Scotland’s First Minister resigns but will stay for the time being

On Thursday, April 25, 2024, the coalition government between Scotland’s Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scottish Greens dissolved.

Guido Fawkes reported (red emphases his):

Humza Yousaf has called an emergency cabinet meeting this morning to scrap his governing deal with the Scottish Greens. The SNP agreed to run the government with the Greens, who have seven seats, in 2021 under the Bute House [the First Minister’s stately residence, Edinburgh] agreement. They will now run a minority government with 63 MSPs…

The SNP scrapped its own target to cut emissions by 75% by 2030 to widespread ridicule as the Greens promised a vote to its members on whether to keep the Bute House deal going. Humza Yousaf said this week that SNP members weren’t to be given a say because they “already had a vote” on it years before. Hilarious…

Scottish Green members would have voted overwhelmingly to ditch the SNP while their politicians were still pretty keen to stay in power. Leaving Yousaf with one option…

That day, Scottish Conservatives brought forward a vote of no confidence in Yousaf’s leadership to be debated this week. Scottish Labour raised a similar vote, one in the SNP government.

Guido added:

UPDATE II: The Scottish Greens have signalled they will support the Tories’ motion of no confidence. The end is in sight…

Ultimately, because the coalition was dissolved, the two top Greens, Lorna Slater (a Canadian) and Patrick Harvie, lost their Scottish government roles.

An STV article published that day explained the reason for the collapse of the coalition (bold in the original, purple emphases mine):

The Scottish Greens have attacked Humza Yousaf as “weak and thoroughly hopeless” after he ended the Bute House Agreement in a surprise move on Thursday morning.

Co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater met with the First Minister at Bute House in Edinburgh where they both lost their jobs as government ministers.

In a furious statement, the Greens said the SNP “can’t be trusted” and accused the party of “betrayal”.

Speaking to journalists in Holyrood, Harvie, who served as minister for decarbonising buildings, tenants’ rights and active travel, suggested the SNP would no longer be in government by Christmas.

Let us remind ourselves via this Daily Mail article of Lorna Slater’s lack of interest in the environment. She preferred being driven around by a chauffeur:

After the 2021 Scottish election, the SNP, then under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, did not win enough votes for a majority government, hence the coalition with the Greens:

The Bute House Agreement was signed by Nicola Sturgeon and the Green leaders in 2021 and was continued into Yousaf’s premiership.

It saw the two parties agree on a raft of policies, from climate change to housing and gender reforms.

But the scrapping of the 2030 climate targets and the Scottish Government’s reaction to the Cass Report – which prompted the NHS to pause puberty blockers – put the two parties at odds.

The Greens were due to vote on ending the Bute House Agreement in the next month.

The party accused the SNP of selling out future generations by walking away from the deal.

“This is an act of political cowardice by the SNP, who are selling out future generations to appease the most reactionary forces in the country,” co-leader Lorna Slater said.

“Voters deserve better, Scotland deserves better. Scottish Green voters certainly deserve better.

“They have broken the bonds of trust with members of both parties who have twice chosen the cooperation agreement and climate action over chaos, culture wars and division. They have betrayed the electorate.

“And by ending the agreement in such a weak and thoroughly hopeless way, Humza Yousaf has signalled that when it comes to political cooperation, he can no longer be trusted.”

Harvie accused Yousaf of caving in to:

“backwards forces” in his party.

Scottish Labour are no fans of the SNP government, either:

In response to the end of the powersharing deal, Scottish Labour deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie said: “This chaotic and incompetent Government is falling apart before our eyes.

“Humza Yousaf is too weak to hold his own Government together and he is too weak to deliver for Scotland.”

Everything is going down the pan: schools, NHS waiting lists and drug deaths, to name but a few pressing socio-economic issues.

Here is a full list of SNP failures that someone posted online:

Ahh, everything started out so promisingly on Yousaf’s first night in Bute House, March 28, 2023, when he won the leadership contest:

Six months later, Time put him on the cover as one of their ten ‘trailblazers shaping the future’. You can say that again:

It all depends on what way one considers ‘shaping the future’. For better or for worse?

Certainly, Time has made mistakes before, such as with its 1938 cover boy from Weimar Germany. Josef Stalin also adorned the magazine’s cover twice not so many years afterwards.

Returning to Edinburgh, however, the wheels started coming off Yousaf’s government in the way that he came off his scooter during the pandemic at one point. (Nicola Sturgeon was still First Minister at the time.) He took his scooter to navigate the halls of Holyrood because of a leg injury. The Sun covered what happened one day on his way to a debate:

Over the past weekend, nearly everyone thought that he would resign on Monday, April 29, rather than face a vote of no confidence.

That morning, the BBC reported:

He has arrived at Bute House in Edinburgh, the first minister’s official residence, for a press conference at 12:00.

The SNP leader has been under pressure since he ended a power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens last week.

Opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament had tabled two confidence votes – one in the first minister and another in the SNP government …

He had written to Scotland’s opposition parties asking them to find “common ground” ahead of the confidence votes.

The first minister’s decision to end the Bute House Agreement – the power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens – followed a backlash over the SNP scrapping 2030 climate targets and gender policies.

The article explained the politics behind Yousaf’s attempt to survive as First Minister:

The SNP has 63 MSPs in the 129 seat parliament. If the seven Green MSPs vote against him, he is reliant on support from sole Alba party MSP [formerly an SNP MSP], Ash Regan, to continue in his role.

Ash Regan had run against Yousaf in the 2023 leadership contest.

It sounded as if talks with Alba, led by former Westminster MP and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, took place at the weekend:

Mr Yousaf, the MSP for Glasgow Pollok, has reportedly ruled out cutting a deal with Alba, a pro-independence party formed by former First Minister Alex Salmond after he broke from the SNP.

Alba’s support would lead to a 64:64 tied vote in which case the presiding officer would be expected to vote to maintain the status quo.

The article went on to say:

The motion of no confidence in him personally is not binding, but if he lost he would come under intense pressure to step down.

If he lost the government vote, MSPs would have 28 days to vote for a new first minister or automatically trigger a Scottish Parliament election.

Scottish Labour has said the motion of no-confidence in the Scottish government would remain tabled even if Mr Yousaf resigns.

Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said Mr Yousaf had “jumped before being pushed” by the no confidence vote which they had tabled …

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton declined an offer of talks with Mr Yousaf over the weekend and called for him to resign.

And, lo, at noon, Humza Yousaf announced his resignation:

Guido has a video clip of Yousaf’s resignation speech:

However, he is not going anywhere until a leadership contest has taken place.

Guido says:

After a whopping 397 days as First Minister Humza Yousaf is resigning. At least he managed to last over a year, just…

Humza said he “underestimated the level of hurt” he would cause by ending the Bute House agreement in the way he did. What exactly did he expect?

Humza spent the weekend realising he couldn’t do a deal with Salmond and someone else had to try to keep the ship going. Salmond says he was still trying at 7:30 a.m. today. He will remain FM rather than passing to his deputy Shona Robinson until a leadership election is completed. Sturgeon’s deputy John Swinney is keeping tight-lipped…

Another BBC report told us more about the proposed votes of no confidence which, as I understand it, must be debated before MSPs vote on them:

Mr Yousaf had been facing two motions of no confidence this week, one tabled by the Scottish Conservatives in his own leadership as first minister and another from Scottish Labour on the government as a whole.

The timing of the votes has not yet been confirmed by parliament and it was unclear whether Mr Yousaf’s announcement will lead to either being pulled.

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross told BBC News that Mr Yousaf should have quit with immediate effect and that his party’s motion of no confidence could still go ahead.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he would wait to see how the week “plays out” but that the “principle” of his party’s no confidence motion in the government “still stands”.

If it passed, government ministers would be obliged to stand down. Only a simple majority would be required, meaning the number of members voting for would have to be greater than those opposed.

The parliament would then have 28 days to choose a nominee for first minister. If it was unable to do so, the parliament would be dissolved for an election.

The SNP currently have 63 MSPs, meaning they could be defeated if all MSPs from other parties voted against them.

However, the Greens are unlikely to vote against Yousaf or the SNP. They consider that his resignation suffices:

… BBC News understands that the Greens, who have seven seats, will not support either of the no-confidence motions following Mr Yousaf’s statement.

In any event, Humza Yousaf will soon be waving goodbye to the opulent Bute House and returning to Dundee, where he and his wife, a local councillor, live with their children.

It will be interesting to see how the leadership contest unfolds, given that there are no candidates worthy of leadership in the Scottish ‘parliament’, or more accurately, a national assembly. Devolved government of the nations outside of England is yet another Tony Blair initiative gone wrong, no matter what way one cuts it.

Glasgow in 1980 as seen by a French photographer

Someone online posted the link to a 2016 article from Scotland’s Daily Record, ‘Photographer reveals the gritty pictures of poverty stricken Glasgow too shocking to publish in 1980’.

The article has a selection of photographs from a Frenchman, Raymond Depardon, who was accustomed to visiting war zones. In 1977, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of Chad.

The thing that struck me was how feminine the girls, the lady with a baby carriage and the older woman looked. By 1980 in the United States, most girls and women were firmly ensconced in trousers. Seeing skirts and dresses shows that, for an American, time did not march on back then as much as it did in the US. Now that much of Western Europe has caught every American trend going, time moves much more quickly on this side of the Atlantic, unfortunately.

Even Glaswegian graffiti in 1980 was pretty basic. Here, again, American taggers had already moved on to elaborate, gang-identified designs, some of which were illegible to the uninitiated.

That year, The Sunday Times commissioned Depardon to chronicle Glasgow in pictures. The paper’s editors refused to publish the photographs. They were too realistic. I’m not sure what they expected to see. After all, it was Glasgow. When I went to Scotland in the Spring of 1978, even then people warned my classmate and me to go to Edinburgh instead, which we did. Every Briton who is 60+ now knew that Glasgow was rough back then.

In 2016, the Barbican Gallery in London put on a retrospective of Raymond Depardon’s photographs, which were also included in his book published that year, Glasgow.

Raymond, who was 73 in 2016, spoke to the Daily Record. Excerpts from the article follow, emphases mine:

The images include three drunks boozing beside a fire, children playing in the street and a poignant shot of a boy crying outside a shop.

… he will never forget the time he spent in a city that shocked and delighted him in equal measure.

He said: “I came to Glasgow twice, once in the autumn of 1980 and once in the spring. I was shocked by the poverty. I wasn’t expecting to find a population in the north of Europe that was so deprived.

“There was also a civil war going on but, unlike in Beirut, there were no other photographers. I was alone on the streets and had no one to talk to about what I had seen. I felt very much like a fish out of water.

“I had spent the last decade covering civil wars and oriental rebellions. On my arrival, I was surprised by the people, the architecture and above all the light. Everything seemed very exotic.

“I worked in Glasgow like I did on the streets of Beirut, without prejudice and despite being shocked by the destitution, I loved every minute. No matter where I went, the people were welcoming and never seemed sad with their lot.”

The photojournalist, who took the official portrait of French president Francois Hollande in 2012, said he would not have got such superb shots without the help of some friendly Glasgow kids.

Although the language barrier was there, Depardon said that the children took him to their play areas — the streets of the city:

“They didn’t understand me but would take me by the hand and trail me around their landmarks. It’s thanks to them that I was able to capture the incredible images.

“Maybe at 38, I was like them, still a child. They didn’t pay me any attention. I was just part of their game.

“My favourite photo is of a little boy who is crying in front of a shutter. It made me think of a Dickens novel.”

He said: “I was sad that my Glasgow photos were never published back in the 80s. I am really proud to be exhibited at the Barbican and I had great pleasure in telling my friends there to choose whichever photos they liked.

“I hope the photos which I happily took 36 years ago will still bring pleasure to those who see them today.”

The acclaimed British author William Boyd, who studied in Glasgow in the 1970s, wrote the foreward to Depardon’s book on the city:

He writes: “When you left the centre of town or the area where the university was, it was very easy to find yourself in a neighbourhood of abject urban poverty and squalor.

“It wasn’t just the manifest decrepitude of the housing or the ­diminished quality of the goods in the shops – you saw deprivation and ­desperation etched in the faces of the young and the old.

“As it happens I had been looking at Depardon’s photographs before I returned to Glasgow two weeks ago. The city is largely transformed today from the one that Depardon photographed in the early 1980s.

“The abandoned wharves, shipyards and warehouses of the riverside – Glasgow’s imperial industrial heartland and the source of its wealth – are now landscaped parks and yet, you can turn a corner and this new 21st century city disappears and in its place are the wide rainwashed streets of an older Glasgow.”

I wonder what Boyd would make of Glasgow in 2024, with so many of the big stores in Sauciehall Street and surrounds boarded up. The same, sadly, is true of Edinburgh — and, even sadder, London’s Oxford Street.

I realise that a number of department store chains have gone out of business over the past several years but wonder what that says about us as a society that our high streets are so deserted. Depardon’s photographs from 44 years ago look innocent by comparison.

Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 10:21-32

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Genesis 10:21-32

The Semites

²¹ Sons were also born to Shem, whose elder brother was^[a] Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber.

²² The sons of Shem:

Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram.

²³ The sons of Aram:

Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshek.^[b]

²⁴ Arphaxad was the father of^[c] Shelah,

and Shelah the father of Eber.

²⁵ Two sons were born to Eber:

One was named Peleg,^[d] because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.

²⁶ Joktan was the father of

Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, ²⁷ Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, ²⁸ Obal, Abimael, Sheba, ²⁹ Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

³⁰ The region where they lived stretched from Mesha towards Sephar, in the eastern hill country.

³¹ These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.

³² These are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their lines of descent, within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Last week’s post gave us more detail on Ham’s sons and his descendants.

Today’s verses introduce Shem’s sons and his descendants.

Japheth was Shem’s elder brother; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber (verse 21).

Matthew Henry’s commentary answers questions that many might have about the wording of the verse (emphases mine):

We have not only his name, Shem, which signifies a name, but two titles to distinguish him by:—

1. He was the father of all the children of Eber. Eber was his great grandson; but why should he be called the father of all his children, rather than of all Arphaxad’s, or Salah’s, etc.? Probably because Abraham and his seed, God’s covenant-people, not only descended from Heber, but from him were called Hebrews; ch. 14 13, Abram the Hebrew. Paul looked upon it as his privilege that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, Phil 3 5. Eber himself, we may suppose, was a man eminent for religion in a time of general apostasy, and a great example of piety to his family; and, the holy tongue being commonly called from him the Hebrew, it is probable that he retained it in his family, in the confusion of Babel, as a special token of God’s favour to him; and from him the professors of religion were called the children of Eber. Now, when the inspired penman would give Shem an honourable title, he calls him the father of the Hebrews. Though when Moses wrote this, they were a poor despised people, bond-slaves in Egypt, yet, being God’s people, it was an honour to a man to be akin to them. As Ham, though he had many sons, is disowned by being called the father of Canaan, on whose seed the curse was entailed (ch. 9 22), so Shem, though he had many sons, is dignified with the title of the father of Eber, on whose seed the blessing was entailed. Note, a family of saints is more truly honourable than a family of nobles, Shem’s holy seed than Ham’s royal seed, Jacob’s twelve patriarchs than Ishmael’s twelve princes, ch. 17 20. Goodness is true greatness.

2. He was the brother of Japheth the elder, by which it appears that, though Shem is commonly put first, he was not Noah’s first-born, but Japheth was older. But why should this also be put as part of Shem’s title and description, that he was the brother of Japheth, since it had been, in effect, said often before? And was he not as much brother to Ham? Probably this was intended to signify the union of the Gentiles with the Jews in the church. The sacred historian had mentioned it as Shem’s honour that he was the father of the Hebrews; but, lest Japheth’s seed should therefore be looked upon as for ever shut out from the church, he here reminds us that he was the brother of Japheth, not in birth only, but in blessing; for Japheth was to dwell in the tents of Shem. Note, (1.) Those are brethren in the best manner that are so by grace, and that meet in the covenant of God and in the communion of saints. (2.) God, in dispensing his grace, does not go by seniority, but the younger sometimes gets the start of the elder in coming into the church; so the last shall be first and the first last.

Shem had five sons: Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram (verse 22).

MacArthur tells us more, including about some of the men named in the rest of the verses in this chapter, and gives us a preview of what comes in future chapters of Genesis:

Now, verses 22 and following list the sons of Shem. They all settled in the Middle East. Lud, mentioned in verse 22, was the farthest north, up by the Black Sea. Havilah, Ophir, Sheba, and several others were the farthest south. All the way – literally all the way down to the Gulf of Aden at the tip of the Red Sea, when it goes into the Arabian Ocean. I mean this group stretched across the Middle East from north to south. All the way to Lud in the north, all the way to Havilah and Ophir – remember the gold of Ophir? – in the south, and the rest – the bulk of them in the middle, in the land surrounding Canaan to the east. So, all the way to the south, the north, and east of the land of Canaan.

Just a couple of them are mentioned. Elam is mentioned in verse 22, the father of the Elamites. There was a king – we’ll find about him in Genesis 14 – named Chedorlaomer. Remember him? King of Elam invaded Canaan so that the sons of Canaan served the sons of Shem. They didn’t have to wait till the Canaanites were conquered by the Israelites; Chedorlaomer was a Shemite who conquered Canaanites in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis.

And among the allies of Chedorlaomer was this Tidal king of Goiim, the nations [Goyim being the word the Jews use for Gentiles, people of the nations], the Hagoyim, the coastland people from Japheth …

Elamites lived east of Mesopotamia, had their capital in a little place called Susa or Shushan, mixed with the Medes and made up the Persian Empire. You also notice Asshur, father of the Assyrians, conquered by Nimrod. They became racially mixed. You have the name Arphachshad or Arpachshad. He is in the line of Abraham. We’ll see that over in chapter 11, verse 12. Lud, the father of the Lyddians in Asia Minor. Aram, the father of Arameans or Syrians who play a major role in the rest of the Bible history. And by the way, it was the Arameans who developed – guess what language? – Aramaic. A couple of portions of the Bible – Daniel and Ezra – are in Aramaic.

Shem’s son Aram had four sons: Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshek (verse 23). The footnote says that, in Hebrew, Meshek is Mash.

MacArthur points out:

The sons of Aram – Uz. Do you know who lived in Uz? … Job lived in Uz, Job 1:1.

Shem’s son Arphaxad had a son who was worthy of mention, Shelah; Shelah was Eber’s father (verse 24).

Eber had two prominent sons, Joktan and Peleg; Peleg means ‘division’ and was so named because the earth’s peoples were divided at that time (verse 25).

Henry explains the two possibilities lying behind that division:

Because in his days (that is, about the time of his birth, when his name was given him), was the earth divided among the children of men that were to inhabit it; either when Noah divided it by an orderly distribution of it, as Joshua divided the land of Canaan by lot, or when, upon their refusal to comply with that division, God, in justice, divided them by the confusion of tongues [Babel]: whichsoever of these was the occasion, pious Heber saw cause to perpetuate the remembrance of it in the name of his son; and justly may our sons be called by the same name, for in our days, in another sense, is the earth, the church, most wretchedly divided.

Joktan fathered Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah (verse 26), Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah (verse 27), Obal, Abimael, Sheba (verse 28) and Ophir, Havilah and Jobab (verse 29).

They lived in the region from Mesha towards Sephar, in the eastern hill country (verse 30).

These were the sons — and descendants — of Shem by clans and languages, in their territories and nations (verse 31).

Genesis 10 concludes, having covered the families of Noah’s three sons, including Japheth and Ham (see here and here), saying that their respective nations spread out over the earth after the Flood (verse 32).

Next week, we find out how Shem’s family line produced Abram (later Abraham).

Next time — Genesis 11:10-26

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B — exegesis on the Gospel, John 15:1-8

The Fifth Sunday of Easter is April 28, 2024.

Readings for Year B can be found here.

The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):

John 15:1-8

15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.

15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

John MacArthur begins by emphasising the supremacy of Holy Scripture:

The Bible is the authority, the only authority, the only book that God wrote.  It contains 66 books – 39 books in the Old Testament, which is the revelation of God before Christ; 27 books in the New Testament, the revelation of God since the coming of Christ, together makes up the 66 books of the Bible.

In the Bible, God speaks.  It is His Word.  When we come together, we don’t come together to hear men speak, we come to hear God speak.  The responsibility then of the pastor and the preacher is to take the message from God and bring it to the people.  I’ve always seen myself, not as a chef, but as a waiter.  My responsibility is not to create the meal, but try to get it to the table without messing it up.  And that is the responsibility which I try to discharge, as we all do whenever we open Scripture.

So as we come to the 15th chapter of John, like anywhere else in the Bible, we are listening to God.  The writer is the apostle John.  But the writer is also God, the Holy Spirit who inspired every word that John wrote.  Because of this, the Bible is without error, it is accurate, and it is authoritative.  When the Bible speaks, God speaks.  And when God speaks, we listen, because God says to us what we must know.

The Bible should dominate every life and all of human society, for in it is contained all necessary truth for life in time and eternity.  And when a nation or a person rejects the Bible, they have rejected God, and the consequences are dire, dire.  Those who listen to God through His Word are given life and blessing, now and forever.

As I have said before, John’s Gospel is my favourite book of the New Testament. Hebrews is a close second because, even though it was written for a Jewish audience, it explains the essential tenets of Christianity. In the words of Reformed church members, it will enable you to ‘know what you believe and why you believe it’.

John’s Gospel has the most complete account of the Last Supper and our Lord’s final discourse to the Apostles. It starts in John 13 and finishes with our Lord’s prayers for the Twelve and for His people in John 17. Those are chapters one can read over and over again poring over every word.

