Daily Devotional

"I Am Tormented"

"Knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end?"
2 Samuel 2:26

Charles H. Spurgeon

If, O my reader! thou art merely a professor, and not a possessor of the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the following lines are a true sketch of thine end.

You are a respectable attendant at a place of worship; you go because others go, not because your heart is right with God. This is your beginning. I will suppose that for the next twenty or thirty years you will be spared to go on as you do now, professing religion by an outward attendance upon the means of grace, but having no heart in the matter.

Tread softly, for I must show you the deathbed of such a one as yourself. Let us gaze upon him gently. A clammy sweat is on his brow, and he wakes up crying, "O God, it is hard to die. Did you send for my minister?" "Yes, he is coming." The minister comes. "Sir, I fear that I am dying!" "Have you any hope?" "I cannot say that I have. I fear to stand before my God; oh! pray for me."

The prayer is offered for him with sincere earnestness, and the way of salvation is for the ten-thousandth time put before him, but before he has grasped the rope, I see him sink. I may put my finger upon those cold eyelids, for they will never see anything here again. But where is the man, and where are the man's true eyes? It is written, "In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment." Ah! why did he not lift up his eyes before? Because he was so accustomed to hear the gospel that his soul slept under it. Alas! if you should lift up your eyes there, how bitter will be your wailings.

Let the Saviour's own words reveal the woe: "Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." There is a frightful meaning in those words. May you never have to spell it out by the red light of Jehovah's wrath!

Giving PC The Old Heave Ho

The Clash of "Absolutely Sacred Rites"

These days the grievance industry is churning forth protestations of offence taken at every manufactured opportunity.  It is social narcissism on steroids.  Precious-petal-me, at the centre of the universe, must have one's precious stamens duly protected, preserved, and nurtured.

Buttressing this absurd pre-occupation with self is a panoply of johnny-come-lately-invented demand rights--which can be characterised as an egocentric state of mind believing that everyone else has an obligation to serve moi.

This mindset gives succour to tyrants and dictators in societies which would tolerate them.  In our more egalitarian, democratic cultures the best that can be mustered is a high pitched whining, punctuated by brief outbursts of tempestuous rage, interspersed with melodramatic foot stomping.

Winston Churchill describes how narcissistic political correctness was dealt with in his day:

The Messiah of our Age

Richard Dawkins as Apostle and Prophet

by Ken Ham

Can the idea of a Creator God be easily dismissed in just five steps? Well, atheist and anti-theist Richard Dawkins certainly thinks so!

Is Atheism a Religion?

He recently appeared on a Norwegian-Swedish television show called Skavlan where he quickly dismissed the idea of God by ticking off on his fingers five arguments for God.

Dawkins starts by equating God with fairies, and then says that “the onus is not upon an atheist to say why there is not something, the onus is on a theist to say why there is.” Well, Dr. Richard Dawkins, the onus will actually be on each person on judgment day when he stands before God. And no excuses will be enough when we stand before Him. In the end, every person will bow before Christ and acknowledge Him as Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). You can either do so voluntarily now or by compulsion later.

Dawkins then says that “there simply are no reasons for the existence of a God.” But, of course, this doesn’t mean there actually aren’t any reasons for God’s existence. It simply shows his anti-God bias. He then mentions a few of the common arguments used to demonstrate that there is a God.

Daily Devotional

Outfitted and Empowered

John Piper

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20–21)

Christ shed the blood of the eternal covenant. By this successful redemption, he obtained the blessing of resurrection from the dead. He is now our living Lord and Shepherd.

And because of all that, God does two things:

*  he equips us with everything good that we may do his will, and
*  he works in us that which is pleasing in his sight.

The “eternal covenant,” secured by the blood of Christ, is the new covenant. And the new covenant promise is this: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33–34). Therefore, the blood of this covenant not only secures God’s equipping us to do his will, but also secures God working in us to make that equipment successful.

The will of God is not just written on stone or paper as a means of grace. It is worked in us. And the effect is: We feel and think and act in ways more pleasing to God.

We are still commanded to use the equipment he gives: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” But more importantly we are told why: “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

If we are able to please God — if we do his good pleasure — it is because the blood-bought grace of God has moved from mere equipping to omnipotent transforming.

