Saturday, September 26, 2015

When will we ever learn?

When you're under twenty one, or so, it can be really annoying to see older people dismissing your views as if you know nothing at all. And sometimes the oldsters who dismiss you can overlook something they need to know. Their rude disrespect or arrogant sense of superiority can blind them and cost them. But having said that, I'm old enough myself to see why it happens sometimes.
The same old things go around and come around.
I'm a nineteen fifties model. I was born in 1953, the same year the Korean War ended. I can remember newsreaders talking about President Eisenhower. And I can remember one of the catch cries from the time: "Ban the bomb." That was the anti nuclear activism of the day.
I can't recall the exact order or the times when the different politico-social fads went round, but in the sixties and seventies the Western world went through phases of concern about global crowding and famine, then pollution, especially in the very late sixties with acid rain. There was concern about heavy metal poisoning of soils, of water ways, all legitimate concerns, but the point is: these themes came and went, and then came again. There was even a global warming alarm sometime in the sixties. People were afraid the number of humans would generate so much body heat that they would raise the planet's temperature and it would start killing crops and causing starvation.
If you live long enough, you see the same things come and go and then come again. If it's the first time someone's heard it, they think it is new. They don't understand why older people are less impressed. To them (us!) it's a case of 'here we go again.'
I'm convinced the world will end, when Jesus Christ comes again. It will end when God decides the time has come. Nothing humans can do will stop that, nor should it if they only knew what was right. Nor will that day come any sooner than God decides, no matter how much humans think their behaviour changes things. So we have a finite span on this planet, no doubt; but it is rather vain for people to think it all depends on them.
How long before people get it?

Monday, September 21, 2015

It tells you something!
Thousands of refugees heading to Europe, trying to get a new life, are heading straight into the homeland of their supposed enemy - Christendom! It tells you something, doesn't it? If they wanted to live in an Islamic society, there are stable Moslem nations like Saudi Arabia which are closer. Many of them are living in Turkey after fleeing Syria, or other Islamic nations racked by war, and Turkey is a peaceful Moslem country. So why the West?
Could it be because Christian societies, or even societies with a Christian past, seem to be better places to live. Human rights are better protected. Toleration of belief and opinion are observed. The individual cannot be killed for changing religions, or stoned for (alleged) adultery. Women have the same legal rights as men and are not forced to cover their heads in public, or even their faces. In short, the West with its centuries of Christian tradition is a much safer and happier place to be. It's a cruel irony that so many westerners become jaded and depressed, amidst all that they have. They don't know how bad it can be. And they have been deluded by 'intellectuals' into rejecting the creed that gave us all so much, Christianity. But even so, the West attracts people from nations like Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as some countries in Africa. Seeing all this, wealthy Moslems promise funding to build mosques for them in Europe. Not help where they are and rehoming, but mosques in the heartland of the enemy, Christian lands. And here's some news I found really heartening, reporting in one Australian newspaper. There are a number of Moslem immigrants in the West, notably Germany, attending Christian churches and wanting to become Christians. So the Islamic nations could not only lose some of the people they will need to rebuild their war-mangled countries, they could see some of those they call theirs becoming Christians instead. I pray it's true. I would rejoice in seeing new brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus redeemed for those who want to overthrow and enslave us, forcing us to bow to their religion and attacking ours. How marvellous if that all backfired, and instead of Islam colonising and invading Europe, Christianity took people from the Islamic world.  Some of the leaders of the Moslem world could do with asking themselves why it should be that their people want to move to the West, why Moslem style government does not appeal to those they need to populate what they think are the lands of the faithful.
God will be glorified, no matter how His foes try to bring down Him and His.
Come again, Lord Jesus.