Archives for

Article

Christians opposed to Belfast City Council plan to limit open-air prepare a briefing on the subject

Following on the news about the Belfast City Council’s plan to limit open-air preaching, concerned Christians have prepared a briefing on the subject.

Briefing Note: Belfast City Council

City Centre Speech Permits – October 2021

The proposal involves two key issues within city centre.

1. Permits for amplification.
2. Permits for stalls, literature, and other display materials.

Some have felt this necessary because of some complaints involving Christian and LGBT activists, pro-life groups, and buskers.

This briefing note lays out several reasons why permits are not the correct way to handle this problem. It also demonstrates some further problems speech permits will create.

Free speech as a principle

The British tradition, especially, after the Glorious Revolution has valued freedom of conscience, civil and religious liberty. This is enshrined in law and practice.

You do have a right not to be threatened by speech. However, you do not have a right to be comfortable or not offended by speech. If offence was an offence – no one would be able to speak freely. The right to offend is not just a moral right but a legal one.

The very use of the word “permit” suggests that the Council has the authority to determine free expression in the public square. No public body has the moral authority to deny rights to citizens or organisations and there is no doubt this will be tried in court.

Read the entire Speech Permits Briefing Note

David Attenborough – wrong from beginning to end!

HE IS WRONG ABOUT THE ‘BEGINNING’ AND HE IS ALSO WRONG ABOUT THE ‘END’!!

A headline of a report of David Attenborough’s latest climate change prediction reads: “End of the world: David Attenborough sends ‘catastrophic’ warning: ‘Not false alarm!’”

Mr Attenborough is well known for his nature programmes on television, all of which are enjoyable as long as you do not listen to his comments on the origins of the various creatures featured in them!

Attenborough is an ardent believer in ‘Evolution’, that is, the world that now is and all that is in it evolved out of a ‘beginning’ which neither he nor any of his deluded compatriots can agree on! Consequently, his programmes are filled with gratuitous misinformation and downright fairy tales.

He ‘explains’ away the wonders of God’s creation and substitutes his daft notions of the creature altering itself over countless millions of years to meet the challenges it faced. Just how, when it took so long for the creature to change in order to survive, it did not succumb to the threat long before it was able to ‘evolve’ to cope with the threat that it faced, he and his ilk never explain!

The Christian believes the Bible’s record of how things began. Genesis 1 and 2 give us full details of the supernatural origins of the physical creation and of the human race. Supportive evidence of that account is everywhere to be found. An abundance of the gatherings of that evidence may be found on hundreds, if not thousands of websites. Some are much more worthy than others it is freely acknowledged. But convincing and conclusive rebuttals of the falsehoods of ‘evolution’ may easily be found in book or website form. (more…)

Thoughts on the history of professing Christianity, Part 2

We continue with extracts from Benjamin Wills Newton’s book, Prospects of the Ten Kingdoms, the chapter 6 — THOUGHTS ON THE HISTORY OF PROFESSING CHRISTIANITY, AS GIVEN IN THE PARABLES OF MATTHEW XIII.

Here is Part 2, which covers pages 151 to 156.

Click here to see the other articles about this book.

They are as a house swept and garnished, but empty. The truth and Spirit of Christ are not there. It is a mansion unoccupied; open therefore to be entered, as it soon will be entered, by that unclean spirit, which, after long wandering up and down, and finding no other people so suited for his designs, will, with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, again make that people his peculiar habitation. Then will be developed the full iniquity of the closing hours of our dispensation. These words have almost entirely failed to arrest the attention of real Christians. Many appear not to know that the Lord has spoken them. Else they could not as they do, “cleave to Israel with flatteries,” and tell them that they are advancing into their millennial rest, when in truth, they are fast approaching the great hour of their anti-Christian evil and final visitation from the hand of God. The chapter, however, which thus records the doom of unbelieving Israel, does not conclude without referring to another family which the Lord Jesus could, and did own as His, at the very moment when He was thus rejecting Israel. “He stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said: Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister, and mother.” All, therefore, in whom the spiritual characteristics of Abraham shall be found-all who shall believe and obey, shall be owned as the family of God, whilst Israel nationally are rejected. (more…)