Without Hope in the World

What Life Is Like in The Darkness

. . . the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

Letter From the UK (About an Important Northern Ireland Free Speech Case)

Irish Pastor Charged With Hate Speech Judged "Not Guilty"

Liam Deacon
Breitbart London

James McConnell — the Northern Irish Pastor charged with making “grossly offensive” remarks about Islam —  has been found not guilty by a judge at Belfast Magistrates’ Court.

Mr. McConnell, 72, stood accused of a “hate crime” for “sending a malicious communication” after broadcasting a sermon on the Internet last year in which he described Islam as “heathen” and “satanic”. The charge carried a possible sentence of six months in jail.  District judge Liam McNally said: “The courts need to be very careful not to criticise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances, adding: “Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges”, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

Daily Devotional

The Great Symphony of Heaven

C. S. Lewis

The thing you long for summons you away from the self. Even the desire for the thing lives only if you abandon it. This is the ultimate law—the seed dies to live, the bread must be cast upon the waters, he that loses his soul will save it. But the life of the seed, the finding of the bread, the recovery of the soul, are as real as the preliminary sacrifice.

Hence it is truly said of heaven ‘in heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit.’ But it is also said ‘To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it’ [Revelation 2:17].

What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints.

If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Finest Hours

Not Politics as Usual

John Paul Warren is reputed to have said, "Cream always rises to the top...so do good leaders".”  Never is this more true than when heat is applied.  Below is a salutary example of the epigram.

When World War II began, Britain's Prime Minister was Neville Chamberlain.  Although prior to war he had been an idealistic pacifist and an appeaser of Hitler, fooled by Hitler's solemn promises not to invade nearby countries.  When he was subsequently betrayed, Chamberlain was not about to be fooled twice.  He became a resolute and ardent war leader.

The early months did not go well.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

7 Tips for Watching This Presidential Campaign

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

We are now five weeks out from the start of actual voting in Iowa. That being the case, and given that the field has been winnowed to fairly manageable proportions, I thought I should offer a few pointers to those observers who are having trouble tearing their eyes away from this slow-motion car-crash spectacle.

1. The media and political consultants all treat polls as though they were video footage of a horse race, but they are not video footage of a horse race. Polls are simply an educated guess, and sometimes they ought to be considered more of an uneducated guess. It is handy and convenient to be able to say that Candidate X is five points up, or ten points down, but keep in mind the possibility that the measuring rod stretched five points or shrank ten. Polls do tell you something, but errors outside the margin of error frequently occur. The method is inductive — you ask questions of 2,000 people in order to find out what 200 million are planning to do. So when election results come in wildly different from what the polls were saying, keep in mind that this might be the result of Candidate X “surging” at the last minute, but it might also be an indication that the polls were purblind and groping their way all along.

Daily Devotional

Responding to the Invitation

"In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink."
John 7:37

Charles H. Spurgeon

Patience had her perfect work in the Lord Jesus, and until the last day of the feast he pleaded with the Jews, even as on this last day of the year he pleads with us, and waits to be gracious to us. Admirable indeed is the longsuffering of the Saviour in bearing with some of us year after year, notwithstanding our provocations, rebellions, and resistance of his Holy Spirit. Wonder of wonders that we are still in the land of mercy!

Pity expressed herself most plainly, for Jesus cried, which implies not only the loudness of his voice, but the tenderness of his tones. He entreats us to be reconciled. "We pray you," says the Apostle, "as though God did beseech you by us." What earnest, pathetic terms are these! How deep must be the love which makes the Lord weep over sinners, and like a mother woo his children to his bosom! Surely at the call of such a cry our willing hearts will come.

Provision is made most plenteously; all is provided that man can need to quench his soul's thirst. To his conscience the atonement brings peace; to his understanding the gospel brings the richest instruction; to his heart the person of Jesus is the noblest object of affection; to the whole man the truth as it is in Jesus supplies the purest nutriment. Thirst is terrible, but Jesus can remove it. Though the soul were utterly famished, Jesus could restore it.

