Monday, July 27, 2026
1 Thessalonians 5: Do not try to predict when the Lord Will Return.
The Day of the Lord.
5) Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2) for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3) While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
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Tyndale.
Celebrating 500 Years of the English New Testament.
A first edition of the Tyndale New Testament is on display at St Paul's Cathedral until February 2027. (Photo: St Paul's Cathedral)Churches, cathedrals and Christian groups across England are marking the 500th anniversary of the first printed English New Testament. This is the story …
Quincentenary
This year marks the quincentenary, or 500th anniversary, of William Tyndale’s New Testament, which was published in 1526. Not only was it the first time that the New Testament had been translated into English from Greek, but it was also the first time that the New Testament had been printed in English.
Up to that point, there was an old fourteenth-century New Testament which had been translated from Latin by Wycliffe and his followers, but it had to be laboriously copied by hand. English had changed so much since it was made about 150 years before that comparing Wycliffe’s translation to Tyndale’s is akin to comparing the English of Chaucer with the English of Shakespeare.
Five hundred years ago, in 1526, England was very different. Henry VIII was on the throne and the Catholic Church held sway. Church services were in Latin, and the Bible in English was illegal. It is hard for us to imagine today, when you can walk into most bookstores and buy a copy of the Bible, but owning an English New Testament was dangerous, and copies had to be smuggled in. CT.
Baptisms.
Twenty churches unite as 80 people are baptised in public celebration.
More than 80 people publicly declared their faith in Jesus Christ as 20 churches from across Rotherham and the surrounding area came together for a landmark public baptism celebration at Manvers Lake on Sunday.
Saint Who?
The story of St Maughold, patron saint of the Isle of Man.
St Maughold depicted in a stained glass window. (Photo: Rev Ian Faulds)St Maughold was the patron saint of the Isle of Man. But who was St Maughold, and what do we know about him? This is the story …
The Isle of Man
The Isle of Man lies in the Irish Sea, midway between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It has its own language, called Manx, which is related to Irish, and a rich spiritual heritage with many Celtic saints. St Maughold is revered across the island, and his story is one of transformation, faith, and devotion.
Origins
According to tradition, Maughold was an Irish bandit from Ulster who was converted to Christianity by St Patrick in the sixth century. His name, Maughold, comes from the Latin forms (Maguilius or Machaldus) of the Irish name, variously spelt as MacCuil, Macfall, Maguil, Magharde and Maghor. He was an unpleasant and evil young man who even tried to fool, discredit and murder St Patrick. After one of his band died as the result of a trick that went wrong, Maughold pleaded with Patrick to bring him back to life. When he saw this happen, Maughold realised the power of God and immediately repented. After being forgiven by St Patrick, he was baptised as a Christian.
Leaving Ireland
Maughold was told by St Patrick that he would have to do penance for his many grievous crimes, including rape and murder. His sentence was an ancient Irish punishment used for serious crimes: to be bound hand and foot and sent out to sea in a currach (a type of ancient Irish boat). Setting out from the coast of what is now Northern Ireland, his fate was left to the judgement of God. Maughold prayed for guidance, and the idea was that, if God looked kindly upon him, he would land somewhere safe, and that would be where he should serve the Lord.
At this time, it was common for Irish saints to travel long distances by currach, linking with monastic communities on islands such as Iona and as far as the Faroe Islands on the western Atlantic edge of Europe. One saint, St Brendan, may even have travelled to America, as described in the book The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin. By comparison, the trip to the Isle of Man was fairly short.
Arriving on the Isle of Man
Sometime around AD 450, Maughold was set adrift and, after some days, washed ashore on the northeast corner of the Isle of Man near Ramsey, feeling quite seasick and exhausted. One early manuscript tells us how his currach was miraculously guided by "a divine rudder". Where he landed is now called Maughold Head, near where there is now a lighthouse. He climbed up the cliff to find a spring of water, which is now known as St Maughold's Well ("Chibbyr Maghal"), and gave thanks for his safe journey across the Irish Sea.