Matthew Henry gives us a synopsis of John 15:

It is generally agreed that Christ’s discourse in this and the next chapter was at the close of the last supper, the night in which he was betrayed, and it is a continued discourse, not interrupted as that in the foregoing chapter was; and what he chooses to discourse of is very pertinent to the present sad occasion of a farewell sermon. Now that he was about to leave them, I. They would be tempted to leave him, and return to Moses again; and therefore he tells them how necessary it was that they should by faith adhere to him and abide in him. II. They would be tempted to grow strange one to another; and therefore he presses it upon them to love one another, and to keep up that communion when he was gone which had hitherto been their comfort. III. They would be tempted to shrink from their apostleship when they met with hardships; and therefore he prepared them to bear the shock of the world’s ill will. There are four words to which his discourse in this chapter may be reduced; 1. Fruit, ver 1-8. 2. Love, ver 9-17. 3. Hatred, ver 18-25. 4. The Comforter, ver 26, 27.

MacArthur tells us more:

And so we come to the 15th chapter of John.  Just to set the stage a little bit, starting in chapter 13 and running through chapter 16, we find ourselves on Thursday night of Passion Week, the last week of our Lord’s ministry. Thursday night was an important night. He gathered with the 12 disciples to celebrate the Passover on that Thursday night when the Galilean Jews would celebrate it.

They met together in a kind of secret place that we call upper room, and our Lord spent that night telling them many wonderful things, giving them many, many promises.  As that night moved on, our Lord exposed Judas as the traitor, and dismissed him.  And Judas left to go meet the leaders of Israel to arrange for the arrest and subsequent crucifixion of the Lord Jesus.  By the time we come to chapter 15, Judas is gone, and only the 11 are left, and they are true disciples.

But as we come to chapter 15, they’re no longer in the upper room.  It is deep into the dark of night.  But chapter 14 ends with Jesus saying this: “Get up; let us go from here.”  Apparently at that time, they left the upper room, Jesus and the 11, and they began their walk through Jerusalem, headed out the east side of the city to a garden where our Lord would pray in prayer so agonizing that He sweat as it were great drops of blood.  And while He was praying, they would fall asleep.  And into that garden later would come Judas, and the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish leaders to arrest Him.  And there, Judas would kiss him; the betrayal would take place; and the next day, He would be crucified.

As they leave the upper room and walk through the darkness of Jerusalem, our Lord continues to speak to them, and what He says to them is recorded in chapters 15 and 16.  Of all these things that He says, nothing is more definitive than the first eight verses of chapter 15.  Our Lord here gives not really a parable – although I guess in the broadest sense could be considered a parable because it is an illustration.  It’s really a word picture, a metaphor, a simile.

Remember Henry’s words about Christ’s desire to see the Twelve continuing to believe in Him and not turn to the Judaism of the day.

Therefore, Jesus said that He is the vine and that God is the vinegrower (verse 1).

Henry offers a brilliant analysis of this well known verse:

The doctrine of this similitude; what notion we ought to have of it.

1. That Jesus Christ is the vine, the true vine. It is an instance of the humility of Christ that he is pleased to speak of himself under low and humble comparisons. He that is the Sun of righteousness, and the bright and morning Star, compares himself to a vine. The church, which is Christ mystical, is a vine (Ps 80 8), so is Christ, who is the church seminal. Christ and his church are thus set forth. (1.) He is the vine, planted in the vineyard, and not a spontaneous product; planted in the earth, for his is the Word made flesh. The vine has an unsightly unpromising outside; and Christ had no form nor comeliness, Isa 53 2. The vine is a spreading plant, and Christ will be known as salvation to the ends of the earth. The fruit of the vine honours God and cheers man (Judg 9 13), so does the fruit of Christ’s mediation; it is better than gold, Prov 8 19. (2.) He is the true vine, as truth is opposed to pretence and counterfeit; he is really a fruitful plant, a plant of renown. He is not like that wild vine which deceived those who gathered of it (2 Kings 4 39), but a true vine. Unfruitful trees are said to lie (Hab 3 17. marg.), but Christ is a vine that will not deceive. Whatever excellency there is in any creature, serviceable to man, it is but a shadow of that grace which is in Christ for his people’s good. He is that true vine typified by Judah’s vine, which enriched him with the blood of the grape (Gen 49 11), by Joseph’s vine, the branches of which ran over the wall (Gen 49 22), by Israel’s vine, under which he dwelt safely, 1 Kings 4 25.

2. That believers are branches of this vine, which supposes that Christ is the root of the vine. The root is unseen, and our life is hid with Christ; the root bears the tree (Rom 11 18), diffuses sap to it, and is all in all to its flourishing and fruitfulness; and in Christ are all supports and supplies. The branches of the vine are many, some on one side of the house or wall, others on the other side; yet, meeting in the root, are all but one vine; thus all good Christians, though in place and opinion distant from each other, yet meet in Christ, the centre of their unity. Believers, like the branches of the vine, are weak, and insufficient to stand of themselves, but as they are borne up. See Ezek 15 2.

MacArthur points out the importance of the words ‘I am’, which God used to define Himself:

The divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is here declared in verse 1: “I am the true vine,” He says.  And in verse 5 again: “I am the vine.”  How is this a claim to deity?  Because of the verb “I am.”

Back in Exodus, chapter 3, when Moses came before God in the wilderness and asked His name, God said, “My name is I Am That I Am.”  The tetragrammaton: the eternally existent one; the one of everlasting being; the always is, and always was, and always will be one.  Theologians call it the aseity of God, the eternal being of God.  He is the I Am.

Throughout His preaching, teaching, healing, discipling ministry, Jesus continually declared that He is God, He is God.  He said things like, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”

John’s Gospel, the theme of which is Christ’s deity, has several examples of this, some of which follow:

In a context of discussion about the Sabbath, He reminds them that, “The Sabbath doesn’t apply to God because God is at work all the time; and the Sabbath doesn’t really apply to Me either because I, like God, am at work all the time.”  They were infuriated that He would make such a claim.  That was in chapter 5 of John’s gospel.

Later in chapter 8 Jesus said, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing.  It is My Father who glorifies Me of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’  And therefore if God, who is your God, glorifies Me as God, you ought to also glorify Me.”  And again they were offended at such perceived blasphemy.

In chapter 10, He even said it more concisely: “I and the Father are one, one in nature and essence.”  In that same chapter, chapter 10 and verse 38, He said, “Though you do not believe Me, believe the works that you may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.”

All through His life and ministry, He claimed that He is God.  Every time Jesus said, “My Father,” which He said many, many times – every time He said, “My Father,” He was underscoring that He had the same nature as God.  And His Jewish audience did not miss the claim.  They were not at all confused.

In fact, in chapter 5, verse 18, this is what we read: “For this cause, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”  They understood that that is exactly what He was doing, exactly.  And one of the ways that He did that was by taking to Himself the name of God “I Am” and applying it to Himself.

There’s a series of those claims throughout the gospel of John.  He says, “I am the Bread of Life.  I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven.  I am the Light of the World.  I am the Door, I am the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd.  I am the Resurrection and the Life.  I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  And then He makes the stunning, inescapable claim, chapter 8, verse 58, “Before Abraham was born, I am eternally existing.”

Jesus told the Apostles that God the Father removes every branch from Him that bears no fruit; every branch that bears fruit, He prunes so that it bears more fruit (verse 2).

Gardeners will understand that reference immediately. We prune dead wood from plants so that the healthy parts grow more abundantly. Some people prune their first rosebuds so that their rose bushes produce even more buds that will flower a short time later.

Henry says:

That the Father is the husbandman, georgos—the land-worker. Though the earth is the Lord’s, it yields him no fruit unless he work it. God has not only a propriety in, but a care of, the vine and all the branches. He hath planted, and watered, and gives the increase; for we are God’s husbandry, 1 Cor 3 9. See Isa 5 1, 2; 27 2, 3. He had an eye upon Christ, the root, and upheld him, and made him to flourish out of a dry ground. He has an eye upon all the branches, and prunes them, and watches over them, that nothing hurt them. Never was any husbandman so wise, so watchful, about his vineyard, as God is about his church, which therefore must needs prosper.

II. The duty taught us by this similitude, which is to bring forth fruit, and, in order to this, to abide in Christ.

1. We must be fruitful. From a vine we look for grapes (Isa 5 2), and from a Christian we look for Christianity; this is the fruit, a Christian temper and disposition, a Christian life and conversation, Christian devotions and Christian designs. We must honour God, and do good, and exemplify the purity and power of the religion we profess; and this is bearing fruit. The disciples here must be fruitful, as Christians, in all the fruits of righteousness, and as apostles, in diffusing the savour of the knowledge of Christ. To persuade them to this, he urges,

(1.) The doom of the unfruitful (v. 2): They are taken away. [1.] It is here intimated that there are many who pass for branches in Christ who yet do not bear fruit. Were they really united to Christ by faith, they would bear fruit; but being only tied to him by the thread of an outward profession, though they seem to be branches, they will soon be seen to be dry ones. Unfruitful professors are unfaithful professors; professors, and no more. It might be read, Every branch that beareth not fruit in me, and it comes much to one; for those that do not bear fruit in Christ, and in his Spirit and grace, are as if they bore no fruit at all, Hos 10 1. [2.] It is here threatened that they shall be taken away, in justice to them and in kindness to the rest of the branches. From him that has not real union with Christ, and fruit produced thereby, shall be taken away even that which he seemed to have, Luke 8 18. Some think this refers primarily to Judas.

(2.) The promise made to the fruitful: He purgeth them, that they may bring forth more fruit. Note, [1.] Further fruitfulness is the blessed reward of forward fruitfulness. The first blessing was, Be fruitful; and it is still a great blessing. [2.] Even fruitful branches, in order to their further fruitfulness, have need of purging or pruning; kathairei—he taketh away that which is superfluous and luxuriant, which hinders its growth and fruitfulness. The best have that in them which is peccant, aliquid amputandum—something which should be taken away; some notions, passions, or humours, that want to be purged away, which Christ has promised to do by his word, and Spirit, and providence; and these shall be taken off by degrees in the proper season. [3.] The purging of fruitful branches, in order to their greater fruitfulness, is the care and work of the great husbandman, for his own glory.

MacArthur says similarly:

There are branches attached to Him.  They’re all attached.  All the branches are attached.  But the ones that don’t bear fruit are cut off, dried, and burned.  So who are they?  Let me remind you of the context.  This all begins back in chapter 13 in the upper room, and it’s pretty clear that there are two types of disciples in that upper room …

I don’t really think there’s a lot of mystery about the two branches.  What did Jesus have in His mind that night?  They had just left the upper room.  The drama that took place there over Judas, the exposure of Judas, the disciples, when Jesus said, “One of you will betray Me,” they said, “Is it I?  Is it I?  Is it I?” which is to say they had no idea it was Judas.

There was nothing manifestly obvious in the life and character and behavior of Judas that would have distinguished him as a false disciple.  He was visibly attached, and for all intents and purposes, looked like everybody else, did what everybody else did.  But, clearly, there were two kinds of people in that room that night.  There were those who bore fruit and there was that one who did not.  There were those who remained abiding in, remaining in, attached to the vine; and there was that one who’s cut off …

Judas had that very night just a few hours before walked away from Jesus terminally, finally.  He is what the Bible would call an apostate, an ultimate defector.  He had been for three years close, so close that people didn’t even know there was no life.  Judas now was on his way to the leaders of Israel to set up the deal to arrest Jesus to get his 30 pieces of silver, and to go from there to hang himself, and catapult into hell.

This is the reality of that night, and this has to be what’s behind our Lord’s thinking and speaking here.  He needs to explain to these men Judas.  Wouldn’t it seem natural to you that in this intimate talk with the beloved 11 that are still with Him, that they’re all still trying to process Judas.  He was high profile.  He was the one who carried the money, trusted.  They were trying to figure out just, “How did it happen?  Who is he?  How does he fit?  What’s going on?” and our Lord gives us an explanation.

He says, “There are branches that have an outward appearance of attachment, but bear no fruit.  They’re taken away and they’re burned.”  And He has to be thinking of Judas.  Judas, who was in close connection to Him, has left on his way to eternal hell.  And, in fact, the Bible says he went to his own place.  It says it would have been better for him if he’d never been born, Mark 14.

MacArthur clears up a point of confusion about people like Judas losing their faith and, therefore, their salvation. The truth is that Judas never had faith — or fruit — to begin with:

I’ve had some discussions with people around the world about this passage, and folks have said to me, “Well, this is proof that you can be in Christ, you can be attached to Christ, and you can lose your salvation.”  The Bible does not teach that, and the words of our Lord Jesus, in the gospel of John, are very explicit: “My sheep hear My voice – ” using another metaphor “ – and I know them and they follow Me.  And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand.  My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.  I and My Father are one.  Together, we hold those who belong to our flock.”

In John 6, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me and I’ll lose none of them.” 

Ultimately:

This is not talking about believers, fruit-bearing branches that all of a sudden are cut off and thrown into hell.  This is talking about people who are attached, but there’s no life because there’s no fruit.

Jesus told the eleven Apostles that they had been cleansed by the word that He had spoken to them (verse 3).

In the King James Version it reads:

3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

Henry explains what Jesus meant. Part of that meaning also relates to Judas:

Now you are clean, v. 3. [1.] Their society was clean, now that Judas was expelled by that word of Christ, What thou doest, do quickly; and till they were got clear of him they were not all clean. The word of Christ is a distinguishing word, and separates between the precious and the vile; it will purify the church of the first-born in the great dividing day. [2.] They were each of them clean, that is, sanctified, by the truth of Christ (ch. 17 17); that faith by which they received the word of Christ purified their hearts, Acts 15 9. The Spirit of grace by the word refined them from the dross of the world and the flesh, and purged out of them the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees, from which, when they saw their inveterate rage and enmity against their Master, they were now pretty well cleansed. Apply it to all believers. The word of Christ is spoken to them; there is a cleansing virtue in that word, as it works grace, and works out corruption. It cleanses as fire cleanses the gold from its dross, and as physic cleanses the body from its disease. We then evidence that we are cleansed by the word when we bring forth fruit unto holiness. Perhaps here is an allusion to the law concerning vineyards in Canaan; the fruit of them was as unclean, and uncircumcised, the first three years after it was planted, and the fourth year it was to be holiness of praise unto the Lord; and then it was clean, Lev 19 23, 24. The disciples had now been three years under Christ’s instruction; and now you are clean.

Jesus then told the Apostles to abide in Him in the same way He abided in them; just as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides on the vine, neither could they bear fruit unless they abided in Him (verse 4).

Henry says:

2. In order to our fruitfulness, we must abide in Christ, must keep up our union with him by faith, and do all we do in religion in the virtue of that union. Here is,

(1.) The duty enjoined (v. 4): Abide in me, and I in you. Note, It is the great concern of all Christ’s disciples constantly to keep up a dependence upon Christ and communion with him, habitually to adhere to him, and actually to derive supplies from him. Those that are come to Christ must abide in him: “Abide in me, by faith; and I in you, by my Spirit; abide in me, and then fear not but I will abide in you;” for the communion between Christ and believers never fails on his side. We must abide in Christ’s word by a regard to it, and it in us as a light to our feet. We must abide in Christ’s merit as our righteousness and plea, and it in us as our support and comfort. The knot of the branch abides in the vine, and the sap of the vine abides in the branch, and so there is a constant communication between them.

MacArthur goes further, saying that Jesus was referring to Israel as a corrupted, wild vine that did not abide in Him:

All the life comes from the vine.  It emphasizes belonging.  If you are connected, you belong.  And I think all of that is true.  But there’s another, much more important reason why He says, “I am the true vine,” and that is because there was a defective vine.

There was a corrupted vine.  There was a degenerate vine.  There was a fruitless vine.  There was an empty vine.  Who?  Israel, Israel.  That’s right.  The covenant people of God, the Jewish people.

Israel is God’s vine in the Old Testament.  In Isaiah 5, Israel as presented as a vine.  God says, “I planted My vine, My vineyard in a very fertile hill,” Isaiah 5.  And that chapter, verses 1-7, goes on to talk about everything God did to give them all that was necessary for them to bring forth grapes.  They produced beushim, sour berries, inedible, useless.  Israel was the vine.  And that metaphor carried through the history of Israel during the Maccabean period between the Old and the New Testament.

The Maccabeans minted coins, and on the coin was a vine illustrating Israel.  And on the very temple, Herod’s massive temple, there was a great vine that literally had been carved and overlaid with gold, speaking of Israel as God’s vine.  God’s life flows through the nation.  That was a symbol of Israel.  There’s much in the Old Testament.  Psalm 80 – sometime you can read Psalm 80 in its fullness – but Psalm 80 tells us the tragedy of Israel’s defection as a vine.

Just listen to a few of the words from Psalm 80: “God removed a vine from Egypt, bringing Israel out of bondage in Egypt.  Drove out the nation’s, planted the vine – ” like Isaiah 5 “ – cleared the ground before it, took deep root, filled the land.  The mountains were covered with its shadow.  The cedars of God with its bows, it was sending out its branches.  It shoots to the river.”  Then this: “Why have You broken down its hedges, so that all who pass that way pick its fruit?  A bore from the forest eats it away.  And whatever moves in the field feeds on it.”

God planted Israel and then turned on Israel in judgment.  Psalm 80 then says, “O God of hosts, turn again now, we beseech you.  Look down from heaven and see, and take care of this vine, even the shoot which Your right hand has planted.  It is burned with fire.  It is cut down.”  Yeah, that’s Israel, that’s Israel.  Ezekiel said it is an empty vine, no fruit.  Isaiah says it produces sort of toxic, useless, inedible results.

Israel had been the stock of blessing.  Israel had been planted by God.  His life would come through Israel to all who attached to Israel.  But Israel was unfaithful, idolatrous, immoral, and God brought judgment.  That’s what the Old Testament lays out for us.

The disciples, like all the other Jews, thought, “Hmm, I’m Jewish.  I’m connected to God.”  Israel, the people of God, the Jewish people, are the source of divine blessing: “I am a Jew; I was born a Jew.  I’m the seed of Abraham; I’m connected to God.”  Not so.

Our Lord comes along and says, “If you want to be connected to God, you have to be connected, not to Israel, but to me.  I am the true vine, althinos.  I am the true vine.  I am the perfect vine.  Through Me, the life of God flows.”

Paul understood that.  He said Israel has all the privileges in the book of Romans.  They have a form of godliness, but they have no life.  They don’t know God.  They’re alienated from God.  He’s the true vine.

Jesus used the word ‘abide’ again in the three verses that follow.

Again, Jesus said that He was the vine and the Apostles — and we — are the branches; He repeated that those who abide in Him and He in them bear much fruit, because apart from Him they can do nothing (verse 5).

Henry tells us:

So necessary is it to our comfort and happiness that we be fruitful, that the best argument to engage us to abide in Christ is, that otherwise we cannot be fruitful. [1.] Abiding in Christ is necessary in order to our doing much good. He that is constant in the exercise of faith in Christ and love to him, that lives upon his promises and is led by his Spirit, bringeth forth much fruit, he is very serviceable to God’s glory, and his own account in the great day. Note, Union with Christ is a noble principle, productive of all good. A life of faith in the Son of God is incomparably the most excellent life a man can live in this world; it is regular and even, pure and heavenly; it is useful and comfortable, and all that answers the end of life. [2.] It is necessary to our doing any good. It is not only a means of cultivating and increasing what good there is already in us, but it is the root and spring of all good: “Without me you can do nothing: not only no great thing, heal the sick, or raise the dead, but nothing.” Note, We have as necessary and constant a dependence upon the grace of the Mediator for all the actions of the spiritual and divine life as we have upon the providence of the Creator for all the actions of the natural life; for, as to both, it is in the divine power that we live, move, and have our being. Abstracted from the merit of Christ, we can do nothing towards our justification; and from the Spirit of Christ nothing towards our sanctification. Without Christ we can do nothing aright, nothing that will be fruit pleasing to God or profitable to ourselves, 2 Cor 3 5. We depend upon Christ, not only as the vine upon the wall, for support; but, as the branch on the root, for sap.

Jesus warned that whoever does not abide in Him is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned (verse 6).

If those words suggest eternal damnation and hell to you, you would be correct.

Henry says:

This is a description of the fearful state of hypocrites that are not in Christ, and of apostates that abide not in Christ. [1.] They are cast forth as dry and withered branches, which are plucked off because they cumber the tree. It is just that those should have no benefit by Christ who think they have no need of him; and that those who reject him should be rejected by him. Those that abide not in Christ shall be abandoned by him; they are left to themselves, to fall into scandalous sin, and then are justly cast out of the communion of the faithful. [2.] They are withered, as a branch broken off from the tree. Those that abide not in Christ, though they may flourish awhile in a plausible, at least a passable profession, yet in a little time wither and come to nothing. Their parts and gifts wither; their zeal and devotion wither; their credit and reputation wither; their hopes and comforts wither, Job 8 11-13. Note, Those that bear no fruit, after while will bear no leaves. How soon is that fig-tree withered away which Christ has cursed! [3.] Men gather them. Satan’s agents and emissaries pick them up, and make an easy prey of them. Those that fall off from Christ presently fall in with sinners; and the sheep that wander from Christ’s fold, the devil stands ready to seize them for himself. When the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, an evil spirit possessed him. [4.] They cast them into the fire, that is, they are cast into the fire; and those who seduce them and draw them to sin do in effect cast them there; for they make them children of hell. Fire is the fittest place for withered branches, for they are good for nothing else, Ezek 15 2-4. [5.] They are burned; this follows of course, but it is here added very emphatically, and makes the threatening very terrible. They will not be consumed in a moment, like thorns under a pot (Eccl 7 6), but kaietai, they are burning for ever in a fire, which not only cannot be quenched, but will never spend itself. This comes of quitting Christ, this is the end of barren trees. Apostates are twice dead (Jude 12), and when it is said, They are cast into the fire and are burned, it speaks as if they were twice damned. Some apply men’s gathering them to the ministry of the angels in the great day, when they shall gather out of Christ’s kingdom all things that offend, and shall bundle the tares for the fire.