Proclamation is made most freely, that every thirsty one is welcome. No other distinction is made but that of thirst. Whether it be the thirst of avarice, ambition, pleasure, knowledge, or rest, he who suffers from it is invited. The thirst may be bad in itself, and be no sign of grace, but rather a mark of inordinate sin longing to be gratified with deeper draughts of lust; but it is not goodness in the creature which brings him the invitation, the Lord Jesus sends it freely, and without respect of persons.

Personality is declared most fully. The sinner must come to Jesus, not to works, ordinances, or doctrines, but to a personal Redeemer, who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree. The bleeding, dying, rising Saviour, is the only star of hope to a sinner. Oh for grace to come now and drink, ere the sun sets upon the year's last day!

No waiting or preparation is so much as hinted at. Drinking represents a reception for which no fitness is required. A fool, a thief, a harlot can drink; and so sinfulness of character is no bar to the invitation to believe in Jesus. We want no golden cup, no bejewelled chalice, in which to convey the water to the thirsty; the mouth of poverty is welcome to stoop down and quaff the flowing flood. Blistered, leprous, filthy lips may touch the stream of divine love; they cannot pollute it, but shall themselves be purified. Jesus is the fount of hope. Dear reader, hear the dear Redeemer's loving voice as he cries to each of us,

"If any man is thirsty, let him come unto Me and drink."

Professing Wisdom, Manifesting Childishness

The Absurdity of Materialistic Atheism

David Berlinski writes:

Ever since the great scientific revolution was set in motion by Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, it has been a commonplace of commentary that the more that science teaches us about the natural world, the less important a role human beings play in the grand scheme of things.  "Astronomical observations continue to demonstrate," Victor Stenger affirms, "that the earth is no more significant than a single grain of sand on a vast beach."  What astronomical observations may, in fact, have demonstrated is that the earth is no more numerous than a single grain of sand on a vast beach. Significance is, of course, otherwise.   Nonetheless, the inference is plain: What holds for the earth holds as well for human beings.  They hardly count, and scientists like Stenger are not disposed to count them at all.  It is, as science writer Tom Bethell notes, "an article of our secular faith that thee is nothing exceptional about human life." . . . .

Neither scientific credibility nor sound good sense is at issue in any of these declarations.  They are absurd; they are understood to  be absurd; and what is more, assent is demanded just because they are absurd.  "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs,"  the geneticists Richard Lewontin remarked equably in The New York Review of Books, "in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories." [Author's emphasis. David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 8f.]

It is truly baffling how those secularists who, by profession scientists, can proceed in such a confused, irrational, illogical, and absurd manner.

Daily Devotional

What Is Your Aim?

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. (Hebrews 10:24)

John Piper

When you get up in the morning and you face a day, what do you say to yourself about your hopes for the day? When you look from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, what do you want to happen because you have lived?

If you say, “I don’t even think like that, I just get up and do what I’ve got to do,” then you are cutting yourself off from a basic means of grace and a source of guidance and strength and fruitfulness and joy. It is crystal clear in the Bible, including this text, that God means for us to aim consciously at something significant in our days.

God’s revealed will for you is that when you get up in the morning, you don’t drift aimlessly through the day letting mere circumstances alone dictate what you do, but that you aim at something — that you focus on a certain kind of purpose. I’m talking about children here, and teenagers, and adults — single, married, widowed, moms, and every trade.

Aimlessness is akin to lifelessness. Dead leaves in the back yard may move around more than anything else — more than the dog, more than the children. The wind blows this way, they go this way. The wind blows that way, they go that way. They tumble, they bounce, they skip, they press against a fence, but they have no aim whatsoever. They are full of motion and empty of life.

God did not create humans in his image to be aimless, like lifeless leaves blown around in the backyard of life. He created us to be purposeful — to have a focus and an aim for all our days. What is yours today?

Just Dumb

The Fruits of a Superficial Education

In John Key, New Zealand has a Prime Minister who is superficial in critical ways.  His analysis and thinking upon some issues barely gets beyond the puerile.  When first elected to Parliament he was faced with a Prostitution Reform Bill--which would make prostitution a perfectly normal and mainstream occupation--you know, like taxi driving.

