Tonight Paris is a city rent apart with mayhem, murder and unimaginable horror.
The leaders of the free West, including our own brand new prime-minister, have all issued statements of sorrow and expressed their solidarity with the French people.
Familiar words have been used in their eloquent condolences:
heart-broken, anguished, shocked, saddened, overwhelmed, deeply traumatized: the full lexicon of grief and loss. And to define the dastardly deeds of the terrorists that have left hundreds dead and wounded: horrifying, brutal, inhuman, despicable, disgusting, outrageous, bestial.... every fitting adjective except one. That word is PREDICTABLE.
After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, as horrible as it was, I said:
"Expect another, for radical Islam will be relentless against our civilization."
Now, less than a year later, we are treated to scenes of another blood-bath in Paris, but this time far, far worse.
To which I again say, "Expect another"
Pouring into Europe from the Middle East in the last year have been hundreds of thousands of islamic refugees and, it has only been announced tonight, that as many as four thousand ISIS fighters are embedded in this flow of humanity.
How imbecilic! While France has closed her borders to prevent terror suspects from escaping she is opening her airports to unnamed others intent on doing the work started by their brothers.
Such is the mad-house of our modern secular world that has for decades ridiculed the gospel of Christ as an out-dated myth.
Out-dated! I somehow suspect that the churches in old secular Europe will be full once again this Sunday!
Ian
Today I stood to attention at my local gym. The whir of the machines went silent, the clank from the heavy metal section at the far end of the hall stopped and the ladies halted in the middle of their ball-and-bounce routine. It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The cease fire had come to the battlefields of Europe. The first world war had ended.
My Uncle Oliver returned from the trenches of the Somme River with a few of his comrades from the Durham Light Infantry. There were a lot that they left behind; bodies that were later to be gathered together and placed in neat rows in the cemeteries of Belgium and France. There they will remain under the green sward with their white crosses until the grand Last Day when everything will be made a lot clearer than it is today.
On Saturday last, a company of good men and myself gathered at the cenotaph in our city. We lifted up our voices and sang a rousing hymn and then preached for a few minutes on the immortal phrase from Kipling's anniversary poem "Lest We Forget".
Not only that we should bring to mind the sacrifice of our troops who laid down their lives in the cause of freedom, but also of the supreme sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ who fought the good fight on the cross of Calvary for all man kind.
There were no objections from the passers-by (in fact we had a friendly police cruiser who stayed with us for the whole service.)
It was the way it should be. The Law upholding the right of all citizens to engage in peaceful assembly and those same citizens exercising their right of free speech.
That's what my Uncle Oliver marched to war to protect and I have a feeling that he would be pleased that his nephew was enjoying that hard won freedom.
Jubilate.
Ian
The sight of a blue/green light streaking up from the shores of California and heading into the darkness of the Western Pacific had a lot of people scared on Friday. Was this a UFO? Was this an experimental aircraft that had gone off course? Or was this some sort of secret weapon that had just been launched by the U.S Department of Defence?
There has been no satisfactory answer from the Military Media, the people who usually deal with "official" answers to the public.
However, putting two and two together, we can surmise that the unexplained light came from the launch of a thermo-nuclear Triton Missile.
There have been encounters between the U.S Navy and Chinese warships guarding the disputed Spratley Islands where the Chinese have been constructing forward airbases. Further alarming the U.S. government have been reports of Chinese missile ships engaging in joint 'first response' nuclear exercises with the Russians in the Western Pacific.
Enough has apparently been ENOUGH! Last week the U.S. Navy sent it's latest Trident missile zooming over the Chinese and Russian fleets a thousand miles out at sea. It carried a clear warning. "Don't come a step closer, or the next one may be loaded"
This is the Brave New World in which we are living folks, where the real Global Warming is but the flick of a switch away.
Jubilate.
Ian