In those days, the people of the Isle of Man were pagan and led by druids, but there were already a few Christians on the island. On his arrival, Maughold was rescued by two missionary bishops called Romulus and Conindrius, who were struggling to convert the island. They educated Maughold in the Christian faith. Maughold grew in his faith and became a hermit, preacher, abbot and then bishop of the island. He is recorded as putting his trust in the Lord, saying that nothing evil can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Today, in the grounds of Kirk Maughold are the remains of some ancient Celtic "keills", or monastic cells, all that is left of the most important monastic site on the island, similar to Irish monasteries such as Clonmacnoise. This was the base from which the Isle of Man was evangelised by St Maughold and his monks. It was a small part of the great missionary wave that would carry Irish monks to much of northwest Europe, whether St Columba to Iona in Scotland or St Columban to France, Switzerland and Italy. Maughold may also have made missionary journeys to Scotland, Wales and Brittany, but he seems never to have returned to Ireland.
Memorials
Maughold died late in the fifth century. Some say AD 488, while others say AD 518. It is not known where he was buried, but it is likely that the local parish church of Kirk Maughold was built over the cell where he was laid to rest. The old tradition was to bury a saint on the right-hand side of the altar. If this is the case, however, the tomb has long since been lost, probably during the Dissolution. Maughold gave his name to the church, the village, and the parish of Maughold (called "Maghal" in Manx).
Maughold was regarded as a saint, although, like most Celtic saints, he was never formally canonised, and he became a symbol of repentance and forgiveness. Consequently, Kirk Maughold remains a place of pilgrimage and has become known as a "church of second chances".
Maughold's story was told and retold in medieval manuscripts. The Book of Armagh, an early Irish manuscript, tells the story of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, but also devotes a good portion to the story of St Maughold, describing him before his conversion as "depraved in words, intemperate in works, malignant in action, bitter in spirit". Known across Europe, a Belgian monk writing around 1100 compared him with St Paul, St Cyprian and Anthony of Egypt. In medieval times, St Maughold's Well was considered a holy well and became a place of pilgrimage.
Patron Saint of the Isle of Man
St Maughold (known as "Noo Maghal" in Manx) became known as the Protector of the Isle of Man and its patron saint. According to an ancient story, in 1158 the Isle of Man was invaded, and the local women prayed to St Maughold. He appeared to the invading leader, Somerled, in a dream and rebuked him, and his forces fled.
Although saints' days were abolished at the Reformation, St Maughold's Day is still marked, and he is one of the patron saints of the nations of the British Isles, alongside St Patrick of Ireland, St Andrew of Scotland, St David of Wales, St George of England and St Piran of Cornwall. St Maughold is remembered in Maughold parish, where the local church uses water from St Maughold's Well for baptisms, while some other Manx churches commemorate him in stained glass. At Jurby Church there is a fine window showing him being baptised by St Patrick. There are two churches dedicated to him: the Anglican church at Kirk Maughold and the Catholic church in Ramsey, which has a statue of him arriving in a currach.
Evidence of the Isle of Man's long Christian heritage can be seen throughout the island in its standing Celtic crosses, parish churches, and nonconformist (mainly Methodist) chapels. Today, many people come to Kirk Maughold to see its collection of ancient Celtic crosses.
St Maughold's Day
St Maughold is remembered in the Anglican world on 31 July, which is known as St Maughold's Day (called "Laa'l Maghal Toshee" in Manx), and a service is held in his honour at Kirk Maughold on the last Sunday of each July. It is not a national day because, on the Isle of Man, that role is taken by Tynwald Day on 5 July.
Maughold Week
Local churches remember St Maughold with special events during St Maughold Week (called "Shuaghtin yn Noo Maghal" in Manx). This year, in 2026, St Maughold's Week runs from Saturday 25 July to Saturday 1 August. It starts with a pilgrimage walk to Kirk Maughold from Dhoon, and the week includes many events, such as talks, concerts, organ recitals, exhibitions and afternoon teas. On St Maughold's Day there will be a pilgrimage from St Maughold's Church to St Maughold's Well, led by the bishop, followed by afternoon tea, choral evensong with the choir, and ending with a celebration supper. The week concludes with a summer garden party on Saturday 1 August. See the Kirk Maughold Facebook page for more details.