Key declared that he intended to support the Bill, announcing to the House:

I do not believe, and will never believe, that the government can legislate for morality. [John Roughan, John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister (Auckland: Penguin Books, 2014), p.111.]

There has been a strong streak of libertinism in his approach to such issues.  He threw his weight behind New Zealand's homosexual marriage private member's bill and undoubtedly was very influential in it passing.

What Key apparently struggles to grasp is the ubiquity of morality.  It is just dumb to assert, "I will never believe that the government can legislate for morality".

Letter From the UK (About Africa)

Capitalism is Eradicating Disease and Poverty

As the remarkable retreat of malaria across Africa shows, free trade is a very efficient way of spreading medicine and wealth

Daily Telegraph
Fraser Nelson


A Maasai warrior talks on a mobile phone in Kajiado, Kenya Photo: Joseph Van Os / Getty

Did you know that someone dies of malaria every 60 seconds? You may do, if you’ve seen one of the latest Christian Aid posters picturing an African girl staring fearfully at the camera, or a young boy lying on what seems to be his deathbed. They send a powerful Christmas message: while we celebrate in comfort, children are dying for want of a £3 mosquito net. And we could change this, if only we chose to help.

What these adverts don’t tell you, though, is the remarkable extent to which we are helping – and, more importantly, the way in which Africans are helping themselves. Malaria, mankind’s biggest killer, is now retreating faster than at any time since records began.

Earlier this month, the United Nations announced that malaria’s global death toll has more than halved since the turn of the century, saving six million lives. It’s the greatest success story of modern times, yet no one seems interested in telling it.

What Is a Dawkins?

An Appearance of Atheism

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

I saw on Facebook that Richard Dawkins had summarily dispatched the God of the Bible. Not only so, but he did it in under three minutes. I found out about this feat of legerdemain because Ken Ham’s answer to this elegant business showed up in my feed, and so then I went and checked it all out. Now I must admit that watching this kind of thing does make me want to have a go at it myself, but nothing here should be interpreted as finding fault with Ham’s response. It was a good sturdy response to Dawkins, albeit somewhat solemn.



So I rise to contest the first thirty seconds or so of Dawkins’ homily.

First, Dawkins announced that the burden of proof is not on the atheist, but rather on the theist. Actually, the burden of demonstration lies with whoever makes a dogmatic claim — and this is not really dependent upon whether the claim is positive or negative. If I state dogmatically that there is gold in Alaska, I may, without being insulted, be asked for my reasons. If a man goes in the other direction, and insists that there is no gold in Alaska, the same thing is going to happen to him. There will be a Q & A.

And in such a time, an interlocutor might go so far as to mention to our no-gold-in-Alaska dogmatist that proofs of universal negative claims are a bit harder to come by. A positive claim might be vindicated by the first venture of panning in the first brook you came to. But to vindicate a negative claim, one would have to dig up all of Alaska, all the way down.

This is why shrewd nonbelievers, among whom we do not count Richard Dawkins, usually retreat to a form of agnosticism.

Daily Devotional

On Self Understanding

C. S. Lewis

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in Words to Live By

The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

No Other Good At All

Fearsome Clown 

David Berlinski writes about the arrogance of the modern secular scientist--at least those who hold to its religious form of atheistic scientism.

Curiously enough, for all that science may be a very good thing, members of the scientific community are often dismayed to discover that, like policemen, they are not better loved.  Indeed, they are widely considered self-righteous, vain, politically immature and arrogant.  This last is considered a special injustice.

"Contrary to what many anti-intellectuals maintain, " the biologist Massimo Pigliucci has written, science is "a much more humble enterprise than any religion or other ideology."  Yet despite the outstanding humility of the scientific community, anti-intellectuals persist in their sullen suspicions. Scientists are hardly helped when one of their own champions immerses himself in the emollient of his own enthusiasm.

Another Pagan Dualism

How To Stop Sexualizing Everything

By D.C. McAllister
The Federalist

“Bye, I love you!” I said as I hung up the phone. My 15-year-old daughter was in the car at the time and asked who I was talking to. “My friend, Leslie, from Texas.”

“A woman?” she said. “That’s just weird, mom.”