MacArthur also relates this to Judas:

And then in verse 6, the one that is thrown away, dried up, gathered, cast into the fire and burned?  Who are the fruitless branches, and the other, who are the fruitful branches who bear the fruit, verse 2, verse 5, and verse 8?  Who are they?  Well, let me recreate for you the context.  The context is a very simple context.  This isn’t our Lord among many people.  This isn’t our Lord in the midst of the crowd.  When He says “you”, He’s directing His words at the Twelve.  In fact, in particular at this point, He’s directing His words at the eleven remaining, Judas having been dismissed … 

Judas is the branch that doesn’t stay.  Judas is the branch that doesn’t remain.  Judas is the branch that doesn’t abide.

John also spoke of such people in his Epistle:

Now, just a reference again to something else that John wrote over in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 19 – very important statement, speaking of people who defect, who do not abide, who do not stay – “They went out from us, but they were not really of us.”  John knows this now from what he learned about our Lord’s words in John 15 and the experience of Judas and others.  “They went out from us,” and it’s still happening in his experience as an apostle, “but they were not really of us; if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”  And then down in verse 24, “As for you,” he writes – he says now the same thing that our Lord said to the disciples that night – “As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning.  If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.  This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life.”  “You abide in Me, and I’ll abide in you.”  John is reiterating what he heard on that Thursday night and is recorded for us in John 15. 

Jesus then talked about prayer, saying that if we abide in Him and His words abide in us, we may ask for whatever we wish and it will be done for us (verse 7).

That does rely on the request being a godly one.

Henry discusses prayer as our means of communication with Christ:

See here, [1.] How our union with Christ is maintained—by the word: If you abide in me; he had said before, and I in you; here he explains himself, and my words abide in you; for it is in the word that Christ is set before us, and offered to us, Rom 10 6-8. It is in the word that we receive and embrace him; and so where the word of Christ dwells richly there Christ dwells. If the word be our constant guide and monitor, if it be in us as at home, then we abide in Christ, and he in us. [2.] How our communion with Christ is maintained—by prayer: You shall ask what you will, and it shall be done to you. And what can we desire more than to have what we will for the asking? Note, Those that abide in Christ as their heart’s delight shall have, through Christ, their heart’s desire. If we have Christ, we shall want nothing that is good for us. Two things are implied in this promise:—First, That if we abide in Christ, and his word in us, we shall not ask any thing but what is proper to be done for us. The promises abiding in us lie ready to be turned into prayers; and the prayers so regulated cannot but speed. Secondly, That if we abide in Christ and his word we shall have such an interest in God’s favour and Christ’s mediation that we shall have an answer of peace to all our prayers.

Jesus concluded by saying that His Father is glorified by the Apostles’ — and our — bearing much fruit and becoming His disciples (verse 8).

Henry elaborates:

If we bear much fruit, [1.] Herein our Father will be glorified. The fruitfulness of the apostles, as such, in the diligent discharge of their office, would be to the glory of God in the conversion of souls, and the offering of them up to him, Rom 15 9, 16. The fruitfulness of all Christians, in a lower or narrower sphere, is to the glory of God. By the eminent good works of Christians many are brought to glorify our Father who is in heaven. [2.] So shall we be Christ’s disciples indeed, approving ourselves so, and making it to appear that we are really what we call ourselves. So shall we both evidence our discipleship and adorn it, and be to our Master for a name and a praise, and a glory, that is, disciples indeed, Jer 13 11. So shall we be owned by our Master in the great day, and have the reward of disciples, a share in the joy of our Lord. And the more fruit we bring forth, the more we abound in that which is good, the more he is glorified.

On the subject of abiding, MacArthur concludes with an answer to people who ask if we have a personal relationship with Christ:

Rather than saying, “I have a personal relationship with Jesus,” which sounds kind of like you’re somebody special, you would be better off to say, “Well, God, the eternal God, holy God, the Creator God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in me.”  What!?  But that is essentially exactly what our Lord is saying, and it’s a trinitarian presence, staggering reality.  Now, I grant you that the glorious manifestation of the children of God of Romans 8 has not yet been manifest, has not yet been made visible.  That won’t happen until we’re glorified.  So in the meantime, we are veiled, right?  We are veiled.  The world doesn’t see us.  It is important to know who we are, so I am, I am literally a body in which God lives.  He lives in me.  The Lord has come to live in me … 

How do you talk about yourself as a believer?  You talk about yourself as the residence of God, the temple of God.  Listen to what John says over in 1 John, building on these truths.  “You are from God, little children,” verse 4, 1 John 4:4, “and have overcome them;” – Listen to this – “because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”  You worry about Satan in the world?  Don’t worry about Satan in the world.  “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.”  Verse 13, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us.”  How do we know that?  “Because He has given us of His Spirit.  We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him.”  Verse 16, “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

I wish we’d start talking like this, right?  To abide is to remain, and for all who remain, they give evidence of a genuine salvation, and how is that defined?  It is defined as God living in us.  God living in us, taking up residence.  Colossians 1:21 says, “You were formerly alienated” – from God – “hostile, engaged in evil deeds.  He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel.”  If you remain, if you stay, if you abide, He abides in you.  This is an incredibly stunning reality.  You think about the condescension of our Lord to take on a human body, but He took on a sinless human body. What kind of condescension is it for the triune God to take on a sinful body, take up residence in us? 

With that, may I wish everyone reading this a happy and blessed Sunday.

UK Parliament debates coronavirus response and excess deaths

N.B.: New posts will be intermittent for the time being. Home responsibilities at the moment have overtaken my spare time. My apologies! At any rate, I hope to continue with exegeses of Lectionary readings and Forbidden Bible Verses as a minimum.

On April 18, 2024, an Independent MP (former Conservative), Andrew Bridgen, representing North West Leicestershire, was granted a Parliamentary debate, ‘Covid 19: Response and Excess Deaths’.

Bridgen has a degree in biology with a focus on genetics. As such, the effect that coronavirus vaccines have had on the general population has been of great interest to him, in particular, the number of excess deaths during and after the pandemic.

The link above is to the transcript from Hansard. I will excerpt Bridgen’s introduction, contributions from two other sceptical MPs and the Government minister’s conclusion at the end of the debate.

Andrew Bridgen

Bridgen has always doubted the narrative that the vaccines were and are ‘safe and effective’.

He introduced the debate as follows (emphases mine):

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the covid-19 pandemic response and trends in excess deaths; and calls on the covid-19 inquiry to move onto its module 4 investigation into vaccines and therapeutics as soon as possible.

We are witnesses to the greatest medical scandal in this country in living memory, and possibly ever: the excess deaths in 2022 and 2023. Its causes are complex, but the novel and untested medical treatment described as a covid vaccine is a large part of the problem. I have been called an anti-vaxxer, as if I have rejected those vaccines based on some ideology. I want to state clearly and unequivocally that I have not: in fact, I am double vaccinated and vaccine-harmed. Intelligent people must be able to tell when people are neither pro-vax nor anti-vax, but are against a product that does not work and causes enormous harm to a percentage of the people who take it.

I am proud to be one of the few Members of Parliament with a science degree. It is a great shame that there are not more Members with a science background in this place; maybe if there were, there would be less reliance on Whips Office briefings and more independent research, and perhaps less group-think. I say to the House in all seriousness that this debate and others like it are going to be pored over by future generations, who will be genuinely agog that the evidence has been ignored for so long, that genuine concerns were disregarded, and that those raising them were gaslit, smeared and vilified.

One does not need any science training at all to be horrified by officials deliberately hiding key data in this scandal, which is exactly what is going on. The Office for National Statistics used to release weekly data on deaths per 100,000 in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations—it no longer does so, and no one will explain why. The public have a right to that data. There have been calls from serious experts, whose requests I have amplified repeatedly in this House, for what is called record-level data to be anonymised and disclosed for analysis. That would allow meaningful analysis of deaths after vaccination, and settle once and for all the issue of whether those experimental treatments are responsible for the increase in excess deaths.

Far more extensive and detailed data has already been released to the pharma companies from publicly funded bodies. Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency, said that this anonymised, aggregate death by vaccination status data is “commercially sensitive” and should not be published. The public are being denied that data, which is unacceptable; yet again, data is hidden with impunity, just like in the Post Office scandal. Professor Harries has also endorsed a recent massive change to the calculation of the baseline population level used by the ONS to calculate excess deaths. It is now incredibly complex and opaque, and by sheer coincidence, it appears to show a massive excess of deaths in 2020 and 2021 and minimal excess deaths in 2023. Under the old calculation method, tried and tested for decades, the excess death rate in 2023 was an astonishing 5%—long after the pandemic was over, at a time when we would expect a deficit in deaths because so many people had sadly died in previous years. Some 20,000 premature deaths in 2023 alone are now being airbrushed away through the new normal baseline …

Bridgen reminded MPs — and us — of the traditional ways that the medical world once treated viruses and why some people die from them:

The average time to death from experiencing covid symptoms and testing positive was 18 days. It is a little-known fact that the body clears all the viruses within around seven days; what actually kills people is that some, especially the vulnerable, have an excessive immune response. Doctors have been treating that response for decades with steroids, antibiotics for secondary pneumonia infections and other standard protocols, but they did not do so this time.

Coronavirus changed all of that and probably not for the better:

Even though the virus was long gone, doctors abandoned the standard clinical protocols because covid was a “new virus”—which it was not. They sent people home, told them to take paracetamol until their lips turned blue, and then when those people returned to hospital, they sedated them, put them on ventilators and watched them die.

The protocol for covid-19 treatment was a binary choice between two treatment tracks. Once admitted, ill patients were either ventilated in intensive care or—if they were not fit for that level of care—given end of life medication, including midazolam and morphine. The body responsible for that protocol, NG163, which was published on 3 April 2020, is called the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or NICE. Giving midazolam and morphine to people dying of cancer is reasonable, but there is a side effect, which is that those drugs have a respiratory depressant effect. It is hard to imagine a more stupid thing to do than giving a respiratory suppressant to someone who is already struggling to breathe with the symptoms of covid-19, but that is exactly what we did …

Remember how nearly every cause of death during the pandemic was classified as from or with coronavirus? Once the vaccines were distributed, no deaths were seemingly attributed to them:

After a positive covid test, any illness and any death was attributed to the virus. After the experimental emergency vaccine was administered, no subsequent illness and no death was ever attributed to the vaccine. Those are both completely unscientific approaches, and that is why we have to look at other sources of data—excess deaths—to determine whether there is an issue.

Then there is the question surrounding the words ‘safe and effective’:

The fear deliberately stoked up by the Government promoted the idea of being rescued by a saviour vaccine. The chanting of the “safe and effective” narrative began, and the phrase seemed to hypnotise the whole nation. “Safe and effective” was the sale slogan of thalidomide. After that scandal, rules were put in place to prevent such marketing in future by pharma companies, and they are prohibited from using “safe and effective” without significant caveats.

That did not matter this time because, with covid-19 vaccines, the media, the Government and other authorities turned into big pharma’s marketing department, and it is very hard now to hear the word “safe” without the echo of the words “and effective”, but they are not safe and effective. In March 2021, when the majority of UK citizens had already received these novel products, Pfizer signed a contract with Brazil and South Africa saying that

“the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and…adverse effects of the Vaccine…are not currently known.”

That is verbatim from the Pfizer contracts.

These so-called vaccines were the least effective vaccines ever. Is there anyone left under any illusion that they prevented any infections? When he was at the Dispatch Box for Prime Minister’s questions on 31 January, even the Prime Minister, in answer to my question, could not bring himself to add “and effective” to his “safe” mantra. In his own words, he was “unequivocal” that the vaccines are “safe”. The word “safe” means without risk of death or injury. Why is the Prime Minister gaslighting the 163 successful claims made to the vaccine damage payment scheme, totalling £19.5 million in compensation for harm caused by the covid vaccines? Have these people not suffered enough already? Those 163 victims are the tip of the iceberg, by the way. It also should be noted that the maximum payment is only £120,000, so each of those 163 victims got the maximum possible award, which should tell us something. The same compensation scheme paid out a total of only £3.5 million between 1997 and 2005, with an average of only eight claims per year, and that is for all claims for the entire country for all vaccines administered. So much for “safe”.

How about effective? On 25 October 2021, the then Prime Minister—the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson—even admitted that the vaccine “doesn’t protect you against catching the disease and it doesn’t protect you against passing it on” …

Those who imposed these vaccines knew full well that they could never prevent infection from a disease of this kind. An injection in the arm cannot do that. Only immunity on the surface of the airways and the lungs can prevent viral infection; antibodies in the blood cannot. In Dr Anthony Fauci’s words,

“it is not surprising that none of the predominantly mucosal respiratory viruses have ever been effectively controlled by vaccines.”

He continued:

“This observation raises a question of fundamental importance: if natural mucosal respiratory virus infections do not elicit complete and long-term protective immunity against reinfection, how can we expect vaccines, especially systemically administered non-replicating vaccines, to do so?”

They knew that the so-called vaccines would never protect from infection, which explains why they never tested for protection from infection …

Bridgen highlighted Australia, which, interestingly, distributed the vaccine before there was a Covid outbreak; the state governments had effectively quarantined their residents:

The Australian Government have launched an inquiry into Australia’s excess deaths problem. Australia is almost unique as a case study for excess deaths; as it had the vaccine before it had covid, its excess deaths are not so easily blamed on the long-term side effects of a virus. Like us, it saw a rise in deaths, which began in May 2021 and has not let up since. The impact was evident on the ambulance service first. South Australia saw a 67% increase in cardiac presentations of 15 to 44-year-olds. That increase peaked in November 2021, before covid hit. We saw a similar, deeply worrying effect here. In the UK, calls for life-threatening emergencies rose from 2,000 per day to 2,500 per day in May 2021, and that number has never returned to normal.

By October 2021, despite it being springtime in Australia, headlines reported that ambulances were unable to drop off patients in hospitals, which were already at full capacity …

In April 2022, Yvette D’Ath, Queensland’s Health Minister, said about the most urgent ambulance calls, called “code ones”:

“I don’t think anyone can explain why we saw a 40% jump in code ones… We just had a lot of heart attacks and chest pains and trouble breathing, respiratory issues. Sometimes you can’t explain why those things happen but unfortunately, they do.”

I think we could explain this if we were to look at the link to the vaccine roll-out. Omicron did cause some excess deaths in Australia from 2022 onwards. However, there was a huge chunk of excess deaths prior to that, which doctors have not been able to blame on the virus. Could those deaths be caused by the vaccine? Very few people dare even ask that question.

Bridgen explained how traditional vaccines are made contrasted with the ones for Covid-19:

Traditionally, the key to making a vaccine is to ensure that the pathological, harmful parts of the virus or bacteria are inactivated, so that the recipient can develop an immune response without danger of developing the disease. In stark contrast, the so-called covid vaccines used the most pathological or harmful part of the virus—the spike protein—in its entirety. The harm is systemic because, contrary to what everyone was told, the lipid nanoparticles, encapsulating the genetic material, spread through the whole body after injection, potentially affecting all organs. At the time, everyone was being reassured that the injection was broken down in the arm at the injection site. Regulators ought to have known that those were problems.

It is possible that the way the coronavirus vaccines work can lead to cancer in certain cases:

Cancer is a genetic disease disorder that arises from errors in DNA, allowing cells to grow uncontrollably. Moderna has multiple patents describing methods for reducing the risk of cancer induction from its mRNA products. That risk comes from the material interrupting the patient’s DNA. It turns out that an mRNA injection has very high quantities of DNA in it, and that massively increases the risk of disturbing a patient’s own DNA. Worse still, the DNA that was injected contained sequences that were hidden from the regulator. That is the SV40, or simian virus 40 promoter region, which has been linked to cancer and has been found in the Pfizer vaccines. That was no accident. Yet again, crucial information was hidden from the regulator and the public with absolute impunity. An independent study in Japan, published last week, has found links between increased cancer rates in Japan and those who took the first and subsequent booster vaccines. Perhaps that explains why Pfizer acquired a cancer treatment company for a reported $43 billion earlier this year.

Those are the main points from Andrew Bridgen’s introduction.

The Gallery

The coronavirus vaccines and their effects are a controversial subject in the UK, as it no doubt is elsewhere in the West. The Gallery had quite a few members of the public in attendance.

After the second speech from Sir Christopher Chope MP, the Deputy Speaker of the House, Dame Rosie Winterton said:

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I want to be absolutely clear, for the benefit of everybody who is watching our proceedings or participating in them, that if there are any more interruptions from the Gallery and it has to be cleared, I will have to temporarily suspend the House, which may mean that those who want to participate will be denied the opportunity. To be clear, I am trying to create a situation whereby everybody can have their say.

Graham Stringer

Graham Stringer, who holds a degree in chemistry, is the only Labour MP I hold in high regard, including during the pandemic restrictions, which he opposed.

Let it be noted that Graham Stringer was an outlier within Labour, which clamoured for earlier and longer lockdowns.

He began by noting that politics and science make strange bedfellows:

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who has done remarkably good work on vaccine-damaged people. I co-chair his all-party parliamentary group’s sister group, the APPG on pandemic response and recovery, which has allowed me to see that we have a whole body of expert opinion before us. Medics, lawyers, experts in childcare and a whole range of politicians have come to very different views on what the right response to covid was and, in some cases, on both the law and the science itself.

Before I go any further, let me say that my experience of the APPG, and of climate change or global warming debates, is that science and politics make very uneasy bedfellows. There is often an attempt in a political debate to resolve matters that are only resolvable by looking at the evidence, doing more experiments and finding out the truth of the matter, which is not always possible in a debate where people feel very strongly about things.

He went on to discuss how the virus affected the general public and how the Government adopted a one-size-fits-all lockdown policy:

I want to talk about something we have not really talked about so far: the disease itself. People have different views about the damage done by covid. Some people think it is harmless and just another flu, whereas some treat it as though it were the plague. It is neither. It was a nasty disease for some people who got it, but its major characteristic was the profile of people who were killed or made ill by it. It affected older people much more severely. I think the median age of those who died was 82 for men and 84 for women, so it was a disease of the elderly. Those below 50 were relatively safe—some died, but not many. That was known at the beginning of the epidemic.

This comes back to the point about politics, and the protection of Government politicians, being more important than looking at the science. A rational response to a disease with the profile of covid-19 would have been to put a cordon sanitaire around those people who were vulnerable because of their age or because they had other diseases, such as lung diseases, and to let the rest of us go about our business and take the risk, as we do every year with seasonal flu, but the Government did the opposite. They locked everybody up and sent untested people back from hospital into care homes, where they infected other people, which led to a spike in deaths.

At the same time, the Government were telling us that they were following the science. I have a scientific background—it is not in biology, but I have a degree in chemistry—and I believe in following the science and finding out exactly what is going on. The science was not followed, and not only because the response did not follow the natural profile of the disease. In their early statements, people from the NHS, and both Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, said that masks were a complete waste of time and that lockdowns were ineffective because there would be a peak six months later that would probably be worse than if we had not locked down. That advice changed very quickly, I believe under political pressure. Again, I think that was a mistake.

One country that did follow the science, Sweden, made mistakes—it made the same mistake that we made by sending infected people back into care homes—but it did not lock down and it did not restrict people’s freedom, or it did so in only a moderate way. It came out as about the best of comparable countries in Europe in terms of deaths.

He thinks that the UK ended up in a parlous financial situation for no good reason:

Another consequence, which we see in every debate in this House, is that there is no money left. We spent £400 billion on covid, a lot of it wasted. We can read National Audit Office reports on the test and trace system, which was money almost totally wasted. There is also the money given to people who could quite easily have gone about their jobs. The businesses needed the money, given the decisions that the Government had taken, but the Government should not have taken those decisions.

I agree, but Labour — Stringer’s party — would have done the same, if not worse.

Stringer discussed that point, after another MP commented about the benefit of hindsight:

I therefore voted against my own party, which supported the Government and more on this issue. I went through the [voting] Lobby with a small number of colleagues from my party and the hon. Gentleman’s party to say that what was happening was wrong, and that the damage being done by the policies was probably worse than covid. It might be hindsight for March and April 2020, but not for the rest of the time and the second lockdown.

He talked about the general lockstep of the media during the pandemic:

Our democracy’s second important check and balance is the fourth estate. These publications are not normally my politics but, with the exception of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and the Daily Mail to a certain extent, the rest of the media, led by the BBC, were quite uncritical of what was happening. People say that BBC reporters were told not to criticise and not to ask difficult questions, and political journalists—not specialist health journalists who might have asked more pertinent questions—were sent to the press conferences. It was a political question, but it was also a science and health question. We were really let down by the BBC primarily, and by other parts of the media.

