared with them. For no-one is beyond the reach, and help, of Jesus, as the powerful testimony of Bishop Ron Archer forcefully brings home.

As a distraught ten-year-old, he held a gun to his head wanting to end his short life. But something stopped him, and God soon began speaking to him through the scriptures.

This is a message that can change lives – and we pray that the children will never forget it.

From Pain to Power

Addressing an international conference of the Bible-distributing Gideon movement, the bishop shared how – as a so-called ‘trick baby’ born to a prostitute and one of her clients – he had come to that dark moment.

His mum became pregnant at 16. It wasn’t supposed to happen and the pimps to whom she was indebted did everything they could to kill the unborn child with drugs, alcohol and repeated kicking and stabbing.

But the baby refused to die and was born two months prematurely with neither pancreas nor bladder, unable to function properly and later developing a severe stutter as he grew up being physically abused.

“That baby was me. Life was so horrific with so much vitriol and pain that by the age of ten I had had enough and wanted to die,” Ron recalled.

Then the miracle happened. “There was a teacher with a Gideon Bible who came to my school and saw dysfunctional kids like me as her mission field. She would read me stories of dysfunctional characters whom God used – like Moses, who was also a stutterer. She said, ‘Ronaldo, God will turn your pain into power.’

“And I began to understand there was hope for me. I began to memorise the Bible, I stopped stuttering, stopped wetting my bed…and eventually became a pastor until everyone in my family got saved.”

He said everything changes “when a child begins to understand the love of God and the power of his Word,” adding: “I may have been a ‘trick baby’, but the trick was on the devil because of you [Gideons] and the power of the Word of God.”

For Ron’s full testimony, click here.

References

1 Doncaster Schools Worker Trust, in association with Scripture Union.

Do the biblical accounts of the Passion and the Resurrection agree?

Simon Pease reviews ‘Three Days and Three Nights that Changed the World’ by David Serle and Peter Sammons (2018, Christian Publications International).

Three Days and Three Nights that Changed the World (abbreviated here to ‘Three Days and Three Nights’) is a robust defence of the reliability of the Gospel accounts and their agreement concerning the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion, contrasted with Christianity’s traditional ‘Good Friday’ narrative. Jesus stated that he would be buried for “three days and three nights” which, counting back from his resurrection appearance early Sunday morning, either places his crucifixion on Thursday or possibly Wednesday.

The authors are convinced of the case for Thursday and make a strong argument, presenting compelling evidence against Wednesday on various grounds. For example, if Wednesday was the day, Jesus’ six-mile journey from Jericho to Bethany would have taken place on the Sabbath, violating its regulations. Whilst a Thursday crucifixion does not produce a literal 72-hour period, biblical examples are provided to show how a partial day counted as a day in Jewish thought.

Contradictory Accounts?

John’s Gospel appears to contradict the synoptic accounts; he presents Jesus’ crucifixion as taking place before the Jewish religious establishment celebrated Passover, whilst Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover meal the previous day. However, extensive research uncovers a fascinating reason for this.

The Judean religious leaders adjusted their calendar following the Babylonian exile, whilst other groups such as the Galileans, Zealots, Essenes and Samaritans retained the one established by Moses. This cultural insight highlights some of the rivalries and tensions described in the New Testament.

Here is a robust defence of the reliability of the Gospel accounts and their agreement concerning the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Perhaps most importantly regarding the Thursday crucifixion is how it fits symbolically with the historical calendar of Jewish worship according to the prescribed format of Leviticus 23. Passover was followed immediately by the Festival of Unleavened Bread, of which the first day was a day of rest, or ‘High Sabbath’. Therefore, immediately after Jesus’ crucifixion on the Thursday (Passover), there would have been a special Sabbath on the Friday (Festival of Unleavened Bread), followed by a normal Sabbath on Saturday, with Jesus’ resurrection on the Sunday (the celebration of First Fruits, Lev 23:9-14).

More than a Detective Story

However, the book is much more than just a detective story. It celebrates the wonderful truth of the resurrection and includes a fascinating chapter on Jonah - the one miraculous sign Jesus offered the Pharisees. Several Bible quotations are used to demonstrate that Jonah actually died and was resurrected.

