Hull Wins A Jackpot.

Give-away Time - Don't Worry - It's Only YOUR Money Funding Corrupt Practices.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4082734/Queue-UK-s-1bn-foreign-aid-cashpoint-Just-thought-couldn-t-worse-cash-doled-envelopes-ATM-cards-loaded-money.html  Just a mere billion, huh?

Heresy.

heresy

ˈhɛrɪsi/

noun

1. belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.
2. Universal salvation; unitarianism; salvation by works not Grace; downgrading of Scripture; abolition of hell; man 'knowing better than God'?
3. Welcome to the world of cults and heresies. The problem is that you are nearly as likely to encounter these things in churches which were once beacons for the lost as you are in outright cults.

Jeremy Looking Back To Christmas - How The Telegraph Sees It.

Jeremy Corbyn.

Even at Christmas, people suffer at the hands of this cruel Tory Government – as I was reminded this week when I went to see the most extraordinary play, performed at my local school.

It was all about a pregnant woman and her husband, far from home and desperate to find a bed for the night – yet turned away repeatedly from temporary accommodation. In the end, they were reduced to spending the night in, of all places, a stable.

There, without the help of an NHS midwife – all thanks to Tory cuts, no doubt – the poor vulnerable woman gave birth. There wasn’t even a crib for her baby to lay his head – so instead, this godforsaken child had to sleep in a manger, cattle...

I Am Warming To Dan Hodges.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4079250/DAN-HODGES-wants-survive-2017-Mrs-throw-caution-wind-grab-control-revolution-cry-m-Spartacus.html

Maybe - But Take With A Pinch Of Salt.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/743492/life-after-death-afterlife-jesus-gary-wood

Birdie.

Insignificant? - No, Not Us!

Significance.

PRIORITIES

By: Stan Guthrie|Published: December 1, 2016 4:06 PM

Topics: Health & Science, Religion & Society, Theology, Worldview

“Astronomy,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “taught us our insignificance in Nature.”

Many people believe this, and on one level, it’s hard to blame them. The size of the universe overawes any who contemplate it.

According to scientists’ best estimates, the cosmos is 91 billion (that’s 91,000,000,000) light years in diameter. A light year, you may recall, equals, give or take, about 6 trillion (that’s 6,000,000,000,000) miles. Multiply 91 billion by 6 trillion and you get a round trip of 546 billion trillion miles. It’s incomprehensible.

How many stars are there? Astronomers estimate the presence of 10 trillion (or 10,000,000,000,000) galaxies like our own Milky Way, each with an average of 100 billion (or 100,000,000) stars, for a grand total of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe.

By contrast, our own solar system itself, with its single star—the sun—is a comparative cosmic speck. Astronomers calculate its distance from the sun to the Kuiper cliff—beyond which few objects have been detected—at 50 Astronomical Units. One AU is 93 million (or 93,000,000) miles, the distance between the earth and the sun. Fifty AU translates to 4.65 billion (or 4,650,000,000) miles—a rather hefty jaunt.

Traveling at the speed of light—roughly 186,000 miles per second—it would take you about seven hours to go from one end of our solar system to another. (At that speed, it would take you over three years to reach Proxima Centauri, the next closest star.)

And keep in mind that flying at the speed of light—however many “Star Trek” reruns we see—is a practical impossibility. It would take a spacecraft flying at 36,000 miles per hour—the fastest yet built—somewhere around 19 years just to traverse the length of our solar system.

Given these “astronomical” distances and our own smallness next to them, it’s no wonder that the late Carl Sagan once remarked, “We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star.” Yet new developments in astronomy are actually leading us to a far different conclusion about our significance in the cosmos.

No less an authority than Howard A. Smith, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Harvard Department of Astronomy, says so. In a fascinating article for the Washington Post, Smith says the evidence shows that the earth, rather than being one unremarkable bit of rock among “billions and billions” of others in the cosmic vastness, is instead an incalculably precious jewel.

“We seem to be cosmically special,” Smith states, “perhaps even unique—at least as far as we are likely to know for eons.”

