All posts by ozwitness

Justified Suspicion or xenophobia?

One of the first priorities of any government  is to protect the sovereignty and freedom of its people, and here in Australia a discussion is emerging regarding the actions of that burgeoning power to our North, China.

Should we keep quiet as China obviously expects us to, to protect our trade relations  with our largest customer,  as some of our politicians have suggested, or should we speak out about China’s unacceptable and lawless  behaviour, and risk its anger and loss of its custom?

For some time we had hopes, even expectations, that its acceptance of capitalism would be accompanied by growing freedoms and democracy, for it seemed the two went together, but it has not turned out so.

As that rising Aussie MP and likely future PM Andrew Hastie has concluded, and expressed in a recent speech, their President for life, Xi Jinping,  is interested only in total idealogical control. Not communism, but the ideology of power – how to use technology to obtain omniscient control over billions of  people, and it does not stop at China’s borders, but travels with ‘belt and road’, debt encouragement in the Pacific, Chinese students sent to study and migrate to Australia, tourists, and above all Chinese money.

In making a decision on how to respond to China’s actions, we should consider Jesus Christ’s words in Matthew 7:16, ‘You will know them by their fruits.’ Let us look at China’s recent activity:

Transportation and ‘re-education’ of a million Uighars, reminding us of China’s invasion and treatment of Tibet.                                                                 Persecution of Chinese Christians .                                                                            Arrest of Australian citizens in China.                                                                            Muzzling of free speech.                                                                                                   Interfering in our universities with “Confucius Institutes”.                         Cyber attacks on Australian Targets.                                                                              Regularly stealing intellectual property.                                                                         Illegally attempting to gain control of the South China Sea by building artificial islands in the territory of other smaller nations.

These are not the actions of a peace loving, law abiding, trust -worthy  power, and add up to an ominous  expansionist threat under preparation. In the Book of Revelation, Chapter 9:16 and 16:12, we are told of  End-Time armies from the East which attack the West. “And the number of mounted troops was two hundred million; I heard their number.”  Would Australia escape such aggression?

They are wiped out at Armageddon by Jesus Christ, the only One with limitless power, and the only One that could protect Australia, but we as a nation have rejected our God.

A Tribute to Lynne

One year ago tomorrow my dear wife of 53 years passed away with a brain tumour. This website would not be what it is without her contribution in many ways. She was the love of my life.

Lynne was born at the end of the 2nd world war to a couple in Liverpool. The marriage did not last long and Lynne’s mother returned to her parents in Burnley, so she was reared largely by her grand parents, as her mother chose to work and let her mother, Lynne’s grandmother, stay at home. Lynne’s grandad was a tackler in the cotton mill, right across the road from his house in Burnley.

Being a bright child, Lynne’s grandparents were keen to see her progress, enrolling her for ballet lessons and then when that failed after another student pirouetted into her, so that she ended up with a cut forehead, piano lessons. She was sent to the local Baptist church where she learned a lot about the Bible, and won various prizes with her Bible knowledge. After passing the 11 plus exam, which all children took in those days, she was sent to the local girls high school, the equivalent of the boys grammar school.

Her closest friend at school was Gerald’s cousin Judith, who eventually took her along to the Methodist youth club of Gerald’s family’s church. She was 14 when they met there and within a year or two they were close friends, getting engaged at 19 while Lynne was at teacher training college in Bingley, just over the border in Yorkshire.

Gerald was at Art College in Burnley then, but had cleaned offices to save up for a Lambretta scooter, and soon they were getting together every weekend, especially after Gerald was at Leeds University to gain his post graduate teaching qualification.

That scooter took Lynne to see her first thatched cottages in Devon, and eventually even to Paris where Gerald worked one summer painting.

Both of them finished their teaching courses together; Lynne gaining a teaching post near Hipperholme Grammar school near Halifax, where Gerald had found work. They graduated from the scooter to an old mini van then and the scooter was retired. Their first home was a cottage on a farm near Haworth in Yorkshire very near to “Wuthering Heights”, the farm on the moors, of Emily Bronte fame. The moors became the location of their many walks.

It was in that cottage that they heard something on the radio that brought them to begin reading the Bible, and within a couple of years they were baptised and members of the Church of God, which is mentioned several times in the New Testament. Marcus was born in 1972 and Guy followed three years later, just after their arrival in Australia.

Both ended up teaching in NSW, though Lynne only started teaching after raising the boys on their hobby farm for several years. After 13 years though, they returned to the UK for family reasons, and both ended up teaching again, this time Lynne becoming a travelling Gypsy teacher until the government funds were withdrawn and Lynne was offered early retirement aged 50! Meanwhile Gerald had become an unpaid ordained minister – looking after a group which he founded, called the Northwest Church Of God, in Britain.