He then went on to address the possible futility and very real expense of the ongoing Covid inquiry, led by Baroness Hallett:

The hon. Member for Christchurch and other hon. Members have talked about the Hallett inquiry. I supported the inquiry but, having seen the way it has gone, I have given myself a good talking to. I do not think I will ever again support an inquiry. Do we really want to spend half a billion pounds on this inquiry? I attended the previous debate on recompense, and we heard how lawyers are getting fat on all these inquiries. I do not know when the Hallett inquiry will report, but it may well last for years and cost half a billion pounds. It certainly will not provide us with any advice on what to do if there is a pandemic next year—I suspect that advice is what we all want. By the time it reports, there may have been another Government or two and it will be a historical document. Sweden is not a perfect society, but its inquiry has reported. The motion before us calls for the fourth part of the inquiry, which will be on vaccines, but is the inquiry really the technical body to do that? I do not think so.

In the first stage, the inquiry has shown an extraordinary bias towards believing in lockdowns. I would want to know a number of things from an inquiry: did the lockdowns work? Did they save lives? Have they cost lives? Where did the virus come from? The inquiry is not even looking at that and it is not dealing with any of those things, but it is taking a long time. It has made it abundantly clear that it is going to look at the impact of the virus on social divisions and poverty. I am a member of the Labour party and I can tell the inquiry, because I know, that poor people come off worse from diseases. It can go back to look at the Black report from 1981, I believe it was, if it wants to see that, as it talks about both regional and class disparities. We do not need to look at this issue, as we know that poor people do badly when there are epidemics—that has been true for all time.

He talked about the absurdity of what happened during the pandemic with regard to policy compared with events that occur daily:

I have never made this point before, and I hope I am not going off-piste too much, Madam Deputy Speaker, but every time there is an horrific murder of a child we get a report with 90-odd recommendations, and the question is: does that protect the next child? No, it does not. I do not believe that these inquiries do. We need serious cultural change in many of these organisations, rather than another report on something. That is an easy thing to say and a very difficult thing to achieve.

Stringer then attacked the statistics from the pandemic:

Let me come on to the other part of the debate, which is about excess deaths and the number of deaths. It appears that just over 200,000 people were killed in this country by, or died of, covid. I had my doubts about these figures from the beginning. On a number of occasions, right from the start of covid, the Science and Technology Committee heard from statisticians. We had Sir Ian Diamond and Professor Spiegelhalter in to talk to us about the statistics. We heard from people from what is now the UK Health Security Agency but was then a named part of the NHS. We asked them whether they had the statistics on the difference between people who died from covid and those who died with it. If someone was dying of cancer and went into hospital, there was a fair chance that they would have got covid, because there was not perfect protection within hospitals. Such a person would then be registered as having been a covid death, but clearly they were going to die of cancer. From the very beginning, that obscured the statistics.

Dr Kieran Mullan, a Conservative MP, defended the statistics and the clinicians involved in completing death certificates.

Stringer replied to two of Mullan’s interventions. Ellipses separate the two responses:

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but I happen to know that in some local authorities, instructions went out to the people who were registering deaths essentially to say, “If there is a cough involved in this, we want it down as covid.” There was a different process because the health service was not working under normal—[Interruption.] …

… I am suggesting that at that time, when it was difficult to examine people because there was a distance between clinicians and the people who had suffered death, there was a temptation and a view that covid should go on the death certificates. I suggest no conspiracy, though. I do not believe in conspiracies.

Stringer concluded by addressing the excess death data:

I want to move on to excess deaths over the last couple of years, since covid, and the figures during covid. One of the ways of measuring the impact of covid was looking at excess deaths during covid. They were measured against a five-year average—that was the gold standard; it is the way it has been done—and that gave quite large figures. That is interesting given what has happened when the excess 100,000 deaths per year over the past two years have been looked at. The Office for National Statistics has moved away from that basis and on to a different one, and the figures are coming down.

We need an anonymised account of those excess deaths—this was part of a recent Westminster Hall debate—because that will help us to understand what is going on. The pharmaceutical companies have been given that information, but Ministers just give reassuring statements that there is no evidence that excess deaths are caused by the covid vaccinations—by the mRNA vaccinations. How do they know? They do not tell us that. We need to know, first, how they have come to that conclusion and, secondly, if that is a fair, reasoned and balanced conclusion. We also need a detailed look at the anonymised statistics, so that we can ask further questions about the problems that are worrying us—that certainly worry me—and so that we can make better decisions in future.

Neale Hanvey

Neale Hanvey is one of two MPs belonging to Alba, a Scottish independence party made up of MPs who broke away from the Scottish National Party (SNP). He has a medical degree, which led him to a 25-year-long career in the NHS and as a contributing author to medical textbooks.

He began by making three points about the thorny issue of raising doubts about the coronavirus vaccines — and others, such as gender identity:

I will begin by picking up on a few of the points that have been raised this afternoon. First, there is a parallel with a very important report that we received last week, and to which the Government responded on Monday: the Cass review. When concerns were first raised about what was happening in gender identity development services, those of us who spoke up at that time suffered both political and public pile-ons that were very uncomfortable. It gives me no pleasure to have been vindicated by the content of the Cass review. Certainly, when the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) first raised his concerns on this issue, he was also subjected to a political and public pile-on. The reason I raise that is that this cannot be how we tackle thorny issues. We must have a much more reasoned and mature approach to these things, where ideological positions are not sacrosanct and we have the flexibility to engage with, and look at, the points that are being raised.

My second point is about the discussion regarding correlation versus causation. It is fair enough to say that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it is sufficient evidence for us to start asking questions about what is actually there. That is a fundamental question that anybody who has been involved in any scientific endeavour must surely understand.

My next point is a slightly more difficult issue to raise, because it is quite emotive. Like many others in this Chamber, I have had two vaccines and a booster. My family had the same, but there is a question about the presumption that that is what saved lives. We cannot prove that, unfortunately—that is just not the way it works—but what we do have to grapple with is the fact that the treatment we were given, like any agent, can cause harm. We have a responsibility to interrogate those concerns, which is why I am very disappointed that module 4 of the inquiry has been delayed.

My last point is about the record-level data and the importance of how it is tabulated. The methodology for assessing excess deaths has changed; that might be a reasonable change in practice at a time of peace, if you like, but we have just come through a very difficult period with the pandemic. Changing the methodology immediately afterwards seems perverse at best and deeply concerning at worst, because it is important that from this moment on, we are able to understand how trends are changing in a directly comparable way. With a change in methodology, that becomes impossible, so it is not a good idea—just in terms of scientific rigour, it is problematic.

He then drew on his personal experience of clinical trials:

I will start off my contribution by expanding on some of the comments I made during the debate on 16 January, because we had very limited time to speak in that debate. I want to take us a step back, away from the emotive issue of whether there is correlation, causation, and a relationship between excess deaths and the covid vaccine, and remind ourselves of the principles that underpin how clinical trials should be conducted. The ethical principles that underpin those trials have their origin in the declaration of Helsinki and are consistent with internationally published good clinical practice guidelines and, obviously, all of the regulatory mechanisms that fall out from those guidelines.

Anybody who has been involved in clinical trials of any type will know that, as I have said, any agent has the potential to cause injury or harm. That is just the nature of the beast, and one of the things we try to establish during a clinical trial is to find out the harm, however minimal or maximal it may be, so as to mitigate it, manage it or rule the agent out because it is too risky. Performing such a test rigorously is the foundation of good clinical practice, and I make these comments as someone who has been involved in the management and delivery of clinical trials over many years. I think that, as politicians, as clinicians and as the industry, we all carry a duty of honesty and candour in these matters.

The aforementioned Dr Mullan intervened, as if to question what Hanvey said.

Hanvey replied:

Well, the hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but that is my experience. I worked at University College London Hospitals and the Royal Marsden, and those are the principles that we applied in such a context. I can only speak to my experience.

Dr Mullan intervened again.

Hanvey elaborated on questions surrounding the available vaccine and death data as well as possible harm:

… The principles I have been outlining are there because they are the basis on which good science is established and based.

Let me move to some of the questions that we must raise and answer today, openly and transparently, and with full access to ONS record-level data. I am not saying that that should be disclosed to all and sundry, but surely the Government cannot defend the position that they are not willing to release that information to interested clinicians and clinical academics as a minimum. Those are the people who need to interrogate the data. It is of little relevance to me—I do not have the means or academic ability to interpret it—but it is something that interested clinical academics should have access to.

Let me move on to what we know about some of the issues surrounding mRNA technology. We know that it does not replicate locally, as we were assured it would do on launch. It metastasises to distant tissue, and replicates spike protein systemically distant from the site of administration. That is problematic for a number of reasons. According to the University of London Professor of Oncology, and principal of the Institute for Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy, Professor Angus Dalgleish, this has precipitated various serious and sometimes fatal consequences due to antibody development mediated by the spike protein. I will not go into the detail of that, but at a meeting convened by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, Professor Dalgleish told us that the UK Government and their agencies are in serious denial about this issue, resulting in many deaths being poorly understood.

Let me give a couple of examples. Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia is one of the principal causes of blood clot formation, which can cause stroke, pulmonary emboli, and other cardiac-related events including heart attacks, all of which can be life-limiting or fatal. Another antibody linked to the spike protein exerts an effect on myelin, and is associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome and transverse myelitis, which is a swelling around the spinal cord. Professor Dalgleish believes that that constitutes medical negligence, because the facts are there for all to see. He contends that many deaths are as a direct result of unnecessary vaccination. Furthermore, he advises that there are a greater number of yellow cards in MHRA for covid vaccines than for all other vaccines recorded, and nothing has really been done.

In a recent written answer to me, it was confirmed that the MHRA has received 489,004 spontaneous suspected adverse drug reaction reports relating to the covid-19 vaccine, up to and including 28 February this year. Across the United Kingdom, 2,734 of those reports were associated with a fatal outcome. Of course the true number is unknown—that is the nature of yellow card reporting, as only a fraction of adverse events are reported—and that is probably because of limited public awareness about some of the potential consequences and complications of vaccines, and the well-understood under-reporting of those adverse events. That is important, because the yellow card system is a key element of safe and effective clinical care. If things are not being evaluated properly, I can think of no greater betrayal of the MHRA’s clinical governance responsibility. I suggest that accountability for that must be swift and decisive. The rigorous assessment of these data is essential and must be actioned urgently. Will the Minister now engage with the MHRA and invite it to come to the House to explain the facts on these reports?

I was delighted to see that someone used data correctly: in the plural. Datum signifies the singular.

Hanvey then zeroed in on the MHRA, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatatory Agency:

Another issue, which arises from a further written question that I tabled, relates to the role of the MHRA. It has a crucial role—in fact, it is a statutory function—to provide post-marketing surveillance and to operate the yellow card system, but the Minister responded to my question about the assessment of the potential implications of the BMJ article “Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is ‘likely’ responsible for deaths of some elderly patients, Norwegian review finds” by stating:

“The MHRA communicates safety advice based upon consideration of the totality of evidence from all relevant information sources, rather than the strengths and limitations of individual data sources.”

Surely, a fundamental step in any meta-analysis of published data is to interrogate the robustness of those data and for the public to have confidence that that is happening.

That point links right back to where I started, on the Cass report. One of the fundamental failings that the report identified was circular citation among various different organisations. They were validating one another’s position to create a false impression that there was an evidence base for the practice they were involved in. If the MHRA will say, “We do not interrogate the data when we do a meta-analysis,” who does? Who will validate the data? If I can hand over to the MHRA a whole load of numbers and it will just count them and accept that I have said my methodological rigour is robust, that is not good enough as far as I am concerned.

The Minister’s response to my written question was that the MHRA does not

“assign causality at the level of individual reports,”

as that is not its responsibility. If that is the case, whose responsibility is it? Who is interrogating the data and making that decision? If no one is, how can we get from correlation to a developed picture of causation? That is an essential step. It raises fundamental questions about that responsibility and the reliability of the data that the MHRA is relying on. If we are to learn anything from the general implications of the Cass report, we must have a clear steer from the MHRA on how these fundamental scientific principles will be observed and upheld …

Hanvey discussed other coronavirus-related issues and included quotes from the aforementioned Professor Dalgleish:

Let us move on to what we do not know. We have had no real progress on the points raised in the debate, particularly on record-level data. We need either that data to be released to clinical academics and others or a cogent explanation for why that is not happening. Why were those concerns kept hidden by the FDA? Are similar concerns or issues being hidden by the UK Government? Some of the points made about the delay in the MHRA taking action on clinical impacts is relevant to that point.

According to a House of Commons Library briefing, the Government-operated vaccine damage payment scheme, which has been discussed in both this debate and the previous one, provides only a one-off tax-free payment, which is currently a modest £120,000, to applicants where a vaccine has caused severe disablement. Data on VDPS claims relating to covid-19 vaccination is not routinely published, so we do not have particular metrics that establish how many claims are being made against those vaccines.

The most recent data is from September 2023. According to the NHS Business Services Authority, at that time it had received 7,160 claims relating to covid-19. Following medical assessment, 142 claims—just under 2%—were awarded, and 3,030 were rejected. A further 192 claims were found to be “invalid”. We need to understand why that was. What are claims being measured against and who is interpreting the clinical assessment information? We must also ask whether the exclusion criteria are reliable, given the concerns raised in the debate.

Based on the data that I have here, there are currently 3,796 unresolved claims, 1,010 of which have been unresolved for more than six months. If the 142 successful claims receive the full payment, the total cost will be around £17 million. If there are a further 177 successful claims from the unresolved cases, the associated cost will be a further £21 million. I am advised that the Government set aside some funding for this issue, but this has the hallmarks of the contaminated blood scandal [a decades-long one, only being resolved with the current Government] written all over it. We must get ahead of the game and make sure that people get the compensation that they desperately need at a time when it is important to them.

There is another question: why are the Government so willing to pick up the tab on vaccine injury, however inadequate the scheme is, given the fatalities and the significant life-limiting impact on the victims? These concerns have been amplified significantly following the publication in The Spectator Australia of an account by genomics scientist Kevin McKernan of his accidental discovery. It states:

“While running an experiment in his Boston lab, McKernan used some vials of mRNA Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines as controls. He was ‘shocked’ to find that they were allegedly contaminated with tiny fragments of plasmid DNA.”

His concern has been considered further by Professor Angus Dalgleish, who noted that the contaminant, simian virus 40, is

“a sequence that is ‘used to drive DNA into the nucleus, especially in gene therapies’ and that this is ‘something that regulatory agencies around the world have specifically said is not possible with the mRNA vaccines’. These SV40 promotors are also well recognised as being oncogenic”—

or cancer-inducing genetic material. Other scientists have confirmed those findings. Professor Dalgleish further notes:

“To put it bluntly, this means that they are not vaccines at all but a…Genetically Modified Organism that should have been subject to totally different regulatory conditions and certainly not be classed as vaccines.”

Worryingly, Professor Dalgleish also notes that oncologists have contacted him from across the world, and the consensus is that this is thought to be precipitating relapse in melanoma, lymphoma, leukaemia and kidney cancers. He concludes with the following warning:

“To advise booster vaccines, as is the current case, is no more and no less than medical incompetence; to continue to do so”—

with his cited evidence—

“is medical negligence which can carry a custodial sentence.”

Neale Hanvey concluded, in part:

Personally—I say this frankly—I will never accept another mRNA vaccine, and I am far from alone. Will the Minster agree to full disclosure of the data and an investigation of the facts? Will she also commit to instructing the Office for National Statistics to release the record level data, or will it take someone like New Zealander Barry Young, a whistleblower imprisoned for publishing its record level data, to surface concerns about the covid vaccine programme? As we have seen with the Horizon scandal, the Government must never bury the facts when lives are being lost and futures destroyed. There is no greater betrayal.

In closing, the foundations of good clinical practice are under threat. I will put that in context with the December 2023 Pathology Research and Practice paper on “Gene-based covid-19 vaccines” from Rhodes and Parry. They gave the following warning:

“Pandemic management requires societal coordination, global orchestration, respect for human rights and defence of ethical principles. Yet some approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by socioeconomic, corporate, and political interests, have undermined key pillars of ethical medical science.”

None of these clinical experts are quacks or conspiracy theorists. As the Government said so often during the pandemic, we must follow the science.

Maria Caulfield, speaking for the Government

Maria Caulfield MP (Conservative), a nurse, spoke for the Government.

She said, in part:

As I said, we have had a number of debates on this issue, including in January, when I acknowledged that the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire [Andrew Bridgen] was correct to say that we have seen excess deaths in recent years. However, excess deaths are not new; they were happening before covid and have happened since then as well. It is important to look at the figures, because the Office for National Statistics indicates that the number of excess deaths has been reducing, year on year, since the high in 2020, when there were 66,740 excess deaths in England. I can only talk about England because health is obviously devolved and the Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will have their own data. In 2022, that number went down to 37,701, and in 2023, there were just 10,206 excess deaths in England. It is important to remember that every single one of those is a person, a family member, and a loved one, but it may reassure hon. Members greatly, as it does me, that the ONS has reported negative excess deaths for every week so far in 2024.

When Andrew Bridgen questioned the figures, she replied:

The hon. Gentleman may have missed my last sentence before his intervention. I said that the ONS data shows that in every week in 2024 so far, we have had negative excess deaths. That goes specifically to his point …

Routine treatments and access to appointments are difficult even now, given the backlog of examinations and tests that need to happen. When we looked at this, we saw that last year, the rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease was 2% higher than expected, with there having been more than 2,200 excess deaths.

That is why we are reinvesting in our NHS health check. It was on pause during covid, when people could not get their blood pressure or cholesterol checked and could not go on smoking prevention programmes. We restarted those, and as a result, excess deaths from cardiac disease are starting to fall. We want to use the opportunity to roll out our new digital health checks. We recognise that access to GPs is sometimes difficult, but this roll-out is expected to deliver an additional 1 million checks in the first four years. We also have a £10 million pilot to deliver cardiovascular checks in the workplace. Again, that is about making it as easy as possible for people to get checked. We have our Pharmacy First roll-out as well. That is all for general health purposes. We know that all these things contributed to excess death rates.

I want to touch on the crux of the matter, which is the covid vaccine; that has come through in all these debates. I was not a Health Minister at the time, so I did not have to make these difficult decisions, but the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton is absolutely right: as the pandemic preparedness Minister, I want the findings of the inquiry. I have to make difficult decisions now about potential future pandemics that may never happen, but could happen tomorrow—we just do not know. The results of the inquiry with regard to lockdowns, face masks and vaccines will all be really useful information, and at the moment, I am not much the wiser on those results.

On module 4, I want to see any evidence about vaccine safety, because that is how we learn. I think we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. We want to do the best, but during the pandemic, when we watched TV footage from around the world, and the media were often pushing us to lock down harder, faster and longer, we had to make difficult decisions without the benefit of hindsight.

I went back to the wards during covid, and I looked after covid patients who were being treated for cancer. We lost many of them, and we lost a number of staff, too. I have seen this from both sides of the fence.

Dr Mullan intervened to say that he, too, worked on the front lines during the pandemic.

Caulfield issued the usual praises and the pot-banging (every Thursday night at 8 p.m.) narratives by way of thanks. You can read the transcript.

Of the vaccine data, she said:

The Office for National Statistics published data last August showing that people who received a covid-19 vaccination had a lower mortality rate than those who had not been vaccinated. Given that 93.6% of the population has been vaccinated with either one or two doses, or multiple does, it is almost impossible to determine correlation versus causation. Vaccinated people will feature highly in excess death numbers because most people have been vaccinated, which is why we need to go through the data really carefully and not just take the first data at face value.

The covid virus continues to circulate, and we are now living with covid. Some people are still very vulnerable to covid, although the current variant is obviously less severe than the initial variant. We have just had our spring vaccine roll-out, and those who are invited should please go to get their vaccine. We know that it makes a difference to the most vulnerable. Over this winter, after both the flu and covid vaccine roll-outs, we have seen a significant reduction in hospital admissions.

She went on to say:

I will answer some of the many questions that have been asked in this debate. I reiterate that no medicine or vaccine is completely risk free. Even simple paracetamol has the potential to kill people if it is not taken properly, and people with certain conditions might not be able to take it at all. We have monitoring systems in place. The MHRA, which I know has come under criticism, took a stand when in April 2021, following concerns raised through the yellow card system, it reduced access for the under-30s and then for the under-40s. When concerns are raised, it absolutely takes action. There are now recommendations about the type of vaccine, and about whom we vaccinate, bearing in mind the current evidence.

I have said that no vaccine is 100% safe, which is why we have the vaccine damage payment scheme. I hear concerns about that, and I have met my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) to discuss it. We took the scheme off the Department for Work and Pensions and moved it into the Department of Health and Social Care to speed it up and get claims turned around more quickly. We have had more than 4,000 claims, 170 of which have been awarded. Roughly speaking, the majority of claims are decided on within six months, and the vast majority are decided on within 12 months. Of course, we want to speed up on those. We recognise the time limit of three years, which is why we are working as hard as we can to get through as many claims as possible, so that if people have been affected by the covid vaccine, they get some help and support through that funding.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) raised the issue of research. We are absolutely researching the issue of covid-19 vaccines—not just future types of vaccines, but their safety. There is £110 million from the National Institute for Health and Care Research going specifically into covid-19 vaccine safety, and I encourage all Members to keep an eye on that as the evidence comes forward.

I have to give the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire a few minutes to reply, so I will just say that we take this issue extremely seriously …

I have been as open and transparent as I can be. If there are concerns, we will always look into them, but there is no doubt that covid vaccines save lives. There is no doubt that some people have experienced harm from them—we acknowledge that, and we want to help and support people who have been affected—but the vaccines did get us out of the pandemic and we need to be mindful of that as well.

