Article

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’

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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’. (more…)

“O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found. Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein,” Hosea 14:1-9.

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I write this on the day of my 82nd birthday. I will be sixty two years a Christian in six months time.

Today, the wonderful love of God toward this unworthy sinner has been brought before me by another portion of God’s Word I read this morning.

The glorious words of psalm 139:13-18 have caused me to marvel afresh at the truly incomprehensible kindness of God toward me — this is something every true believer may say!

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee,” Psalm 139:13-18.

Today I think particularly of one of the innumerable mercies the Lord has bestowed upon me. It was sixty one years ago, in September past, that I first met the one who was to become the love of my life, my dear Ann. She went to be with her Saviour 17 months ago on 8th June 2024.

I have much to consider and rejoice over on this day!

Another of my readings was the last chapter of Hosea. There is stated the purpose of God for Israel in the days following the Saviour’s victorious and glorious return.

“I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon,” verses 4-5. (more…)

These are perplexing days for everyone, including the Christian. It is said of the Christian, “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way,” Psalm25:9. Nevertheless, such is the spirit of the days that are beginning to break forth upon us, many believers are at a loss to know what to expect or what is happening!

Within a lifetime, the basic standards that governed the behaviour in our land has been overturned completely. Truly, there has been a calling “evil good, and good evil”, a putting of “darkness for light, and light for darkness” and a putting of “bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20.

Compass

The moral compass and map of God’s Word has been cast aside and the nation is adrift on an ocean of depravity and degeneracy with no knowledge or understanding of what is taking place!

Governments and churches are swept along by this tsunami of wickedness. Even fundamentalist denominations have felt the power of this spiritual earthquake and many within their ranks have faltered and lost their footing and stumbled from off the “old paths, where is the good way,’ Jeremiah 6:16.

Few pulpits seem able to define what is happening and what it is the people of God should be expecting to break forth all around them!

That ought not to be so!

It ought not to be so for the Lord has given us clear and precise descriptions of these days so that we ought neither to be surprised nor alarmed at what is happening.

I want to set before my readers just three of the many portions of God’s Word which reveal what it is that is taking place all around us, in every nation!

I. THE FIRST OF THESE HAS OFTEN BEEN QUOTED BY ME.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. . . . . ,” 2 Timothy 3:1. The word translated “perilous”, ‘chalepos’ appears in only one other place.

“And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way,” Matthew 8:28.

It is translated in the above verse by the word “fierce”!

So, Christian, there are to come ‘fierce” times in the last days!

1. The “fierceness” manifested by the two men who encountered the Lord in “the country of the Gergesenes”, was the result of their possession by many devils. The hatred of the devils for the Saviour was seen in that the two men “met” the Saviour. The word has a military and hostile connotation! It was a warlike spirit toward the Saviour that they manifested. Indeed, that was their disposition toward all men for “no man might pass by that way.”

2. We must never forget that the “devil . . . was a murderer from the beginning.” “He abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it,” John 8:44. He is the embodiment of all evil and where he is is a most “perilous” place!

Where the devil is able to possess men and women, there you have a most evil society, marked by every form of debauchery and cruelty! (more…)