Smith cites two pieces of scientific evidence. The first, big bang cosmology—the study of the universe’s origins and development—reveals that the cosmos appears to be designed to accommodate human life.

“The universe, far from being a collection of random accidents, appears to be stupendously perfect and fine-tuned for life,” Smith says. “The strengths of the four forces that operate in the universe—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear interactions (the latter two dominate only at the level of atoms)—for example, have values critically suited for life, and were they even a few percent different, we would not be here.”

Along these lines, Eric Metaxas, author of the bestseller “Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life,” has noted a related point when it comes to planets being capable of supporting life. Metaxas says a planet must fulfill more than 200 known conditions—such as orbiting the right kind of star, at the proper distance, with just the right tilt of the planet’s axis, with a massive neighboring planet like Jupiter to protect it from killer asteroids—to be able to support life. Again, the odds are simply “astronomical.”

“Yet here we are,” Metaxas says, “not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces?”

One way we know about the uniqueness of the earth is by studying planets that orbit other stars. These exoplanets, Smith’s second line of evidence, are being discovered in ever-increasing numbers by ever-improving technology. But rather than displaying earthlike environments conducive to life, these exotic exoplanets reveal how special earth conditions really are.

“Many have highly elliptical orbits around unstable stars, making evolution over billions of years difficult if not impossible,” Smith says. “Other systems contain giant planets that may have drifted inward, disrupting orbits; and there are many other unanticipated properties.”

For his part, Smith believes we might be “alone in the universe,” and that therefore life here on earth has special significance. “All the observations so far,” he says, “are consistent with the idea that humanity is not mediocre at all and that we won’t know otherwise for a long time. It seems we might even serve some cosmic role.”

The Christmas season, of course, emphatically proclaims:

• that human beings are not alone but have been visited by a cosmic Intelligence far surpassing our own;
• that we are not mediocre but have been forever dignified by a Savior who deigned to take on our flesh; and
• that we are not insignificant but have a cosmic role, “to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”

So the next time you hear that the universe proves our insignificance, don’t believe it. It’s a claim disproved by both science and Scripture. As the Psalmist said:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

Image courtesy of losw at Thinkstock by Getty Images.

Stan Guthrie, a licensed minister, is editor at large for the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and for Christianity Today. Stan blogs at www.stanguthrie.com. His latest book is God’s Story in 66 Verses: Understand the Entire Bible by Focusing on Just One Verse in Each Book.

Season With ...

Support Gerard Coyne In Unite Leadership Contest!

‘End free movement NOW’ Union boss says EU migration only helps rich to hire cheap nannies.

A TOP union figure has tonight launched an extraordinary attack on EU free movement rules, saying Britain’s working classes have been betrayed so rich establishment figures can hire cheap nannies and butlers. In an eviscerating assessment of successive governments’ approach to border control, Gerard Coyne argued mass migration has helped widen inequality between the haves and have-nots in broken Britain. 

He tore into the establishment’s claims that Brexit will bring economic disaster, saying Britain will prosper and flourish outside the EU and should leave the single market. And in a series of devastating remarks he said the rich and powerful wanted to keep freedom of movement because it allowed them to hire cheap nannies and cleaners whilst watering down the wages of British workers. 

His jaw-dropping outburst will heap huge pressure on Theresa May to prioritise regaining control of immigration over single market access in the upcoming Brexit negotiations. Mr Coyne, who is battling to become the next leader of the Unite union, warned that ordinary workers will feel “betrayed” and angry if the PM caves into Brussels over free movement. 

His comments, to be made in a speech to union activists in Birmingham tomorrow, place him squarely at odds with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has repeatedly refused to consider any change to EU migration rules. 

Unite is Labour’s biggest financial backer, and if Mr Coyne succeeds in unseating current chief Len McCluskey he would make the party leader’s position increasingly untenable. 

By NICK GUTTERIDGE. Express.

Something To Ponder.

Downloading From Youtube.

This is a tricky moral area. Is copying a piece of music, theft, and therefore, unGodly?

It may not help us unduly to broker in the fact that many artists put a stop to this downloading from Youtube - but then, the moral position perhaps equates to the same principle as someone having or not having a burglar alarm on their house. Think about that!