Conclusion

Andrew Bridgen concluded:

… I wish this debate were not needed; I wish the experimental covid-19 vaccines were safe and effective, but they are not. The longer we go on not admitting the problem, the bigger the problem that will come, and the greater the harm that will continue to be caused. Those in this House can continue to deny that the vaccines are causing harm and deaths, and the legacy media can continue to censor all reports of vaccine harms and excess deaths, but the people know, in increasing numbers, because they are the ones who are losing their loved ones and relatives. I urge the Government: release the control-level data, and let us sort this out once and for all.

I could not agree more.

The Hallett inquiry could do much better, too.

I fear there will be doubts for years to come on coronavirus vaccines, further polarising the public’s view of them.

Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 10:13-20

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Genesis 10:13-20

¹³ Egypt was the father of

the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, ¹⁴ Pathrusites, Kasluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites.

¹⁵ Canaan was the father of

Sidon his firstborn,^[a] and of the Hittites, ¹⁶ Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, ¹⁷ Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, ¹⁸ Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.

Later the Canaanite clans scattered ¹⁹ and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon towards Gerar as far as Gaza, and then towards Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha.

²⁰ These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Last week’s post introduced in more detail the sons and descendants of Ham. Noah put a curse on one of Ham’s sons, Canaan, the father of sorts of the Israelites’ Promised Land, also of the same name.

Today’s verses expand on Ham’s sons and descendants. For those who missed it a few weeks ago, also pertinent to today’s verses is the curse Noah pronounced on his grandson Canaan, Genesis 9:24-29.

Matthew Henry’s commentary tells us (emphases mine):

Observe here, 1. The account of the posterity of Canaan, of the families and nations that descended from him, and of the land they possessed, is more particular than of any other in this chapter, because these were the nations that were to be subdued before Israel, and their land was in process of time to become the holy land, Immanuel’s land; and this God had an eye to when, in the meantime, he cast the lot of that accursed devoted race in that spot of ground which he had selected for his own people; this Moses takes notice of, Deut 32 8, When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

Egypt — one of Ham’s sons — was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites (verse 13) as well as the Pathrusites, Kasluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites (verse 14).

John MacArthur says:

… any time you see “im” it’s an ending that means a people. And all those “ims” in verses 13 and 14. They could be “ites” or “ims.” Later he changes to “ites,” but “ites” or “ims,” it’s the same thing; it’s people groups.

Canaan, the bearer of Noah’s — and God’s curse — likely for unbelief, although Scripture does not specify it, was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites (verse 15), the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites (verse 16), the Hivites, Arkites, Sinites (verse 17) as well as the Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites (verse 18).

MacArthur emphasises the vast number of clans here:

So, the Canaanites were people who descended from Canaan, but there were all kinds of families of them. All kinds of families.

Later, the Canaanite clans scattered (verse 19).

MacArthur discusses the Hittites:

The Hittites, an interesting people, they had sort of a life of their own. The Hittites – we don’t need to introduce something that’s not important in this text, but in case you’re wondering what happened to the Hittites, they had an empire of their own, which today is in the area of modern Turkey. At the time of Abraham, they were in the land of Canaan, and they were a powerful people. They were still a power a thousand years after Abraham at the time of Solomon.

Are these the same people who had the highly powerful Ottoman Empire, which existed between 1299 and 1922? At varying points in history, that empire spread from as far north as Poland down to Kosovo in the opposite direction. The Ottomans had their defeats, but their empire collapsed only after the First World War with the Turkish War of Independence which lasted between 1919 and 1923. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, left Turkey on November 17, 1922, and the Republic of Turkey was created on October 29, 1923. That was only a little over a century ago.

Then there is the question of which of Noah’s sons’ descendants settled the eastern part of Asia.

MacArthur posits two possibilities.

The first involves the Hittites:

Most of the evidence connects the heritage of Asian people to the descendants of Ham. Perhaps the Hittites who came out of Ham were the ones who populated China. Let me read you just a thought on this. The Hittite Empire endured a long time – as I said, over a thousand years. And there are indications survivors of the Hittite Empire fled into China, that they went into China east of Turkey, moving, migrating on a route which Marco Polo took when he opened a new era of commerce many centuries later. And some say it’s the Hittites who got the name Chitti, which brought to the east the name Cathay, which, of course, is a name associated with the Orient.

And some archeologists say that the Hittites and the Mongols have very similar features: shoes which had toes that turned up, hair in a pigtail, pioneer work in smelting and casting iron, and the domestication of horses. That’s one possibility.

The second involves the Sinites:

The other possibility of the origin of the Asians is from the Sinites. Look at verse 17, at the end of the verse, “Sinite” – S-I-N-I–T-E. When we talk about American-Chinese relations, what do we call those? What do we call them? Sino-American relations. Why do we call them Sino-American relations? Well, the word “sin” – S-I-N – is a common word in the Orient. There is a dynasty – the Sin [Qing] Dynasty. It’s a word that means purebred. Many emperors used Sin as a title. There is the study of China. Do you know what it’s called? Sinology. And so, it is possible that they came from Ham. But I’ll tell you this; they came from Noah’s family. There is a Chinese scholar in the church who keeps giving me lessons in the Chinese language all through the book of Genesis and showing me how the Chinese letters – Chinese letters are really pictures – prove their connection. They have words that are connected that demonstrate in pictures the story of the garden of Eden – the serpent, the tree, Adam, Eve, the whole thing.

One of the ones that’s very interesting, that I just discovered, is the Chinese word for ship – the Chinese figure for ship; it’s not really a word, it’s a figure. The Chinese figure for ship is made of three components – if I had a board; I’d draw it for you – three components. Component number one is a container. Component number two is a person. And they depict a person by a mouth that’s open. Because what distinguishes a person is the ability to communicate, speak.

So, these three figures are all pressed together for the sign of a ship. And one of them is a container; it’s the sign for a container. One is the sign for a person. And the other is the number eight. That’s the Chinese word for ship. A ship is how eight people got in a container and survived. That’s how the Chinese language – and that’s one of hundreds of illustrations; there’s an entire book on this. They take their roots all the way back to the ark. And it’s most likely that they came either from the Hittite strains of Ham, or from their Sinite strains of Ham.

The borders of Canaan — the Promised Land — stretched from Sidon towards Gerar as far as Gaza, and then towards Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha (verse 19).

That concludes the sons — including descendants — of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations (verse 20).

MacArthur gives us a biblical view of what happens to the Israelites as they laid claim to the land of Canaan:

… out of Egypt they came, they wandered around in that desert south of Israel and east of Israel for 40 years, and they’re ready to go into the land of Israel, that little thin strip of land that we’re so familiar with between Africa and Europe, and Asia to the east, and they were to go in and take possession of that land. After the 40 years of wandering they had been purged, the generation that came out of Egypt had died off, Moses was set apart at that point to be their leader until the time to enter the land, and then the mantle was passed, as you know, to Joshua, and you know the story of them going in, sending spies, the whole time moving in and taking the Promised Land.

Now at that time, that land was called the land of what? Canaan. The land of Canaan. And that is because it was occupied by descendents of Ham through Canaan. Canaanites. And here are the Jews on the brink of going in to take this land. And God had told them go in, take the land, it belongs to you, and kill the people who live there. You are acting as instruments of divine judgment. You need to go in on behalf of God and be the instrument of judgment against the wicked Canaanites. And they were wicked. Vile, idolatress people. Who if not eliminated, would corrupt the Israelites. And as you know the history, the Jews did not eliminate them as God told them to, and they suffered the corruption. Because they didn’t, it cost them ultimately to again to into captivity into Babylon, and lose the glory of their great land.

But here are the Jews on the brink, they’re ready to go in to take this land. Turn to the 15^th chapter for a moment of Genesis. And I think it’s important for you to kind of see what’s going on here. Here is where initially the land is promised to the descendents of Abraham, the Jewish people for whom Abraham and those who came after him; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, and that’s the line of descent that ends up being Jewish people.

But here in the original promise to Abraham that we know as the Abrahamic Covenant, God promises to Abraham and his descendents this land. Let’s pick it up in verse 7 of Genesis 15. God said to Abram as he was called initially, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it.” And he said, “O Lord God how may I know that I shall possess it?” You’re telling me that there’s gonna be a land that I’m going to possess? A great land, in fact a land that extends far beyond the current borders of Israel in its original pledge, that engulfs most of the Middle East, east of Israel.

The Lord made a covenant, seemingly with Abraham but really with Himself:

And when the sun was going down, verse 12, says Moses the writer, “A deep sleep fell upon Abram.” God gave him a divine anesthetic, knocked him out. “And behold terror and great darkness fell upon him.” I mean, he went into a serious coma. They indicate that there was a fear, overwhelming fear, indicative of the presence of God. And God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendents will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years”. God gives him a prophecy that there’s going to be an enslavement of the Children of Israel, the Children of Abraham, for 400 years. Actually, specifically, 430 years they were in Egypt, “But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions”. That’s exactly what God did. The Israelites came out of there with a measure of wealth, delivered from Egypt by, as you know, the ten plagues, the Red Sea parted for them. “As for you, Abram, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried at a good old age.” And the fourth generation after the 400 years of captivity, they shall return here. For the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” Here is the land I’m gonna give you, He says to Abram, right here in front of you. You left there, you’ve come here, here’s the land. But I want you to know your descendants are gonna get this land, I’m gonna make a covenant, I’m cutting the pieces right here, to signify the seriousness of this covenant as if to say may I die if I don’t keep the covenant. But I’m telling you, the covenant is not gonna be fulfilled immediately; in the intervening period there’s gonna be a 400-year enslavement. And you’re not gonna be able to come back and take this land, look at this, until the inequity of the Amorite is complete. The Amorite is another word for Canaanite.

I can’t bring you into the land until you can act as my instrument of judgment on an iniquitous people. so from the very beginning, God had pledged to Abram this land. What land is it? Go down to verse 18. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying ‘To your descendents I have given this land from the River of Egypt, as far as the Great River, the River Euphrates.'” That would be from the Euphrates way at the east, way back in the Iraq/Iran fertile crescent area; we don’t know where the ancient River Euphrates exactly was and where it exactly flowed, to the River of Egypt. Probably not understood to be the Nile, but rather, what has been known in ancient times as Wadde El Orach, the southern border of Judah. “I’m giving you all that land, the land of the Kenite, the Kennezite, the Cadmonite, the Hittite, the Parazite, the Rupham, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Girgashite, the Jebusite; the Jebuse being an ancient name of Jerusalem, and the ancient occupants of God’s city. So all of these people were a part of their whole Canaan culture. But He said I can’t give you the land until the iniquity of these people is full.

We now jump not 420 years later, but closer to 600 plus years later. The 430-year captivity is past, it didn’t come for a while after Abraham as you know, they didn’t go into Egypt in Abraham’s time. They went into Egypt after Abraham and the stories of Joseph are the ones that are linked with Egypt.

So, there’s some time to pass, then there’s 430 years, and now here we are jumping ahead 600 or so years, and the inequity of these people is full. The inequity of the Canaanites, the Amorites meaning Canaanites is full. And God has now brought his people through this equitous trek. Forty years in the wilderness, they stand on the edge of the Jordan to cross and take the land. They’re entitled to it, because God pledged it to Abram.

And to show you how binding the pledge was, I want you to go back to verse 17 for a minute. I think this is one of the most interesting little pieces of insight in the Old Testament. When the sun set, remember now, Abram’s in a coma. Usually when there’s a covenant, you cut the animals, and both parties walk though. Both parties together walk through the dead animals. They’re cutting the covenant, and signifying by walking between the bloody pieces, may such happen to me if I don’t keep the covenant.

But Abram didn’t go through this ritual. He didn’t go through the pieces, God knocked him out. Came about when the sun had set. It was very dark. “And behold there appeared a smoking oven, and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.” Who was that? God, by himself. That’s why we say the Abrahamic Covenant is a unilateral, unconditional covenant made between God and Himself. It’s not dependent on Abraham. It is unilateral, it is a covenant which God makes with Himself. He will give Abram a people. He will give that people the land. That’s His promise.

Going forward in time with the Israelites:

And when they were standing on the edge of the Jordan River looking across at the land, and ready to go take the land, and the surrounding area, the question would immediately come into their mind, what right do we have to this land? The answer: the promise of God to Abram. This is your covenant land. But why should we go in and dispossess the Canaanites? Because their inequity is complete. God has a limit. And you will be his instruments of judgment. But why Canaanites? Well, they would know the answer to that, wouldn’t they … Let’s go back to chapter 9. Because Canaan was the one who was cursed …

That is not to say that the rest of the family weren’t sinners – they were all sinners, of course. But this is a unique curse that shows up in the line of Canaan, ultimately in the Canaanites. And the Canaanites become the enemies of God’s people all through the Book of Genesis. Starting in chapter 11 we’ll see it, all the way to chapter 50. They are the enemies of God’s people. In fact, the sin of the Canaanites was so massive and so great, that it defiled the land. You can read about that, Leviticus 18:28, Joshua 23; their inequity was so great, they had totally defiled the land.

And so this is to help the Jews understand that when they go in, they are acting as the judges of God, or I should say the executioners, bringing out God’s judgment. And what is this specifically, this curse, “…a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers”. A servant of servants he shall be to his brothers. That is, he’s gonna be a slave. He’s gonna be a slave, first of all, to the family of Shem. Because it was out of the family of Shem that Abraham came and the Jews came. These people were wicked.

… if you study the territory of Ham, the territory of Canaan coming from Ham – it included Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the Plane. Go down to verse 15, Canaan became the father of Sidon his firstborn, and now you see them develop the Jebusites, Amorite, the Girgashite, the Hivite, the Arkite, the Sinite, the Arvadite, the Zemaritem the Hamathite; afterward the families of the Canaanite were spread abroad, they’re going everywhere extending from Sidon, that’s on the coast of what is now Israel, toward Gerar as far as Gaza on the south, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim – they sweep all the way to Sodom and Gomorrah. That whole area was the area of these people who were the descendents of Canaan. Wicked, wicked people. Corrupt and corrupting. We’ll see that in chapter 13, chapter 15, 18, chapter 19, and particularly in chapter 38 of Genesis.

And they, by the way, interestingly enough, were the people whose lifestyle was characterized by nakedness. When we get to Leviticus chapter 18, if you wanna look it up, I think as I remember, 24 times the issue of uncovering nakedness is mentioned there, and it was part of the lifestyle of the Canaanites. Somehow … that experience of nakedness that occurred with Ham shows up generations later in this immoral pen[chant] for uncovering peoples nakedness; that is for having activities outside of God’s boundaries. God didn’t make them evil; in fact, God waited for centuries, until their evil had reached an intolerable limit. God’s hatred of these sins particularly caused him to ready the Children of Israel to take that land …

And I might just say the promise to Abraham of the land for the people of God is still in place today. It’s still their land, it still belongs to them, and God will see that they receive it.

On that note, a couple of weeks ago, someone posted the following graphic online:

In case the graphic disappears in time, it is a quote from Mossab Hassan Yosef, the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of Hamas.

Mossab Hassan Yosef was no stranger to Israeli jails, yet was appalled by the brutality of Hamas towards their fellow Arabs.

In time, he left his past behind. He became a Christian. He now lives in the United States.

The graphic says that no one knows Hamas or Gaza as well as he does.

Recently, this is what he said about the Hamas-Israeli conflict:

There is no difference between Hamas and the so-called ‘Palestinians’, as the vast majority of them support Hamas … There are no ‘Palestinian People’. There are conflicted tribes, and without Israel as the common enemy, they would kill each other.

It would be interesting to read more about what this man has to say.

Next week we look at Shem’s line, the Semites.

Next time — Genesis 10:21-32

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B — exegesis on the First Reading, Acts 4:5-12

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is April 21, 2024.

Readings for Year B can be found here.

An exegesis for the Gospel, John 10:11-18 (the Good Shepherd), is also available.

The First Reading is as follows (emphases mine):

Acts 4:5-12

4:5 The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem,

4:6 with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family.

4:7 When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?”

4:8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders,

4:9 if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed,

4:10 let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.

4:11 This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’

4:12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

At this point, those assembled in the room for the first Pentecost have received the Holy Spirit, not least the Twelve (Matthias replaced Judas).

Peter and John preached at the temple daily. They also healed a man who was lame from birth (Acts 3:1-10):

The Lame Beggar Healed

3 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.^{[a] 2} And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. ³ Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. ⁴ And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” ⁵ And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. ⁶ But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” ⁷ And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. ⁸ And leaping up he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. ⁹ And all the people saw him walking and praising God, ¹⁰ and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Peter then preached boldly about healing in the name of Jesus Christ and talked about the people’s and the rulers’ denial of the Messiah, calling for Him to be put to death. He also preached about our Lord’s resurrection (Acts 3:14-16):

¹⁴ But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, ¹⁵ and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. ¹⁶ And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus^[c] has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

As a result, the Jewish hierarchy arrested Peter and John and imprisoned them.

That provides the backdrop to today’s verses.

The next day, the Jewish rulers, elders, and scribes — the Sanhedrin — assembled in Jerusalem (verse 5).

Matthew Henry says they were eager to put a stop to the preaching, the healing and the message about the Resurrection:

… they adjourned it to the morrow, and no longer; for they were impatient to get them silenced, and would lose no time …

The judges of the court. (1.) Their general character: they were rulers, elders, and scribes, v. 5. The scribes were men of learning, who came to dispute with the apostles, and hoped to confute them. The rulers and elders were men in power, who, if they could not answer them, thought they could find some cause or other to silence them. If the gospel of Christ had not been of God, it could not have made its way, for it had both the learning and power of the world against it, both the colleges of the scribes and the courts of the elders.

MacArthur discusses the Sanhedrin:

The scribes, the elders, and the rulers, along with the high priest, made up the Sanhedrin, and the Sanhedrin was the high ruling council of Israel.

This is the Supreme Court of the Jews. And even in the Roman times, they had the right to arrest. It had 70 members, and then the high priest was ex-officio president, so there were 71. And it included the priests and the scribes – you remember the scribes were the ones who were the experts in the law – and the elders, who were from the people. And then it included, in addition, the people from the priestly family, and they were really a motley bunch, to say the least.

MacArthur says that the temple had a rota, a scheduled rotation of priests, so that they served only on certain days. When the days came for a priest to serve, they were his time to shine, as it were:

… there were 24 courses of priests in the Levitical order, and there were so many priests that they divided into 24 courses, and of those courses, only certain priests ministered every week. So, when the priests were ministering in the temple, that meant it was their week, and you waited a long time for your week, and when your week finally came, it was a big deal. And least of all, did you want all of this commotion going on during your week, that you’d waited so long for?

And so here, in the middle of the week of these particular priests, all of this hubbub is going on, and they’re really concerned. This is religious opposition. And remember as I said earlier, persecution of the church often comes from religious groups, still even often from Judaism. All right, second person that we meet is the captain of the temple, the sagan, and this is the head of the temple police. Here is the political opposition. In some parts of the world, there is political opposition against the church.

The other factor in stopping Peter and John was the possibility of falling foul of the Romans governing the city. Rome did not tolerate civil disorder. The Jewish hierarchy had a love-hate relationship with the Romans:

Now, the Roman government was very tolerant, but against disorder publicly, they were merciless. And so, he wasn’t about to get himself in a position where there was a riot, or he would really be in trouble. Then we meet the most important group, and that is the Sadducees. Now, you say, “What are the Sadducees?” Well, within the framework of Israel there were many groups. There were the Pharisees, and there were the Zealots, and so forth, and one interesting group was the Sadducees. Now, we don’t really know where that name comes from; some say from Zadok, but there’s really no way to tell.

But Sadducees were a religious and a political group, so they combined the worst of both in their persecution. They were the power sect in Israel. They were the religious liberals. They were the high priestly family; all the high priests at this point were Sadducees. They were the opposition party to the Pharisees, like the Republicans and the Democrats, with a religious flavor. They were the opposition. Now, the opposition of the Pharisees dominates the gospels, and the opposition of the Sadducees dominates the book of Acts, so both of them get into play.

It’s also very interesting that they were very wealthy. The Pharisees tended not to be wealthy; they tended to be extremely wealthy. They were also the collaborationist party. They were the ones who were always scratching Rome’s back for the mutual scratch, you know. They really didn’t care that much about the common people; they only cared about maintaining the status quo, and keeping their power and their prestige in Israel.

So they maintained a collaborationist attitude with Rome, kept on friendly terms with Rome, in order to maintain their prestige, power, and their comfort. They were a small group, very minority, but were greatly dominant in the political influence of Israel. They didn’t care for anything about religion, other than the fact that it was social custom, and so they were strict liberals. They were strict social religionists.

Among those assembled were Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family (verse 6).

Henry tells us:

The names of some of them, who were most considerable. Here were Annas and Caiaphas, ringleaders in this persecution; Annas the president of the sanhedrim, and Caiaphas the high priest (though Annas is here called so) and father of the house of judgment. It should seem that Annas and Caiaphas executed the high priest’s office alternately, year for year. These two were most active against Christ; then Caiaphas was high priest, now Annas was; however they were both equally malignant against Christ and his gospel. John is supposed to be the son of Annas; and Alexander is mentioned by Josephus as a man that made a figure at that time. There were others likewise that were of the kindred of the high priest, who having dependence on him, and expectations from him, would be sure to say as he said, and vote with him against the apostles. Great relations, and not good, have been a snare to many.

