All posts by ozwitness

Innate Human Instinct

I just watched an interesting program on BBC1 about a university experiment to see if we could learn if human children are born with inherent characteristics which are dependent on their sex. For example, do boys instinctively choose to play with different toys than girls because of inbuilt sexual characteristics?

Some would say that this is quite noticeable, but these days it is not politically correct to admit that there are inherent sexual differences. This would be called ‘sexist’ by the rainbow brigade, so the experiment was significant. They claim that such differences are brought about by their environment, rather than their sex, so, is it nature, or nurture?

The experiment resorted to using animals because they could not be claimed to have been influenced by their  ‘family’ background. The animals needed to have characteristics similar to humans, and in this experiment, baboons were chosen.

Male and female baboons were given access to toy cars, trucks planes and mechanical items mixed up with soft toys of different kinds, and  dolls.

It quickly became apparent that the males went for the cars and trucks, being fascinated by the moving parts like the wheels and the shiny surfaces, while the female baboons picked up the odd car, but quickly changed to examining the dolls, and began carrying them around as though they were babies.

This experiment, though simple, indicates that nature rather than nurture  determines our choice of items which prepare us for our future roles – that we are born with those roles already imprinted in our genetic make-up, something that the politically correct hate and decry as sexist, but is entirely natural, or should we really say , Biblical, for the Bible indicates that men and women have God given, and quite different roles.

Ephesians 5:22-25,    “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

No Moral Compass

Here in Britain there is great concern about the number of knife crimes.  Just watching the news brings another death  – a young man stabbed in the heart. Such stabbings don’t happen by accident; it could not be a blow dealt in self-defence.

Then I was brought a poem written by someone suffering from depression. It started, “It’s me, not you…” and went on to reflect a very introspective concern with trying to find a way out of the black dog of depression.of depression, which obviously wished the author dead, a cry for help which has become very common these days, especially among the young.

In my own country, Australia, the similar figures for self-harm and even suicide among the very young are worse than allarming, and this can be traced back to the results of drink, drugs, and often, child sexual abuse.

I cast my mind back, and ask my family if they remember anything like that occurring in the days of their youth. Thy cannot. It is simply a symptom of a sick society where lawlessness, drink, drugs, pornography and evil have gained such a grip that some people feel lost and can see no way out of their sad circumstances.

Have we arrived at this by accident? No. We have brought it all about ourselves as a society, by our rejection of all moral authority. It used to be, not long ago, that people understood the difference between right and wrong. In those days every school in Britain had by law to include a dominantly Christian religious assembly in the morning. As a teacher I listened to and gave many myself. Youngsters learned that right and wrong were determined by the Ten Commandments, given by God…  And as a result, authority still existed in schools, in the police force, and the laws of the land, as well as in the self discipline which stemmed from that recognition of a God who determined right from wrong.

All of this is no more. Today it is all about “me, my ‘Facebook’, self-respect, my ‘rights’,  no matter how evil, and the result is lack concern for others, the concern of which is actually the only way out of the depression which afflicts so many in society. Read about that choice in Leviticus 26, or Deuteronomy 28, and find the Way to overcome depression and gain the moral compass we all need.

Deuteronomy 28:1, ‘Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God:’…..

But, Deuteronomy 28:15, ‘If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:’……

Origin of Political Correctness

Where did Political Correctness come from?  When we think about it, PC has not been around that long, indeed I don’t rememberer its existence  50 years ago.

It was only really after the end of the 2nd world war that Britain began to lead the way in departing  from the law that had guided her for many hundreds of years – British Common Law, largely created in the period after the Norman ConQuest. Sir Francis Bacon long ago said, “The Law of England is not taken out of Amadis  de Gaul, nor the book of Palmerin, but out of the Scripture…”   I’m sure most of us can recognise the influence of the Ten Commandments upon our laws even to this day.

The equality of all people before the Law, for example, is another of its legacies, but  the Bible’s  influence upon society began to wane with the Theory of Evolution, and by the 1950’s the churches were on the decline, and even the laws of the land relating to property, marriage and sexual relations all came under criticism and eventually, change.

