Monday PrayerCast 04/04/2022
News and Prayer Update.
It’s Monday morning, 4th April 2022, this is the regular Monday PrayerCast here on the Semper Reformata Podcast, our weekly NI News and Prayer Update. Let’s begin with
The Oscars!
What has that got to do with NI, I hear you ask? The tenuous link is that a movie called ‘Belfast’ with Kenneth Branagh has won something. But that was greatly overshadowed when an actor called Will Smith publicly slapped the MC for insulting his wife. He’d made a joke about Mr Smith’s wife. Now I’ve never watched a film with Will Smith in it, frankly I’d never heard of him before this.
The big debate the following day was, was the slap for real or was it a stunt? After all these people are actors, I’m sure they’ve faked a fight scene before. If it was a stunt it succeeded. For the publicity value from that slap and the foul mouthed exchange that followed got Smith worldwide publicity. And I wonder is it just a coincidence that the joke was about Smith’s wife’s alopecia – hair loss, just at the time when Pfizer is about to release an alopecia drug – and Pfizer sponsors the Oscars…
Anyway I agree with a tweet put out by the Ulster Scots folk musician Willie Drennan, who tweeted,
Oor Willie’s no wrang!
Listen to the PODCAST HERE.
Ukraine
Word has come though ‘Release International’ that in Mariupol, Ukraine, Russian soldiers have arrested the pastor of the Light of the World Evangelical Church in the city , Pastor Alexsander Glushko. He was arrested at his own home and has been taken to a prison near Donetsk. Pastor Alexander’s family has been offered no further information, and his wife has been told she has no right to visit her husband. The report confirms that a hunt for the pastors of evangelical churches has now begun in Mariupol and its surroundings. The Russians in the past have persecuted evangelical Christians in Ukraine, accusing them of being western collaborators and spies.
Alex Thompson, a Bible translator who lives in Holland, reporting on this on his ‘Eastern Approaches’ Telegram channel added, “Please pray for:
- The well-being and safety of Pastor Alexander Glushko and for his release.
- Pray also for his wife and family at this time.
- For God’s merciful protection of Evangelical pastors in Ukraine, especially in those territories of Ukraine previously occupied by pro-Russian groups.
- For Evangelical Christians in Ukraine: that the Lord will sustain them in their faith and witness amid the current conflict.”
Find Alex Thompson’s Telegram feed here.
I’m not backing Ukraine in this war, nor am I backing Russia, and I’m certainly not backing the USA and I’m not backing the Ukrainian government in this war, nor am I backing Russia, and I’m certainly not backing the USA and NATO. I’m backing the men and women who are suffering, who are fleeing, and I’m backing the Christian Church in Ukraine, many evangelical believers have risen to the challenge and are on the ground helping those in need, providing food and shelter and medicine to the people who are fleeing from wrecked homes, lost loved ones, ruined businesses. The ordinary people who live in Ukraine are being used as pawns in a conflict between superpowers. There are so many conflicting geopolitical agendas. The war rages, and the people of Ukraine, are in the middle. It is the ordinary people, the common men and women, the decent hard working citizens who are suffering.
Abortion
Last week I reported on the passing of the Abortion Services (Safe Access) Bill through its final stage in the Assembly of the Wicked at Stormont. The pro-life organisation ‘Precious Life’ are to take legal action to attempt to get this law overturned on grounds that it denies people their fundamental human rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression – both protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act. It also breaks one of the of the key principles of the Good Friday Agreement, which is to uphold the right to expression of religion. Precious Life are vowing to challenge the new law through the local courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court, and if need be, right up to the European Court of Human Rights. I’m told other organisations may also be considering legal challenges.
Incidentally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 73.3 million babies are aborted per year.
LGBT Issues.
