News and Prayer Update.
Monday PrayerCast 30th May 2022.
It’s Monday morning, 30th May 2022, and this is the regular Monday PrayerCast – where we take a look back over some of the recent news and events in Northern Ireland and further afield, with a Christian worldview. But before we start, I need your help! I certainly appreciate God’s wonderful creation, and I hope that you do too, after all, the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. He made the world, and the land and the seas, and the animals and the fish and the birds of the air… And that’s where my problem lies just now!
Listen to the PODCAST HERE
There’s a bird, right outside the studio-pod, and I’m being driven to distraction by its insistent singing. Every time I go to switch on the recoding equipment, the bird starts, and even the well insulated walls can’t numb the sound. I’ve never heard such a loud bird! But, I can’t see it – anywhere. So here’s a recording of it, and a few of its friends, making a right racket. Listen for a few seconds, and if you can recognise any of these winged wonders, Go to the COMMENTS SECTION on this page, and leave a comment! Here’s The Birds…
The assault on the morality of the people of NI continues, and it is once again being spearheaded by the Secretary of State, Mr Brandon Lewis MP. Mr Lewis was responsible for legislating at Westminster for abortion in the province, going against the wishes of the majority of people who live here, and more recently adding more pressure to the local department of health to entrench and extend abortion provision, forcing abortion upon health trusts, hospitals, doctors and nurses. But it now appears that buried deep in Mr Lewis’s abortion legislation, is a clause that requires a standardised sex education curriculum, in line with a United Nations programme to be introduced and taught in every school here.
Reporting on this, Tuesday May 24th, the News Letter’s Philip Bradfield wrote, “…it is understood that Mr Lewis holds that he is under “a clear legal duty” from his own abortion legislation to ensure that the recommendations from the 2018 Report of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women are implemented in full. These recommendations include, making age-appropriate education on sexual and reproductive health and rights a “compulsory curriculum” component for adolescents, covering “early pregnancy prevention and access to abortion”.
So, Mr Lewis wants schools to teach our children about ‘reproductive health and rights’ – I ask, ‘what right has a woman to murder an unborn baby?’ And the biblical answer is, no right at all. Abortion is the murder of a human being at his or her weakest, and it has serious health and mental illness consequences for the woman who commits it. No-one has the right to take an innocent life.Yet Mr Lewis’s sex education for kids will include, by his own admission, teaching on abortion, and you can guarantee it will not be pro-life.
The Catholic Church poses a problem to Brandon’s wicked scheme. In NI most Catholic children are educated in church schools and the Catholic bishops have just published their own sex education curriculum to be taught in their own primary schools. Known as ‘Flourish’ it includes lessons on how babies are made, bullying, same-sex attraction and puberty. But the Catholic bishops have avoided the subject of contraception and abortion. It remains to be seen if the Catholic Church’s determination to teach their children a more conservative morality will have any bearing on what Mr Lewis can implement in the state run schools.
If you want a personal opinion, – [and why would you!] I didn’t think sex education should be taught in schools at all. You can agree with me or not, but I think that it is the role of parents to teach their children morality, especially Christian parents, who are to instruct their young people in the ways of the Lord, not in the ways of the world, even the UN. Our children are the inheritance that God gives us, so why would we hand them over to the state to have their minds polluted by the likes of Brandon Lewis and his ilk. It would be good to do some Christian parenting lessons in our churches.
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Ephesians 6:1-4, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honour your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” 4 And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
The culture of death in modern society is all pervasive. In Texas an 18 year old youth – a boy, a student – obtained weapons and went on a killing spree, murdering his own grandmother, then killing 19 children and two teachers at what we would call a Primary School. The teenager, named as Salvador Ramos, opened fire at Robb Elementary School – which teaches children aged seven to 10 – before he himself was killed by police officers. The 18-year-old suspect had a handgun, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazines.
A child, killing children. A meme on social media got right to the heart of the matter. It showed a man with a placard, a poster that read, “If you teach a child that it’s ok for moms to kill babies, don’t be surprised when children kill children. End the violence.” That’s a poster our Secretary of State should read very carefully before he introduces so-called abortion rights into the local school curriculum. We must pray for the grieving families in Texas.
One final story. Last week the World Economic Forum met for its annual conference in Davos. Someone on Twitter quipped that the people who want to remove your privacy met in secret with armed guards, the people who want to restrict your travel in the interests of the ‘Climate Change Agenda’ travelled there by jet aircraft, the people who want you to eat insects fared sumptuously with their meals accompanied by the finest wines, the people who want you to own nothing and be be happy, were all themselves, multi-millionaires. Klaus Schwab, the leader of that cabal, earns a mere one million Swiss francs, for his work with this non-profit organisation. I wonder where that comes from?
Among the technocrats gathered was one J Michael Evans, one of the executives of a shopping company called ‘Alibaba.’ Canadian, Evans was part of a panel discussion, in which he revealed that his company is developing an app, that will track an individual’s carbon footprint. One news reporter, Andrew lawton, who was at Davos, monitoring the meeting quoted Evans as saying, “We’re developing through technology an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint,”“What does that mean? Where are they traveling? How are they traveling? What are they eating? What are they consuming on the platform?” Evans told the delegates to ‘stay tuned’ for further developments.
So imagine how that will work out, when cash is replaced with a programmable central bank digital currency. Old Klaus and his weird collection of misanthropic friends must be rubbing their hands with glee. Just so you know – Alibaba is owned by the Chinese… No coincidence there at all, nothing to see, just keep on thinking everything’s fine…
Well, links to all these stories are available so you can read and research them for yourself. Follow the weblink in the episode notes to www dot Semper hyphen Reformata dot com to learn more.
Today’s Grace Gem is from Alexander Smellie
“O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all.” Psalm 104:24 Let me walk through the world, so various, so beautiful, so pleasing–with an open eye. It is strange that there are many who have no discernment of its wondrousness. Let me walk through the world, which is the many-coloured vesture of the Lord, with a believing mind. The sights and sounds of the landscape ought to be preachers and trumpets of the glory of God. In the cool of the day, when I pass through the country fields, or climb to the summit of the hill, or sit and gaze across the sea–God and my soul should meet and talk.
Let’s pray…
Our Heavenly Father, we praise you for your creating power and might, for truly we can agree with the psalmist who said that The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. May we too marvel at the hand of God in creating and sustaining this world in which we live. We pray for those who have no faith in God’s power to sustain the earth, those who would see our own human race, created in God’s image, as a curse or a cancer on this earth, and who in their own sinful depraved worldview would seek to destroy mankind. Restrain their wickedness we pray, and turn them from their evil ways, and teach them the error of their paths, so that they will repent of their sins and turn to Christ for forgiveness. We pray for those who grieve over lost children. Comfort them with your presence, and remind them that Jesus called the children to himself, saying ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me. For of such is the kingdom of heaven.’
That’s all for now! Catechism class is tomorrow – Tuesday at 1pm, and there should be a sermon podcast on Saturday.
Don’t give up, – lift up your head! Don’t be discouraged, – let’s keep watching, and keep praying, for greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world…
The Salty Scrivener 