Britain’s military leaders, with the help of the mainstream media, are preparing the public for the possibility of war with Russia.

On Friday, General Sir Roly Walker, head of the British Army, warned that political leaders would soon need to have a frank conversation with the public about the sacrifices required to defend the nation.

Every citizen, he suggested, would have a part to play.

But before asking another generation of young men to fight and die in the never-ending wars of the globalist elites, there’s a question the political establishment needs to answer:

Why should British men be expected to fight for a country whose political leadership appears embarrassed by and increasingly hostile to their national identity?

For decades, Britons concerned about immigration, demographic transformation, cultural displacement, and the erosion of their national inheritance have been branded racists, far-right extremists, and even Nazis by the political establishment.

They have been told to celebrate diversity, while their own desire for cultural continuity has been met with accusation and condemnation. They have been told that Britain belongs to the world, that their homeland is everyone’s homeland, and that their national identity is available to anyone who wishes to claim it.

When the British people seek to preserve their own distinct identity, culture, and inheritance for future generations, their efforts are increasingly treated not merely as objectionable, but potentially criminal.

And now, after decades of promoting a conception of Britain in which national identity is increasingly detached from ancestry, history, and inherited culture, the establishment wants its sons to prepare for war.

But men do not fight for abstract notions of nationhood. They do not die to protect global economic zones. Men fight for what’s behind them. They die for the people they love—the people the establishment told them they ought to apologise for, the people they were told have no right to any power or place of their own.

Their wives. Their children. Their families. Their communities. The churches their ancestors built for them. The countryside they grew up in. The nation they inherited from their own people. They fight, and they die to ensure the inheritance they received from their fathers can be passed on securely to their children.

A homeland is not merely a geographic location, nor is it simply a collection of random individuals temporarily occupying the same territory.

It’s a people and their inheritance, sustained across generations by common loyalties, traditions, institutions, and obligations.

The Bible itself recognises the significance and goodness of nations. According to the Apostle Paul, their boundaries and their appointed places are established by God’s providential hand (Acts 17:26). As such, we are not to regard the existence of distinct peoples and nations as an obstacle to human progress. Nations are good, natural, and inevitable.

And yet, much of modern political discourse treats national attachment and patriotism as something potentially dangerous, particularly when expressed by the British people themselves.

This is a little more than ironic, considering the government is now asking those same men to be prepared to sacrifice themselves on behalf of the nation they weren’t allowed to express any degree of pride in.

Apparently, loving your country is dangerous, until the government needs you to die for it.

But you cannot spend decades weakening a people’s attachment to their homeland and then expect that same attachment to inspire them to die for it. Nor can political leaders spend years demonising patriotism, only to suddenly appeal to it when they need another generation of young white men willing to sacrifice their lives for the very government that was condemning their national loyalties just five minutes earlier.

Of course, defending Britain is not necessarily the same thing as defending its government. A man may have every reason to despise the decisions of his rulers while remaining fiercely devoted to his homeland.

But if Britain is worth defending against so-called foreign aggression, then surely its national inheritance is worth preserving at home. If its people are worth dying for in wartime, surely their interests, identity, and continuity are worth defending in peacetime.

Patriotism is an indispensable virtue in wartime, and Britain's political leaders understand its importance. That’s why you’ll only see British men calling British men to sign up, fight, and die for Britain. That’s why wartime military recruiting advertisements almost exclusively feature White people. Suddenly, their beloved diversity quotas and racial representation don’t matter.

But if patriotism is an indispensable virtue in wartime, why should it be treated with suspicion during peacetime?

Britain’s leaders are increasingly concerned about whether the country possesses the military strength to withstand a foreign enemy. But they should also consider whether they have preserved the national solidarity necessary to inspire its defence.

A government cannot reasonably expect men to sacrifice everything for a homeland while treating their desire to preserve that homeland as something shameful.

Before asking British men what they are prepared to die for, Britain’s rulers ought to ask themselves what they have allowed those men to live for.

This work will examine the criticisms made of Theonomy by Matthew Cliff of Brisbane School of Theology.

Mr. Cliff set out to speak on the Abortion Abolitionism movement by primarily criticising Theonomy, in which he says “shapes and drives the entire AA movement,”^[i] to which we now find ourselves talking about it. I’m grateful to Mr. Cliff for stepping into this arena in critiquing Theonomy. Theonomy, rather than a movement, is the theological position where God’s Law is upheld, believing it is abiding today, that it remains the just standard, righteous and sufficient to deal with all of life’s endeavours.

