Choose Life Australia

 
Filed on 30 September 2017 in Food For Thought category. Print This Page

Breakfast Talk Sat 30 Sept 2017. A Perspective on our times to a Christian audience.

Good morning. I bring you good news and bad news and the bad news is very bad but the good news is very good (sounds like a nursery rhyme from my childhood about a little girl with a curl on her forehead).

I trust that by the end of this morning you will be more alert than ever to our times and the need for prayer and sometimes action, and that you will be in tune with a theme that we have in our early morning weekday prayer time 5 days a week – grief for our nation, mourning for our world and the suffering church, excitement for tomorrow and joy for today.

And if anyone here does not know Jesus as Lord and Saviour, my prayer is that by the end of this morning you will come to that place of commitment.

My serious side is always mixed with fun which sometimes gets me into trouble. I have to be careful in the surgery consulting room to keep my sense of humour in check – but not always. I enjoy camping and it was around a camp fire about 5 yrs ago that I talked about some of the challenges facing us as Christians and threats to our world and one person who had been listening asked me the next morning “how can we prepare?” And so I talked about that the next evening and it became a paper on “A Safe Place for our Children” which you will find on the Choose Life Australia website and we will mention this briefly later.

And so, what are these threats?

There are so many books that we should read. Yeah, I know, people keep telling us don’t they? Elizabeth Kendal is an Australian writer who publishes the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin. Last year she published “After Saturday Comes Sunday” that highlights Islamic aggression “first the Jews, then the Christians”, an Arabic war cry – as sure as Saturday (the day of Jewish worship) is followed by Sunday (the day of Christian worship), first we’ll kill the Jews, then we’ll kill the Christians.

I don’t know whether any of you listen or watch Dr Michael Youssef on Sunday morning – I was amazed to hear him say one time that he grew up in Egypt with this taunt from other children.

We probably all realise the threat of Islamic extremism bathed in the resentment of many centuries. To understand the Middle East and the threat to the “Nations of the Cross” inscribed in blood from the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded on the beach in Libya in 2015, you need to read this book. And so, Islam, the first threat.

And we need to add in here the unpredictable threat of North Korea and nuclear holocaust!

The next threat is internal and is from the aggressive atheistic lobby with the leftists onside in wanting to erase anything Christian, re-writing our Christian heritage, stopping children from talking about Jesus in recess, replacing Happy Christmas with happy holiday, and with the militant evolutionists wanting to deny any uncomfortable evidences or logic in Intelligent Design and barring scientists who do accept ID – or, even worse, flood geology or Creation Science – promotions in their university or other fields.

And this of course leads to the threat to our freedom – control of belief and to speak of that which we believe, and beyond that, control of our thoughts and minds – if necessary with correctional re-education classes. This threat is spearheaded by the push for same-sex marriage, the “nice” name for homosexual “marriage”. But even that nice name is now not acceptable. As doctors in the response to the AMA statement supporting “marriage equality” we were accused of using the term same-sex marriage instead of marriage equality with a counter-response saying “which shows what we are up against”. So even using the nice term of same-sex marriage is regarded as hurtful.

But the marriage equality push is, as I said, only the head of the spear to control our freedom – Marxist philosophy in its “long march through the institutions” as Tony Abbott said in an editorial The West Australian just three days ago.

But this in turn is only indicative of the war in heaven and the satanic push to counter God’s creation plan and to wage war on God’s people.

So, how is this war in heaven played out at our level? By a direct attack on Creation and Creation order. By attacking that mankind is created in the Image of God and then by attacking the creation of male and female – first demonstrated by the attack on sexual behaviour, then the attack on marriage and now – with the transgender issues so much before us – with the attack on masculinity and femininity, what it means for God to have created male and female and make it of no essence.

John Yates puts it so well “the oppositional but complementary nature of heterosexual gender identity is written into the very framework of the order of the universe and the peak of the Creator’s genius. The challenge is far more profound than most Christians realise. This is a claim (for same-sex marriage) that God did not create His Image as male plus female, it is an attack on the very existence and nature of God. The spiritual warfare around this issue is very intense.”

This is direct rebellion against God in an intensity as we have not seen in our lifetime – and against His people, the Bride of Christ, the Church – to silence it, to divide it, and to destroy our freedom to teach our children about our Christian faith. Yes, we’ve been here before with Communism and German fascism but not in our time and not in the “free” West.

It reminds me of that scene in Revelation 12 where Satan declares war against “those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus”.

Yes, the real issue for humanity, for us – and it always has been – is what we do with our God.  Terrorism and war may then be what God does with us – or at least permits.

Are we in the Last Days? Who knows but if we are then remember the words of Jesus on the Calvary Road to “lift up your heads for your redemption draws nigh”.

And the other day I was reading Hezekiah’s prayer (2 Kings 19:16) when Jerusalem was surrounded by the army of Sennacharib and Hezekiah responded to Sennacharib’s challenge against God by praying “give ear, Lord, and hear; open your eyes Lord and see; listen to the words Sennacharib has sent to ridicule the living God. Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Lord, are God”.

