Category Archives: History

Part of my low output here recently (apart from a cold, driving my car into a ditch, and dealing with a broken washing machine) is down to transcribing the second volume of the proceedings book of my Baptist Church, 131 pages of hand-written entries from 1778-1904. It is generally in pretty legible copper-plate script compared to the mere 58 pages of Volume 1, from 1653, which are largely in the crabbed handwriting of that period and considerably more difficult for a modern transcriber.

It’s astonishing how Scripture surprises you every time you read it, even after a lifetime of familiarity.

A conversation with a younger brother at church yesterday came round to Charlie Kirk and the Christian presence at the Unite the Kingdom march recently. He’s been a dissident over COVID and related deceptions, but has been asking himself recently whether Christians should be involved in politics at all, or whether the Kingdom of God ought to be seen as a completely different kind of kingdom.

No, they are relevant, honestly! I have downloaded, and am currently reading, The Great Secret of Islam by the French popular historian Odon Lafontaine (and you can too – searching on his name will take you to the free download site). The book is one attempt at an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence that the standard narrative of Islam is complete fiction, and that Islam actually began as a Messianic Jewish Christian sect linked to Arab imperialism beginning in the seventh century.

There were many different issues and moods amongst both crowds and speakers at the London Free Speech Festival yesterday. The most revolutionary voice was probably that of Elon Musk, whose message was that we probably don’t have another four years to replace this government (and the Uniparty structures around it) before too much damage has been done to personal freedoms and the economy. People in sleepy villages (like mine) need to wake up, he said, and act to bring about such change. It’s difficult to interpret that in any other way than as a call to revolution.

I’m working through Jonathan Edwards’ Treatise Concerning Religious Affections of 1746, which I downloaded in 1999 when thinking and writing about the then current Toronto Blessing and Pensacola Revival for Prophecy Today, but which i never actually finished.