Retired Director of Faith Christian Group (Reading), my passion is to see God's Kingdom extended to everyone through evangelism and acts of compassion both large and small.
Yesterday (Oct 5th 2025) I went with a friend to the October 7th Memorial gathering in Trafalgar Square.
The event was about an hour and a half. Completely Jewish, so as a Christian one did feel a little out of place. There was a lot of prayer and some songs in Hebrew.
Much of the time was taken up with people who were survivors of October 7th or family of people who had been killed or taken hostage. On top of that was the presence of folk from Manchester. Watch prayers for Manchester ….
Several Jewish dignatories and even one lady who was a Holocaust survivor. All extremely moving and quite sombre. How anyone intelligent person can pretend that October 7th never happened is beyond me. Watch a Nova Festival survivor ..
What was lovely though was the absence of anger, just sorrow.
At one point we sang the National Anthem. These are people who are profoundly integrated into British society. After all their God is our God. It is a good time to be praying that they discover their Messiah!
Yesterday I had an unfortunate conversation with two young Moslem men. They were approaching a street performer who had just shared the gospel between songs and their opening comment was enough for me to need to step in and protect the performer.
Young men like this have been so indoctrinated that they simply hate the Jews. What on earth goes on in our local mosques and then online at home should deeply concern us all. The level of anger and vitriol spewing from their mouths was not new to me. I’ve heard it all before. But clearly their understanding of middle eastern history and geography is so skewed. Almost every line I started to say was greeted with grins and the response “free free Palestine”. After a few minutes it was obvious that this was not a discussion. They were so closed in their thinking that further interaction was pointless. BTW these weren’t migrants, they both had English accents.
Then this morning’s news of the attack on the Manchester Synagogue. Simply horrendous. But as a Jewish spokesman said on the radio, what can you do when people are motivated by the thinking of a desert dwelling tribal warlord from the Dark Ages?!
I would urge anyone reading this and disturbed by what I have said to go to an online Qur’an site and read the book for yourself. Try searching for words such as peace, kill, neck, jihad.
And if you aren’t a Christian, when you finished the Qur’an, try the New Testament and compare Mohammad to Jesus. You will be surprised.
You may have seen my previous posts about a certain social media platform censoring items under the guise of “spam”. Well it occurred again today and I have concluded that they automatically take out anything that appears to be sourced form a certain country. So here’s my attempt at cheating the system.
So first up I hate the title of this piece. It is typical of modern media exageration. However the content is challenging if you are inclined to accept the “Palestinian” viewpoint about the conflict and in particular the alleged famine and genocide. Please watch
Whether you like it or not there is no human solution to the Middle East problem, and currently the Gaza crisis, all the time Islam exists as an ideology!
That is the simple truth. Israel actually created the much lauded two state solution when they left Gaza in 2005. But the Arabs didn’t want it. Islam”ism” wants all Jews eradicated “from the river to the sea”. Islam”ism” is a genocidal philosophy. Islam”ism” will not stop until the whole world is a Califate and that doesn’t bear thinking about.
October 7th was a declaration of war, bur worst still and invitation to enter a war that could not be won.
Israel are trapped. If they withdraw now, Hamas will simply retake power, rebuild the tunnels with all the ill-conceived foreign aid that will flood in and while taking years to rebuild housing and infrastructure will begin as soon as it can to launch missiles into Israel once gain, glorying in their “victory” and worldwide adulation. The thousands of lives lost will have been in vain.
The suffering of the Arabs is down to Hamas. “Palestine”, indeed the Middle East, needs to be set free of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and every other proxy of Islamic regimes. The region needs democracy. Israel is currently the only real democracy where Arab and Jew, Moslem and Christian can live together as one nation. Gaza becoming part of Israel may indeed be the only solution.
Meanwhile this speech is brilliant. Ritchie Torres Warns Against Rising Antisemitism, Urges Support for Israel At AJC Global Forum -YouTube
As a P.S. – history should show us that all war is just a waste of human life and resources.
The Second World War achieved nothing but death and destruction. Millions dead and for what? Furthermore the scale of that makes Gaza pale into insignificance.
Currently the question is what philosophy will win? Capitalism? Communism? Islam?
His nickname is “Marmite“, and for good reason. Over the past years I have come to love and respect this man. So much so that in 2019 I got a disciplinary at work for a Facebook post about Tommy which upset some local woke clergy that I’d never met! And frankly I think this is why. Tommy represents so much that I, as a middleclass, grammar educated man of a certain age and belief dislike about the “working class”! They’re rude, crude, unrefined and above all because they use the F word like punctuation.
But isn’t that just my bigotry? What do I know of growing up on council estates in deprived areas? I don’t. What do I know of feeling that my daughter is unsafe? I don’t. What do I know of feeling that the whole system is biased against me? I don’t. What do I know of feeling that as a white person I am now a minority in my own home town? I don’t (oh O K maybe I get that) All this is precisely why he has become a HERO.