And what is our way forward? More than anything else it is to engage in prayer as did Hezekiah. Remember as never before that our war is more than just against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

We are quite fortunate here in Australia in that we realise the agenda has become more transparent in moving from same-sex marriage to definitions of male and female and transgenders and gender fluidity with state driven indoctrination with its many broad aspects in our schools and even in our pre-schools. The push to wipe out “heteronormativity” is so extreme that in some early childhood education programs children are not supposed to ask whether a new-born baby is a boy or a girl.

The agenda of Ros Ward has become obvious in what she has said “Safe Schools Coalition is about supporting gender and sexual diversity… Not about stopping bullying. About gender and sexual diversity. About same-sex attractive. About being transgender. About being lesbian, gay, bisexual – say the words – transgender, intersex”. And her Marxist agenda slipped in a tweet about the rainbow flag flying over the Victorian parliament when she said “Now we just need to get rid of the racist Australian flag on top of the state parliament and get a red one up there and my work is done.”

And so, this plebiscite is more than just giving gays permission to marry and marriage equality. Equality was achieved by the law changes of 2008. There is no inequality. Gays too are free to marry but marriage is for male and female as a complementary biological pair.

Legislation has consequences – changing marriage law is no exception

• To include any “two people” as per law changes already suggested also includes different genders i.e. transgender marriage would be legal
• Legislative approval of sexual indoctrination of our children to accept such a genderless society (gender is fluid), to explore their sexual orientation and their gender identity, being encouraged at a young age to declare their sexuality, that there are two virginities (with a chick and a dude), that homosexual behaviour is “normal” and without risk, and to groom for early sex
• In giving such legislative approval of a homosexual lifestyle with reinforcement through our schools we are exposing them to all the medical risks of that lifestyle (but we’re not allowed to talk about that like we are able to talk about smoking and alcohol and drugs)
• Legislative approval of a new “stolen generation” of children being raised in same-sex/transgender families without the solid foundation of mothers and fathers – particularly biological mothers and fathers
• The attacks on freedom of speech and belief – at risk now as has already been demonstrated during this campaign – will be “weaponised” through anti-discrimination laws
• On freedom to bring up our children with our own values and not be subject to “diversity/sensitivity re-training”. Ultimately, as we have seen overseas, home schooling will have to incorporate such instruction and children will be tested to ensure that they have “learned”.

The push to transgender, to change our sex when we feel like it and to approve of such to our kids is an extraordinary issue that has come out of this revolution and moved with lightning speed. On the one hand in Toronto parents are considered to be abusive unless they agree to their transgender child having medical or surgical therapy to help them transgender, are threatened with having the child taken away from them. On the other hand we have very prominent paediatricians including our own Dr John Whitelaw considering it abuse if treatment is given.

The elephant in the room is biology (some elementary one-liners)

• The biological design and purpose of male and female sexual anatomy and function is the creation of progeny and the formation of family
• Sexual activity outside of biological parameters is not the same – it is different..
• Sexual activity outside of biological parameters is associated with significantly increased rates of disease.
• Legislative approval of “marriage” outside of these biological parameters is therefore a public health disaster
• State indoctrination of our children through school curriculums that endorse and encourage sexual activity outside biological parameters is likewise also a disaster
• Children have a right to know and be brought up by their biological Mothers and Fathers

None of these can be classified as hate-speech.

What is our responsibility to be? What did Jesus say that is applicable to this battle?

1. Firstly, Jesus affirmed the creation story. Matt 19:4-6 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’^b? ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” As we have said, this warfare is an unprecedented rebellion against God and His Creation – we must preach and teach the fundamentals of creation and their application – male and female created He them, the ordinance of marriage and the Imago Dei – to be created in the image of God
2. Secondly Jesus explained and affirmed the command (Luke 10:27) to love our neighbor. Loving our neighbour and our neighbour’s children means warning against approaching calamity (e.g. a flash flood) or helping to protect their future from encroaching evil – in this instance against state mandated sexual indoctrination. It is not optional (oh, I don’t get into anything political, I just concentrate on evangelism). “Hate evil and love good, then work it out in the public square” (Amos 5:15 Msg)
3. Thirdly, Jesus said “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt 18:6). If we, as informed Christians, support SSM and support and vote for politicians whose firm commitment is the sexual indoctrination of our children through legislative mandate, then we too are guilty of allowing our little ones to be led into sin.

Action

• Realise above all that this is a battle in the heavenlies and pray
• Realise at the earthly level this is now a political exercise and for the sake of our country and our future
• Talk about it. Know how to communicate with different age groups
• Vote! And encourage others to vote. (No, of course!)
• Do the Zoom program via the CoalitionforMarriage website
• Teach and learn scripture. Learn it and by your example teach your kids and grandkids to learn it. Teach them as we walk along the road, as they go to bed and as they get up. What they learn now will stand them in good stead as they face these battles in the times to come. This is Deuteronomy 6 of course – the Shema: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
• For the same reasons learn and teach songs – the tunes stay in our head and we can sing along to the tune (even in times of trouble like Paul and Silas did in the jail at Philippi).

Good news. Bad news. I don’t think the bad news gets any worse than this. I come back to the saying of our early morning prayer meetings – grief for our nation; mourning for our world and the suffering church; excitement for tomorrow because God is ultimately in charge; and JOY for today. Every day.

Are we in the Last Days? Who knows but if we are then remember the words of Jesus on the Calvary Road to “lift up your heads for your redemption draws nigh”.