MacArthur has more:

Verse 6 introduces Annas, and you remember Annas, who was the high priest formerly, but had been deposed by the Romans. He was the senior ex-high priest, but he really ran the show. He was the power behind the scenes. In fact, when Jesus was taken in the Garden of Gethsemane in John 18, they immediately took Him to Annas, because Annas was really the power of the whole structure in Israel. He was a Sadducee. Now, he had a son-in-law by the name of Caiaphas, who was Roman-appointed high priest, and he was as bad as Annas was.

Then it says “John, and Alexander.” Now, it’s very difficult to know who they are; there’s no way to know. But it is interesting that Annas did have five sons, one of his sons named Jonathan, and some of the manuscripts read Jonathan instead of John, so it may have been his son. And some say that Alexander is a form of Eleazer, and Eleazer is a known son of Annas. So perhaps they were two sons of Annas, perhaps we’re reading into it; that, we just really don’t know. But anyway, they were of the kindred of the high priest.

They had Peter and John — ‘the prisoners’ — brought before them and asked (verse 7), ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’

The hierarchy were always concerned about authority, something about which they asked Jesus. Of our two former fishermen, Peter and John, MacArthur says that the head Jews despised them:

Theirs was the prerogative of teaching, and nobody else had the right, and least of all, to walk right in the temple where all of these teachers were, stand up, and teach contrary truth to that truth which they had been teaching. They were really upset because these two were teaching. Who were they to teach? They’re not approved …

… They weren’t versed in Jewish theology. “These guys are not even Jewish theologians,” they said. “They’re ignorant of rabbinic law. They haven’t been to the proper schools. How can they know anything?”

You remember they accused Jesus of the same thing. “Who is He that’s saying all of this? He’s never been to our school. Where’s He getting His information?” And then Jesus answered, “I get it directly from God.” Oh, you know, school is a little extraneous. And secondly, it says not only were they ignorant in terms of Jewish theology, but the second word, ignorant, means that they are commoners; they are not professionals, they are strictly amateurs. “Who are these uneducated amateurs?” That’s exactly what they’re saying.

And to make it even worse, they were from Galilee, which, of course, was the ultimate in despising. And so, they had no right to step into the narrow world of the instructors, and stand up in the very temple, and teach doctrines contrary to their own. And they were mad, because they did not agree with their theology. Now, whenever you stand up in the face of opposition, and you proclaim a truth that they deny, you’re going to get in trouble, and so they were angry. They had every reason to be, from their perspective, because they needed to preserve their own position.

Also:

They “preached through Jesus the resurrection,” but they were preaching Jesus, and that, they hated. They had determined that Jesus was a blasphemer, and here they were back, announcing all over town that Jesus was Messiah, and you all have killed your Messiah. Now, that is not real popular stuff. And you try announcing that today in the midst of a congregation of Jewish people, and you’re going to find some reaction.

Peter proclaimed, “Jesus is Messiah,” and he indicted the whole nation of Israel for missing the Messiah, and he got a reaction. So, they didn’t like that he taught, and they didn’t like what he taught. And thirdly, they didn’t like the resurrection idea. He “preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.” He kept announcing that Jesus was alive. Well, that’s a fearful thought. I mean, if they have executed their Messiah, and He’s back alive again, that’s scary for them, because what would hinder Him from moving right out to bring about the vengeance that they would justly deserve?

And let’s be honest enough to think that they knew they were hypocrites. I don’t think they covered that up very well. I’m sure they knew they were hypocrites in their hearts, and they probably took a second thought, and thought, “Well, maybe we did blow it. Maybe we did execute our Messiah. Boy, if we did and He’s alive again, this is bad news. Better to shut these guys up.” Apart from the fact that the Sadducees’ theology did not permit a resurrection, which irritated them to death. And do they didn’t like the fact that they taught, and they didn’t like the truths that they taught, and so they reacted.

MacArthur describes the scene:

Now, they got together in their council and their Sanhedrin, and they brought in Peter and John. Now, this is a tough pill for them to swallow, because they’re still not rid of Jesus, you see. He’s still the issue. Verse 7 says, “And when they had set them in the midst” – now, that’s interesting, because they usually assembled – in the precincts of the temple, there was an inner place called the Hall of Hewn Stones. And they sat in a semi-circle, and they faced the president, who sat out here, and they always stuck the prisoner in the middle.

So, when it says, “They put them in the midst,” that gives you a good idea, even, of the picture of Peter and John standing here, with a semi-circle of the 70, and the president behind them. Now, this is so exciting. Do you know what God had just done? God had just given them the wonderful opportunity to preach to the Sanhedrin. This is a good case of Satan overdoing it. Satan does this all the time. He gets himself into real trouble. By persecution, he opens avenues that are never opened any other way.

Do you know that there was no way that they could have set up an afternoon to present the gospel to the Sanhedrin? There was no way possible to preach to those men, except this way. That’s why I say in the design of God, to submit is the whole key. They submitted, and God put them right where He wanted them. It’s a fantastic thing. God allows them to carry their testimony to the Sanhedrin itself. What an opportunity. And precisely why we must be submissive in persecution.

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, addressed them, beginning with, ‘Rulers of the people and elders’ (verse 8).

Henry explains:

Peter, who is still the chief speaker, addresses himself to the judges of the court, as the rulers of the people, and elders of Israel; for the wickedness of those in power does not divest them of their power, but the consideration of the power they are entrusted with should prevail to divest them of their wickedness. “You are rulers and elders, and should know more than others of the signs of the times, and not oppose that which you are bound by the duty of your place to embrace and advance, that is, the kingdom of the Messiah; you are rulers and elders of Israel, God’s people, and if you mislead them, and cause them to err, you will have a great deal to answer for.”

Peter put it to the Sanhedrin that they were accusing him of wrong by his doing a good deed to someone who was sick and asking how the healing occurred (verse 9).

Henry says:

He justifies what he and his colleague had done in curing the lame man. It was a good deed; it was a kindness to the man that had begged, but could not work for his living; a kindness to the temple, and to those that went in to worship, who were now freed from the noise and clamour of this common beggar. “Now, if we be reckoned with for this good deed, we have no reason to be ashamed, 1 Pet 2 20; ch. 4 14, 16. Let those be ashamed who bring us into trouble for it.” Note, It is no new thing for good men to suffer ill for doing well.

Peter then gave an abridged sermon encompassing his previous messages: all the people of Israel should know that the man was healed ‘by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead’ (verse 10).

Of the brevity, MacArthur tells us:

Now, apparently in this message, which is only 92 Greek words, it embodies all of the apostolic preaching characteristics.

Henry gives us this analysis:

[2.] He transfers all the praise and glory of this good deed to Jesus Christ. “It is by him, and not by any power of ours, that this man is cured.” The apostles seek not to raise an interest for themselves, nor to recommend themselves by this miracle to the good opinion of the court; but, “Let the Lord alone be exalted, no matter what becomes of us.” [3.] He charges it upon the judges themselves, that they had been the murderers of this Jesus: “It is he whom you crucified, look how you will answer it;” in order to the bringing of them to believe in Christ (for he aims at no less than this) he endeavours to convince them of sin, of that sin which, one would think, of all others, was most likely to startle conscience—their putting Christ to death. Let them take it how they will, Peter will miss no occasion to tell them of it. [4.] He attests the resurrection of Christ as the strongest testimony for him, and against his persecutors: “They crucified him, but God raised him from the dead; they took away his life, but God gave it to him again, and your further opposition to his interest will speed no better.” He tells them that God raised him from the dead, and they could not for shame answer him with that foolish suggestion which they palmed upon the people, that his disciples came by night and stole him away. [5.] He preaches this to all the bystanders, to be by them repeated to all their neighbours, and commands all manner of persons, from the highest to the lowest, to take notice of it at their peril: “Be it known to you all that are here present, and it shall be made known to all the people of Israel, wherever they are dispersed, in spite of all your endeavours to stifle and suppress the notice of it: as the Lord God of gods knows, so Israel shall know, all Israel shall know, that wonders are wrought in the name of Jesus, not by repeating it as a charm, but believing in it as a divine revelation of grace and good-will to men.”

Then Peter said that Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone’ (verse 11).

That is a very familiar line from Scripture, as MacArthur reminds us:

Peter doesn’t back off, and they knew they were spiritual hypocrites, and the lingering fear that perhaps He was Messiah must have begun to eat inside. And then, as if to dig a deeper hole for them, he says this. In verse 11, he quotes Psalm 118:22, right out of their own prophecy.

Because their question was, “Well, if this is the Messiah, He wouldn’t be dead and brought back again. We don’t see that.” And so, he quotes, “This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which has become the head of the corner.” “You know, your own Psalm 118:22 said there would be a stone to be the cornerstone, but the builders would reject it, but it would be brought back to be the head of the corner. That’s a prophecy of the death, resurrection of Messiah. It’s right there. You’ve got it all.”

Buildings had cornerstones. In fact, they’ve found some from the original temple – or one of the temples, I should say – that measures 38 feet in length. They would run up to the corners. They were tremendous things. And one that wasn’t perfect would be thrown away, because everything else would be imperfect all the way up. They had to have a perfect cornerstone. And so the prophecy simply says Jesus will be the cornerstone, but the builders would reject it, thinking it imperfect, but God would bring it back, and make it the corner.

That’s exactly what happened with Jesus. They threw it away. “That’s not our cornerstone.” God raised Him from the dead, and stuck Him right back in, created a new temple – Ephesians 2:20 – the church. And in Matthew 21:42, our Lord even claimed to be that stone. And in Romans 9:31-33, Paul said He was that stone.

Henry gives us superb advice in Christian apologetics:

Probably St. Peter here chose to make use of this quotation because Christ had himself made use of it, in answer to the demand of the chief priests and the elders concerning his authority, not long before this, Matt 21 42. Scripture is a tried weapon in our spiritual conflicts: let us therefore stick to it.

Peter concluded by making a powerful statement: ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved’ (verse 12).

Henry impresses this verse upon us:

We are undone if we do not take shelter in this name, and make it our refuge and strong tower; for we cannot be saved but by Jesus Christ, and, if we be not eternally saved, we are eternally undone (v. 12): Neither is there salvation in any other. As there is no other name by which diseased bodies can be cured, so there is no other by which sinful souls can be saved. “By him, and him only, by receiving and embracing his doctrine, salvation must now be hoped for by all. For there is no other religion in the world, no, not that delivered by Moses, by which salvation can be had for those that do not now come into this, at the preaching of it.” So. Dr. Hammond. Observe here, First, Our salvation is our chief concern, and that which ought to lie nearest to our hearts—our rescue from wrath and the curse, and our restoration to God’s favour and blessing. Secondly, Our salvation is not in ourselves, nor can be obtained by any merit or strength of our own; we can destroy ourselves, but we cannot save ourselves. Thirdly, There are among men many names that pretend to be saving names, but really are not so; many institutions in religion that pretend to settle a reconciliation and correspondence between God and man, but cannot do it. Fourthly, It is only by Christ and his name that those favours can be expected from God which are necessary to our salvation, and that our services can be accepted with God. This is the honour of Christ’s name, that it is the only name whereby we must be saved, the only name we have to plead in all our addresses to God. This name is given. God has appointed it, and it is an inestimable benefit freely conferred upon us. It is given under heaven. Christ has not only a great name in heaven, but a great name under heaven; for he has all power both in the upper and in the lower world. It is given among men, who need salvation, men who are ready to perish. We may be saved by his name, that name of his, The Lord our righteousness; and we cannot be saved by any other. How far those may find favour with God who have not the knowledge of Christ, nor any actual faith in him, yet live up to the light they have, it is not our business to determine. But this we know, that whatever saving favour such may receive it is upon the account of Christ, and for his sake only; so that still there is no salvation in any other. I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me, Isa 45 4.

MacArthur says:

People always say, “Well, you can get saved a lot of ways.” We were in Israel, went up to Haifa, and they’ve got the Bahaism Temple up there, and it has nine doors to God: Muhammadism, Confucianism, Buddhism, every kind of ism there is. And that isn’t true; there aren’t nine doors to God. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father” – what? – “but by Me.” There is no other name. There is no salvation in any other. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.

And Peter is saying, in effect, “People, if you don’t turn to Jesus, you will be damned. There is no other way.” People always accuse Christians of being narrow. We’re not narrow, friends; any more narrow than the word of God. Unfortunately, the word of God is the most narrow book ever written. It’s always right, and never wrong, and anything that contradicts it is wrong. It is only in His name. They said to them – they said to him, “Who healed that man?” And he said, “Jesus did.” And he uses the same word for healing the man that is used when it says it made him well.

How did you make this – the end of verse 9. “What means he is made well,” is the same word as salvation, and so he does a play on words. This man was physically healed by Jesus, and you’ll never be spiritually healed, unless it’s by Him. He’s the only way. There’s no salvation in any other. The word salvation means deliverance from sin. No other name, no other name. I close with this, very quickly. In February 1959, at the South Pole, 17 men in Operation Deep Freeze Number Four, took their spare time and built a 16-foot-square chapel.

And on that chapel they put a sign, called The Chapel of All Faith. The structure contained an altar, over which they had a picture of Jesus, a crucifix, a Star of David, and a lotus leaf representing Buddha. The inscription on the wall read, “Now it can be said that the earth turns on the point of faith.” An all-faiths altar was recently dedicated at a university – it’s called an inter-religious center – at one of the Midwestern universities. The altar, it revolves. One is for Protestant, one for Catholic, one for Jewish, and then there’s one miscellaneous that’s adaptable to any religion.

That’s just exactly what the Bible says is so wrong. It would have been very easy for Peter and John to have mumbled innocuous platitudes about religion, and won the smiles of all, and the early church would have been immediately acquitted from the world’s hatred by a reasonable, broad-minded, downgrading of Jesus Christ. But not so, not so. This is it. Be submissive, be Spirit-filled, and boldly use it as an opportunity to preach the gospel.

MacArthur has an important message about persecution.

First, the early persecutions were physically brutal and fatal:

The first persecution, for example, broke out under Nero Domitius, the sixth Emperor of Rome, and about the time A.D. 67, which isn’t too long after the church began. And Nero contrived all kinds of punishments for Christians; he sewed some up in the skins of wild animals, and then turned hungry dogs loose on them. He used others, dressed in wax shirts and attached to trees, to be lit as torches in his garden. The next persecution under Domitian was perhaps even more inventive. Christians were imprisoned. They were put on racks, they were seared, they were broiled, they were burned.

They went through scourging, stoning, and hanging. Many were lacerated with hot irons, others thrown on the horns of wild bulls. In the fourth persecution, beginning in about 162 A.D., some Christians were made to walk with already-wounded feet over thorns, nails, sharp shells; some were scourged until their flesh was gone, others were beheaded, and so it went. Under the eighth persecution at Utica, 300 Christians were placed alive around a lime kiln and told that they were to make offerings to Jupiter or be pushed in. Unanimously they refused, and all 300 of them perished in the lime.

Lime, which is used in making traditional (old fashioned) plaster, is a highly caustic substance, so their skin would have been burnt through a chemical reaction. It is horrifying to contemplate.

Secondly, while people in parts of Africa and parts of Asia still undergo shocking physical torture and horrifying deaths for their Christian belief, today’s persecution in the West makes the Church and her followers into laughing stocks instead:

Satan’s persecution, as time has progressed, has become all the more subtle than it was then. It’s not nearly as obvious how it is that Satan persecutes today. And incidentally, today, apparently much more successfully, Satan’s techniques are working. Now, our text records for us the first persecution. This is the beginning of the steady stream of persecution that has gone on since the commencement of the church. In one way or another, the Christian church is always under persecution. It is not always political.

It is sometimes personal. It is sometimes religious. It sometimes comes from illegitimate Christianity. That is the greatest persecutor of evangelical Christianity is probably liberal Christianity, at least in the American situation. In one way or another, then, the church has suffered persecution ever since what we’re going to see in Acts, chapter 4, began at all. And as I said, persecution is subtle today. It’s not what it used to be. Satan usually directs the persecution today not at the physical body, but at the ego.

He directs his persecution at pride, or acceptance, or status, et cetera, and it’s really very effective. He doesn’t threaten the Christian by saying, “If you witness, I’ll cut your head off.” He threatens the Christian by planting within his mind the fact that if you witness you might lose your job, or your status, or somebody might think you’re strange. In these days, persecution has a tremendous effect, in a very subtle way. The form of persecution in the early church made heroes out of those who died.

And it came to be such a normal thing for Christians to die that many Christians developed a martyr complex, and just went around trying to put themselves into positions where they could be martyred. I mean, they wanted to belong, you know? But today, the persecution that comes is more effective; it doesn’t make heroes out of anybody. And it’s a sad thing; while the church today is not being killed physically, the church has succumbed to a kind of living spiritual death …

In fact, by letting them all live in an insipid kind of godless Christianity, he has a greater effect than if he wiped them all out, and had to face the issue again that the seed of the church is the blood of the martyrs. And so, Satan, whose persecution in the past has slaughtered Christians physically, has found it much more effective to kill the church by making it complacent, indolent, fat, rich, socially oriented, and accepted. And insipid, as it’s watered down its theology to accommodate the world; much more effective than if all Christians were boiled in oil.

Now, there are some places in our world where persecution does reign, physical persecution. Even some places here in America. But one way or another, Satan is antagonistic to the church. He persecutes the church. Obviously, and flagrantly, and blatantly physically, or subtly, by the persecution to become involved in the world, to strip off that which offends, in order that you might maintain your prestige, your status, or whatever it is that you desire from your ego. Now, Jesus, in John, chapter 15, warned the church in the statement to His disciples that they might as well expect persecution.

In verse 18 of John 15, we read this: “If the world hate you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own.” You see, that’s why, John says, “Love not the world.” What happens when a Christian falls in love with the system is, the system no longer really is hindered by this guy, they are no longer offended by this guy, and Satan has accomplished a greater persecution than if you had taken that guy and killed him, physically, because he has destroyed his effect. In fact, he has made him a negative …

Peter went on a step further, in 1 Peter 2:21, and said this – and this is an important statement. He, in effect, said we should expect it. “For hereunto were you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.” If you confront the world, the world will react violently, one way or another. Now, you may succumb to the persecution of Satan, so that you fiddle out and kind of get laid by the wayside, long before you ever confront the world, because you’re really doing that to save your ego from being persecuted.

But Paul said to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3:12, “You” – pardon me – “Yea, and all that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” Now, that’s a very clear statement. “Yea, and all that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” You say, “Well, you know, I go along, and I don’t suffer persecution.” Read the verse again. “All that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” If you’re not suffering persecution, why aren’t you? Because you’re not living godly in Christ Jesus, just that simple.

If you live the kind of life that God intends you to live in Christ, you will by the very nature of that life butt heads with the world, and when I say world, I mean the system. If you are not suffering some persecution, you have either fallen right into the flow of the system so that they don’t know the difference, or they haven’t discovered yet who it is that you really are; you have hidden it well. But you begin to live openly and godly in the world, and you’re going to bang heads with Satan, and with his establishment.

You begin to confront the world, and the persecution is automatic. Now, we see this in the early church. First of all, it looks so great. You know, we always say, “If you really live a Christian life, the world will be drawn to you.” Sure, they’ll be drawn to the beauty of your person, but as soon as they find out what it is, then, all of sudden, that which draws them to you – unless they come to Christ – turns to be a negative. The early church, for example, in chapter 2 and 3, everything looked real positive.

Chapter 2, the world was amazed at them, and they found favor with all the people, and everything looked great. And all of a sudden, they found out what it was they stood for, and everything shifted gears mighty fast. Now, in chapter 3, you’ll remember that Peter had gone with John to the temple, and there he had healed a lame man. A crowd had gathered together in the courtyard. Peter and John had stood in Solomon’s portico, up off the floor, a little bit, of the courtyard, and he and John had between them the lame man, and Peter began to preach …

That’s the kind of confrontation that brings hostility. But that’s the kind of confrontation that God expects us to be involved in. It is not that kind of a mealy-mouth hiding, in order to protect our ego, our status, and our prestige, and our name among the world. The response to what Peter did was very interesting. Look at verse 4 of chapter 4, and we’ll kind of begin to look at our text. “But many of them who heard the word believed.” Now, that’s what we’re trying to effect. We’re not trying to hide, because if we hide, not only do we not suffer, but nobody gets saved, either; that’s the problem.

Sure, you say, “Well, if I do that, I’m liable to get really messed up.” That’s right. You’re liable to get messed up, and somebody else is liable to get straightened out, and your life is expendable, my friend; so is mine. True? My life is expendable for the sake of somebody else. As soon as I start trying to live to protect my ego, and to protect my status, and to protect my prestige, then my life has become self-centered, and it’s no good to God or to anybody else.

If I’m not willing to confront the world for the sake of the salvation of those in the world, then I don’t have, really, anything to offer God or anybody else, and I’m only kidding myself. Now, it says in verse 4 that “Many of them who heard the Word believed, and the number of the men was about five thousand.” Now, the word was about should be translated came to be five thousand men. That means this is the total of men; at this point, this is the membership roll of the church. This is the male volume, anyway.

And there are two words for men in the Greek, two really most dominant words: anthrōpon or anthrōpos, and that word has to do with man generically, man as a race. Then the other one is andros, or here, ton andrōn, plural. This means man as opposed to female, and it would be best translated males. And so, what it says is this, “And the number of the men came to be,” or “the number of the males came to be five thousand.” That means, in addition to that, they were probably at least another five thousand women, and children.

That’s a large church for such a fast beginning, and you never hear another listing of how many from here on out. It grew so fast from this point, that it got past the possibility of keeping an accurate count. But many believed, and that was the reaction. Now, that was worth the price that Peter paid. It’s always worth the price to confront the world, that God may do His work. If we never confront the world, we’d blow it, because it is to the world that we are sent with the gospel.