The early retirement with pension access suited Lynne very well as they had just bought an old farmhouse with some fields and barns, in Wales, from where Gerald commuted to his school near Manchester.

Always Lynne helped Gerald with his ministry, and the church website, one of the very first church websites, typing out very many of Gerald’s hand written articles, which still appear on the Ozwitness website, today.

Eventually the boys were old enough to go their own way and zoom – it was off to Australia once more for them! As soon as they were married and began to have children , Lynne said it was high time to return to Australia too, and so Lynne truly became the patriarch of the family’s emigration to this great land, which she has thoroughly enjoyed exploring, from the red centre through to its to it’s circumference, until finally settling in Dunsborough, in which they had enjoyed many happy holidays.

Few people could have had a happier varied life and achieve the wonderful peace that Lynne has displayed with her beautiful smile even until almost the very end of her life. We thank God for that and today celebrate Lynne’s life and future in the Kingdom of God, for Lynne had found in the Bible a clear explanation of a glorious future for all mankind who have ever lived.

Thank you Lynne for all those wonderful years.

Progressives Got it Wrong

The following is a quote from todays “AUSTRALIAN” newspaper,  by Labour frontbencher Clare O’Neil:   “When… Labour people of a lifetime tell us they feel they are not allowed to question new social standards that seem to be reset every other week, I think we need to listen,”  she will say, according to a draft copy of the speech.

“There is a culture developing in the progressive movement where membership is granted with a box of ideas.  And if you don’t accept one of the ideas in the box, you do not merely have a different opinion,  you are obviously wrong, probably stupid and possibly subhuman.

” Not everyone with a concern about the immigration rate is a bigot. Not everyone  with a hesitation about is sexist. Not every social change is inarguably a good one.

“If Australians feel they can’t question assumptions and positions in conversation with us, they will find someone else to talk to about it.”

Clare describes herself as a ‘progressive’, that she believes in an ever changing society. The trouble is that rejecting laws that some believe to be eternal will result in an automatic conflict, in addition to the shifting sands of political correctness.

Political correctness is now found in many nations, though it started in Germany the 1930’s.   (See our article “Satan’s Political Correctness”)

What its adherents don’t realise is that following its ever more perverse guidelines comes with automatic penalties which have blighted societies around the world, and some of us recognise their source.

The time will come when mankind learns the hard way that there is a God who will not tolerate perversity, and the sad result will be the destruction of almost all human life because we have been duped by the “god of this world”, 2 Corinthians 1:21.  “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” NLT.

But there is one last chance for humanity. God will make one last miraculous effort to reach every man and woman in every nation, worldwide, with the way to peace, prosperity, and happiness. The whole world will be shocked, and the media will go bananas! Read about it in the next blog.

 

 

 

Prophecy fulfilled

It’s been almost unbelievable to see the dramatic decline into political chaos in Britain and the US this last year. For as long as almost all of us can remember they have been the leading stable, civilised nations of the world, setting the standard to which the ’emerging’ nations aimed.

Their inherited blessings and infrastructure are still there, and they still attract hopeful immigrants, legal or otherwise, but there is some thing rotten at the core of their governments which is evermore apparent as it breeds the division and disunity which we see, along with a hopeless lack of vision and clear direction.

We see it in the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and the obscene greed of the CEO’S, while the wages of the workers stagnate. We seat in the claims of criminality and corruption  directed at the political leaders and in the actions of the opposition , who make it their business to prevent any real progress. There is no sense of working together for the better good of the nation, just hatred and confrontation, and the public are as divided as their representatives, protesting about their rival claims.

On a moral level  the leaders are accused of working towards their own advantage, with claims of sexual misdemeanour and abuse.They can’t even rely upon the loyalty of their own party members anymore.

What has brought about this tragic decline? It is the absence of any respect for the laws and guidelines which made these nations great, which used to ensure co-operation in long term visionary projects, but which have perished under the attack of political correctness, with all its attendant curses. It is the rejection of God’s Laws and their replacement with Satan’s that brought this about, and we are starting to suffer the consequences you can read about in Leviticus 26, and Deuteronomy 28, and we have not yet reached the worst, for example, Lev.26:16, ‘ also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.’  Verse 19, ‘and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.’  And verse 33, And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

In Deuteronomy 28:43,  ‘The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker.’  And verse 62, “Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, because you did not obey the LORD your God.’  NAS.