The New Testament writers emphasised strongly not just the importance of Messiah’s death (literally on the day of Passover), but also the symbolic significance of First Fruits - as the very first harvesting of the religious year – as resurrection day. Jesus is the ‘first fruits’ of those raised from the dead: the promise of the resurrection to come.

First Fruits vs. Easter

Three Days and Three Nights usefully includes a summary of Peter Sammons’ ‘The Jesus Pattern’ (which is effectively a prequel), which explores all seven ‘moedim’ (Levitical festivals) as they relate to Jesus and their spiritual significance for believers.

Born-again believers are ‘First Fruits people’ rather than ‘Easter people’. The authors attack institutional Christianity’s choice of a feast day based on pagan fertility rites, especially since the decisions for dating Easter and ‘Good Friday’ were motivated by a profound hatred of the Jews. The historical evidence for this is clearly presented.

By contrast, Scripture indicates that the New Testament Church at the very least kept the Jewish Passover and used all the Levitical festivals as an important part of their teaching about Jesus – a model Christians could learn from.

Born-again believers are ‘First Fruits people’ rather than ‘Easter people’.

Removing the Veils

Three Days and Three Nights is crafted carefully to help readers make sense of a technical subject by providing several diagrams, the most of impressive of which is a fold-out chart tracking all the events of the ‘Passion week’. As well as providing a handy reference point throughout, this shows how the events of the religious calendar relate specifically to Jesus. For example, the Passover lamb was carefully examined for blemish at exactly the same time as Jesus underwent extensive cross-examination regarding his Messianic credentials and sinlessness.

The appendices include Scripture references and a suggested timeline of the events between Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, specifically to repudiate attacks on the authenticity of the biblical narrative.

Ultimately, Three Days and Three Nights provides an important testimony concerning the reliability of the biblical account, at a time when many believers are rediscovering the Jewish context of Scripture. The book makes an important prophetic point: just as the scriptures affirm that Jewish recognition of Messiah has been veiled until his imminent return, so too did Christianity once lose sight of Messiah’s Jewishness and God’s faithfulness towards the Jews. However, the Lord will finally remove both these veils and accomplish his purpose of ‘one new man’ in Christ. Three Days and Three Nights makes a contribution to the unfolding of this plan.

‘Three Days and Three Nights that Changed the World’ (202pp, paperback) is available on Amazon for £16. Find out more about the book and accompanying resources on the Christian Publications International website.

How the West was lost – and what God's people ought to do about it.

Editorial Introduction: Randall Hardy concludes his interview with Bishop Ashenden, who speaks about how believers can respond in these turbulent days.

Part 2: Paying the Price

RH: Many Christians, from a broad cross-section of Bible-believing backgrounds, are holding on to a hope that the secularisation of the West could be reversed. The bolder ones expect this to be the case. Do you see such hopes to be realistic?

GA: I've spent the whole of my adult life trying to reverse secularism in the West. I've done it energetically and I've done it in its heartland, which is the university where I spent 25 years arguing - enthusiastically and joyfully - for the Kingdom and for belief. I enjoyed tripping up my atheist friends with the weaknesses in their own arguments, but I have to say that no matter how many arguments I won, they didn't often result in the change of the human heart.

If I look at the extent to which the churches have changed human hearts in the West, however, whatever you put it down to, we haven't succeeded very well. So some of us can enjoy scoring points philosophically, but that isn't the goal and it doesn't achieve very much.

We ought to give some thought and pray for discernment to understand why we've lost so many hearts, but I think you have to take into account…the notion of spiritual conflict…and also the inevitable hubris of technological innovation.

I'd like to think that as time [goes] on and secular society [begins] to collapse under the weight of its own ambition and cleverness, we could [make] more impact on hungry human hearts. But long before that will happen, [I believe that] Islam will overtake us and we won't have the opportunity.

RH: For centuries the Western church has considered itself to have a role in governing the state. Do you think this has been helpful in fulfilling its main mission? How do you think Christians can most helpfully engage with the state in the future?

GA: The role of Christians is always to Christianise people and, again, the human heart. The Gospels ought to have taught us the danger of hoping to produce a Christian state, because of the constant danger of imbalance between the life of the Spirit and the life of the flesh, speaking theologically.