You say, “Well, I might lose my job.” Praise the Lord, so lose your job – who cares about your job? I mean, God can handle you. He can provide everything you need, and promises that He will. Now, this doesn’t mean you’re to be a lousy employee, and waste all your time preaching the gospel; you better reread Ephesians. You’re to work like you ought to, and give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s earning. But wherever you are in this world, they ought to know that you stand for Jesus Christ.

Today’s Church in the West also has many lukewarm believers:

If trial – watch it – and persecution on a personal level is God’s way of maturing a Christian – and it is, if you read James 1 – then trial and persecution on a whole church-wide level is God’s way of maturing His whole church, and building it up.

Persecution always results in growth – mark that. That has to be the beginning thing, because that’s your commitment to do what’s right, even if persecution is involved. Persecution results in growth for many reasons. Number one, it strips off all of the dead weight. If you’re a part of a group of people that are having to lay their lives on the line for Jesus Christ, then we’re only going to have people in that group who are willing to do that, right?

And part of the problem of the church today are all the tares that’s sown among the wheat, and the easiest way to get rid of the tares is just to make the wheat pay the price, or make the church pay the price of total discipleship. And the tares will just drop off, because they’re not really that committed, and don’t want to get that involved. And so, as a church is persecuted, it is purified. The waste is stripped off, false believers leave, the strong are left, and God works freely through them.

… In James, chapter 1, you know, he says, “Count it all joy when you fall into trials and temptations.”

That’s a wonderful opportunity to grow. That’s the way you grow, is by going through the test, you see. If we live godly in the world, we will suffer persecution. If we suffer persecution, we ought to be happy, because persecution will make us grow, and it will reach others for Christ, and that’s what we’re all about. True? But somewhere, you’ve got to make the commitment that you’re willing to do that; make your life expendable, rather than to hide and protect yourself. So, we look forward to persecution with great anxiety and great joy, for righteousness’ sake.

… Second principle – in dealing with persecution, be submissive to it – secondly, be filled with the Spirit, verse 8: “Then Peter” – what’s the next word? – “filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them.” Now, you see, the key to anything in the Christian life is the power of the Holy Spirit, right? And Peter at this point has yielded to the Spirit of God. It’s an aorist passive. It indicates, perhaps, that he was already ready, because he was already filled with the Spirit.

… The Spirit – the filling of the Spirit is simply when a believer walks in obedience to the Word and the Spirit, you see. Peter had already taken the steps to be Spirit-filled, because he was obedient. He had preached, and he had submitted as God had brought the persecution, and that was under the control of the Spirit, at that point. That’s why it’s an aorist passive; it had already been done. It is simply submission, is all it is.

Submission to the triune God is the only way to salvation.

May all reading this enjoy a blessed Sunday.

What we learn from Liz Truss’s boldly titled new book

Considering that she served fewer than 50 days in office, former British Prime Minister Liz Truss has a boldly titled new book that has just come out, Ten Years To Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room.

To borrow from King Charles, one can say only, ‘Dear, oh dear’, which is what he said to her on their first prime ministerial meeting at Buckingham Palace.

Before I go into highlights from the book, before its publication, The Critic featured an article on her premiership, ‘No, Liz Truss did not crash the economy’. An excerpt follows, emphases mine:

… Liz Truss crashed the Conservative Party’s poll ratings and she temporarily crashed the pound. She did not crash the economy and mortgage rates today have nothing to do with her or her mini-budget.

There is no technical definition of “crashing the economy” but using GDP as the best measure of the economy, it has conspicuously crashed twice since 2007, including the worst nosedive in 300 years. In neither case was Liz Truss in charge.

Not only did she not crash the economy, she had no means by which to do so. Hardly anything she announced in the mini-budget was ever enacted. The big exceptions were the Energy Price Guarantee and the abolition of the Health and Social Care Levy (effectively an extra 1.25 per cent on National Insurance). Between them they were by far the more expensive policies in the mini-budget but they are rarely mentioned today because they had cross-party support and most people thought they were a jolly good thing. It is inarguable that both of these policies led to more government borrowing but they did not crash the economy and the economy did not crash.

The more controversial parts of the mini-budget — freezing Corporation Tax and abolishing the 45p rate of income tax — did not crash the economy for the simple reason that they never happened. 

What did happen is that bond markets became alarmed by a debt-financed dash for growth that was likely to be inflationary at a time when inflation was already at 10 per cent. Interest rates had been rising steadily since December 2021 as the Bank of England slowly woke up to the inflationary threat, but the fear of steeper rate hikes in response to the mini-budget led to a spike in bond yields and mortgage rates, both of which had also been rising for some time in Britain and around the world. But the spike in bond yields lasted less than a month … and the spike in mortgage rates did not last much longer. 

If you happened to take out a mortgage (or remortgaged) in the autumn of 2022, you can reasonably blame Liz Truss for getting a rate closer to 6 per cent than 5 per cent, but it is absurd to blame the mini-budget for mortgage rates today. As one mortgage expert said a year after the mini-budget: “Would we be in the same situation now if the budget hadn’t happened at all? I think we would probably be here or hereabouts, certainly in terms of rate.”

The main determinant of UK mortgage rates is Bank Rate and that is determined by inflation and expectations of inflation. It was the same across Europe and in the USA: inflation rose therefore interest rates rose therefore mortgage rates rose. Liz Truss had about as much impact on long term interest rates and mortgage rates in the UK as she did in America. A mini-budget that was undone before it could be implemented caused a month of chaos but has made virtually no difference to any macroeconomic variables since October 2022 when inflation peaked.

The Conservative Party’s reluctance to challenge the narrative that Liz Truss caused the cost of living crisis is understandable on one level. Rishi Sunak’s claim to Downing Street rests on being the grown up who took the car keys off a drunk. But all the electorate really hears is that the Conservatives crashed the economy with a mad experiment that they would probably repeat if they got the chance.   

Sunak could level with the public and tell them that the Bank of England printed a tremendous amount of money for him to give away back when he was popular during lockdown. This caused inflation, as it did in other countries where QE was tested to destruction, and he had warned about the risks of rising inflation and higher interests in 2020 when many people thought the magic money tree would last forever. Getting inflation down required higher interest rates and therefore higher mortgage rates, but interest rates had been insanely low for years and most other western countries had to tackle inflation in the same way. There are no free lunches and the last two years have been payback time. It’s been painful but the British public were generally very keen on lockdowns, furlough and “free” tests. Even today, only 21 per cent of Britons think Covid rules were too strict while 38 per cent think they didn’t go far enough. Everything that has happened since has been the inevitable consequence of policies that were wildly popular at the time and which the opposition parties wanted to do more of. 

This might be too bitter a pill for the public to swallow, but Sunak has tried everything else, so why not try telling the truth?

Rishi will never tell the truth there because Liz Truss won the Conservative Party member vote propelling her into Party leadership and into No. 10. All Rishi could rely on to achieve the same were the votes of the Parliamentary Conservative Party — his fellow MPs.

On April 15, The Telegraph‘s Allison Pearson interviewed the former PM, ‘Liz Truss: “The people who claim I crashed the economy are either very stupid or very malevolent”‘.

Halfway through the interview, which includes reminders of Truss’s premiership, Pearson writes:

Which brings us to the events surrounding her downfall: cock-up or conspiracy? Truss’s leadership victory party was on September 5. But Sunak did not look defeated. There were rumours that a plot was afoot to have Liz out by Valentine’s Day. She was more vulnerable than she knew.

As for the economy:

Does Truss believe they were deliberately gunning for her?

“Look, I don’t have any proof. I mean, one version of events is that the governor [of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey] just believed in what he was doing. The economic consensus had been, amongst the Bank of England, Treasury and the OBR, relatively loose monetary policy, cheap money, which had been going on for years. I think that was actually very damaging to the economy, with high taxes and high levels of regulation, and I don’t think Andrew Bailey wanted to move away from that, even though we’d got a mandate to do things differently. So the markets reacted badly to the fact that it was clear the governor of the Bank of England and the Government were not necessarily on the same side. And what the Bank of England governor should have been doing – and this is what happened when the Bank of England wasn’t a law unto itself as it is now – is the Bank of England governor should have been co-ordinating monetary with fiscal policy, and he just didn’t.”

After Truss was ousted, the Bank swiftly reversed its actions – which made it looked like the markets were overjoyed at the installation (I was about to write “coup”) of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the so-called “adults in the room”. So how is that not a stitch-up? …

She says a lot of people who support her policies have asked why she U-turned.

“I literally had a gun to my head, that there would be a debt crisis if I hadn’t done it, or that we would not be able to fund UK debt. And that’s why I had to reverse those policies. But why did the £70 billion figure from the OBR leak? Why?”

Truss, like many ordinary Britons, sees that the Prime Minister and the Government are not really in charge at all:

Truss is silent for a while, holding tightly onto the gold circle of her necklace. Finally, she says: “The outsourcing of decision making to technocrats is completely wrong. What we should be basing our decisions on are the principles about what is the right thing to do, not some flimsy prediction in the future by the OBR that is very unlikely to happen. So the whole system is deeply flawed, but it’s in the interest of people who are insiders, who are part of the status quo. Andrew Bailey, he’s paid more than twice what the prime minister is paid. Andrew Bailey has done a bad job. Yet he doesn’t get 1 per cent of the scrutiny the prime minister gets, so it’s a completely perverse system.”

Truss tells me she wants an inquiry into what happened. “I mean, I think it’s a scandal, Allison, it really is. And I think the level of power that is exercised now in Britain by people who aren’t elected is a huge problem. I put forward policies that I’d advocated in the leadership election, which I believe would have resulted in the economy being in a better position today. Raising corporation tax has not been a success. Things like the windfall tax on energy has not helped. So I believe the policies were right and I had a mandate to deliver them. And I was forced to reverse them.”

Truss’s husband gently warned her that No. 10 would not be easy; in fact, it could ‘end in tears’. Their daughters took the end of her premiership to heart, as she told Allison Pearson:

She gets upset for the first time when I ask how her teenage girls handled seeing their mother cast out like a pariah. “It was awful, pretty awful. Frances and Liberty are very protective of me. But they laugh and say, ‘Mum, what on earth is wrong with you, you’re never normal?’ and I suppose I’m not.” Indeed, Liberty rang from school to tell her mum not to resign, but it was already too late.

Truss told Pearson:

I’m not regretful, I don’t know why. I suppose I see myself as a warrior, a combatant. So I’ve lost this battle, but I’m still alive. I knew when I went for the job that it was going to be really tough and I would face the onslaught and opposition. I didn’t realise quite how big the onslaught would be, but it makes me more determined because what’s the alternative to fighting? The alternative to fighting is giving into these awful people and their Left-wing ideology who are damaging our country.

On the topic of left-wing ideology, a review of her book at Reaction summarises what she says:

Truss portrays the Conservative prime ministers under whom she served as either unwilling or unable to challenge the entrenched left-wing agenda. In David Cameron, she writes, “I never really sensed a drive to transform the country.” Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Truss says, had cemented the left-wing orthodoxy, and Cameron and Osborne expressed no wish to change it. Theresa May and Philip Hammond continued that orthodoxy in line with the Treasury officials, she says.

The establishment’s agenda is not restricted to the civil service and, a particular obsession of Truss’s, the “quangos”. Even Dominic Cummings is deemed insufficiently pro-Brexit and controlling of Johnson. Truss writes that she finally managed to get Johnson to sign off on trade talks with the US when the Prime Minister was in hospital in April 2020: “I knew he would have his mobile on him and be free of nefarious Downing Street influences”.

In the cabinet, Michael Gove was Truss’s main antagonist, and she characterises him as an obstinate opponent of her true conservative agenda. After the 2016 referendum, she writes, she urged Gove to run for the Conservative leadership but he declined. When Gove did decide to run, forcing Johnson’s withdrawal, he phoned to ask for her support. “By this time, my shock had given way to anger. I told him bluntly I could not back him.” She continues: “His actions in stabbing Boris in the back were unforgivable. I simply did not understand how someone could do that”.

The Guardian‘s April 8 review pointed out the advice the late Queen gave her new Prime Minister:

“Pace yourself,” the 96-year-old queen said – a suggestion Truss admits she failed to heed after the queen died, leaving Truss unsure if she could cope.

Truss later introduced radical free-market policies that crashed the British economy and saw her ejected from office just 49 days after winning an internal Conservative party vote to succeed Boris Johnson, making her the shortest-serving prime minister of all.

“Maybe I should have listened” to the queen, Truss writes …

Of her historic meeting with the queen at Balmoral in Scotland in September 2022, Truss says the 96-year-old monarch “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.

“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics,” Truss writes. “She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: ‘Pace yourself.’ Maybe I should have listened.”

When the Queen died:

… Truss writes, the news, though widely expected after the monarch’s health had deteriorated, still came “as a profound shock” to Truss, seeming “utterly unreal” and leaving her thinking: “Why me? Why now?”

Insisting she had not expected to lead the UK in mourning for the death of a monarch nearly 70 years on the throne and nearly 100 years old, Truss says state ceremony and protocol were “a long way from my natural comfort zone”.

Other prime ministers, she writes without naming any, may have been better able to provide “the soaring rhetoric and performative statesmanship necessary”. She herself, she writes, predominantly felt profound sadness.

Truss describes carrying out duties including giving a Downing Street speech about the queen’s death and having a first audience with King Charles III. A subsequent Buckingham Palace meeting between the king and his prime minister was widely noted for its stilted nature – Charles being heard to mutter: “Back again? Dear oh dear.” But Truss says their first official meeting made her feel “a bizarre sense of camaraderie between us, with both starting out in our new roles and having to navigate unfamiliar territory”.

As the UK went into mourning, so Truss watched on television with her family as the queen’s coffin was brought from Balmoral to Edinburgh. Truss describes being “suddenly overwhelmed by the emotion of it all”, and breaking down “into floods of tears on the sofa”.

“Once again,” she writes, “the grief was mixed with a feeling of awe over the sheer weight of the event, and the fact that it was happening on my watch.”

More recently, as most conservative-minded people know, Truss has been spending time in the United States:

Last April, she delivered the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. This February, in Maryland, she spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, telling a pro-Trump audience the Anglo-American right “need[s] a bigger bazooka” to take on its leftwing enemies.

The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley gave his take on the book, relating what Truss said about what it was really like in No. 10 away from politics:

The job of prime minister comes across as near-impossible, down to the bare essentials. Truss had to do her own hair and makeup (which probably took up half the day). There was no on-site doctor to care for her health. And the inhabitant of No 10 is kept awake by the Horse Guards clock that chimes every quarter hour. This might seem trivial, but Ten Years to Save the West – a brilliantly presumptive title from someone who spent 10 minutes in office – makes the powerful point that a modern PM “is treated like a President but has nothing like the kind of institutional support for the office that we would expect in a presidential system”.

Another Telegraph article had more, including an anecdote about an unintentional legacy, allegedly from Boris Johnson’s dog:

Downing Street was a prison infested with fleas caused by Boris Johnson’s dog Dilyn, Liz Truss has claimed in her new book.

The former prime minister said that she spent her first weeks in the job “itching” because of a flea infestation at No 10, which she said some believed was a result of Mr Johnson’s dog.

She also compared herself to a “prisoner” when resident in Downing Street, saying that “just being stuck there” was one of the most difficult things to get used to.

In an extract of her new book, Ten Years to Save the West, serialised by the Daily Mail, Ms Truss wrote: “The place was infested with fleas.

“Some claimed that this was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.”

But, she said that “the most difficult thing to get used to was just being stuck there”.

“Spontaneous excursions were all but impossible: I was effectively a prisoner,” she added.

“If I insisted on going for a run or a walk, arrangements were made for me to be driven to a quiet bit of Hyde Park – but even this felt like being allowed out into the prison exercise yard” …

In the new extract, Ms Truss also complained that there was a “lack of personal support” available to her while prime minister – and that she had to organise her own hair and make-up appointments.

She said it was shocking that as “one of the most photographed people in the country” she had to arrange such bookings herself.

“As well as being personally inconvenient, all these things took precious bandwidth away from me. Here I was, the prime minister of a major G7 country, and I was having to spend time worrying about when I was going to be able to get my hair done,” she wrote.

She added that she had “no medical support” and had to send her diary secretary out “in the middle of the night to buy me some medicine” as there was nobody else available to do it.

On Wednesday, April 17, Guido Fawkes reported that Truss’s book hit the No. 4 spot on Amazon, despite the fact that lefties tried to downplay her rankings thus far, as Gordon Brown’s former economic adviser Danny Blanchflower did:

Nobody is going to g to buy your stupid book it currently ranks 55172 on Amazon ….and all you do is blame everyone else for the fact that you are a mindless fool

Rank
#55,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#38 in European Politics Books
#67 in Democracy (Books)
#165 in…

— Professor Danny Blanchflower economist & fisherman (@D_Blanchflower) April 10, 2024

That day, Truss was the lead topic at Prime Minister’s Questions. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer began his questions to Rishi Sunak with this:

I am privileged to be the proud owner of a copy of the former Prime Minister’s new book. It is a rare unsigned copy; it is the only unsigned copy. It is quite the read. She claims that the Tory party’s disastrous kamikaze Budget, which triggered chaos for millions, was the “happiest moment” of her premiership. Has the Prime Minister met anyone with a mortgage who agrees?

Rishi responded with a deft riposte referring to a suspected tax controversy the Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner, is involved in, a news story that has been running for weeks:

All I would say is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to spend a bit less time reading that book, and a bit more time reading the Deputy Leader’s tax advice. [Interruption.]

That interruption was the howls of laughter from Conservative MPs. One political diarist said that it lasted for 32 seconds, a possible record.

To conclude on Liz Truss, she made a bold move in writing her memoir after a record-breaking brief time in office. One can only hope that the future holds brighter things in store for her.

A return to the good old days? Impossible!

What are we missing in our world today?

A sense of fun.

When did we last have fun?

Probably when we came of age, anytime from our teenage years through to our early twenties.

Those years are the ‘good old days’.

A YouGov poll for Times Radio, The Times and The Sunday Times published on April 10, 2024, bears this out, ‘Long for the good old days? So do most people, poll shows’.

A graph of the survey results shows that the respondents saw their coming of age years as the best years of their lives. I looked at my age cohort and also agree that the 1970s and 1980s reigned supreme (emphases mine):

Exactly when you think the good old days were depends, perhaps unsurprisingly, on your age. The over-70s are most likely to think the Sixties were truly swinging, just as they were becoming adults, according to the YouGov poll for Times Radio, while the under-30s think the turn of the millennium was the best of times.

Political persuasion also plays a part:

Half of those who backed Brexit think life was better in the 1960s and 1970s than today, compared with a quarter of Remainers.

People who voted Conservative at the last election fondly remember the 1980s heyday of Margaret Thatcher, while Labour voters prefer the years of Tony Blair’s reign.

Optimism about the future is higher among young people than it is older age groups:

Half of people think they will never again live their best life, and 56 per cent think the year 2050 will be worse than today. Only 17 per cent think it will be better. Young people are more upbeat: a quarter of 18 to 29-year-olds think things will be better in the next 25 years, compared with only 12 per cent of over-70s.

It’s not just Westerners who long for a return to the ‘good old days’. Here is the blurb to an Indian restaurant in London that plays older Bollywood hits as background music:

Discover Empire Empire, a celebration of food, art and music in Notting Hill. A nostalgic tribute to our younger selves, back to the carefree days when the whole world was our playground and everyone seemed to be having fun. Picture Jukeboxes, polaroids, murals, and the heartwarming touch of comforting Indian food.

Returning to the survey, Times Radio interviewed Dan Snow, historian and television presenter, for his take:

Looking further back, one in 30 think the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were better than today. Dan Snow, the television historian, is not among them. “Obviously I hold a candle for the 18th century,” he told Times Radio. “But I don’t want to live in the 18th century. I like the fashion, I find it’s an extraordinary period of revolution, of transformation. It’s a period many people are drawn to in fiction and film [but] it was a terrible time to live. It’s a terrible time to be a woman or a person of colour or to have a dentistry problem.”

He forgot general anaesthesia, which did not exist then. If you had kidney stones and wanted them removed, you were given brandy, because that was the strongest sedative there was at the time. Although he lived a century earlier, Samuel Pepys wrote about his kidney stone removal in his extensive diary. What a horrifying passage.

Anyway, Snow’s admiration for the 18th century brought to mind a fascinating Guardian article from last week which explored the history of footwear from antiquity to the present:

But when did shoes get sexy? The rich tapestry of human sexuality being what it is, they probably always were. In 1769, Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne published a full-blown foot fetish novel, Le Pied de Franchette, after getting hot under the collar about a girl in pink high-heeled slippers.

Snow also plumped for his coming of age years as his best and recalled his optimism at the time:

Born in 1978, Snow best remembers the late 1990s, just before the rise of the internet and the terrorism seen on September 11, 2001. “There was this great sense of this global awakening and fraternity. The Cold War was over. I was listening to Slide Away by Oasis.

“In the communications revolution, this was exactly the right spot. We didn’t have social media, but we did have mobile phones to text each other. So you could meet up. You could text. The world was so exciting and I thought the future had everything.”

Yep. I, too, recognise those sentiments.

Some will say that we have much nostalgia and ‘good old days’ experiences to explore in Britain.

The news items below explain why those days have faded or are fading fast.

