These two sermons were preached yesterday in Coragarry Free Presbyterian Church, Co. Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland.
“And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Matthew 24:3.
The subject of both were “A glorious light at the end of a long dark tunnel!”
Dr.Edward Cooke
Master of Philosophy, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics
One policy area that differentiates the UUP and DUP sitting in the NI Executive at Stormont from the TUV (sitting in ‘opposition’ in the NI Assembly) is their respective positions on the funding, monitoring and regulation of NI third-level education sector. An examination of how the DUP and UUP administer the third-education sector, not only indicates differences between them as unionist parties sitting in government for two decades from the TUV, it also highlights (as a case study) a growing credibility problem that incrementally, year-after-year, impacts on the declining number of NI unionist voters, voting in Stormont Assembly elections. Essentially, if a political administration and system of government loses credibility, people cannot be enticed to vote for it. If the political representatives elected are incapable of satisfying the philosophical foundations and long-established principles of representative government, the democratic system will collapse. This historical fact is something that all NI political parties appear to have forgotten. Our inept NI unionist politicians ever dutiful to their party political leaders put at risk what remains of our liberal democracy.
Within GB over the last year, all the political partes have acknowledged that there are existential funding and sustainability problems in the GB university sectors. The dilemma for all the political parties is how best to tackle historical problems given the political importance of the sector and the rising cost of third-level education. As yet, no political party is publicly prepared to admit that the UK university sector has grown too-large and needs to be culled in order to allow for public investment in the (badly neglected) UK further education sector. The recent UK media disclosures of ‘back-door entry routes’, (or in other words, structured discrimination) into UK universities has galvanised Westminster, but not Stormont, into action. Stormont’s intransigence, or cowardice, to act in this policy matter, is similar to Stormont’s indecision during the 2020 Covid-19 crisis when NI lockdown policy was decided on only after Westminster had acted! (more…)
So ran the headline in a national daily newspaper today. The ugly grimace of the ‘Green Councillor’ at the centre of this controversy was pictured snarling out the Islamic catchphrase, so often used by terrorists with the intention of intimidation, ‘Allahu Akbar’. The words mean ‘god is the greatest’. The god referred to is the Islamic idol, known as ‘Allah’ and not the God of the Bible, Jehovah.
We have thus the situation developing in the nation of those who come to the United Kingdom for reasons of bettering themselves from under the privations of an Islamic state but with the real agenda of destroying what remains of the Protestant heritage which has been enjoyed for centuries in this land.
In the early days of the New Testament Church, the enemies of righteousness were compelled to disguise themselves and their intentions and this is made plain by the warning of Jude in his epistle. “There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ,” Jude 1:4.
However, those bent on destroying the remnants of gospel liberty left us in the United Kingdom, be they political or religious activists, need no disguise. They can come in with ‘trumpets blaring’, as do the Islamic councillors recently elected in England and who make no secret of their intention of imposing their perverted religious and political views on the nation.
These individuals care nothing for the culture or heritage of the land to which they have come. They are intent upon changing this nation, destroying this nation by imposing their own heathen notions upon it and reducing it to the impoverished state of the land from which they sought to escape.
What blindness and idiocy this indicates! (more…)