On the other hand, if a neighbour has a beautiful garden to which you have contributed nothing - are you stealing by admiring all that beauty? - No, because you are taking nothing away from that neighbour.

No. My position on this - and do feel free to criticise my logic - is that anything which costs the artist by my actions is wrong. (We must also remember that many sites invite this as they have advertising attached.)

I have thought about this both long and hard and my practices are to pay for all music that I would have bought anyway.

In fact, what this means is that I pay for the stuff I really like. I do not for the things I stumble across which I would not have bought because I only quite like them.

Convoluted thinking? - Indeed, it is. But that is what works for me and leaves my conscience clear.

In fact, only a few days ago, a CD which I could easily have downloaded for precisely nothing, arrived from Amazon from where I had purchased it for the very reasons listed above.

Progressive' Churches.

I came across this description yesterday and paused to ponder it. The word 'progressive' is gravely misused.
It suggests 'carrying the Church forward on a wave of fresh enthusiasm' but that is, most emphatically, not the case.
It tends to be code for 'the liberal church' which is nothing more than  a rabid, hand-wringing cult which contradicts The Word of God and replaces it with the 'the thoughts of (frequently) leftwing man.'

Shameful Actions By Some Liberal Churches.

Hundreds of Churches Vow to Protect Immigrants Facing Deportation as Trump Presidency Looms.

BY LEONARDO BLAIR

As President-elect Donald Trump gets ready to take office on Jan. 20, 2017, hundreds of churches across the country have vowed to defy deportation policy by providing sanctuary to as many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country as they can. Christian Post.

Anyone who knowingly enters a country illegally, by any definition, is a lawbreaker. Deportation must invariably be the correct outcome.

Christian churches should never be in the business of protecting criminals from the consequences of their crimes. They should be majoring on protecting people from the consequences of their sins by showing them the pathway to salvation.

Ken Dodd.

"Laughter is the greatest music in the world and audiences come to my shows to escape the cares of life. They don't want to be embarrassed or insulted. They want to laugh and so do I - which is probably why it works."

No Honours For Nigel.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/31/ever-one-man-deserved-honour-special-services-country-nigel/

Our shamefully iniquitous honours system - knighthoods and peerages for seats in the upper house - would be better suited to Zimbabwe or North Korea. These simply remain within 'the gift' of the PM. Scandalous!

To All Readers!

'Bad Boys Of Brexit'.

Nigel Farage set to star in Brexit movie called 'Bad Boys of Brexit'.

A MAJOR film studio is planning to bring Nigel Farage to the silver screen, with a Brexit blockbuster about Britain's decision to leave the European Union.

By JOEY MILLAR. Express.

Regular readers will be well aware of the ambivalence in my attitudes to 'our Nigel'. Without his monumental efforts over several decades, Brexit would have been impossible. 

BUT, in the last two and a half years, he has acted unwisely far too often. In the end, I firmly believe that he lost us Brexit votes and too many voters actively dislike the man. The damage to Ukip, at this time of huge potential to move forward, has been immeasurable. Time to head off to the Americas, I think, Nigel!

I do know Nigel slightly and he is personable, intelligent and good company. 

Sorry to say it but I wish he had demonstrated greater wisdom in public pronouncements. Intelligent as he is, he is not clever enough to get away with talking 'on the hoof' and 'shooting from the lip'. When he prepares, the man is formidable. (What was that I said about 'ambivalence' in my attitudes?)

Please Pray For Her Majesty.

The Queen has now been laid up for eleven consecutive days with an infection. (If it were anything worse, it is most unlikely that we would be told the nature of the problem.)
So, please pray for the wise monarch who, seemingly, never wanted our subjugation by the EU.

Birdie.

She Is Right But Can She Deliver? - Does She Even Want To?

Brexit is a 'golden opportunity' promises Theresa May in first New Year Message

THERESA May believes Britain’s global opportunities are “greater than ever” as she vows to start making Brexit a reality in 2017.

By CAROLINE WHEELER. Express.

Er ... Yes.