Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts

Friday 14 February 2014

Certain people trying to stem freedom of speech

This early morning I was very surprised to find my blog Christadelphian World blocked for public viewing because of a complaint to Google for inappropriate postings.

I am convinced this action against my writings and also taking away others to react on my writings is a breech of freedom of speech, plus a childish and cowardly action undertaken by a person living in a country which was part of the Soviet Union.  Though that person living it that country up North came originally from the United Kingdom he might have taken over dictatorial ideas of the previous oppressors.

He took care that my defence on the accusations he had made publicly were placed on my own website and where supplemented by other people who have seen the same atrocious action that person undertook in the Christian community.

His behaviour and managing to censure other people calls for the question how it is possible that one person can get so much power that he can silence those he does not like! This is bringing democracy and the freedom of speech in danger.

First of all I apologise to those people who made a comment on my articles:Duncan Heaster en Carelinks onverbiddelijke verhinderaars and No reconciliation possible between CBM and Duncan Heaster from Carelinks and could not find their remarks published. it sincerely is not my fault, and I find it strrange that I do not have any control over the texts that are written and comments that are made on the writing on thise platform. Very scary!
 I did send a request to Google to reconsider the accusation of inappropriate writing.

Either it was one person on his own who wants to silence me, or it is an organisation which backs their dictatorial leader and is prepared to do anything to please him, not considering if it is right and justified. The organisation which has the element "care" in in its name as such did not proof until know that it wants to care for those who want to share the love of God.  it also has the element "link" in its name, though since years our small community wants to link with other baptised Christadelphians which reside in Belgium. We also would have loved to give people who ask us for an address to meet, an address of a meeting place where they could find like-minded people.

It is because that person and his organisation do not want their members to meet with CBM members that it is impossible for us those who are in need of fellowship.

In the past we always have made advertisement for a book written and edited by the person who is against us. We also still said the last weeks, to people who phoned us to take contact with that organisation which refuses to arrange contacts with us. We did not mind to send them forwards to an organisation who did not want to share brotherhood with us. But for us it was more important that the people interested to learn about God and his Son could have regular fellowship and Bible study with people who believed in the same things we do.

For the same reason I also ask people when we can not reach them are they are unable to come to us, that they would take up a Bible study with the Jehovah Witnesses, and ask them to come to us if they have further questions. We also ask anybody interested to pose their questions on the internet itself.

Naturally when an other organisation seems to be able to stem the course of our replies, we have entered a very dangerous situation of an outsider bringing censorship on our own, and not their site.

Clearly someone of their organisation is taking much care to follow everything I am writing; Either there is a mole by my subscribers or there is someone taking much time to follow the many websites I present to the general public. In case there is a spy under my subscribers we do find it a pity such a person comes to us with such bad intentions and to cause such nuisance.

I do hope by Google would be people with more sense, than those childish persons who are fighting against such a small fly like me.

Though I must confess the Australian organisation of the above so called Christian and Christadelphian organisation seem to have weird ideas of my power. (See about that lower concerning taking somebody in fellowship and putting him out of fellowship)


In Belgium, we always have been open to the man who accuse me now of slander and who is trying to block me from writing. He even asked Facebook to withdraw me. Probably it is also him who asked Google to withdraw the writings on Blogger. (For that part I must say I do not know if it is him, so it could also have been somebody else who this time managed to do what the leader or the man living in Riga could not do).

We would have loved to welcome Mr. D.H. and people he had baptised in our midst and we did not want otherwise that those baptised Christadelphians in Belgium and Holland, would come together in unity. Our world is to small and we are not with enough to go into small units which would have no voice as such. Combined forces could do so much more.

Because in May 2012 we still had not come to a conclusion and could not have the so called caring Christadelphians meeting with us because the sir of the North refused us to fellowship with them, I called him Mr. ('mister') in the term of address, instead of 'brother', so the organisation took it as I had disfellowshipped him.


In October last year having seen that the person also was on a Christadelphians Unite Group and he himself asked for addresses of other Christadelphians I thought the time was ripe to come to reconciliation and offered him to join forces again. He kept refusing and coming back on my old writing.