I laughed. “No it’s not. She’s my friend and I do love her very much. Why shouldn’t I tell her that?” My daughter just shook her head and said, “It’s kinda gay, don’t you think?”

“No, it’s not gay. I have friends I kiss, too—on the lips! And I hug them and I get excited when I see them. I adore them, and I’m devoted to them. I have friends who captivate me with their beauty and intelligence. I tell them so. I tell them I think they’re beautiful and amazing. It’s nothing sexual. It’s phileo.”

“What’s phileo?” she asked.  “It’s friendship love,” I explained. “It’s passionate, but not like erotic love. It’s wonderful and stimulating. It’s probably the best kind of love when you really experience it, but so few of us do.”  She shook her head again. “Mom, you’re weird.”

I guess I am kind of weird. I confess: I’m very passionate about my friends. But am I the abnormal one, or is there something wrong with our society?

Daily Devotional

Setting Him Higher

"What think ye of Christ?"
Matthew 22:42

Charles H. Spurgeon

The great test of your soul's health is, What think you of Christ? Is he to you "fairer than the children of men"--"the chief among ten thousand"--the "altogether lovely"? Wherever Christ is thus esteemed, all the faculties of the spiritual man exercise themselves with energy. I will judge of your piety by this barometer: does Christ stand high or low with you?

If you have thought little of Christ, if you have been content to live without his presence, if you have cared little for his honour, if you have been neglectful of his laws, then I know that your soul is sick--God grant that it may not be sick unto death! But if the first thought of your spirit has been, how can I honour Jesus? If the daily desire of your soul has been, "O that I knew where I might find him!" I tell you that you may have a thousand infirmities, and even scarcely know whether you are a child of God at all, and yet I am persuaded, beyond a doubt, that you are safe, since Jesus is great in your esteem.

I care not for thy rags, what thinkest thou of his royal apparel? I care not for thy wounds, though they bleed in torrents, what thinkest thou of his wounds? are they like glittering rubies in thine esteem? I think none the less of thee, though thou liest like Lazarus on the dunghill, and the dogs do lick thee--I judge thee not by thy poverty: what thinkest thou of the King in his beauty? Has he a glorious high throne in thy heart? Wouldest thou set him higher if thou couldest? Wouldest thou be willing to die if thou couldest but add another trumpet to the strain which proclaims his praise? Ah! then it is well with thee. Whatever thou mayest think of thyself, if Christ be great to thee, thou shalt be with him ere long.

Though all the world my choice deride,
Yet Jesus shall my portion be;
For I am pleased with none beside,
The fairest of the fair is he

Lonely Voices

A Dishonoured Prophet 

Muslims are different and they are not going to integrate into Western society--so says Trevor Phillips, chairman of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission under Tony Blair.  Unsurprisingly, this view cuts right across the prevailing orthodoxy in Europe generally, and the UK in particular.  

To discuss this helpfully, we need to make some distinctions.  We need to be clear what sort of Muslim are we talking about.  As everybody knows, there are Muslims and Muslims, just as their are Christians and Christians.  Grant, if you would, that there are millions of Muslims in the West whome we can categorize as nominal Muslims--that is, Muslims in name only.  They do not get out the prayer mat, face Mecca and bow their faces on the ground six times a day.  Neither to they ever contemplate going on the haj.  They do not attend mosques, except for social occasions. They rarely, if ever, read the Koran.  They do not speak nor read the language of the Koran, Arabic.  They drink alcohol, ignore Ramadan, and socialise at the local pub.

Nominal Muslims have indeed integrated into Western society.  But there are Muslim immigrants who want to live as consistently as they can with Muslim practices.  They strive to follow the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, the Koran, and wherever possible, Sharia Law.  They are not nominal Muslims, but genuine conscientious believers.  Such Muslims are far less likely to integrate into secular Western society.  On the contrary they believe and practice Islamic imperialism.

