The following headline appeared in the The Daily Mail of November 7th, 2025.
Police officer warns Prince William’s vicar friend that Bible verse on his van ‘could be considered hate speech’
The article reads:—
A pastor has been warned by a police officer that the bible verse on the back of his van ‘could be considered hate speech’.
Pastor Mick Fleming, who is a friend of the Prince and Princess of Wales, worked as a drug runner and debt collector and was once arrested on suspicion of murder.
Now 59, the former gangland criminal enforcer dedicates his life to helping others as a pastor, along with setting up his charity, Church on the Street, which was visited by the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Earlier this year, Mick released a book which detailed his early life in crime and how nearly dying made him turn his life around, and even had a foreword from Prince William.
After recently giving up all of his belongings, Mick now lives in a campervan which has the bible verse John 3:16 printed on the back.
The verse reads: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life’.
He was approached by a police officer while at a petrol station in Lancashire, who told him ‘the writing could be seen as hate speech in the wrong context’.
Despite being told he wasn’t there to arrest Mick, the officer said that ‘if someone reported it police would investigate, and [he] could end up in trouble’.
Ludicrous
Just who would the police charge, since these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Ludicrous as this policeman’s ‘warning’ is to a Christian, it nevertheless is a clear indication of the darkness descending upon the nation!
The policeman in question appears to be utterly ignorant of the meaning of the words of the text — one of the clearest declarations of God’s mercy toward sinful man in the Bible, in that they reveal the immeasurable free grace of God toward rebellious man. It says that God the Father “gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”, to quote the Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures, which gives a more accurate rendition of the original Greek text than the version the street preacher has painted up on his campervan. Or the policeman is a Bible-hating heathen, of whom there is no shortage in modern British society!
The Law
It has always been considered lawful for Bible verses to be displayed publicly in the UK. But, that freedom has had a caveat added of late so that God’s Word could be considered ‘hate speech’ if the wording displayed is deemed threatening or inciting of hatred based on the protected characteristics, such as religion or sexual orientation!
That caveat is a devil-inspired attempt to undermine the truth of God and ban it from our land!
Paganism
In truth, that simply means that a Hindu, a Muslim or a member of any other pagan religion, whose religious ‘aberrations’ may be seen as having been granted greater protection and consideration than the doctrines of the Bible, while God’s Book is no longer consider the ‘only rule of faith and practice’, may take offence at the wording of the Bible and demand that legal action be taken.
The Bible, the basis of the religion, ‘established by law’ in England, condemns pagan views as false and satanic. The ‘39 Articles of The Church of England’ are established by law as having a unique relationship with the government, including Royal assent for ecclesiastical laws. The monarch, at his/her coronation, takes an oath to maintain this established religion.
What has happened of late indicates that the long established views and cultural distinctions, imprinted upon the national psyche as a result of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, are being daily eroded.
Ecumenism, and its accompanying liberal and modernistic apostasy, has brought about a ‘divorcing’ of the nation from the truth of the Bible and opened the door wide to the casting aside of the liberties and privileges, engendered by the Book of God and bestowed on former generations.
The policeman that issued this warning is the very embodiment of the work of destruction ongoing within the land.
We would do well to remember the question in Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
The answer is — NOTHING, any more than the passengers and crew of the Titanic could stop her sinking, given the mortal wound below her water line inflicted by the iceberg she struck!
The daily reports of crime and political lunacy that bombard us are but as the sound of the inrushing waters which overwhelmed the great ship and finally brought her, broken in two, to the seabed, some two and half miles below.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Monday, 10th November 2025