So the best Christianity can do is to infiltrate and infect the state for good, but its influence grows and wanes. There have been times when we've done that very effectively, partly because our rulers have been hungry for God, and [there have been] times when we have done it very badly, partly because our rulers have had hard hearts. But it's always ebbed and flowed. The great temptation is to imagine that we can capture the state for the Kingdom of Heaven, and that's a category error.

We ought to give some thought and pray for discernment to understand why we've lost so many hearts.

What we now find is that we live in a period of time when the state [is] resentful of Christianity…to some extent the animus we experience as Christians in [Britain] is driven by hatred and resentment of moral constraints that Christianity offered as an understanding of the virtuous life.

And in that sense we're experiencing a delayed reaction of revenge from a culture that is in rebellion against God the Father and the transformation He calls us to. [The culture] takes some delight in taking that revenge out on a weakened Church.

RH: The rise of secularism in the West and globally suggests that we face a very uncertain future. What advice do you have for Western Christians as they look ahead?

GA: I think the first thing I would say is make sure you understand the history of Islam, and don't believe the propaganda about the convivencia in Spain. The suffering of Christians and Jews in Spain reached the most dreadful scale - until Muslims were driven out by force.

There are only two ways to deal with Islamic ambition in history - and they're either to convert Muslims from Mohammed to Jesus, or to meet force with force. I'm still puzzling and praying about my own response to these two ways. I obviously prefer the first, and I don't know to what extent the second is accessible.

I think if Christians want to preserve any kind of safe space to worship Jesus without interference from the state, we need to enter the public arena with more courage than we've found in the recent past and tell as much of the truth about the human heart, the prophet Mohammed and Jesus the Messiah as we can, in the hope that some secularists will listen and that this will buy us a bit more time.

I think as I look at the history of Islam and the weakness of hedonistic secularism, my own sense is that we have to prepare for a Europe entering a period of darkness in spiritual terms, with the Church having to go underground.

I say that in the appreciation that the Holy Spirit is bringing renewal and new life to people in Russia and in China, and astonishingly within the heart of Islamic culture: Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whether we are paying the price of our faithlessness as a Church or the hubris of Enlightenment culture, it looks as though Europe is about to enter a period of darkness - so I'm grateful for the light that the Holy Spirit is bringing elsewhere in the world at the same time.

If Christians want to preserve any kind of safe space to worship Jesus, we need to enter the public arena with more courage and tell as much of the truth about the human heart, the prophet Mohammed and Jesus the Messiah as we can.

RH: You've just mentioned that Christians in places such as China and Iran, to name but a few, face intense persecution in various ways. How do you think their experiences can inform our thinking as Christians in nations where freedom is being eroded rapidly?

GA: Christians are always persecuted - even in Europe. As Christian voices have called rulers and populations to account; the Christian voices that have done that, whether they have been Catholic or Protestant, have always faced a reaction of anger and repression from the state.

When Christians aren't persecuted, it may be a sign that they're too deeply steeped in an accommodation to the culture around them. Jesus makes this very clear in the gospels.

So I think that when we look at people who love Jesus paying a very deep price in repressive states around the world, we ought to see them as an inspirational norm and perhaps count it as a privilege that we too may be called to suffer for him in ways that in our more relaxed society we have escaped up until this point.

You can read the first part of Randall's interview with Gavin by clicking here.

Author Biography

Gavin Ashenden read Law at Bristol University, before studying theology at Oak Hill Theological College in London. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1980, subsequently serving in a London parish for 10 years. He spent 23 years at the University of Sussex as a senior lecturer and senior chaplain, lecturing in the Psychology of Religion and Literature.

Over the years he has written occasional newspaper articles and worked for the BBC on a freelance basis presenting a weekly faith and ethics radio programme.

In 2008 he was appointed a Chaplain to the Queen. In 2017 he resigned from this position in order to be free to speak out for the faith in public. Later that year he resigned from the Church of England, convinced that its leadership was replacing apostolic and biblical patterns with the alternative values of Cultural Marxism.

He is now a Missionary Bishop to the UK and Europe in the Christian Episcopal Church.

You can find out more about Gavin’s extraordinary life, journey and ministry on his blog.