Gender Warriors In Our Schools

Militant Sexual Libertines Push Their Ideology in Government Schools

We posted recently on the Gender Warriors--the attempt by sexual libertines to take over the schools and teach their particular propaganda.  They are becoming more and more bold.  They believe (correctly) that the tide is flowing in favour of sexual nihilism throughout the West.  They are now actively promoting it in government schools--in New Zealand, the UK, and in Australia.  There is almost always a strong streak of emotional blackmail thrown in: people must not judge.  Others must be accepted.  Then there are claims based on equity and justice.  Human equality and human rights demand that others be treated fairly.  If one is unwilling to join the cause, ostracism follows.  And so it runs.

In a recent issue of AP (Australian Presbyterian), Mark Powell described an incident at Burwood Girls High School, based in Sydney Australia.  It involved an activity requiring all students to show their support for homosexuality by a "Wear It Purple" day.

Islamic Parodies of the Christian Faith

Baghdadi is Not Insane

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the acknowledged Caliph of Islamic State, has taken to the airwaves once again.  One supposes the idea is to gee up the troops.  Some have suggested that it has been prompted by a number of reverses and setbacks suffered by Baghdadi in recent days.  Who knows?

The Guardian summarised his address as follows:

Islamic State has released a new message purportedly from its reclusive leader, claiming his self-styled caliphate is doing well despite an unprecedented alliance against it.  In the 24-minute audio posted Saturday, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi says airstrikes by the international coalition only increase Isis’s determination and resolve. He also mocks a recently announced Saudi-led Islamic alliance against terrorism and warns Israel “we are getting closer to you every day”. He says Israeli Jews “will hide behind trees and stones” from Isis.

Al-Baghdadi urges Muslims worldwide to join the fight, saying it is their Islamic duty to rise up everywhere.

We are always interested in the West's reaction to Baghdadi.  In any war, the adage "know your enemy" is not just apt, but strategically imperative.   The secular West struggles with Baghdadi.  He is a religious man.  This puts him in the West's lexicon perilously close to feeble mindedness at best; insanity, at worst.

ISIS has faced a number of military reversals in recent weeks; its shock troops are said to be shocked, dispirited, and thinking of a white Christmas back home.  But Baghdadi is not worried.  Nor does he wish his followers to be in a flap.

In a desperate call for support the terrorist leader admitted that Western and Russian airstrikes have had a “calamitous” toll on ISIS, but brushed off the death and mutilation of thousands of its fighters as a “blessing from Allah” which are simply part of a “pre-destined ordeal”.

He also bizarrely welcomed the recent widespread desertion amongst ISIS ranks, branding deserters “hypocrites and agents” and insisting that the numbers of fighters abandoning the jihadis every day is actually making the group stronger.  The unhinged message, which was circulated amongst jihadi fighters online, is the latest evidence that the increasingly fragile hate group is falling apart amid reports it is desperately short of both fighters and weapons.

He paints the seemingly impending collapse of the terrorist group as a "battle of all the infidels against all the Muslims", adding that "each time that the number of nations against us grows, so too does the certainty of the help of Allah and the fact that we are on the right path".  He says: “O Muslims, the current battle is not a simple crusade, but a war of all the nations of the infidel nations against the Islamic State. It has never happened in the history of our people that the world has gathered in a single battle like the one taking place today." [The Express]

These statements and claims are not the ramblings of the insane.  They are rather the ramblings of someone mistaken, even deluded.  But perfectly understandable and consistent, when seen in the lights of Baghdadi and the Caliphatistas.  They believe they are living in the end times.  They believe that the more they suffer reversals and hardships, the closer will be the Advent of Allah, the great unveiling, whereby Allah will come to their aid to vanquish their enemies.

If you believe in such an eschatology, Baghdadi's response is perfectly understandable.  All his provocations of ethnic cleansing, terrorist attacks, mass rapes--all of it has been an attempt to put fear into the hearts of his enemies.  All of it has been to subdue the infidels and make them submit to the pure will of Allah.  He believes that the reversals of fortune meted out by the infidels against him will arouse Allah to come to his aid.

Such beliefs are a Satanic parody on the Christian belief that the more we suffer for Christ, the closer God is to us.  

Daily Devotional

Glory Is the Goal

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2)

John Piper

Seeing the glory of God is our ultimate hope. “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). God will “present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).