While it is true that there is a connection between Abolitionism and Theonomy, Mr. Cliff is correct in noticing that not all Abolitionists are theonomists, but all theonomists (to some extent) are abolitionists.^[ii] The simple explanation is that the abolitionists uphold the Law of God on this one point of murder and how it ought to be dealt with in accordance with scripture.

I grant that there is connection here, but there are plenty of Christians who consciously choose to not label themselves as theonomists while they proclaim the Law of God on the streets within Abolish Abortion Australia, and that’s fine. Indeed, I am a member of Abolish Abortion Australia. Primarily however, I will set out to defend Theonomy that is often associated with Abortion Abolitionism.

Addressing the Critique

Part 1

While I thank Mr. Cliff for attempting to bring to light theological errors of Theonomy, how and where he takes the position of arguing from needs to be taken into consideration seriously. On page eight of his critique, he explains the contrast between what he calls the Classical position over against the Theonomist position, and in doing so, argues that the “ceremonial” (i.e. sacrificial) laws have been fulfilled in Christ, to which he rightly points to Hebrews 9. But in his reasoning for the fulfillment of the civil laws in particular, his position from arguing shifts to a footnote.^[iii] Why is this the case? I think because it is not as easily answered as with what is explicitly stated in Scripture, so he had to appeal to a fallible source. I would not have a problem if what the footnote contained was in scripture, but it is not.

Moreover, in contrasting the theonomic position with the classical, Mr. Cliff rightly quotes Greg Bahnsen, but then goes on to describe his position as being “an inherently political project,”^[iv] as if Bahnsen had forced a chic idea onto the Bible. This is grossly untrue.

Preceding this point on page seven, Mr. Cliff referred to the idea made by Ligon Duncan that theonomists do not want a biblical ethic, but the ethic of the Sinai Covenant.^[v] This is a big charge against the theonomists. If this was true, theonomists do not take into

consideration the New Covenant, making us Judaisers, cutting us off from the faith therefore. If there was an ethical distinction between “biblical ethics” and “Sinai Covenant ethics,” those distinctions would be covenantal, thereby disastrous if the theonomists seek Sinai ethics over [all-encompassing] biblical ethics.

I purposely lined those criticisms up to go to what must be said before we get too hasty. What Bahnsen argues is actually an argument from Scripture. His central thesis in Theonomy In Christian Ethics, a work cited by Mr. Cliff, lays out the basis for the continuing validity of God’s law. And the text Bahnsen uses is Matthew 5:17-19:

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.^[vi]

In his thesis, Bahnsen spends 47 pages^[vii] working through this text, and what do we find? Many things, but most importantly, conclusions from sound exegesis and sound hermeneutical methodology. From Bahnsen, “The concern of Jesus in Matthew 5:17-19 is to make clear that His purpose is not to abrogate the Older Testamental law.”^[viii]

In responding to the two criticisms made, firstly, while it is true that Bahnsen was political, that is not his starting foundation. Bahnsen sought to answer the question of what we ought to be doing, and in this case, within the sphere of law. Bahnsen maintained that there is no other standard under heaven by which men must walk in, since it continues.

Secondly, to address the charge made that theonomists seek the Sinai ethic over against the Biblical ethic, we need to ask ourselves, do theonomists hold to this? If we mean by “Sinai ethic” to be the Law given on Sinai apart from further biblical revelation, then no, we reject that. These categories are misconstruing and are irrelevant. Theonomists do not ignore further revelation, as Bahnsen points out,

“[I]f I were to continue the ritual observances under the New Covenant, I would be despising the final accomplishment of salvation in Christ.”^[ix]

So then, how can Bahnsen defend himself with a potential charge of leaving out aspects of the Law whilst claiming that all of the Law is presumed to continue? Bahnsen continues,

“The New Testament shows the Christian how to “see” the ceremonial laws fulfilled in Christ and His redemptive economy (e.g., passover is seen in the Lord’s supper). Thus the change in outward form of observance is grounded finally in the teaching of God’s word and is not arbitrarily brought to the data of the Bible as an extraneous model. Hence also the New Testament is showing the believer how it is that the ceremonial law is not abrogated but fulfilled in Christ for us.”^[x]

And he further states,

“Only scriptural authority is sufficient to alter the observance of any law from God, and only Scripture can be taken as the basis for characterizing any law as typological or ceremonial.”^[xi]

What Bahnsen gets at is that it is not up to us, or from secondary sources, to determine what classifies as ceremonial or typological, but that of only Scripture interpreting Scripture.

While it is true that the theocracy of Israel has vanished as a political entity, how does this fact correspond with scripture equipping us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:17) in light of God’s kingdom mission to reconcile all things to Himself (Colossians 1:20)?