We (the Belgian Christadelphians) let the person know that for us it would be best if we could bury the previous period of conflict as one to forget and make steps to rebuild trustworthy contacts. We wanted and still want unity and respect for all members in the Body of Christ.

After months of trying to come to reconciliation I at last went into the pen publicly and defended myself in front of those who questioned me. It was no intention of me to make false statements that could damage a person his reputation. The things brought forward in the Dutch and the English articles can be crosschecked for their viability. (In the comments I also had given a translation of the Dutch text in English and told the Flemish readers the part I forgot to write in the Dutch article but wrote in the English article.)

To Christadelphians we can show the files from the CBM and our discussions with D.H. and C.H. his wife, so that the readers of my articles can make up their mind and see if I did tell lies or that I reacted on facts which did really happen and where said by D. H..

After I had written the articles on this platform I got to know from a member of the Belgian Christadelphians that the organisation from Australia, with the C from Care in their name, would be willing to continue talks in case I re-installed Mr. D.H.

So in Australia they consider my talking to the person of the North by not calling him brother any more, would have included a worldwide taking away of his fellowship in the Christadelphian community. I would never have thought that I would ever be considered to be so powerful to be able to decide who can fellowship or can not fellowship in the worldwide community of Christadelphians.

So it was a strange reaction of that organisation. For my part there was no reason at all we would not take in Mr.D.H. as our brother.

! But what he has done now, after still refusing to have brethren and sisters in the faith meeting with each other, continuing to blame me and to assault me, accusing me of slander, plus him trying to block everything I bring into my defence, so that I could have the right to speak, makes reconciliation impossible.

I can only sincerely state that the whole situation of Mr. D.H. not allowing baptised C.l. members to have fellowship with our CBM baptised Christadelphians, in my eyes him not willing to have us meet together in Belgium, is an unchristian act, which after many trials to come to reconciliation got us nowhere further, except much more agitation and extra difficulties for our members with the CBM now too.

A person being able to stop having published reactions on what I placed in my articles, is a very dangerous person and also a very dangerous situation for the freedom of speech. It is a real infringement of what people should be able to share ideas and communicate with each other. Taking away such a possibility to communicate and to exchange ideas is going into the law of democracy and liberty.

I also do not know how it comes that I can have no control myself of what is written on my own webpages, and why I myself am not able to judge what can, may or could be added as comments to what I have written.

I wonder what organisation is behind such censorship and why they do not have to come those matters with the people involved.

All bloggers should be aware of such a dangerous situation of censorship by somebody, out of our control.

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Please do find the concerned articles where the comments disappeared:
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Monday 7 February 2011

Egypt in the picture

Egypt had also been a mighty power in the Middle East. The period of its greatness was about 1600 BC, when the armies of the conquering Pharaohs pressed southwards into the Sudan, westwards along the north African coast, and northwards through the land of Canaan (later Israel) and into Syria.
The land invaded by Nebuchadnezzar who overran Israel, sacked Jerusalem and burnt its temple, and carried thousands away captive to Babylon is now back in the picture with an opposite wealth. For 2500 years Egypt has remained, as Ezekiel prophesied it would, "a lowly kingdom", always dominated by others. But Egypt and the Egyptians did not disappear. They still exist, and though many claim that they have even recovered a measure of independence in recent times, thanks to massive financial support from the U.S.A. and Saudi Arabia, not many people got something from this economic funding.  Lots of the people have not enough to eat and no work. There were no prospects but now thousands have put their hope in a new peaceful revolution.

Egypt has been one of the United States' closest allies in the region but this governments’ reign now looks increasingly likely to fail.  This crisis follows the toppling of the Tunisian president a few weeks ago who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office. Surely we see distress of nations and the sea and waves roaring. The sea and waves are symbolic of people raging against each other.

George W. Bush had previously pushed Hosni  Mubarak for democratic reforms but the head of state has perhaps promised a lot to his people and to the outside world, but kept 'his country' good in chains.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, with 600,000 members, stands for the re-establishment of the Islamic Empire (Caliphate), the takeover, spiritually or otherwise, of the entire world, and jihad and martyrdom. It has front organizations in the UK, France, and the United States. The danger exist that they are going to exploit the situation and the figure like Mohammed ElBaradei in order to hijack the Egyptian revolution at a later stage. We may not forget that that ever since the Brotherhood was founded over 80 years ago, it has engaged in political terrorism, assassinating Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Nuqrashi Pasha in 1948, trying to kill President Abdul Nasser several years later, supports Hamas, and more.
The Egyptians should well be aware what it could implicate if the Moslim Brotherhood comes into the governement. A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel.