On April 10, The Times Diary looked at synagogues over the past few decades. One anecdote involves smoking in enclosed spaces, something the sainted Tony Blair banned in 2007:

After more than 40 years as rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue, Jonathan Romain is to retire this summer around his 70th birthday. He began his stewardship with 72 households in his flock and has increased it to almost 1,000, giving him the “lovely problem” of having to move or rebuild four times. The most recent synagogue was opened by Prince Edward in 2017, a perk of being down the road from Windsor. A previous visitor was Princess Margaret, who put everyone at ease with the icebreaker: “Time for a fag?” Over tea, Margaret remarked on the prayer the rabbi had said for the royal family during the service. “We do that every Saturday, not just when you’re here,” he replied. “How nice,” Margaret said. “They don’t in our church. I’ll tell my sister.”

Another thing Tony Blair ended was the ancient tradition of fox hunting. Only drag hunting is permitted; no fox is harmed.

Also, shooting as a sport has had more regulation — admittedly, also, though not exclusively, under a Conservative government — so the demand for rifles has tanked. The paperwork is too much bother.

As a result, an old shop in Hampshire (Hants) is closing, as The Telegraph reported on April 12, ‘”Dying trade” forces gunsmith to close shop after 100 years’:

… Malcolm Lambert has owned Lamberts of Ringwood, Hants, since the 1990s – but the shop itself has stood at its Market Square site since 1916.

The 78-year-old gunsmith – someone who repairs, modifies, designs and builds guns – is retiring at the end of the month and has blamed declining footfall and fewer country shoots taking place on a fall in business.

It comes as shooting sports face increasing red tape. In November, campaigners said they faced a shooting “ban by the backdoor” after Natural Resources Wales (NRW) recommended the introduction of strict new rules limiting the release of partridges and pheasants on the basis that they are not native to the country.

It threatened to make it much harder to release certain game birds for shooting in Wales [Labour-governed Senedd].

Mr Lambert said the decline in shoots was a key driver for the decline in his trade …

Manager Linda Jury added: “It’s difficult to open any shop on the high street.

“It’s a terrible shame but plenty of people have come in with their memories of Malcolm. I will miss it a lot. We have a lot of regulars who need us for their farms or clay pigeon shooting.”

The shop closes at the end of the month.

Well, you say, we still have steam trains.

Or do we?

I learned of a new (to me, anyway) quango, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), that is putting a spanner in the works there, too.

On April 11, The Telegraph reported, ‘Steam trains face end of the line in Britain after row over slamming doors’.

Seriously, the slamming doors are one of the best parts of the experience.

We discover:

Some of Britain’s last steam trains are in danger of disappearing from the railways following a row over the door locks on 60-year-old carriages.

West Coast Railways, the biggest operator of steam and classic diesel trains on the national network, said its business was in the balance following the move by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) to scrap an exemption that allowed it to use traditional hinged-door carriages.

The safety watchdog banned the popular steam-hauled Jacobite train service – dubbed the “Hogwarts Express” for its appearance in the Harry Potter franchise – in January because the doors on its 60-year-old carriages don’t have central locking. The ORR was concerned that passengers could open the doors themselves while the train was moving, risking injury.

The ban threatens not just the Hogwarts Express, which has run every summer for 30 years along the West Highland line, but also many of West Coast Railways’s other historic trains.

The company operates 60pc of all main line heritage rolling stock in the UK, comprising 125 coaches. Fitting new locks across the fleet would cost an estimated £7m, a bill that commercial manager James Shuttleworth said was both unjustified and beyond its resources.

A cross-party group of MPs backing West Coast have written to Rail Minister Huw Merriman urging him to engage with the ORR on the matter and warning that regulators operating unchecked “have the capacity to bring business they regulate to a quick end”.

Refunds are already being issued, and tens of millions in tourist revenue will be lost this year:

The loss of the Hogwarts Express would cost an estimated £25m a year in lost tourism revenue, depriving the Highlands not only of rail passengers but thousands of other visitors who flock to Glenfinnan to watch the steam engine and its rake of vintage coaches traverse the famous viaduct. A three-coach Scotrail diesel unit is unlikely to have the same allure …

In the meantime, West Coast has been forced to fully refund passengers who bought tickets for the Hogwarts Express. Some 77,000 tickets costing between £55 and £98 apiece were already sold for a season that should have started last month, meaning more than £4m must be returned to customers.

West Coast said it has been singled out by the ORR as other main line operators have an exemption to use the same carriages affected by the ban.

But, there, the ORR says, they would be wrong:

An ORR spokesman said: “The law states companies cannot operate rolling stock with hinged doors for use by fare-paying passengers on the mainline, without the means of centrally locking them in a closed position.

“Other charter heritage operators, which use the mainline railway, have made the necessary investment to install central door locking on ‘hinged door’ rolling stock (or have committed to do so over a transition period) and it remains open to WCRC to do the same.”

The Government is bowing to this quango — and the courts!

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “The ORR is the independent rail safety regulator, and it would therefore be inappropriate for the department or ministers to intervene in their decision to refuse a further exemption to West Coast Railways, which was upheld by the High Court.”

Never mind, you say, we still have fancy cars running on huge engines.

Or do we?

On April 10, The Telegraph reported, ‘Bentley says goodbye to the W12 engine with its own £40,000 Scotch’:

If you were thinking of buying a new W12-powered Bentley, I’m afraid I have some bad news. You can’t have one.

… Bentley is currently winding down production with a view to fulfilling the final orders for W12-engined cars, which it reckons will be complete by the middle of the year. But the order books are closed – you can no longer buy one. Make no mistake: the W12’s time is almost past.

It would be disingenuous to try to compare the W12’s import for Bentley to that of the old L-Series V8 – the engine upon which almost all of the brand’s cars were based from 1959 until 2001 and which stayed in production, somewhat unbelievably, until 2020.

But equally, it would be churlish to understate the significance of the arrival of the W12 in the Bentley Continental GT of 2003. This, you see, was a turning point for the company; the first Bentley for decades that wasn’t simply a rebadged or rebodied Rolls-Royce, developed with new money from its acquisition by the Volkswagen Group and carrying with it the engine that would form the backbone of Bentley’s rebirth.

The W12 was developed by Volkswagen and the principle is simple: take two VR6 engines, with their staggered cylinder arrangement halfway between those of an in-line and a V engine. Cant each of them to an angle of 36 degrees from vertical and mate them at the crankshaft.

Bentley would rather you didn’t point out that the W12’s design origins lay in the Mk3 Volkswagen Golf, which featured the aforementioned VR6 unit, but the fact remains. Nevertheless, a good idea is a good idea, no matter from whence it came; the result is an engine that is almost as smooth as a V12 and delivers just as much power, but which takes up less under-bonnet space, allowing more room for passengers. In the latest Continental GT, it puts out 650bhp, enough to reduce the 0-62mph time to only 3.6 seconds.

Under the bonnet of the 2003 model, meanwhile, it signified the start of a new Bentley – one that didn’t appeal solely to the landed gentry. Traditionalists may scoff, but there’s no doubt that the money that has since rolled into Crewe – from footballers, musicians, YouTube celebrities, film stars and those who wanted to ape them – has helped Bentley to heights of which it could only have dreamed back in the 1990s.

So there is good reason to mark its passing. And what better way than a toast, with a very special whisky? Bentley’s own, in fact …

I’ll let you read the rest.

This leaves us with one remaining news item of nostalgia: the upcoming Bridget Jones movie.

Let us cast our minds back to the Millennium. Bridget Jones really was the English Everywoman, as The Telegraph reminds us:

Romantic heroines may come and go, but no one lingers in the memory quite so fondly as Renée Zellweger as Our Bridge, that pulchritudinous, pink-cardi-wearing Everywoman whose love, family and work travails so endearingly held up a mirror to our own.

As did her wardrobe. Costume designer Rachael Fleming undoubtedly didn’t set out with the intention of making Bridget’s outfits so iconic: quite the opposite, since they were supposed to embody a slightly dishevelled pragmatism that women would find relatable. But iconic they’ve become, even spawning their own microtrend – Frazzled English Woman – on TikTok; a cheerful melange of scrunchies, cosy scarves, short skirts, collapsed ballet flats and washed-out vest tops. 

As Gen Z is obsessed with the Y2K aesthetic, it stands to reason that they’d fetishise Bridget’s style. Unable to remember a time before iPhones and Instagram, they’re fascinated by any look that doesn’t involve being groomed and polished to within an inch of their lives. That Bridget walked around with dry lips, rosy cheeks, hastily tied-back hair and eyes devoid of XL volumising 3D mascara is of great anthropological interest to a demographic weaned on the glossy, ultra-groomed perfection of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Bridget just looks so… normal. 

That she does — and endearingly so.

Let’s hope that the latest instalment doesn’t ruin that, too. Otherwise, what do have we left?

Thoughts on the Resurrection — and humanity

Many of us think that Easter is but one day.

There we would be mistaken. Eastertide runs all the way to Pentecost Sunday, which comes 50 days later. Sunday Lectionary readings continue to point us to the holy mystery of Christ’s resurrection and the promise of eternal bodily resurrection on the Last Day.

On Easter Day, a number of articles appeared in the press discussing the most important feast in the Church calendar. If Christ had not risen from the dead, then our hope as Christians is in vain.

Christ’s disciples did not understand or believe that He would actually rise from the dead on the third day. It was incomprehensible to them, even though Jesus had said this would happen. Furthermore, He raised his good friend Lazarus from the dead several days beforehand. The Critic explored this in light of Mark’s Gospel, ‘This vision glorious’, concerning the women who found our Lord’s tomb empty (emphases mine):

And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid (Mark 16:8)

This is the description in Saint Mark’s Gospel of the response of the women at the empty Tomb on the first Easter Day. It is, scholars think, the earliest of the four Gospel accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We might think that it lacks Easter joy. “Fled … trembled … amazed … afraid”: these are not words that immediately come to mind when wishing someone a “Happy Easter”. Indeed, the fact that these women were initially silent in the face of the empty Tomb — and, for good measure, an angelic vision declaring “he is risen; he is not here” — overturns any assumption that the Resurrection of Jesus was received as a straightforward “all is good, no need to worry” affirmation.

As we realise when reading Saint Mark’s account of the Resurrection of Jesus alongside those in the other gospels, there is nothing straightforward, easily comprehended about the Resurrection. The accounts by the four Evangelists do not at all neatly, comfortably sit beside each other. The timelines, the characters, the events cannot be straightforwardly pieced together, as if we were watching the concluding episode of a television series, or reading the final chapter of an airport novel. 

The various timelines, characters, and events in the accounts given of the Resurrection in the four Gospels are infinitely richer and more demanding. They are witnessing to and seeking to convey to us something of the explosion of divine presence, light, and life that occurred at that Tomb on the first Easter Day. Little wonder that the four Gospel accounts are anything but straightforward; little wonder that they can appear confused, even contradictory. Language, experience, recollection — all these are stretched far beyond what they can possibly contain on the first Easter Day. The One who is eternal Light and Life, the mighty Creator of all that is, touches and fills the Tomb with creative, life-giving power. 

Neat, comfortable, easily comprehended accounts of the empty Tomb would utterly fail to convey the explosive outpouring of this creative, life-giving power. No straightforward affirmation, the Resurrection of Jesus brings us, with those women at the Tomb, to be silenced in awe and reverence before the revelation of God’s life-giving presence and saving purposes …

The current — and long-running — trend to see Christianity as a social justice project undermines the Resurrection:

There is little that quite so undermines the proclamation of the Resurrection of Jesus, the Easter faith, than regarding it as an affirmation of a political or cultural project. Neatly fitting the Resurrection into political or cultural visions, as a convenient, helpful prop, is to profoundly misunderstand (if not deny) the faith of Easter. It is to entirely set aside Saint Mark’s account of the reaction of the women at the empty Tomb, rendering their reaction unnecessary and inappropriate rather than the authentic witness to God’s presence and act in the Resurrection. 

Let us reflect on this, not just on Easter, which seems an eternity ago for some, but during the rest of Eastertide:

… let us heed the response of the women at the empty Tomb, recognising in that response the witness to the out-pouring of Eternal Light and Life, bringing to humanity — broken, confused, and foolish as we are — participation in the Resurrection life, anticipated now and having its fullness in the life of the world to come …

May Easter Day renew us — amidst whatever tombs, whatever defeats and failures and fears we know — in this enduring hope, this vision glorious.

Another theme which runs from the Crucifixion through to the Resurrection is that of forgiveness, which is so difficult. It can be for me, anyway, particularly in serious situations when people who know how to help have been unhelpful.

It is easier to hold on to grudges against such people than it is to forgive them.

Another article in The Critic, ‘Try Christianity’, explores our difficulty in forgiving others, something that Jesus did so readily, yet He suffered much more hurt than we do.

Let’s start with apologies, something else few of us do:

… the pen of P. G. Wodehouse still manages to express a multitude of sentiments from the pews. On this occasion I’m thinking specifically of a line from The Man Upstairs: “It is a good rule of life never to apologise. The right sort of people don’t want apologies, and the wrong sort of people want to take a mean advantage of them.” In his narration, Wodehouse has summed up how many Anglicans, perhaps even many English Christians, think about God, sin, confession and forgiveness.

While Wodehouse has a point, I would venture that his view on apologies pertains to most people, not just English Christians.

Furthermore, our reluctance to forgive varies among cultures. For some, the mantra is, ‘Don’t get mad, get even’.

The article points us, using the words of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in the first paragraph below, to our Lord’s example that we remember on Good Friday:

… we are confronted by this God-Man who allows himself to be vulnerable, who confidently demands contrition, and whose property is always to have mercy …

Many of us still believe and act on the conviction that contrition and forgiveness is really rather complicated and perhaps should be avoided. Or that it can only be extended when the one wronged has returned to a position of power and the enfeebled supplicant comes begging. Examples are superfluous here — you will know when your hackles are raised by injustice or snobbery or idiocy. 

The quality of mercy is so alien to the wounded creature that it simply must be a miracle. Today that quality is one which we see in the most maligned of persons, the Man of Nazareth, hanging on the cross. “A man of sorrows”, Isaiah called him, “acquainted with grief — despised and rejected.” When soldiers struck and mocked him he returned “Father, forgive them.” When the thief next to him asked for clemency, he granted it.

Even when we assent to a conceptual understanding of Christian forgiveness we qualify it. As Cosimo de Medici wryly put it, “We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.” However, Jesus’ business on earth was not finished until he had assured his friend Peter, the one who denied him, of his consistency.  

Today we remember that Jesus of Nazareth decided that forgiveness was worth dying for. And his life and death stand as an example and challenge to us still.

Well, one would not have seen either of these two themes in the media between Good Friday and Easter, March 29 and March 31, 2024.

A third article in The Critic examined the BBC’s online headlines on March 29:

… it is Good Friday, and the front page of the BBC website appears to have precisely no references to the occasion. The “culture” section contains articles about Beyoncé, the Oscars (that holy ceremony!), Godzilla x Kong and “What we know about the accusations against Diddy”. Stirring stuff. 

Buried deep on the site’s “Topics” section is a “Religion” page. Recent articles include “Rastafarian faith mentor dies, aged 73” (RIP to him) and “UK’s first Turkish mosque faces threat to its future”. Nothing about Easter — though there is a guide to celebrating Holi, which is nice.

A fourth article in The Critic points the finger of blame at the established Church for promoting social justice ideology, ‘The Church of England is practising a secular religion’:

Church attendance is of course declining. One in five worshippers has disappeared since 2019 alone. Is the Church of England spending more and more money on dubious forms of “anti-racism” under the delusion that it will attract young leftists to its services on Sundays? Or perhaps this quasi-theological endeavour is just a more winnable cause than encouraging religious belief and practice. Justin Welby cannot fill his churches but he can fill his heart with a sense of righteousness. 

This isn’t good enough — not for anyone. An obsessive interest in the sacred values of equality diversity and inclusion can distract believers from the divine, but it also threatens the social functions of the Church of England. The Church is one of the last major foundations of tradition left in the United Kingdom, along with the monarchy. The identitarian left has been tearing at the stitches holding us together for a number of years. To imitate its most fanatical tendencies is to encourage divisiveness rather than inclusion.

The Church of England should stop enabling these phenomena. Granted, to place the blame for its diminished status entirely on “woke Welby” would be naive. The problem predates the current Archbishop of Canterbury. A Telegraph analysis shows that church attendance has more than halved since 1987. However, the embrace of secular religion is exacerbating rather than ameliorating its decline.

This year, the Easter services at Canterbury Cathedral featured the Lord’s Prayer recited in Urdu or Swahili, led by native speakers of those languages. On the face of it, it’s something inclusive. Yet, people in every non-English speaking country recite the Lord’s Prayer in their own tongues. When, on holiday, I used to attend services at the Reformed Church of France, I joined everyone in reciting it in French. Therefore, what’s the big deal?

The Telegraph covered the story (as did GB News) in ‘Canterbury Cathedral reads Lord’s Prayer in Urdu and Swahili during Easter service’:

At the 10am service shown on the BBC, The Very Rev Dr David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, invited each member of the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own language, while it was led in Urdu on the microphone by a member from Pakistan. The subtitles on the screen were in English.

At an earlier service, aired on Radio 4, the prayer was led in Swahili.

The Dean said: “We invite congregations to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language at most of our communion services …

“From time to time, we invite someone to lead in their preferred language of prayer – today it’s in Congo Swahili as he was ordained in Zaire, and by a member of the Community of St Anselm from Pakistan …”

Then came Justin Welby’s sermon, which had nothing to do with the Resurrection, the core tenet of the Christian faith:

Shortly after the Lord’s Prayer was said, the Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, used his Easter sermon at the cathedral to condemn “the evil of people smugglers” in the wake of a row over the Clapham chemical attacker being granted asylum.

The article also points out:

Several Church of England dioceses faced backlash after appointing individuals or teams to address racial inequality in their regions amid concerns they would alienate ordinary worshippers.

However, dissent is also present elsewhere in the world. Anglican church groupings outside the UK are at odds with Welby:

The Archbishop has been struggling to unite the Anglican Communion because of the row on same-sex blessings.

The conservative Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), which represents churches on every continent and the majority of Anglicans worldwide, has previously said that it expects the organisation to “formally disassociate” from both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.

However, it was not only Justin Welby pulling the identity politics strings. In the United States, Joe Biden’s administration declared Easter Sunday, of all days, Trans Visibility Day.

And here I thought that Joe Biden was a Catholic.

The Telegraph had an article on the story, ‘Joe Biden has betrayed Christian America’. The most telling sentence was this one:

And certainly he had dozens of other dates on the transgender awareness calendar, including a whole week in November, he could have chosen instead.

Returning to the UK, on April 3, The Telegraph‘s Madeline Grant wrote about Richard Dawkins having his cake and eating it in ‘Christianity’s decline has unleashed terrible new gods’:

… Professor Dawkins’ admission that he considers himself a “cultural Christian”, who is, at the very least, ambivalent about Anglicanism’s decline is an undeniably contradictory position for a man who in the past campaigned relentlessly against any role for Christianity in public life, railing against faith schools and charitable status for churches.

Before we start preparing the baptismal font, it’s worth noting that Dawkins says he remains “happy” with the UK’s declining Christian faith, and that those beliefs are “nonsense”. But he also says that he enjoys living in a Christian society. This betrays a certain level of cultural free-riding. The survival of society’s Christian undercurrent depends on others buying into the “nonsense” even if he doesn’t.

Grant gives us an example of the ‘terrible new gods’ — Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act which came into force on April 1:

By the New Atheist logic, it ought to be the most rational place in the UK since de-Christianisation has occurred there at a faster rate. Membership of the national Church of Scotland has fallen by 35 per cent in 10 years and the Scottish Churches Trust warns that 700 Christian places of worship will probably close in the next few years. A Scottish friend recently explained that every place where he’d come to faith – where he was christened, where his father was buried – had been shut or sold. This is not only a national tragedy, but a personal one.

New Atheism assumed that, as people abandoned Christianity they would embrace a sort of enlightened, secular position. The death of Christian Scotland shows this was wrong. Faith there has been replaced by derangement and the birthplace of the Scottish enlightenment – which rose out of Christian principles – now worships intolerant new gods.

The SNP’s draconian hate crime legislation is a totemic example. Merely stating facts of biology might earn you a visit from the Scottish police. But perhaps Christianity has shaped even this. It cannot be a coincidence that Scotland, home of John Knox, is now at the forefront of the denigration of women. The SNP’s new blasphemy laws are just the latest blast of that trumpet … 

… Much of what atheists ascribed to vague concepts of “reason” emerged out of the faith which informed the West’s intellectual, moral, and, yes, scientific life – a cultural oxygen we breathe but never see …

… The world isn’t morally neutral, and never has been.

Recognising Christianity’s cultural impact is the first step. The bigger task facing the West is living out these values in an age when they are increasingly under threat.

On Easter Day, The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley, an agnostic turned Roman Catholic, wrote about the horror of what assisted dying — euthanasia — legislation could bring to the UK. At the end, he had this to say about the impact that widespread unbelief has had on Holy Week and Easter:

Christ died on Good Friday, but for much of the zeitgeist he has never risen again, setting the context for this debate that is minus the hope that once brightened the lives of Westerners even in war or plague.

I thank God I am a Christian. I would have to fake it if I weren’t. In an atheistic culture, beyond the here and now, there is little to live for – and when the here and now become unbearable, nowhere to turn but death.

It is up to us as individuals, with or without the help of the Church and the media, to keep the spirit of forgiveness and the hope of bodily resurrection alive. How do we do that? By studying the Bible, verse by verse.