WESTMINSTER: On Thursday 31st March, GB News was reporting that Boris Johnston had abandoned plans to introduce the so-called ‘Gay Conversion Therapy Ban’ law – legislation that would have criminalised anyone witnessing to homosexuals, or even offering to pray with them. But Johnson is no friend of truth, and frankly you can’t believe a single word he says. By Friday evening the Christian Institute was reporting that the decision had been reversed, and that the legislation would proceed. The LGBT+ lobby is a very powerful voice in modern society, and they were never going to let this go. On The Christian Institute’s website, Simon Calvert said, “the move to abandon legislation on conversion therapy was ‘well-considered’, and that the Government’s swift U-turn is a poor decision.”
https://www.gbnews.uk/news/boris-johnson-drops-plans-to-outlaw-lgbt-conversion-therapy/262259
Staying with that subject. Please watch what your children are watching. Disney’s “Reimagine Tomorrow” in-company video call has been leaked, and it shows many of their high ranking employees talking about their plans for Disney’s “gay agenda,” including plans to have at least half of their characters in some form or another belong to a racial or sexual minority.
The sexual agenda is being pushed upon your children. So be careful what they watch, make sure that their internet and television intake is carefully monitored, and take your parenting seriously. Sit with them and explain to them the Christian worldview, use the scriptures to teach them the Law of God, and to give them clear Christian ethical guidelines. Pray for our younger generations.
USA
Across the USA a new movement seems to be taking root. The latest manifestation of the Malthusian cult is the ‘Stop Having Children’ movement. Based originally in Portland, the group gained its first publicity through a series of donor sponsored billboards in the city, but is rapidly spreading. The group is opposed to all human reproduction and their website claims that choosing not to have children is how you show you really care for others! They are calling for normalising and destigmatising of sterilisation and abortion. Chapters are forming throughout America, and this Malthusian cult are evangelistic in their outreach, training across the States to spread their message. On Twitter, one of their followers claimed that that children are “horrible things,” and a “virus” and “bacteria” consuming resources. Shockingly, the group also conducts open air activities, that they call street outreach where they promote the messages of “Normalise Antinatalism” and “Parenthood Regret Is a Silent Epidemic.” The street outreach aims to talk to as many people as possible about being child-free, regretting their parents had them, and wishing they were never born. What a message! If that’s not satanic what is! Oh, and you can shop on their on-line store and buy some ’Stop Having Kids’ merchandise – their website proclaims in bold letters, that “A portion of all sales support an organisation helping humans and/or other animals in need.”
This is of course, directly opposite to The Christian message, the biblical teaching that children are a gift from God, that they are a blessing. And contrary to the simple fact that almost half of the world’s countries are below population replacement rate, meaning the human population is declining, not growing, and we are charged by God in Genesis to populate the world.
Watch out though – what begins in the USA ends up here… eventually. The ‘Stop Having Kids’ street outreach – perhaps coming to a street near YOU – Soon.
https://www.stophavingkids.org
LEARN MORE ABOUT MALTHUSIANISM – LISTEN HERE.
Todays Grace Gem.
Today’s Grace Gem comes from Arthur Pink, who writes about laughter, -appropriate perhaps, when we think of the over inflated egos of the Hollywood culture, and the self-congratulatory nature of the Oscars and other similar award ceremonies. Here’s Pink:-
There is a natural laughter, which is innocent and harmless. There is a spiritual laughter, which is God-pleasing and beneficial. There is a carnal laughter, which is sinful and injurious. In Luke 6:25, Jesus “said, Woe unto you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep!” The laughter which Christ denounced here, was a state of heart which lived only for the present, and had no serious concern for the future.
Find more inspirational quotes on www.Gracegems.org.
Let’s pray
Father, You have made us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. For You have rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of Your beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Lord, help us to make it our ambition to please You, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before Your judgment seat, that each one of us may receive what is due for the things we have done while in the body, whether good or bad.
Amen
That’s all for now! Don’t give up, – lift up your head! Don’t be discouraged, – let’s keep watching, and keep praying, and keep believing in our Sovereign Lord, who overrules everything in the universe.
The Salty Scrivener 