But the removal of respect for Biblical Law and the resultant changes brought more problems than had been imagined. It seemed that the replacement of biblical principles with ever more detailed acts of parliament brought unintended consequences. Too often the victims of crime were punished while the criminals went free, and child abuse, one parent families, juvenile crime and women’s refuges increased enormously, while all sorts of sexual deviations which could not contribute to society as did marriage, flaunted their pride.

Still worse, Britain’s power, prosperity and position in the world declined, while our deluded leaders led us into Europe and allowed ‘every man and his dog’ into the country unchecked, to satisfy their one world ambitions.

When we stand back and look over these years, we see the consequences of our departure from biblically originated Law, and if we have eyes to see, it is hard not to recognise it as a curse, so who has benefitted,  in Britain and Britains ex-colonies around the world?

Only one is delighted at the success of his influence;

‘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.’  New Living Translation.
2 Corinthians 4:4.

Air Pollution and Heart Disease

Research just released shows that the hearts of even the very young city dwellers contains billions of toxic air pollution particles. These iron-rich particles, produced by vehicles and industry, could be the cause of the long-established link between air pollution and heart disease.

Another  recent report found the same nano-particles in human brains associated with Alzheimers-like damage, indicating that air pollution damages every organ and cell in the body, even in the placentas of women who had given birth.

Although it is suggested that particle emissions from vehicles can be reduced, this would be merely tinkering around the edges of the problem, which will feed into reducing life expectancy figures. What would be required to remove the problem altogether is an unimaginable change in both worldwide industry and transport. This is not going to happen in the present circumstances, but there is good news.

A change is coming, when the whole earth and its systems, its climate, geography, industry, transport, religions and  even the way the nations are governed, will totally change for the better. It will occur under the rule  of the  returned Jesus Christ who will have both the ability and the support needed to enable the change to be successful worldwide, achieving peace, prosperity and happiness for all mankind, but it will not be industry and technology based.

It will be an agrarian society, based upon farming, the family, and human and animal involvement rather than huge machines and computers. The whole emphasis will be upon human relationships and ecology, rather than wealth and material possessions, and and the result will be that pollution of all kinds will be removed !

Isaiah 30:23-25,  ‘He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill.’

Computer Danger

Many of us are wary of handing over our lives to another person, especially in a situation where there is no escape if things go wrong, so when we learn of increased risks in modern air transport we are naturally concerned, and recently there have been too many crashes with enormous loss of life.

Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the sea off Indonesia because the pilot “lost (the) fight with his software,” Canadian Transport minister Marc Garneau chillingly told a Wednesday press conference announcing the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 8.

There was nothing wrong with the basic mechanics of the aircraft: Its engines, wings and control surfaces are all believed to be working fine. Rather, the passenger jet may have killed 346 people for the terrifyingly modern reason that human pilots were unable to override a malfunctioning computer.

The cause of the Lion Air crash — and the suspected cause of the recent downing of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 — is a little-known piece of software known as MCAS, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

The 737 MAX 8 has heavier and more fuel-efficient engines than prior editions of the 737, a change which causes the aircraft to pitch upwards ever-so-slightly after takeoff.

Rather than instructing airlines to warn their pilots of this quirk, Boeing simply equipped the MAX 8 with MCAS, a program that would automatically tilt the nose downwards to compensate.

Unaware of this automatic system, which was interfering with normal flight because of erroneous information, the pilots fought the computer until the tragic end.

We have always been led to believe that the pilot can, in emergency take over the manual flying of the airplane, but often we tend to believe that our technology cannot be wrong .  In the final analysis though, the man is to be trusted more than the machine, and pilots should be trained to accept  that responsibility and be provided with a simple switch which places the entire control of the plane back into their hands.

Until this is done and that doing made public, some of us will be doing as little flying as possible!

‘For surely we will die and be like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be recovered. Yet God does not take away a life; but He devises ways so that the banished one may not remain estranged from Him.’  2 Samuel 14:14.