Part 2

Moving on, the next line of criticism to address is on the Kingdom of God. On page ten, Mr. Cliff points to the position where the Kingdom of God is actually the “church”.^[xii] To know what the Kingdom of God is, we have to ask what the nature of the Kingdom is, the domain of the Kingdom, and the mission of the Kingdom. If the Kingdom of God is the church, is the nature of his Kingdom, then, individual Christians, and that its existence is

dependent on Christians? Is the domain of the kingdom the local church? Is the mission of the kingdom to bring people to church? Unfortunately, Mr. Cliff conflates the roles of the Kingdom of God with the Church, thereby reducing the Kingdom of God to the church, as Joseph Boot comments:

“Because the institutional church is rightly limited in its role and jurisdiction in the Christian life and in human society, whenever and wherever an unscriptural dualism reigns, where artificial separations of nature and grace, law and gospel, creation and redemption are propounded, God and his Word become theoretically imprisoned in the church, and Christ’s reign is faithlessly limited to one sphere of life.”^[xiii]

Boot is correct in noting that the institutional church indeed has its jurisdictions, and if the Kingdom of God is contained within the church, then the Kingdom of God is hindered by the church’s limitations amongst the rest of creation, spheres and institutions. Does the church do missions? Absolutely, the people of God apart from the institutional church ought to be operating under God’s Kingdom jurisdiction, which is not the institutional church.

If we confuse the Kingdom of God with the church, then the only time you’re operating within the Kingdom is when you’re serving within the institution, which sounds a lot like the Roman church. The nature of the Kingdom is spiritual (John 18:36), the domain of the Kingdom is all of creation (Matthew 12:28-29, Romans 8:19-21) and the Mission of the Kingdom is to glorify God in the expansion of the reign of Christ through His people; the Universal Church (Matthew 28:18-20, Colossians 1:15-20, Matthew 6:10, Psalm 110:1-2, Matthew 13:31-32).

Why did I take time to criticize Mr. Cliff’s view of the Kingdom of God? Because how you view the Kingdom of God shapes how you look at the Law (commands) of God. If God has nothing to say about law, the family, education, economics, science, or gardening, and is not under the jurisdiction of God’s rule, then obviously Christ did not come to restore it, and no good, law and order can come out of these spheres. Boot again,

“But Christianity, the true gospel of the kingdom, cannot be locked up within a single institution any more than it can be corralled into the enclosure of individual salvation from the consequences of sin. For salvation, which implies total wholeness and restoration, is also deliverance from the power and corruption of sin. The scope of salvation is as broad as the scope of the Fall. Clearly then, the faith of the gospel is centered in and focused upon Christ Himself, not in an institution.”^[xiv]

I disagree with Mr. Cliff that the Kingdom of God does not manifest itself physically, since its domain certainly does (i.e. the earth, Isaiah 66:1; Matthew 5:35a). Only by implication through the rule of Christ, and not from roots found within an earthly or worldly source,^[xv] is where we see His rule on earth be manifested, as He has all authority in heaven and on earth.

Therefore, applying it to AA, justice in proclaiming the Law of God on the streets to combat the cultural issue of abortion is Kingdom work by those, obviously, who are part of the Universal Church outside of the institution. If the Kingdom of God does not encompass law and government, then scripture does not speak on it, nor is it redeemable. But we know that it does and what it ought to look like.

Part 3

Much that has been said so far in the critique has answered much of the misunderstandings and errors of Mr. Cliff. In his next section, on page twelve, he gets into the question of how believers should relate to the Mosaic law in light of Christ and the new Covenant. We have already dealt with what Jesus had to say in Matthew 5:17-19, that the law is binding, as our Lord warns not to annul any of them (Matthew 5:19). So what about now that we are in the New Covenant?

Let us recall what is new about the New Covenant and what the first benefit entails: God will put His Law on our heart (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10). Part of the New Covenant benefit is that we are able to, by our affections bestowed upon us, approach God, as well as keeping His commandments (John 14:15); our affections are also set upon the Law of God (Psalm 119; Ephesians 2:10, Romans 8:4).

I agree with the scripture quotations used in this section of his critique^[xvi] in reference to what typological events have taken place, but only by the hermeneutical method he accuses theonomists of using: that the law is binding unless stated otherwise.^[xvii]

I wonder, though, what law were the apostles operating under in their ministry, as the Law of God apparently has no “determinative role among God’s people.”^[xviii] The law of Christ, then? That would work if that is defined by what He said in Matthew 4:4 and 5:17-19, that the Law still has a central and determinative role in all of life for the Christian (cf. 1 John 5:2-3).

