Monday PrayerCast – 18th July 2022
News and Prayer Update – “Billy Goats and Farm Gates...”
It’s 8am on Monday morning the 18th July 2022 and this the weekly look at what’s happening, and a little bit of ethical commentary from a Christian standpoint.
Listen to the PODCAST HERE
And first some good news. The ‘Online Safety Bill’ has been dropped from the House of Commons agenda. Apparently it was because the Labour Party had demanded a vote of no confidence in the government, which denied the bill the time for its first reading. Perhaps so. There was a lot of opposition to the bill, both inside and outside the house, with several MPs and non-governmental organisations flagging up the bill’s restrictions on free speech. Christians especially would have been targeted under the bill, (for example, even the public preaching of Romans chapter one or 1st Corinthians 6 could have been considered ‘harmful’ under the terms of the bill). It is quite possible that the withdrawal of the Online Safety Bill was a response to widespread opposition, and the Labour motion was a convenient excuse for its demise, with the additional benefit of shifting the blame across the chamber. Anyway, it’s gone – for now at least. And we mustn’t rest. This or similar legislation may be resurrected by a future administration.
Let’s go to New Zealand where the socialists, (or perhaps they are communists?) in government, serving under the Tony Blair mentored premier, Jacinta Ardern, are doing everything they can to force people to eat bugs and vegetables so they can ‘save the planet.’ That seems to include taxing farmers for when their cows burp! The website NPR reports, “New Zealand has announced a plan to tax livestock burps in an effort to curb the country’s gas emissions. Methane emissions from animals is a well-known issue. Cows alone are responsible for about 40% of those planet-warming gases globally — mainly through their burps.”
What they really want of course is for farmers to stop producing meat altogether, to raise the price of meat so much that people cannot afford to eat it, and offer them insects and plants instead.
Look, if someone wants to restrict their diet to non-meat products that’s entirely up to them, but no-one should be forced to do so, certainly not by ideologically driven overlords. All foods are given for our blessing, and should be available to us. In 1st Timothy 4, Paul condemns those teachers in the church who say that we should abstain from meats – meats that had been sacrificed to idols, but in that context he speaks about “foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.” I know the context is false teaching and apostasy, but the point remains that all food is given by God for our use.
Farmers are rightly alarmed by the highly co-ordinated worldwide push to reduce national herds of cattle and sheep. I’ve already reported on the how our local assembly in Northern Ireland aims to reduce the regional herd by around one million cattle and sheep. On 22nd April, the Guardian carried a report which read, “Northern Ireland will need to lose more than 1 million sheep and cattle to meet its new legally binding climate emissions targets.”
In Holland a tractor protest has been taking place. Farmers are protesting against unreasonable nitrogen directives, from the government, aimed to combat ‘climate change’ which, if implemented will force many of them out of business. Fox News carried a report on July 10th, “Farmers in the Netherlands have formed their own version of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy,” blocking highways with tractors, setting bales of hay on fire and taking other actions to protest the government’s recent goal to cut emissions that could force some farms to shutter. Roughly 40,000 protesters gathered in central Netherlands to protest plans to curb the emissions of nitrogen and ammonia last month. Weeks later, the protests have continued across the country with no sign of abating.” Shots have been fired by police – at least at one tractor.
But what happens to the land, after the farmers have gone bankrupt? In the USA, organisations with links to Bill Gates have been buying up farmland right across the country with The Guardian reporting that Mr Gates owns more farmland than anyone else in America, and you can be fairly certain that the deserted farms will be bought at well below the true value of the land, if it were to be commercially farmed, Could something like that be happening in Holland?
In an interesting twist to this story, a fire has destroyed a food delivery facility in Holland. The factory, owned by a firm called “Picnic” was destroyed in a blaze on Sunday July 10th. The major backer in Picnic, with a €600,000,000 (Six hundred million Euros) stake is… Mr Bill Gates. German farmers have been out protesting in support of their Dutch colleagues, and the Canadian truckers have also established links with the protestors in Holland. Remember their slogan – No Farmers, No Food, No Future. God bless the farmers. It’s their calling to feed the world, and may the Lord prevent those who seek to hinder them in that God given task. Let’s keep an eye on what the Climate Change fanatics and Population Alarmists at Davos are up to, it’s all far too co-ordinated to be accidental.