Salcombe Wreck.
A mysterious shipwreck off England’s southern coast near Salcombe, Devon, has finally been identified by researchers who believe they have uncovered its origins and destination.
Researchers with Bournemouth University (BU) said the site was discovered in the mid-1990s but apart from that no one was able to determine much about it except there were hundreds of gold coins, cannons, and anchors on the sea floor, Fox News noted on Friday.
It has since been identified as a Dutch trading vessel, the Dom van Keulen, from 1633.
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Lepra.
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I am chilled to the very core of my being!
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Poem: Jesus loves all people with a deep, unfailing grace
A quiet light walks through the shifting crowd,
To whisper peace where stormy winds are loud,
And touch the wounded spirit - making whole.
But opens wide a gentle, healing hand,
A steady anchor holding fast and last,
A grace the human heart can understand.
His quiet mercy moves without a bound,
To turn our darkest winter into light,
And lift the fallen where His love is found.
I Know Of No Writer Who Is More Accurate and Honest as Melanie.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani should be held to account for libellous incitement against Israel and the Jews.
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We are being overwhelmed by a global tsunami of lies.
Flanked by US and New York City flags, the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, packed so many lies about Israel into a videoed two-minute hate that he sounded like the late Hassan Nasrallah on double speed.
Mamdani proclaimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a war criminal, the architect of genocide, responsible for killing more than 73,000 in Gaza, for maiming tens of thousands of children, for targeting neonatal hospitals, for blocking food and aid, and for gunning down hundreds of aid workers and journalists.
The ostensible purpose of this farrago of falsehoods was to complain that when Netanyahu comes to the headquarters of the United Nations in September, the mayor would be unable to arrest him under the terms of the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
But there was never any prospect of Mamdani doing so because only a federal government has that power; moreover, the United States has no standing to make such an arrest since it isn’t a signatory to the ICC.
Mamdani would have known that. The point of his video was libellous incitement.
His call upon federal authorities to arrest Netanyahu was a dog-whistle to his supporters to attack the Israeli leader when he visits.
In the current pre-pogrom atmosphere, it was also a dog-whistle to attack the city’s Jews — to whom, on the very same day, he nauseatingly sent good wishes for the fast of Tisha B’Av, when Jews mourn over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and of ancient Israel in addition to genocidal attacks on the Jewish people through the centuries.
Accusing Mamdani of abusing his duty as mayor of New York misses the point.
He’s not an ordinary, left-wing politician. He’s a rabid Islamic extremist. He was rabble-rousing in the streets accusing Israel of genocide a few days after the Hamas-led attacks against Israelis on October 7, 2023, before the Israel Defence Forces had even gone to war in Gaza.
The charge is clearly deranged. How can the lowest ratio of civilians to combatants ever killed in any war be classified as “genocide”? Yet this and other eminently disprovable charges against Israel have now been adopted by millions in the West as unchallengeable facts. How could this have happened?
As noted in a Free Press article by the historian Sir Niall Ferguson and AI expert John-Clark Levin, it’s been made possible by the enormous followings that have been built on social media through granting permission to break all social norms.
This has grown into the movement on the right led by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. He showcases brazen and gleeful bigotry against blacks, Muslims, gays, transsexuals and others, in which Holocaust denial, Hitler fandom and calls for American Jews to be rounded up and deported are part of the mix.
But the lies have also become normative among leftists to whom Palestinianism is the cause of causes. The “genocide” libel has been used routinely by Palestinian Arabs for decades, along with calling the Israelis Nazis and accusing them of perpetrating a “holocaust.”
Such projection onto the Israelis of behavior of which they are, in fact, the victims is a key weapon to destroy Israel and Zionism. And this was taught to the Palestinian Arabs by the Soviet Union, which itself used anti-Zionism as a weapon to persecute Jews.
