Liberty and freedom – so easily lost

A frequent subject of our commentaries is the sad state of our British cousins under King Charles III and his ministers (remembering that “minister” is supposed to mean “servant”).

Yet another example of how far the United Kingdom has succeeded in destroying the liberties of their King’s subjects recently crossed our desks here.

The headline is pretty accurate, for once: “A pastor preached John 3:16: The government called it a crime.” (MSN.com of course used the common, not biblical definition of “pastor” of course: the “criminal” was an evangelist, literally a street preacher.) He was within the “Safe Access Zone” of a hospital in Northern Ireland when he was arrested for preaching the Gospel. A hospital which has abortions performed in it. He was arrested for unlawful “interference” under the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act. Not because he was preaching against abortion – he was preaching about God’s love for humans!

For those that may not recall perhaps the best-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16; “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

It is now unlawful, upheld by a judge and jury, in Northern Ireland, to preach a sermon about God’s love within earshot of a hospital

Over the centuries, English kings, queens, nobles, and lower classes have arrested, tried, convicted, imprisoned, fined, and even executed men (and women) for preaching something that the powers that be, including the established Church, didn’t want preached. The 78-year-old Cleve Johnstone was not killed: merely jailed and fined.

Most folks believed that sort of nonsense went about a good 200 years (or more) ago. Of course we have to remember that much of the City of London was destroyed by a mob of tens of thousands of “protestors” in 1780, over religion. Yes, right in the middle of the American War of Independence, thousands of redcoats had to retake London, capital of the world’s greatest empire at the time, from their own rioting and vandalistic subjects. And no, it was not Roman Catholics who did that in officially Protestant (Anglican) London: it was people angry that the Roman Catholics in London were allowed to assemble peacefully to worship God.

Clearly, we were wrong.

To make matters worse, the law was pushed (as are similar laws in other Commonwealth nations and at least some American States) in order to supposedly protect the liberty of certain people.

What kind of people? Women who are going to be mothers who don’t want to be mothers, don’t want to have a child, and therefore are willing to have doctors and nurses betray their Hippocratic Oath and kill the child before he or she is born. Heaven forbid that these women be unduly influenced by a man speaking on a public street about how God loves us so much that He gave His Son to atone for our sins.

So the liberty of many more Irishmen and Irishwomen must be snatched away.

Oh, we’ve heard that before, haven’t we? Apparently, there is only a certain amount of liberty available to humans in the universe, and since the supply is limited, a supposed majority of voters can tell their representatives to steal liberty from some people and give it to others.

Now, please, explain to us how God tells His followers they are supposed to obey their human rulers, because they are “God’s ministers.”

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