And in SriLanka, a huge groundswell of populist revulsion with the way that the government has behaved over the past two years has led to the overthrow of the ruling cabal. The president of the country has been seen fleeing from the docks on board a naval vessel, and the presidential palace has been over-run with protestors, swarming through the grounds and into the building, even swimming in president’s private swimming pool. The Sri Lankan Central Bank has been breached too, as crowds entered the premises, protesting at food and fuel shortages. Calling it “An uprising fuelled by green madness…” MARK ALMOND, DIRECTOR OF THE CRISIS RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN OXFORD, FOR THE DAILY MAIL commented, “Make no mistake: The roots of this chaos can be traced to Rajapaksa’s wrong-headed thinking on farming. In his 2019 manifesto, he pledged to transform Sri Lanka into an ‘organic’ nation within a decade – reducing and eventually banning chemical fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides. … But the trade-off, as Sri Lanka learnt the hard way, is food production tumbling over a cliff. For them, going green meant going hungry.”
It should serve as a warning to other governments, especially to ours, that they govern as servants of the people, on the people’s behalf, not as petty dictators doing the bidding of some supranational focus group or elite clique. It’s time to scrap the Net Zero madness and give the people some relief.
Finally, we return to that old canard. The hardest question of all these days. “What is a woman.” There was a strange but telling exchange in the US last week, when a Senator, Mr Hawley asked a professor if only women ‘had the capacity for pregnancy.’ Here is is…
Note the tactic, – if you question the narrative, you are ‘phobic’ and you are guilty of inciting violence and suicide! That’s the tactic that has long been used by the LGBT lobby, on this side of the Atlantic also, used to shut down the debate and kill off opposition to the agenda.
And staying with that, now it seems like the Church of England have also been scratching their heads, trying to find the answer. Guess what the answer is, according to Archbishop Wokeby and his friends? WHAT IS A WOMAN? You guessed it, THEY DON’T KNOW! BUT HEY, THEY’VE SET UP A COMMITTEE TO TRY TO FIND OUT. The Daily Mail filed a report on July 10th, revealing that, “The Church of England has admitted it does not have a definition of the word woman. A bishop said yesterday that the meaning of the word used to be ‘self-evident’. But he added that there are now ‘complexities associated with gender identity’ which a church project about sexuality and relationships is exploring.’“
I wonder will the ‘church project’ explore the Bible, and take God at his word, his infallible word – and agree that a woman is a human adult female, created as such by God, made such in her mother’s womb. Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. No problem with that then.
Today’s Grace Gem is from James Smith, in “The Pastor’s Morning Visit.” How can … a man be just before God? Where is his righteousness to come from? Jehovah answers, “His righteousness is from Me!” Jesus wrought it; the Father imputes it to us; the gospel reveals it; and faith receives it, puts it on, and pleads it before God. Precious Jesus! In You alone, I have righteousness and strength!
Find more like that on www.GraceGems.org
Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father, we thank you for those who are called to work in the vital food industry, bringing our daily bread to our tables. For farmers and processors and supply chain workers and supermarket assistants.. For those who run and operate food banks, to help others who are in need. We praise you for them, and we are alarmed at the policies of governments who hinder them in their God-given vocations. Bless and encourage them in their vital work we pray, and remove all obstacles, for we know that this earth contains enough goodness that everyone should have enough. We mourn over human greed, and we ask you to remove the influence of those who want to live opulent lifestyles, while at the same time oppressing others. Impress upon us all the precious nature of every human life, made in the image of God, so that we truly value all our neighbours. We pray that in this week, in our lives we will seek the Lord, while he may be found, and know him, whom to know is life eternal.
That’s all for now! Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday July 19th July at 1pm, for the first short podcast in a mini-series on John Knox, Scotland’s Reformer. Download and listen where ever you get your podcasts.
Join us for worship, if you are free, each Lord’s Day morning at Ballymacashon Church, 78 Saintfield Road, Killinchy, Co.Down, at 11.30am.
Don’t be discouraged, – let’s redeem the time, and keep praying, keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, for greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world…
The Salty Scrivener 