I'm sick and tired of being lied to - a call to prayer. Part One.

I'm not claiming to be perfect. I've lied to myself more times than I care to admit, but generally speaking, I try to avoid lying. I've never liked it and when, on the handful of times I have consciously lied, it has been to spare someone else's feelings - usually female.  I dare say it works the other way as well. I hate it and I regret the times when I have felt that it was necessary.  All this is to demonstrate that I find lying inimical to whom I think I am, let alone whom I think God is.

Consequently, deliberate lying really winds me up. Unsurprisingly, I find today's media a source of increasing displeasure. We are being lied to. Sometimes for reasons of policy, sometimes because they want to sell papers and and why let facts get in the way of a good story?

It's August, it's the silly season, but this August there's very little silliness - of the harmless sort - about.

We have been lied to over MH17 and possibly MH370. We have been lied to over the Ukraine. We have been lied to over Assad. In the UK, we are regularly lied to over the UK Independence Party and over the European Union. We are lied to about fracking and climate change. We are lied to about same-sex 'marriage' and the 'protections' afforded to the Church of England - but only the C of E. We have been lied to so many times that it is difficult to decide who is telling the truth.

And most of all, we have been lied to over Israel and Gaza. The reputation of the BBC as a purveyor of accurate reporting is now in tatters, but so strong is the lie that they still haven't understood this.

What follows will be a selection of lies, truths and possibilities, along with a call to prayer. The call? Simply, that God will restore honesty, objectivity and truth to the media and that He will raise up honest and God-fearing politicians and clergy.

Faith moves mountains, so start praying.

 

The girl in blue. A story of two little girls and the Devil's work

This post comes with a warning. The content is distressing and, although the visuals are upsetting, it is the stories which are heart-breaking.

If you have a legitimate celebration today, read this tomorrow.
The first little girl is Jewish. Her name is Hadas Fogel.
 

The inset is Hadas Fogel before she was murdered.The rest of the image is her tiny coffin. A little girl in blue.

Her family was murdered by Islamist terrorists (from Arab Palestine). They were walking away from the slaughter when they heard the baby crying...

This took place in 2011.

What follows is more recent.

 

This little girl's parents were Syrian Christians, and like them, she became a martyr to her faith.  A martyr to her parents' faith, I suppose I should say in view of her tender years.  A martyr at the very hands of the cruel and ruthless Islamists and Jihadists who wish to wipe Israel ahttps://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Emmaus-Group/157999294338029nd Jews and Christians and Christianity from the face of the Middle East. 
The Facebook page of the Emmaus Group explains:

Child “crucified” in Syria.

The image ... shows a very young girl tied to railings in a crucifixion style position and left until dead. The image was sent to us via facebook from a contact in Syria. The girl’s crime, as if there could be one? Her parents were Christians. She was tied up and made to watch her parents being killed then left. This evil act was perpetrated by Syrian rebels. The same rebels the West continues to support financially, with training and technology and supposedly, “non lethal hardware.”\

 Sadly this practice is not new. Christian children have been crucified in Iraq in an attempt to terrify their parents and the Christian population in general. See link

My sources are Daphne Anson and the http://www.emmaus-group.org/

Sometimes, evil is so utterly appalling that terms like 'The Enemy', 'the Devil' and 'Satan' are all that are left to describe who has done this thing.

The Church of England is expunging all mention of the Devil from its new service book.

Update: It would seem that at least one other source attributes the picture somewhat differently.

  "chained up for being Shia Muslim"

http://beforeitsnews.com/middle-east/2013/06/horrifying-picture-child-chained-up-forced-to-watch-parents-executed-by-obama-backed-syrian-rebels-2452386.html

In either case, the act is attributed to Syrian rebels and is horrendous. However, the link above has credibility issues, see the following quote - the brackets and highlighting are my insertions.

The Syrian civil war is an ongoing armed conflict in Syria between forces loyal to the Syrian [?] and outside foreigners paid by zionist intellegence [sic], a system build to weaker the arab army, esspecialy [sic] those who are a threat to the pro-american diplomacy, in other words ”those who do not bow down to them”.2013 

 I am seeking further clarification.

The angels rejoice over Poirot - sort of.

Fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and David Suchet's definitive portrayal will find a recent Telegraph article interesting. Christians and Messianic Jews will find it revelatory! We rejoice with the angels. Suchet is a non-orthodox Jew who has joined the Church of England.

Persevere, if you do not like Poirot, to the end of the article. Like Rocky Raccoon, he went into his room ... and then he read the letter to the Romans. He almost quotes C.S. Lewis in 'Surprised by Joy'.

“I read it as a letter than had just been sent to me through the post”, he says. “ By the time I got to the end, I found a world view I had been looking for all my life; something I could hang onto. I don’t have blind faith. If I were ever to write a book about my journey to faith the title would be ‘Dragged Kicking and Screaming’.” 

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in 'Curtain', ITV's last Poirot film Photo: ITV

 

 

It's what they don't say that tells you what you need to know.

I should read the vicar's blog more often. Mea culpa. Over at Transforming Grace, he has posted on the bowdlerisation of Scripture with particular reference to a psalm/canticle in Ezekiel.

"The canticle has five verses, but the bible reference shows that verses 27 and 28a are missing. When I notice this sort of omission I turn to my bible to see what the naughty liturgical committee has cut out and here it is (omissions in bold)":

I will take you from the nations
and gather you from all the countries
and bring you into your own land.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you,
and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness-es,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
26 And I will give you a new heart,
and a new spirit I will put within you.
And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh
and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit within you,
and cause you to walk in my statutes
and be careful to obey my rules.
28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers,
and you shall be my people,
and I will be your God.
Ezekiel 36:24-28

This is Rev. Neil's comment on what he saw:

Do you notice what different effects reading the two readings, or singing the canticles, have on you as the reader? The first reading from Common Worship omits the purpose of God’s work in his people. The reader is left with the effect of a warm glow of God’s ability to change the hard human heart. Sure, it’s nice to have a new heart of flesh, but what is this new heart for? The full reading of scripture discloses God’s purposes; to turn the hearts of his people from idols and to give them the desire to obey him.

The cumulative effect of this sort of distortion of scripture might explain why our denomination is as it is. People aren’t stupid but we are all shaped by what we read in devotion. If our liturgy shapes us to talk about worshipping the God of love who changes hearts whilst those who read the whole of scripture have a much fuller and rounded view of God (which includes having a heart for God which turns away from the worship of created things and is willing to obey God’s statutes, amongst other aspects of God’s character revealed in scripture but are judicially removed from our liturgy and our diet of bible readings) then of course we’ll be at odds with one another.

I do not dispute any of this. I added a comment, which I trust will be published, as follows:

They’ve removed the destination so that there is no future Hope for the Christian or the Jew. They’ve removed the removal of idols and so made it multi-faith which removes the Heart of our faith which is Jesus.
They’ve removed the Holy Spirit and so removed the Help of the believer as well as putting their own souls in peril.
Finally, it’s anti-Semitic as well.
No future, no faith and no fruit. No hope. No faith . No love. It’s a pretty comprehensive attack, but it forms the basis of a good sermon!

It's anti-Semitic and it's anti-Messiah/Christ, which is no coincidence. No wonder we're in trouble.