No casualties yet recorded by our brothers and sisters in Egypt. Our brothers and sisters seek seeing "(God's) righteousness" and find it important to try to develop a love of God's character, which means that we want to be worthy Christians showing our love for God His creation, our neighbours, and our love in God's Kingdom because righteousness will be glorified there.

We know that there is a fascinating prophecy in Isaiah 19 that speaks of God setting Egyptian against Egyptian. (Isaiah 19:2,4) As with all prophecies this has both a latter and future fulfilment. As we see Egyptian being set against Egyptian we see a latter day fulfilment now. In verse 4 of that chapter it speaks of a “fierce king” ruling over them. In fact Daniel 8:23 speaks of this fierce king. He is none other than the king of the north who will invade Egypt.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus describes the nations (multitudes) rising up against nations (multitudes). This month we got reverberations from the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt to be felt around the Arab world. Is it the woe of the multitude of people? US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the Middle East is facing a "perfect storm" of unrest and nations must embrace democratic change. Democracy (Liberty or freedom of the people from monarchies)  is one of the froglike spirits spoken of in Revelation 16 which gather all nations to battle. Brother Andy Walton agrees with Hilary Clinton:" We can see before our eyes how this spirit of people power will indeed bring war and conflict.... – the status quo is simply not sustainable. There is a day in which God will judge the earth by that man who he has appointed – even Jesus Christ."

Wednesday 14 January 2009

Obeying the King

Rick Lower wrote on Facebook  "Exhort one another daily" on 2 january 2009
Today we had some friends over from our ecclesia. In conversation a brother brought out an excellent analogy that I thought might be handy to share.

If we were around many, many years ago then our countries may not have been under the rule of democracy. We as citizens of the country would not have had a say in the ruling of our country, our opinions would have meant nothing. Whatever the ruler of that country said was all that mattered. The King or Queen's laws were to abided by and if not then the likelihood would have been that the offender would be executed. Anyone who went against the rules would be killed. So of course we would not have even dared to go against these laws as we would not have wanted to lose our lives. We would have followed the commands without second thought.

Linking this to our King, our Lord Jesus, we can see striking similarities. Christ has shown us the way, he has laid down the laws to be abided by. His teachings were far greater than the Old Law and whatever Jesus said was to be obeyed. Now if we obey and listen to Christ (and ultimately God), then we will be greatly blessed. However, if we do not hearken to the laws then the simple answer is that we will be destroyed following Judgement. We will be killed just like the offender was for disobeying his ruler. We can in no way, shape or form take a back seat in our service and pass off certain commandments simply because we do not like them. We can not break rules simply because we can not make the effort to adhere to them. If we would obey a king of the land for the sake of our lives then why would we not obey the King of Kings? For if we do not obey then we know our punishment.

"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Revelation 20:15

The starkness of that is frightening but we should not be scared of this, instead we should take delight in obeying our King. And if we do fail and not obey, if we do slip up then we have the great privilege of being able to avoid eternal death. If we put to death such sins, sincerely repent and live with the more earnest desire to serve our Father and His Son, then we will through such grace and mercy be blessed with a place in the Book of Life.

I felt this was a great point made by this brother.Of course I have expanded upon it. But the main idea is that in old times, if you disobeyed the King then you would be executed. Therefore, if we disobey Christ the King, we too will be cast aside. There is no room for complacency or laid back attitudes. Every act of ours is recorded and sins will only be blotted out if we truly ask for mercy.

Let us all strive to follow the teachings of scripture, to follow the pattern laid down by Christ so that each and every one of us may have "an entrance that shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

"AND BEING MADE PERFECT, CHRIST BECAME THE AUTHOR OF ETERNAL SALVATION UNTO ALL THEM THAT OBEY HIM." Hebrews 5:9