Migrant Landing an “Act of War”

Italian police have arrested a German sea captain who had rammed a much smaller military vessel which was trying to prevent the illegal landing of 53 African migrants on the small Italian island of Lampedusa. She was led away in handcuffs after her failed attempt to get permission to land  and was arrested for “resisting a warship”, an offence that carries up to ten years in jail.

Italy and Europe have tired of the endless stream of African migrants who seek to force their way into Europe, aided by “human rights” organisations who provide ships which encourage people smugglers to launch groups of African migrants on overcrowded rubber dinghies which have no chance of crossing the Mediterranean.

Unknown thousands have drowned in the process, even as we saw with the boat people attempting to reach Australia and enter illegally, but after rescuing these drifting migrants this captain refused the offer of the Libyan government to disembark them in Tripoli, and instead took them to Lampedusa, nearly sinking the small government vessel in her attempt to force the acceptance of these migrants upon Italy.

The logical conclusion of such acts, were they not to be resisted, would be the end of nation states as we know them, and the orderly  acceptance of genuine refugees in dire need would end. Each nation has the responsibility  to care for  and govern its own people, and if it fails to do this, for any reason, other nations have the right  to decide  how to respond, depending on the circumstances.

Very often  it seems that these are migrants fleeing the results of Islamic violence and war, who seek to bring their dangerous beliefs into Europe, where a peaceful Christian civilisation is already suffering Islamic terrorism. Were it not for the set boundaries of nations, European civilisation as we know it would perish.

Deuteronomy 32:8, ‘When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.’ NIV.

Acts 17:26, ‘From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.’ NLT.

We are going to see an even stronger European response  to this growing problem before long, when the prophesied ‘Beast’ Power emerges in Europe.

The Jews Today

There are Two main cities in Israel, but they could hardly be more different.  Jerusalem is still centred on the old walled city: historical, Palestinian/Israeli, choked with tourists, so ‘religious’ that parts virtually shut down for the Sabbath, and the orthodox Jews make their presence felt with their black hats, ringlets and public praying – reminiscent of the Pharisees of Jesus Christ’s day.

Tel Aviv is humming. Centred on the beach. The Sabbath sees the streets almost empty, but the beach is crowded with sun worshippers, an endless parade of hedonistic, sun bronzed Israelis, macho, muscled IDF soldiers, and still feminine girls, despite their gun toting service in the army for three years. There is no Sabbath on the beach. The musak never stops and it seems half the population is racing back and forth on electric scooters and bikes, some carrying two or three people at highly dangerous speeds.

It used to be that there were 3 kinds of Israelis. The orthodox religious black hats, the liberal religious Jews, and the secular Jews with no religion. Now we are told that a fourth group is emerging, combining a liberal, free and easy approach with a nationalistic bent, almost like the state has replaced their religion, maybe due to their experience in their army. This seemed more evident in Tel Aviv.

In fact, neither city appeals. Christ was rejected in Jerusalem, Matthew 23:37, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”,  and Tel Aviv  has never known Him.

The Jews have been replaced  as God’s chosen people by Spirit Begotten Christians of all races – Spiritual Israelites, Galatians 3:28, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’  They are the ones who will assist Christ in the reconstruction of both cities, after the coming Great Tribulation, and in their rule, after Christ’s return, in the future Kingdom of God.

The Dangerous Liberal Left

In a very interesting article in the Jerusalem Post, Maayan Hoffman came out with, maybe without realising it, some very Biblical truths,  quoting from Dr Michael D Evans at the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference:      “The Liberal Left has convinced America and Israel [in fact the whole West] that the war on terror cannot be won through military action.” He went on to say that the liberals are “attempting to  fracture even our will to win,” the war on terrorism.

The Liberal Left tactic is better just to talk with people, since we are basically all the same and reasonable at heart, rather than  bring criminals to justice or stop them committing crimes.”

“The Liberal Left kills the soul. The terrorists kill the body,” he said.     “It is very important for you to fight…. the ideological terror war that exists.”  “It exists.”

