Verity Christian Fellowship

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the LORD will reward you.

Proverbs 25:21-22

Last week the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, took the decision to release from prison Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person who has been convicted of the 747 aircraft bombing over Lockerbie. The release was on compassionate grounds as al-Megrahi is dying of cancer and is expected to have only a few months to live. The result of this has been an international political storm with claims of all sorts of underhand deals being done. There are also doubts expressed about whether al-Megrahi was even guilty in the first place.

I cannot comment about whether he is guilty or not or whether anyone has taken or will take advantage of the situation to make deals. I do not know enough about the case to state categorically what went on and give an opinion, and knowing a little about human nature I expect there will always be people who officially or unofficially will try to gain an advantage in any situation.

The question that does interest me though, is ‘was the Justice Secretary right to release the prisoner on compassionate grounds?’

From reading the various comments from people on the news websites, the main argument against releasing him was ‘the Lockerbie bomber showed no compassion to his victims, so why should we show compassion to him?’ This is a very natural and understandable reaction. However is it the one that God would have us make?

The quote from Proverbs 25 above can be simplified as ‘Show compassion to your enemies and they will feel shame for what they do’. I don’t know that Libya was Scotland’s enemy or that they feel shame for what happened at Lockerbie. But from the waving of Scottish flags at al-Magrahi’s return it is obvious that they now feel more respect than they probably did.

Also it is true that terrorists show no compassion. That is the futility of what they do. It is why terrorism will never achieve anything. Indiscriminate killing just hardens people’s hearts and their resolve to get revenge and not give in. And by showing no compassion in return we are becoming just like them. We may not instigate the spilling of innocent blood but we are certainly doing nothing to prevent it. We need to prove we are better than them. That we have higher ideals, higher values.

Jesus instructed us that if an enemy strikes us, we should turn the other cheek. This is not simply doing nothing and giving in, but is showing resistance. By releasing al-Megrahi we have proved that we will not be brought down by terrorists, but that we will stand by our principles and stand proud.

Jesus showed compassion on those who crucified him when he said ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do’. These words marked his victory.

I therefore think that Mr MacAskill’s actions were not a submission as some would say but in fact a victory. A victory cry we should all take up.

I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified

1 Corinthians 9:27

Not many people leave comments on this site, and most comments are fairly innocuous. However one came in last week that sort of caught me off guard. It was very flattering and asked if I were a journalist by profession. I am not a journalist or professional writer in any sense so having read this I could feel my head getting bigger by the second.

But that was just the problem. My pride got the better of me. For you see the programme that formats this site had identified the message as SPAM. Now I am not very technically proficient in these matters and I could see nothing wrong with the message, so I let it go. But something inside me had nagging doubts. It was too flattering.

So I investigated further and found that within the post was a link to a web site selling pharmaceuticals. I then checked back on a number of previous comments and found the same thing.

Now maybe this site has some special interest to those working in the pharmaceutical industry, but I doubt it. It may also be that those who sent the comments were totally innocent and their computers are infected, but the incidence of this was very high. Only one external comment was not so affected. I can therefore conclude that this is how some people try to get hidden advertising onto the site, and in that case I can only thank God that the links were not worse.

The point of all this is that the enemy can trick us if we are not careful. He will not trick us by obvious deceits but by very subtle ones. If we are not careful it is easy to fall into sin and before we know it we are trapped.

However, the enemy usually overplays his hand and gives the game away. In this case the flattery was too much.

The answer is to always follow the rules. Don’t try and convince yourself that you are a special exception and that God has given you special permission. He has not. If you stick to the rules you can stay on the path and ultimately you will be happier.

In my case I will take more notice of what the system tells me in future.

1 Corinthians 1:18
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

When Magellan brought back the first example of a Bird of Paradise from the Far East, people did not know what to make of it. For you see he brought back not a live sample but a mounted display one. This example had had its wings and feet removed as the display was to show off the exquisite feathers, not the bird itself.

However the ornithologists of the day thought this was the whole thing and so concocted the theory of a wingless creature that never landed (and so needed no feet) and did not fly but just floated in the heavens (as they had no wings), hence its name Bird of Paradise.

This theory lasted for many years and was written in the scientific books of the time.

Man can only deduce theory’s from what is observed and already understood, not from actual truth. This is why we can make spectacular mistakes as with the Bird of Paradise.

The same is true when we try to second guess God. A good example of this is in the book of 2 Chronicles and the book of Ezra. Here we have the story of the fall and destruction of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple 70 years later.

Now if you asked someone what is the best way to make God known to the nations you would probably not say ‘destroy the one civilisation that knows all about him’. But that is exactly what happened. The Jewish nation was whittled down from its might at the time of Solomon until its final conquest by the Babylonians.

But instead of destroying God’s reputation this seems to have made it stronger. For in the book of Ezra we have the account of King Cyrus decreeing that God’s temple should be rebuilt and this being confirmed by King Darius. And they both use the term ‘The God of Heaven’. This is an amazing turn around, for these civilisations did not believe in god before the fall of Jerusalem.

Human wisdom says that the religion of the powerful dominates the religion of the weak. And so with the conquest of the Jews, the theology of God should have disappeared, replaced by the beliefs of polytheism. But instead God comes back stronger than ever.

And there are countless other examples of this happening throughout history. The persecution of the early Christian church did not lead to its destruction but to its growth. This has been repeated many times over. This is not Man’s way of doing things and seems to make no sense. But we do not see with God’s eyes.

So when people say ‘science has proved God does not exist’, just think of what science had to say about the Bird of Paradise, and say ‘We shall see….’

There is another reason for me to start writing posts again. Every month I receive an e-mail telling me the number of times this site has been looked at and where in the world this has been happening. We have had visiters from South America, the USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden and China to name a few.

Recently however the numbers had dwindled to a trickle. I was not surprised. If nothing new was posted then why should people bother to look.

You can imagine my surprise then when this month the number of visits went up by several thousand. On further investigation these all came from Namibia. I know very little about the country and I don’t believe I have ever met anyone from there. But whoever you are, welcome, and may God look upon you with favour.

It has been a while since I last wrote a post for the site. We had hoped to get the recorded talks back on line but there has been a delay in this. The other big delay in everything however has been due to the economy.

As everyone knows things have been tough for a lot of people just lately. I have a full time job, so for me this is no exception. We had two pay cuts and work was drying up. It looked like redundancy was on the cards. We have a small prayer group at work and we were praying hard for God to give us a hand but so far had seen no change.

Then one day I was praying at home with my wife about the situation when she got an answer. God gave her a bible passage. It was Psalm 2:7 and in ‘The Mesage’ version it said ‘Let me tell you what God said next. He said, “You’re my son, And today is your birthday. What do you want? Name it:’. This was not an invitation to turn up. We wasted no time in asking for more work as this was not just for me but for everyone else in the company.

A week later the company found out we had won a government contract which has given us more work than we can handle. We have had to take on several extra staff to cope. I have been incredibly busy.

When God steps in be ready for a deluge. His measures are huge. I have been so busy that it has even crossed my mind to ask for a break but you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it comes as a gift from God. So I say thank you Lord and all honour to your name.

I encourage you all to keep praying. God can help. Just be ready for when he answers.