Salt Shakers Journal Summary February 2007

Subscribe to the Salt Shakers Journal

Editorial (in full below)
“Welcome to 2007! We trust you all had a very happy Christmas/New Year break. 2007 promises to be an exciting year for Salt Shakers especially with the launch of ‘RESISTANCE THINKING’. This Salt Shakers initiative, to be headed up by Dave Hughes and his wife Emma, is an exciting project to reach young people (16 - 30). There are many pressures on our Christian heritage and the culture that has made Australia the great country that it is….”

A time to fight, command and guard
Peter Stokes calls us to fight for God’s truth, to take responsibility for ourselves and others, and to guard against false teaching.

Media Reporting- Get your facts from the source
Two new federal government initiatives inviting Christian participation have been launched recently. The first is a $90 million program enabling schools to apply for up to $20,000 to employ a chaplain. The government had also previously announced plans to spend $51 million to fund a pregnancy hotline.

Resistance Thinking in Practice
Emma Hughes speaks of her experience at university and demonstrates the need for young adults to think critically when presented with different worldviews.

War on the Weak
Charles Colson and Anne Morse look at recent focus on eugenics and the history and philosophy of the movement.

Stem Cells Update
The Australian Parliament‘s House of Representatives voted, by 82 to 62, on 6 December, to allow the cloning of embryos for stem cell research.

News and Action
RU 486 Update; Western Australia ; SA: Sexuality laws; ACT: Civil Partnerships.

Religious Vilification in Victoria
Peter Stokes examines the verdict of the Court of Appeal in the Catch the Fire case, highlighting the discrepancies in Judge Higgin’s judgement.

Amazing Grace
The hymn Amazing Grace was written by former slave trader John Newton after he became a Christian.
An epic movie titled Amazing Grace has just been produced about the life of William Wilberforce and John Newton and their battle to eradicate slavery in the UK .

Beware! Conversations with God
Conversations with God is the title of a book written by Neale Donald Walsch. He describes it as personal conversations he had with ‘God’. Walsch has sold millions of copies of his books; the original was published in 1996 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 132 weeks. The first book was followed by others including one called Conversations with God for Teens.

Mardi Gras 2007
Jenny Stokes looks at the decline of the Mardi gras and points out which politicians issued statements endorsing the event.

Abortion: Sex Selection
Sex selection of babies is leading to severe imbalances of boys and girls in China and India . A 2005 report found a worldwide gender imbalance of at least 200 million more males than females.

World News
India: Christians persecuted; Abortion: Togo; UK: Homosexual priests; UK : Homophobia spies; Iraq : Update.

Editorial
Welcome to 2007! We trust you all had a very happy Christmas/New Year break.

2007 promises to be an exciting year for Salt Shakers especially with the launch of ‘RESISTANCE THINKING’.

This Salt Shakers initiative, to be headed up by Dave Hughes and his wife Emma, is an exciting project to reach young people (16 - 30). There are many pressures on our Christian heritage and the culture that has made Australia the great country that it is.

It is vital that we RESIST the pressures caused by other world views and religious cultures, and that we help young Australians to appreciate what has made us who we are as a nation.

We want to help all Australian Christians, but especially young Australians, RESIST the pressure to conform to an ever-changing set of world views and values. Christians of all ages are called to ‘stand in the gap’, to ‘hold on to what we have until He comes’. That means to hold on to a Biblical Christian Worldview.

Some have suggested that the name Resistance Thinking is a “negative” one, but if we think back to one of the most turbulent times of the 20th century, the Second World War, we find one of the most successful resistance movements of all time.

The men and women of the French Resistance, under extreme pressure from a tyrannical German occupation, played a significantly positive role, not only resisting the occupation, but also assisting in the overthrow of the German forces.

Today, in Australia, our Christian heritage is under threat like never before, our universities are occupied by the same Humanist/Marxist ideology that gave rise to Nazism and Communism last century.

The Iron curtain may have fallen a long time

ago in Europe, but the ideology that created it is alive and well, not only in some infamous countries, but also in Australian and other western universities. There are also many aspects of the same ideology in some sections of Australian politics.

The publicity and promotion that surrounded Richard Dawkins latest book The God Delusion should be a warning to all Christians that the battle for the minds and hearts of Australians is far from over. Despite this, few adult Christians and even fewer young Christians have been equipped for such a challenge. A challenge that we predict is going to get stronger rather than weaker in the years ahead.

Training Christian young people to adopt a Biblical worldview and resist the invading forces of Secular Humanism and other religious world views such as Islam must become one of the main focuses of the church in the years ahead.

We believe God is calling us to be at the forefront of such a move. We trust you will all stand with us, in prayer, and financially, as we try to be faithful to His calling.

Finally, another positive note on which to start this year was the decision by the Victorian Court of Appeals to overturn the guilty verdict against Pastors Nalliah and Scot on December 14. A full report on this decision is on page 6 of this Journal.

This win was the ‘reward’ for being prepared to hold the line and stay in the race, rather than compromise and appease as some Christians were advocating.

The challenge, as we start another year, is to decide what our response to such challenges will be in 2007.

Yours in HIS Service
Peter & Jenny Stokes