 

This is essentially the message brought to us in the Bible.  We have chosen sin, helped along by Satan, and it is part of Satan’s plan to bring down the entire West, to undermine any concept of right and wrong, of good and evil,  so that we are simply left  with shades of grey to chose from.

Leviticus 26:18-19, ‘And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze.’ (Read the whole chapter to receive God’s warning)

The fact is that we are not all basically the same and reasonable at heart, because  the Koran differs from the Bible and preaches hatred and violence rather than love,  which is why its fruits are so bitter, why the jihadis delight to blow up  men, women and children, and expect to be rewarded  with 70 virgins in Paradise.

The result if we don’t fight, is what we see in Syria and the Moslem lands; a nightmare,  for Satan loves to see humans kill each other. No wonder half the Moslems try to flee to the Christian West!

Why Western Troubles?

In Israel today there is apparently growing concern about the Western assault on Jewish symbols and the rising tide of anti- semitism in the West.

Now it seems that the Star of David  and the Kippah, which Jewish males wear on their head, are not safe to wear in Germany. Angela Merkel has said, “I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah every where, all the time in Germany.”  But she allowed pro- Iranian protesters to march through Berlin shouting anti- Israel slogans, and waving banners reading “Zionism is racism’ and ‘Child Murderer Israel’.

Why is it that , though a third of the world’s flags contain a religious symbol such as the cross or the Muslim crescent, the star of David is banned in some nations, or unsafe to wear?   No other symbol is unsafe in the West, where Jewish cemeteries are often defaced  and claims are made such as ‘ Israelis behind ISIS’ or ‘The holocaust never took place.’

Why do we see antisemitism growing in the halls of academia, where it masquerades as anti- Zionism, hiding behind the mask of pseudo- intellectualism and creeping into the mainstream?  This rewriting of history attempts to legitimise the case against  a Jewish homeland, and is  finding its way into our parliaments and Congress where it has never been seen before.

Read the book of Hosea to see that God is angry at His people for forgetting Him and His Laws.  Israel (That is, Britain  and the US,  part of the 10 Tribes)  have rejected their God, and Jerusalem holds Gay Pride marches, in their hypocrisy.

Hosea 8:14,  ‘For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples [Islamic mosques etc.]; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof.’

Last time in Jerusalem ?

It’s been years since I was here in Jerusalem, actually the largest city in Israel, as well as its capital. I found it hot and rather humid in comparison to winter in Australia.

I  took my first drive out to a village South of Jerusalem, called Tekoa, the hometown of the Prophet Amos.  The GPS in the car took me a long way round through several Arab villages, something the Jews would never contemplate. But when I ended up in a dead end, it was a kind Palestinian who got in his car and led me to the correct route.

Arriving at a Tekoa, it was obviously a Jewish town, though it was surrounded by the West Bank. The comparison was clear: neat, tidy,  trees, shade, no litter or rubbish, and the infrastructure quite Western. I felt sorry for the inhabitants of the West Bank, who had been unable to achieve the same facilities.

In fact Jerusalem ranks as Israel’s poorest city, and I suspect that the 36.5% who are Muslim figure in that number. Christians are just 1.8%. Strangely for a Western county, Jewish women produce an average of 4.3 children and the Arabs 3.3% (2017).  In total 31% are religiously observant.

But here, something new is happening. A new Interior Ministry report shows a significant increase the numbers of the city’s Arab residents requesting Israeli citizenship, up 47%  from 2015. most Arabs are “residents” not citizens. They are entitled to social services and rights like health, National Insurance and employment rights, but do not hold passports or citizenship.

Citizenship brings better jobs, use of Ben Gurion Airport and safeguards the rights of residents of Jerusalem. These new applicants often try to hide it from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas activists, but secretly many of them already have passports.

This trend reflects a recognition that maybe the Arab leadership are making many mistakes. Who would want to live in Syria, or Iraq?  Israel is obviously better, and many Arabs must be asking what could be the cause of those very bitter fruits in their nations?