Our future is determined by our choices. How tragic that we are choosing wrong!

A Dark Force Active?

Why is it that on so many of the important news items I get the feeling that there is something lemming-like about the public response, according to what we see in the media?

Is it because our media slant those responses according to their left -wing views or is there really some powerful dark force projecting its views into the public arena? Or, Is it both?

Let’s face it, for example, the current gender issues have not until recently been a hot topic, common sense still prevailed. Are sea levels really rising? Take a look in your area, and remember the earth’s crust is not stationary.  Sydney harbour tidal records reveal no rise in the last 100 years, and from what I saw in Britain, it is the same there.  Don’t the Brits want to leave the EU, despite their unwilling Parliament?  An increasing majority say yes. Is abortion morally acceptable?  Yes, say the woke women, but the quiet majority are much more doubtful.  Is Israel really the Pariah State the media make it out to be, or is it really the only civilised, democratic State in the Middle East?

Do we see the world spiralling down  into more chaos, violence and depravity?  Are the leading Western nations in deep trouble? Are their rivals peaceful, human rights respecting democracies, or ambitious,  expansionist autocracies, which repress their own people?

So are we really being brainwashed by a subtle dark power?

Are we all heading towards strife and war?  Oh yes, and in spades! ‘That Dark Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.’  2 Corinthians 4:4, New Living Translation.         ‘….in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—’ Ephesians 2:2, ESV. 

That Dark Power is the temporary god of this world, the Prince of the power of the air, over which he broadcasts his spiritual mis-education to deceive humanity.

In fact there are only two sexes. The world will continue to exist despite man’s mistreatment. Britain will escape from the EU, because it is corrupt and anti- democratic. Abortion remains murder and there is always a penalty for sin. Israel will survive the Tribulation to come and will be instrumental in the rebuilding the nations after the greatest war the earth has ever seen.

How do I know?  It’s all in the Book, and thankfully its main message is the gospel (the good news) of the coming Kingdom of God, but only after we have learned the hard way, by following that Dark Power.

Fighting for Freedom

I came across an article by Greg Sheridan in the ‘Australian’ newspaper which is so important  because of the British Supreme Court decision expected in the next few days, that I will summarise it here.

“Brexit represents the clash of forces playing out in the main Western democracies.  It may be about national sovereignty, but it is also about how societies should run, and what is the source of democratic legitimacy.

The clash is between a  postmodern, undemocratic, technocrat state, with its purpose the eradication of national identity and the transformation of human nature………. and a vision of  the universal quality of humanity with the nation state at the heart of democratic and civic loyalty, honouring traditional wisdom  and authority, and traditional forms of democracy…..

Remainers  faithfully represent the modern European constitutional tradition… that empowers a technocratic elite…. Give great legislative power to judges….. restrict the space for normal democratic decision making….

These,  shift power from electorates and parliaments to managers of information….. from thousand year old constitutional ideas to five year old ones, from habeas  corpus to gender identity.  Because it was Britain that did most to construct the ideal of liberty which is now being challenged, Brexit clarifies the constitutional stakes for the world as nothing else.

In the old British constitutional system, which Brexiteers want to uphold and restore, courts had very little role in reviewing British legislation. In the EU system everything  is ultimately decided by the courts. All  EU member nations must submit to European law and the European Human Rights Court.  Once politics is “judicialised” all politicians become mere talkers…….it represents an enormous transfer of power from the poor to the rich….The judiciary is drawn from an extrembly narrow band of society, typically from successful lawyers, by birth and education… among the tiniest sliver of the wealthiest people in the society.  Parliaments, on the other hand, represent all kinds of people— rich and poor, smart and dumb traditional and iconoclastic, conservative and radical…. 

Remain is essentially synonymous  with ruling class and that Brexit represents  an assault on the prerogatives of this ruling class…. Brexit has been an “all out”  administrative judicial, economic, media, political and parliamentary war. The battle against Brexit is being fought Europe-wide, with all the weaponry a cornered  elite has at its disposal.

 EU insider elites are extremely good at augmenting their own power…..impos[ing] this on the nations of Europe….. this hasn’t been very good for  those who live in Europe……. blamed for stagnating economies, dizzying inequality and out-of -control immigration….

Boris Johnson , like Donald  Trump wants an Australian- style immigration system.  

But the EU being blamed for rising inequality….. The fact that so many working-class and poorer areas voted for Brexit is used by Remainers, with fabulous class condescension, to show what an ill-judged, foolish decision it was, for the great unwashed could not possibly know what is actually in their best interests.