That’s why the world seems to have gone through the looking glass. The Soviet insight was that if a lie—however preposterous—is repeated often enough, it becomes over time an unchallengeable reality.
But there’s another crucial stage in this poisonous process. Far from calling out these falsehoods and placing the truth in the public domain, Western politicians are actually parroting the same lies themselves.
Two days into his new job as Britain’s defence secretary, Wes Streeting, who previously claimed that Israel was “committing war crimes before our eyes,” accused it this week of “falling short” of British military standards.
Yet the very opposite is the case. Gen. Sir John McColl, NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said after visiting Israel that the IDF’s procedures under the law of armed conflict “are as strong as ours.”
The High Level Military Group, whose members include senior officers from Britain, Germany, America, Australia, Spain and France, concluded that Israel’s conduct even exceeded the standards Western armies set for themselves.
Under the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Britain’s Labour government looks like becoming even more hostile to Israel than it was under Keir Starmer. That’s partly because it’s dancing to the increasingly powerful Muslim tune in Britain. It’s also because it worships at the feet of the global human rights and humanitarian establishment, centred in the United Nations, which is hell-bent on destroying Israel.
The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, whose unprecedented open-ended task is to defame and delegitimise Israel, recently claimed obscenely that children in Gaza “continue to be deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli forces”.
The United Nations works hand in glove with viciously anti-Israel NGOs that constantly peddle the genocide lie and other blood libels painting Israelis as monsters. Western politicians continue to use these propaganda sources as fonts of truth and justice. Yet the corruption of these sources is increasingly being exposed.
The ICC has suspended its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who has been accused of sex offences by a young Muslim ICC staffer who has now bravely identified herself. Since the ICC itself was blindsided by Khan’s issuing his arrest warrant against Netanyahu, it appears that he did so just to divert attention from his own scandal.
As for Mamdani’s charge that Israel has been “gunning down hundreds of aid workers and journalists,” Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have themselves been confirming that many “healthcare workers” who were killed were in fact their military commanders.
And the Committee to Protect Journalists has descended into chaos and infighting over revelations that dozens of Gaza “journalists” who were killed were military operatives for Hamas and other jihadist groups.
The threat posed by Mamdani needs to be identified correctly. He’s using far-left populism to advance the destruction of America. But he doesn’t want to replace it with a rainbow-hued nirvana. He wants to replace it with Islam.
Despite his adherence to Shia Islam, Mamdani’s behavior corresponds to the strategy of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, which has set out how it will conquer America by infiltrating democratic institutions and using them to push the Islamist agenda.
Mamdani constantly makes references to Islam. He has cheered the growth of Islam in the city, repeatedly visits mosques and Islamic centres including ones linked to the Iranian regime, and said that America should follow the example of Islam and Mohammed’s teaching on migration and sanctuary.
Not only does the mayor need to be called out as an Islamist plant; action needs to be taken against him as a danger to America.
Pointing out that Mamdani could be denaturalised and deported, the head of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, has said that the US Department of Justice should investigate evidence that before becoming an American citizen in 2018 he “knowingly provided funds or services to Hamas or another terrorist group—and concealed this from immigration authorities”.
The monumental onslaught on truth and facts about Israel has knocked the West off its moral compass. A despairing Niall Ferguson wrote that, as a teacher, his aim was to ensure that people learned the lessons of history, including the vital lesson that antisemitic rhetoric can be translated into genocidal reality if it’s adopted by a modern state. “Yet today,” he laments, “I see this hatred normalised, the Holocaust trivialised.”
Ferguson implies that reason itself has been defeated. Such demoralisation, while entirely understandable, risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Truth is being defeated because none of the custodians of the public sphere is standing up for it. People need to start calling out the agents of this contagion and holding their feet to the fire. And that includes Jews calling out Jewish anti-Zionists, too.
I am not often speechless.
EXCLUSIVE Left-wing MPs invited Hamas-linked activist to address them in Parliament just weeks after he was sanctioned by the US Saif Hash...
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