He will “make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:23). “He calls you into his own kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:12). “Our blessed hope [is] the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Jesus, in all his person and work, is the incarnation and ultimate revelation of the glory of God. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). “Father, I desire that they . . . may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24).

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed” (1 Peter 5:1). “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

“We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7).“This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). “Those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30).  Seeing and sharing in God’s glory is our ultimate hope through the gospel of Christ.

Hope that is really known and treasured has a huge and decisive effect on our present values and choices and actions.  Get to know the glory of God. Study the glory of God, the glory of Christ, the glory of the world that reveals the glory of God, the glory of the gospel that reveals the glory of Christ.  Treasure the glory of God above all things.

Study your soul. Know the glory you are seduced by, and know why you treasure glories that are not God’s glory.

Study your own soul to know how to make the glories of the world collapse like Dagon (1 Samuel 5:4) in the pitiful pieces on the floor of the world’s temples.

Daily Devotional

Grace for the New Year

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

John Piper

Grace is not only God’s disposition to do good for us when we don’t deserve it. It is an actual power from God that acts and makes good things happen in us and for us.

God’s grace was God’s acting in Paul to make Paul work hard. So when Paul says, “Work out your salvation,” he adds, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). Grace is power from God to do good things in us and for us.

This grace is past and it is future. It is ever cascading over the infinitesimal waterfall of the present from the inexhaustible river of grace coming to us from the future into the ever-increasing reservoir of grace in the past.

In the next five minutes, you will receive sustaining grace flowing to you from the future, and you will accumulate another five minutes’ worth of grace in the reservoir of the past. The proper response to grace you experienced in the past is gratitude, and the proper response to grace promised to you in the future is faith. We are thankful for the past grace of the last year, and we are confident in future grace for the new year.

Peshawar Versus Paris

Genteel Sophistication Or Faithfulness to Duty

The Guardian has carried a piece on Pakistan, one year after the Peshawar school massacre.  Doubtless this act of murderous infamy has long since been leeched from the memory of most people in the West.  To refresh our minds:

It only takes the crash from nearby building work to send the teenage survivors of one of Pakistan’s worst ever terrorist attacks diving for cover.  “Everyone is traumatised inside the school,” said Mehran Khan, a 14-year-old student at the Army public school in Peshawar. “We are all thinking that there will be another attack.”

A year ago on Wednesday, Khan was shot three times when gunmen armed with suicide bombs stormed into the school auditorium where several year groups were watching a first-aid lecture. Most of the boys were unable to get to the exits, turning the hall into a scene of particular horror. The following day, when television crews were allowed in, the hard floors were still wet with blood.

More than 140 students and staff were killed, many of them executed at point-blank range by gunmen who also detonated bombs around the school buildings.

In the succeeding twelve months, much has changed in Pakistan, we are told.

New York City Gets Serious

NYC Will Fine You $250,000 For ‘Misgendering’ A Transsexual

by ALLUM BOKHARI

Breitbart News

Did you call a transsexual person “he” or “she” when they preferred to be called “zhe?” According to a newly updated anti-discrimination law in New York City, you could be fined an eye-watering $250,000.

In the latest, astonishing act of draconian political correctness, the NYC Commission on Human Rights have updated a law on “Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression” to threaten staggering financial penalties against property owners who “misgender” employees or tenants.

Incidents that are deemed “wilful and malicious” will see property owners face up to $250,000 in fines, while standard violations of the law will result in a $125,000 fine. For small business owners, these sums are crippling.

It’s not as simple as referring to transmen “he” or transwomen as “she,” either. The legislation makes it clear that if an individual desires, property owners will have to make use of “zhe,” “hir” and any other preferred pronoun.

Good News

Free Traders, Not Free Booters

We have noted in the past that we at Contra Celsum are free traders.  We support free trade not because we think there is something magical or messianic about goods and services being freely traded.  Rather, our position on free trade is an extension of the fundamental rights of private property ownership and the command, "Thou shalt not steal".  People's property is theirs to sell or exchange as they see fit.

Naturally, this is not an absolute right.  The use of one's property must be in accordance with the other nine commandments.  If one sells a good or service, whilst bearing false witness about the quality or nature of the service, theft has occurred, for example. Free trade must take place in the context of honesty and integrity, of true weights and measures.

