CHRISTIANS OF NORTHERN IRELAND : LIFT UP YOUR VOICE LIKE A TRUMPET (Isa 58:1)!

Stephen Green of Christian Voice is visiting Northern Ireland to set out his vision of a Christian society at a time when the politics of Northern Ireland is creating fresh challenges and opportunities for witness.

Thursday 9th October 2008, 8pm – Christian Meeting
Independent Methodist Church , Queen’s Parade, OMAGH , BT79 0DJ  

Friday 10th October 2008, 8pm – Christian Meeting
Independent Methodist Church , Doury Road , BALLYMENA , BT43 6JD

 Saturday 11th October 2008, 7.30pm – Christian Meeting
Townsend Street Presbyterian Church, BELFAST , BT13 2ES  

Sunday 12th October 2008, 11.30am – Morning Service
Independent Methodist Church , Duncastle Road ,
New Buildings, LONDONDERRY , BT47 2QT

Sunday 12th October 2008, 6.30am – Evening Service
Free Methodist Church , Gregg Street , LISBURN , BT27 5AW

Stephen Green says: ‘These are new and demanding times for Northern Ireland, and during my visit to the Province I shall be encouraging Christians to lift up their voices and call for repentance and a turning back to Jesus Christ, who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

‘The old certainties, it seems to me, are changing, and Christians need to be aware where the new threats are coming from. Who would have thought, for instance, that the first civil partnership would be registered in Northern Ireland, or that Ulster’s primary school children would be the first in the UK to have their innocence destroyed through mandatory sex education? There are moves afoot to impose the horrors of legal abortion on the Province. Will the Church have the conviction to stand against that?

I have a vision of a society where God’s law is preferred to secular ideas, and where there is peace and tranquillity. In such a society, individuals have responsibilities, married couples stay married, they bring up Godly children, perversion is not paraded through the streets, the State wields the sword of true justice, and God’s blessing is poured out. As the Psalm says:

“That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace: That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store: that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets: That our oxen may be strong to labour; that there be no breaking in, nor going out; that there be no complaining in our streets. Happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the LORD.” Psalm 144:12-15 (KJV)

I have been much challenged by Isaiah 58:1 recently, and the prophetic duty of the church in Ezekiel 33 to sound the trumpet of warning.  I have realised as well that the spate of knife and gun crime amongst the young has come just 40 years after the 1968 implementation of the Abortion Act 1967. In the Bible 40 years seems to speak of testing and judgment (Jonah 3:4). Much more evil was sown in the sixties as well, and I believe we are now reaping the results.

We were able to place an ‘advertorial’ at very low cost in ‘The House’ magazine which went last week to everyone at the Labour Party Conference.  It is appended below.  Does it strike a chord with you?

VIOLENT CRIME – SOWING AND REAPING

There is a Biblical principle that we reap what we sow. It applies to nations as well as to individuals. What politicians sow, the people reap. When politicians sow evil, the people reap misery, and the poorest reap it the worst.

The Divorce Reform Act 1969 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 introduced divorce on demand and no-fault settlements. The ease with which Parliament said marriages could break up sowed the idea that the promises made in marriage did not matter. The people have reaped a covenant-breaking mentality in which being divorced against your will or any kind of justice is taken for granted and the sum of human misery is increased.

Around that time, the state began to encourage teenagers to have sex with the only moral message being to use a condom. That resulted in profits to manufacturers and an explosion of teenage pregnancy. Now we have the disaster of teenage infertility. Every government initiative, including the HPV vaccine, will increase it, but as all the targets revolve around pregnancy, no-one in power cares about those young people they have made sterile.

An increase in the size of the state meant heavier taxation, and big business wanted a feminised, non-unionised work-force. So mothers were driven out of the home into paid employment. That bit of sowing increased the pressure on families and the poorest reaped it the hardest.

Taken together, these anti-Christian measures mean around half of children are now growing up without their father. Parliament has just said fathers aren’t even needed in families. How is a mother on her own supposed to restrain an adolescent son? How is she supposed to know what her teenage children are doing between the end of the school day and the time she gets home from work? Is it any wonder we are reaping massive disaffection among the young, showing itself in drunkenness, drug-taking, illicit sex and lawlessness?

And with the abolition of the death penalty in 1965 and the Abortion Act 1967, Parliament removed the death penalty from the guilty, by the state, where it belongs, and imposed it on the innocent within the family, where it does not. With those two measures, our politicians sowed the belief that innocent human life, made in the image of God, had no value.

We are now reaping a shocking callousness and brutality in society of which the growing trend of violent deaths of teenagers is the starkest evidence. And it is among the most disadvantaged sections of society that these deaths are having the greatest impact.

No doubt the parliamentary reformers of the sixties were carried away with secularist motives, determined to destroy the family and overturn the hated Christian morality, but did none of them stop to think, or care, that ordinary people, those they were supposed to represent, would be the hardest hit when society broke down?

The prophet Isaiah pronounced woe on those who call good ‘evil’ and evil ‘good’. And woe on today’s politicians, who are so in love with their own importance they cannot humble themselves and seek the Lord. Rather than reject the sixties secularist paradigm, they stumble around trying to put sticking-plaster on burst arteries. March offenders around hospital wards, have metal detectors in clubs and continue to embrace evil, with the mayor, the police and armed forces parading at the head of London ‘s annual display of immorality.