We live in very strange and dangerous times. History is being systematically rewritten on a global scale. No longer is it just possible to make one nation believe lies, the internet has made it possible to influence the whole world.
Nothing stands out more clearly than the manipulation of the perception of the war between Israel and HAMAS. One side in the propaganda war would have us believe that October 7th never happened, that it was all Israeli propaganda. Of course similar train of thought would deny the Holocaust.
Make no mistake about it, HAMAS control all information getting to the western media.
What is happening in Gaza is entirely the fault of Iran and its literal interpretation of the teachings of the Qur’an. Mohammad was a tribal warlord who sort power through domination and conquest. They are simply following his example. Islam cannot countenance the existence of a people descended from Abraham even though the Qur’an itself acknowledges them ……..
And We took the Children of Israel across the sea, and Pharaoh and his soldiers pursued them in tyranny and enmity until, when drowning overtook him, he said, “I believe that there is no deity except that in whom the Children of Israel believe, and I am of the Muslims.”
And We had certainty settled the Children of Israel in an agreeable settlement and provided them with good things. And they did not differ until [after] knowledge had come to them. Indeed, your Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that over which they used to differ.”
And We caused the people who had been oppressed to inherit the eastern regions of the land and the western ones, which We had blessed. And the good word of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel because of what they had patiently endured. And We destroyed [all] that Pharaoh and his people were producing and what they had been building.
If HAMAS had any compassion at all for its people they would surrender, release the hostages and agree to new elections. Iran won’t countenance that.
I cannot even begin to understand the evil mindset that would orchestrate October 7th fully knowing that if they hit the” bees nest” that hard, the swarm would come after them relentlessly! THEY KNEW.
They are that callous that they would martyr their fellow Gazans in order to turn the world against Israel and hopefully complete their long term objective of ridding Palestine of the Jews “from the river to the sea“.
It is almost impossible to see how Israel can bring an end to this conflict without completely occupying the Gaza Strip and systematically rooting out every member of HAMAS.
If Gazans were not a threat then by now Egypt would have allowed refugees to escape.
But no, their border wall is more impressive than Israel’s.
Displaced Palestinians walk next to the border fence between Gaza and Egypt, on February 16, 2024 in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group. – Nearly 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are trapped in Rafah — more than half of Gaza’s populations — seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egyptian border. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
I finally decided to retire from working for FAITH Christian Group officially as from the end of May 2025.
It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Twenty years is a long time to be responsible for such an organisation. It becomes as much a part of you as you are of it.
One immediate benefit is finding more time to sit typing a post on one of my websites! But small comfort for knowing that no-one is going to be looking to me for direction or decisions!
It also just so happens that today is the anniversary of my marriage to Penny back in 1972.
The sacrifice of the Red Heifer has happened only 9 times in Jewish history. The last was not long before the coming of Christ.
Jews believe that the 10th Red Heifer sacrifice will usher in the coming of Messiah. In order to qualify for sacrifice the heifer has to be completely red (brown!) without any two hairs of a different colour adjacent to each other. The heifer has to be in its third year. In 2022 5 red heifers were imported from the United States in readiness for at least one to qualify for sacrifice. They are currently under heavy security on a farm in Shiloh (where Joshua set up the Tabernacle).
This 10th sacrifice could happen around Passover this year, i.e. any time now. It will trigger the process of rebuilding the temple (destroyed by the Romans) on the Temple Mount. This of course is the last thing that Moslems want and as you’ll hear in the YouTube footage below one of the reasons for October 7th was anger around the existence of the Heifers and the implications for the possible destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount to make way for the new Jewish Temple. Neither religion can countenance their temple being alongside the other’s. Some might argue that the Islamic Temple is what Jesus (and Daniel) referred to as the “Abomination of Desolation“. The Daniel prophecy will of course be on the minds of practising Jews in this context.
What is truly intriguing is that Moslems are also looking for the coming of Messiah, well sort of, Mah·di ˈmä-dē who assumes a messianic role before the return of Jesus. The huge irony for Moslems however is that the Bible predicts the coming of the one commonly called “The AntiChrist” – in 2 Thessalonians 2 we read, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”
The Qur’an even says that the Mahdi will rule for seven years. The exact same time as the Bible says the Anti-Christ will rule for! Why Mohammad didn’t have a better grasp of Christian teaching is remarkable. He dared to have more knowledge of the life and person of Jesus than the Apostles it seems, yet he missed this crucial point. Of course being apparently illiterate he couldn’t have read the Bible, so he was making stuff up from hearsay and snippets of information and downright imagination.
So is Jesus coming back a mere seven years or so from now? If so of course we have the seven years of Islamic domination of the world to get through!
I have been astounded at the effect of October 7th. Far from alienating people to Islam it has generated a bizarre backlash against Israel and by association Christians. Perhaps if that gets worse it might mean that Israel says, “Enough is enough, we will tear down the Mosque!”
I used to read Daniel and Revelation with some excitement, like a good Sci-Fi film! But the nearer the reality comes, the less romantic death and destruction on a collosal scale sounds!