 …..the model of governance the EU  promotes pervasively diminishes   all the traditional and real measures of democratic input and accountability. It privileges the affluent technocratic elite with all its neurotic virtue signalling and tells the common man his life embodies no wisdom and not much value. This Brexit  revolution is a liberty- seeking missile.  Will it find its target?”

It will, eventually, but only with a lot of luck if those elite judges find it in themselves to respect the original democratic referendum of the British voters. This article suggests they may not, but if they don’t, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about!

Isaiah 29:14, “Therefore, behold, I will again do a marvelous work Among this people, A marvelous work and a wonder; For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, And the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.”

Coming Rulers

The Conservative manifesto at the last British election declared, ”No deal is better than a bad deal.”  What the EU wants, is to extend its power  over Britain, and their offer is plainly a bad deal, said Parliament, so the Conservative rebels who refuse to back Boris are simply continuing their refusal to represent the peoples’ democratic vote to be rid of the EU and even their own party’s manifesto.

Their betrayal of the one man who is doing exactly what he promised to do when he ran for election as leader of his party, is heinous!

Finally, Britain will end up out of the EU. We have known this would happen and have been saying so on this site and others for over four decades, but what this fiasco actually reveals  is the growing threat  of a European Super State and the unreliability of our politicians to represent the views of the people who have elected them.

Their desire to be part of a corrupt despotic empire which has weakened Britains borders, overruled its laws and demanded taxes for its corrupt bureaucracies, welfarism, political correctness and social engineering, is the real reason they rebel , rather than their claim that they just want to avoid a no deal Brexit.  Their treachery will go down in history as evidence that democracy is just not good enough!

What this world needs  is rulers who have proved that they understand their role is to truly serve the people they govern. Such rulers as those Jesus Christ mentioned in Luke 19 :17, ‘And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’

Who are these people? They are the ones who will stand up for true Christianity at the cost of their lives in the face of that coming, world conquering EU Super State.  Revelation 20:4, ‘Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.’

Brexit Deniers

There hav been suggestions  from the ‘Remainer’ MPs that the British people never voted to leave the E.U. without a deal, or agreement. To do so, they declare,  would be undemocratic. Let’s look again at the actual wording of the 2016 referendum.

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? ”   As you see, there is no mention at all of any qualification in that wording. It was a simple straightforward question to which the majority eagerly answered Leave !  Such was the disillusion among many, that they were anxious (to fulfil the prophecies) to leave.

Therefore, If Britain fails to gain a deal before the 31st of October, it will leave under Article 50 of the treaty on E.U., and it will leave because of a clear desire of the people to be rid of the E.U. for a whole variety of reasons,  none of which needed to be stated, for there were no conditions mentioned.

It is the devious  and selfish politicians attempting  to deny the instructions of the people  through the referendum, who are undemocratic, failing to represent their views and betraying the trust and will of their employers. They will pay the price in the next election !

Psalm 146:3,   ‘Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.’

A Machete Maniac – How Come?

A 28 year old police constable made a routine vehicle stop after spotting an uninsured van in East London. He and his woman colleague chased the van with their lights  and sirens on  until it stopped.

“Having engaged the driver, who was quite aggrieve…. he then tries to make off, gets back in the van and a violent struggle ensues where he produces a weapon and stabs our officer in the head and around the body”, said  Chief Superintendent Richard Tucker.

The assailant slashed the hands of the officer with a footlong blade as he tried to defend himself and cut him about the face and head in a frenzied attack, but as he was forced to the ground the officer used his taser to disable him until the police arrived, and pinned the screaming, violent offender down.

Scotland Yard Chief  Tucker said the attack was “a symptom of people having less fear of the police.”  He added, “Ive been in the police a long time – there’s certainly a sense a lack of respect, not just of the police but for authority”. He called for harsher sentences for the increasing knife crime against officers.

But is that really the solution to the knife crime on our streets, or to violence and misbehaviour anywhere, when in days gone by just a couple of police sergeants could control the crowds at a football match?

DCS Tucker was right in that respect for authority has been lost, but the solution is the recognition that behind all law and authority lie the Commandments of an all powerful God. Once that recognition is lost, there is no more right or wrong, and the slippery slide into chaos begins. Only when we recognise that parents have the responsibility to instil respect in their infants by teaching them about God, and by the use of loving discipline, which political correctness has made an offence, will children grow respecting the instructions of their mother and father.

Then, later, those children will respect and learn from their teachers too, and finally, on leaving school, they will naturally respect the law of the land and our protectors, the police.

Proverbs 13:24, ‘Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. ‘Proverbs 22:6, ‘Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.’