For the past thirty years or so New Zealand has moved pretty steadily in the direction of free trade.  Part of trade being free is that exported goods are not subsidized by the State, thereby enabling sale at an artificially low price for the buyer.  Any such arrangements constitute theft--first of all from taxpayers whose property is extorted by the State to fund the subsidy, and secondly, it constitutes theft from competitors elsewhere in the world.

Traditionally, agriculture has "enjoyed" the greatest subsidies and barriers to free trade.

Asleep At the Wheel

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

There is mounting evidence that intelligence and police authorities have failed in their fundamental duties to protect by prevention.  When we consider how the big debates have been over granting powers to the authorities to spy on electronic messages, such as phones and e-mails--yet all the while, plain, old, ordinary, everyday responsibilities are ignored, it makes one a tad irate.  

Now we are learning that the mosque attended by the one of the San Bernadino shooters, Syed Farook is a militant mosque, a base for Tablighi Jamaat.  Yet the authorities allegedly knew nothing of the presence of this militant group at this mosque.  Worse, authorities are now estimating that there are over 50,000 adherents of this sect across the United States.  Fifty thousand--and US authorities want to focus upon powers and technologies to allow them to eavesdrop on German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

This, from Breitbart News:

Daily Devotional

A Horrible Destiny

. . . Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:10)

John Piper

Do you remember the time you were lost as a child, or slipping over a precipice, or about to drown? Then suddenly you were rescued. You held on for “dear life.” You trembled for what you almost lost. You were happy. O, so happy, and thankful. And you trembled with joy.

That’s the way I feel at the end of the year about my rescue from God’s wrath. All day Christmas we had a fire in the fireplace. Sometimes the coals were so hot that when I stoked it my hand really hurt. I pulled back and shuddered at the horrendous thought of the wrath of God against sin in hell. O how unspeakably horrible that will be!

Christmas afternoon I visited a woman who had been burned over 87 percent of her body. She has been in the hospital since August. My heart broke for her. How wonderful it was to hold out hope to her from God’s word! But I came away not only thinking about her pain in this life, but also about the everlasting pain I have been saved from through Jesus.

Test my experience with me. Is this trembling joy a fitting way to end the year? Paul was glad that the Lord from heaven is “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians1:10). He warned that “for those who do not obey the truth there will be wrath and fury” (Romans 2:8). And “because of [fornication, impurity and covetousness] the wrath of Godcomes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6).

Here at the end of the year, I am finishing my trek through the Bible and reading the last book, Revelation. It is a glorious prophecy of the triumph of God, and the everlasting joy of all who “take the water of life without price” (22:17). No more tears, no more pain, no more depression, no more sorrow, no more death (21:4).

But O, the horror of not repenting and holding fast to the testimony of Jesus!

Our Christian Hope

On This Day

If we were ever asked to give a "State of our Nation" address there would be many reasons for thanksgiving and gratitude.  We, as a people, have far, far more blessings than we deserve.  We marvel at God's patience and long-suffering toward us.  We rejoice in the beauty of our land: the swift sunrise, the joy of cooking a freshly landed a fish on hot coals on the beach to feed the family; or the glory of the dawn or sunset bird chorus, ringing forth in praise to our Creator.

These things have become so common place, so plentiful as it were, that we seldom think of them or value them highly enough.  In so many ways we have become like spoilt children, with a  perpetually stretched forth, demanding more.  Yet, in a comparative sense there are multitudinous numbers of people upon this planet who have never known or experienced such a rich and beauteous bounty.  What we take for granted in this country, others would gape at in astonishment, should they ever experience it.

Particularly for those of us who live in New Zealand, living on this earth is  to partake in and enjoy a constant marvel.  Here we get a vision or foretaste--more so than many upon the earth--of the recreated and restored earth to come.

We have come to understand by God's grace that upon death, our souls will ascend in Christ to the Father, to heaven, to the multitude of angels and our forebears, to have our joy and praise join theirs before the throne of glory.  We know that this is the house prepared for us by our Saviour.

But, we also know that glorious as it is and will be for us, His people, it will not be complete.