If God has mercy on us, He will remove from office those intent on evil, and replace them with men after His own heart. If not, we shall continue to descend into a mutual hell-on-earth of the politicians’ making. A nation which has just legislated that Christ may be blasphemed is not one which can expect to enjoy His blessing. So our message to those in power is the same as it was in the days of the prophets, and the same as in the days when God incarnate walked this earth as the Lord Jesus Christ: Everything you try in opposition to God will fail. Repent, turn to Christ, stop doing evil, start doing good.

Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand. (Micah 2:1)

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, (Matt 6:33)

See How Your MP Voted

An amendment ensuring people are free to criticise homosexual activities and to run sexual healing ministries has passed into law after a stand-off between the Lords and the Commons.

The clause, moved by Lord Waddington in the House of Lords, was inserted into the Government’s Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill in reaction to a new homosexual ‘hate crime’ law.

In practice, although the new law criminalises behaviour which would ‘stir up hatred on grounds of sexual orientation’ it has to be ‘intended’ to do so and it has to be ‘threatening’. There is as little prospect of anyone being charged under it as there is of anyone being charged under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act which outlawed ‘threatening’ behaviour intended to stir up religious hatred. In addition, the Crown Prosecution Service must gain the approval of the Attorney General in every case, which gives each prosecution a political dimension.

There have consequently been no prosecutions under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, and it is hard to see how there could be. The law was largely symbolic, just as the new law will be. That does not make it unimportant; the Government used the Racial and Religious Hatred Law to justify abolition of the blasphemy laws.

In addition, there is always the concern that people will feel so under threat from a law such as this that they will feel inhibited from expressing their opinions – the so-called ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of speech. The free speech clause in the 2006 Act was also inserted to prevent politically-correct policemen turning up on doorsteps to intimidate people who were merely engaging in the cut and thrust of religious debate.

That is why, as the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was going through Parliament in 2005, atheist politicians Dr Evan Harris MP and Lord Lester of Herne Hill were to the fore in promoting a ‘free speech’ clause (which Christian Voice supported). Their clause wrote on the face of the Bill that ‘discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse’ of religions and belief systems were exempt from its provisions.

Now, in the case of the sexual orientation equivalent, the same two politicians were suddenly opposed to freedom of speech.

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today:

‘There is a famous quote attributed to Voltaire, another opponent of Christianity, that says: “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today’s atheists are unencumbered by such noble sentiments. Now it is: “I disagree with what you say, and I will defend to the death my right to shut you up.”

‘While Christians campaigned for both these freedom of speech clauses, the atheists only want freedom of speech where it suits them. And it does not suit them to have homosexuality, that overweening expression of rebellion against God’s created order, criticised, ridiculed or insulted. As it happens, in his bid to get his clause accepted, Lord Waddington even had to take out the words ‘expressions of antipathy’. So ordinary decent people aren’t really supposed to be disgusted by homosexuality.

‘Nevertheless, the absence of those words should not matter. Even without them, no one should fear a knock on the door for expressing their opinion about homosexuality. But the passage of the Bill has shone a torch into the dark corners of atheist hypocrisy, and for that we should be both amused and grateful.

ENDS

NOTES:

RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS HATRED ACT 2006
The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (why the words ‘Racial and’ were there when it had nothing to do with racial hatred is a good question) amended the Public Order Act 1986.

The exact form of words, from the 2006 Act, is:

‘A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.’

The deletion of ‘insulting’ and ‘abusive’ from the original wording of the religious hatred offence means that to prove ‘threatening behaviour’ is now a very high mountain for any prosecution to scale. The fact that the permission of the Attorney General is needed before a case can even be brought adds an additional hurdle, and one of a political nature.

However, despite that provision, it was feared that over-zealous policemen could arrest or harass anyone who merely criticised another religion.

For that reason, as the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 was going through Parliament, the Government was forced to concede this qualification on the face of the 2006 Act, under the heading ‘Protection of freedom of expression’

‘Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.’

The two main parliamentary protagonists for this freedom of speech clause were Dr Evan Harris MP in the Commons and Lord Lester of Herne Hill in the House of Lords.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND IMMIGRATION ACT 2008
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 has further amended the Public Order Act 1986 by inserting the words ‘or hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation’ after ‘stir up religious hatred’ in the definition above. So it now reads:

‘A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred or hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.’

The permission of the Attorney General is still needed before a case can be brought.

However, despite that provision, the experience of people who had been intimidated by the police for voicing opinions hostile to homosexuality even without the new law showed that there was still a problem from policemen prejudiced against Christianity in particular. The case in which the Bishop of Chester, a member of the House of Lords, was investigated by the police for saying the homosexuality could be treated and overcome showed that mere guidelines would not work. A freedom of expression clause was needed on the face of the Act. The one successfully moved by Lord Waddington was in the end much weaker in tone than its religious hatred equivalent. Under the heading ‘Protection of freedom of expression (sexual orientation),’ it says this:

‘In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.’

The two main parliamentary opponents of this freedom of speech clause were Dr Evan Harris MP in the Commons and Lord Lester of Herne Hill in the House of Lords.