See also Tews and Christian persecution and October 7th from the menu bar.
Five months into this new level of conflict between Israel and Hamas and we seem to face an inevitable catastrophe whatever Israel do.
First let me state that I hold the official government line that Israel as a democratic state has the right to defend itself.
Second, I am am at heart a pacifist. I consider all war a ridiculous and tragic symptom of human sin. But, I equally wonder for instance what Europe would be like today if we had simply surrendered to Hitler. If you get to the end of this you’ll see my remarks on the Crusades!
Israelis were viciously, mercilessly and savagely attacked by Hamas in the most brutal and inhumane way imaginable. There was no question that a military response was inevitable. This I believe was the intent of Hamas. They wanted to provoke what they knew would be all hell let loose! And that is what they got, albeit in a measured and carefully controlled manner. The IDF are perhaps the most modern, professional and moderate military in the world.
If HAMAS truly wanted peace they could have laid down their arms and returned the hostages within days, admitted their mistake and repented!!!! As if that was going to happen. Anyone who has studied Islam knows that there is at its core a justification of violence and a glorification of martyrdom.
I have been horrified at the response of a certain vocal minority across the developed world. Our streets have been filled with calls for the genocide of the Jews, “from the river to the sea“! I am of a generation that grew up in the disgrace and shadow of the holocaust. I never dreamt that I would see a day when Anti-Semitism (*) would openly rear its ugly head again. Frankly it sickens me.
Islam from its inception has hated both Jews and Christians. The Jews because of Isaac and Ishmael. The Christians because of Jesus, a blasphemer and liar, albeit bizarrely a revered “prophet” in the eyes of Moslems.
As we head through February the calls worldwide for a ceasefire have grown even among those countries that have supported Israel. But WHAT IS ISRAEL TO DO?
If the IDF withdraws now they will leave a “state”, that has had self-governance since 2005, with the inevitability of HAMAS retaining control, returning to their old tunnel-building and with no means or will(+) to rebuild the ruins. UNWRA has been discredited. The truth about the tunnels suggests that many countries will be reticent to fund “rebuilding“.
Israel withdrew all Jews from Gaza in 2005, effectively creating the much vaunted two state “solution”. But Hamas did not use that position positively.
I suggest that the only feasible conclusion for this is for Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, re–unify it as part of Israel, and not rebuild it but BUILD it! Do what Hamas failed to do. Gaza could blossom as the rose just like much of the rest of Israel. There is certainly potential for tourism (note the small picture above of Gaza beach), amongst other things, once Hamas are gone and peace is restored. Imagine how much money would be saved by Israel if the Iron Dome was no longer needed. Gazan Arabs could live at peace “in Israel” just as the other 20% of Israeli Arabs do.
However, how can Israel build trust among the Arab inhabitants after the death and destruction that is being inflicted upon them? Perhaps the fairest comparison would be the rebuilding of Germany after WW2 having rid the country of Nazism. Few Germans objected to the mass slaughter by Allied bombing that seemed necessary to bring Hitler to his knees.
Not Israel’s border but Egypt’s border with Gaza
Are you not puzzled as to why other Moslem countries are reticent to help Gazans? Why is Eqypt reinforcing its fence? Why have they not opened their border to “refugees”? Is it the fear that thousands of Hamas fighters would pour in too? Oh and by the way, this nonsense about “refugees” in Gaza. The so-called camps are mostly blocks of flats, not encampments. Gazans have had 19 years to get over their refugee victim mentally, but it plays in their favour.
Tragically therefore I see no end to this war on terror, even if Israel have to fight alone while the rest of the western world fund the war against Russia. Hamas (ISIS, Taliban, Hezbollah – call them what you will) must be resisted and preferably deconstructed if the Middle East is to find peace. Spoiler alert – the Bible suggests that is unlikely till Messiah comes.
CRUSADES
Lastly a quick comment on the Crusades! Once Christianity became established as a “national” religion across European countries (A.D. 300 onwards) a military clash with Islam (A.D. 700) was inevitable if tragic. What were ‘we’ supposed to do in the face of Moslems rampaging and raping across Europe?
As we are still witnessing today, once politics, religion and the military get welded together, peace is unlikely to result. In the case of the Crusades, our “valiant” warriors were guilty of the most horrendous atrocities against both Moslem and ironically Jews (on the grounds that they killed Jesus!). Taking up arms is never a good solution, especially not for the soldiers and civilians that get in the way. Hamas and other Islamic entities clearly don’t believe that. So what is Israel to do?
(+) Hamas have clearly ‘wasted’ the billions of dollars given to them for development in buying weapons and building tunnels instead of investing in infrastructure, squirreling away vast sums so that their leaders can live in luxury anywhere but in Gaza!
(*) for the pedantic reader please note that I am aware that Arabs (at least some) are in fact Semites themselves, which raises interesting questions. I am also aware that 10 of the 12 original Hebrew tribes appear to have “vanished” and could therefore be among those that today we call Arabs. DNA tests could prove fascinating if not dynamite!