Part 4

The term “General Equity” has definitely played a massive role in the early theonomic tradition, particularly to Bahnsen, who evidently desired to remain within the bounds of the Westminster Confession of Faith.^[xix] I do not share his sentiment. I believe “General Equity” has actually made Theonomy more ambiguous in its enforcement.^[xx] This becomes relevant now to the “General Equity” of law in the Bible in pages 13-14 of the critique.

On the not uncommon idea, propounded by Mr. Cliff, that we can define the parapet law in its General Equity to mean the government can enforce workplace regulations, building codes, and public safety laws,^[xxi] is to miss something extremely important: the jurisdiction of the government. In God’s Law, there is no legislative function apart from what has been given to the people (Deuteronomy 4:2; Deuteronomy 12:32).

The unwitting assumption that man or the government have this prerogative unconsciously shows us that the state ought to be autonomous, likely due to tradition and how drenched we are in this kind of rule in the West. But in fact, the reader may notice that along with the parapet law in Deuteronomy 22:8 there is no penalty assigned to failing to put up a parapet.

If, as Mr. Cliff suggests, we legislate a principle of the Law of God whereby it does not have a penalty, ought it be a punishable law? In fact, under manmade legislation, there would be an arbitrary penalty assigned to it, causing injustice and unproductiveness. Legislating is a prerogative only God has. Therefore, this interpretation of the “historic Reformed meaning,”^[xxii] as well as the General Equity position, are unqualified when it comes to 21st-century theological development, because both positions hold an outdated view of the legislative function.

On this, Chris Hume says plainly, “There is a place for law, but it must be limited to what the Triune God, in the Bible, has legislated.”^[xxiii] God in His law does not prescribe the state to enforce workplace regulations, building codes, and public safety laws – that is entirely up to the enterprises if they so choose within their sphere of operation (Something altogether foreign to our world currently).

Part 5

Now, up to page fifteen, we see the issue of hermeneutics come up. Briefly touched on earlier, Mr. Cliff criticised Bahnsen’s hermeneutics stating, “The error is that theonomists begin with continuity and require explicit New Testament repeal before civil laws can be set aside.”^[xxiv]

In light of Bahnsen’s appeal and expansion of Matthew 5:17-19 in Theonomy in Christian Ethics, I object to Mr. Cliff calling it erroneous because it is Scripture that qualifies this continuity, thus putting the burden of proof on my opponent for his hermeneutics. And was it not true that explicit New Testament repeal was needed to qualify the antitypes pertaining to the sacrificial laws? It is this same consistent hermeneutic, same treatment of the whole law of God, that Bahnsen uses as his hermeneutic.

Instead, Mr. Cliff wants to offer the “Classical Reformed” hermeneutic that you need to “begin with discontinuity that was introduced through fulfilment of the Mosaic covenant through Christ.”^[xxv] Could he possibly be referring to Matthew 5:17-19, where Jesus came not to abrogate, but to fulfil? I do not see that or where he is coming from here, he may need to clarify.

We do not deny redemptive history; there is a New Covenant. But the Church cannot wield the sword to punish those who do evil; that is the job for God’s minister, the delegated authority in this sphere; the powers (Romans 13:3-4). How would an authority know if he is not committing murder when he wields the sword? How would Mr. Cliff know, too?

Part 6

There seems to be an endorsement from Mr. Cliff in “seeing society shaped by biblical principles.”^[xxvi] There’s an objection from me here, however.^[xxvii] Would these Christian values be Christian values if they conflict with the Law of God? Mr. Cliff also unopposed Christian Reconstructionism “in principle” – just without theonomic ethics.^[xxviii] Nonetheless, I think we are getting to the heart of the issue here:

“[T]he objection is to the confusion that arises when the civil legislation given to the theocratic nation of Israel is applied to modern, non-theocratic states.”^[xxix]

Interestingly enough, I agree. We cannot expect to enforce God’s judicial Law within a man-made form of government. The Law, as well as the form, must be in accordance with God’s Law (Theonomy). Our current system will not last due to its imperfections, but God’s revealed form of government is perfect, and therefore appropriate to enforce the Law of God. Man with God’s Law in his hands cannot legislate God’s Law because God’s Law contains the form of government to dispense the Law of God righteously and justly.

What good is having the death penalty established for murder if you only need one witness to convict? What good is there in punishing delinquents if they’re protected by the state for crimes that, according to the Bible, would result in the death penalty? What good is having a state, or a politician, that upholds Christian values and passes conservative laws, but taxes you, all the while imprisoning you for not paying tax in the same breath?

These issues would not be systemically susceptible under a theocracy. How much evil would be done against the Law of God if we try to keep the man-made system while attempting to “establish His Law” (Romans 3:31)? So I agree wholeheartedly on this point by Mr. Cliff, not that it nullifies what God requires, but rather points to the fact that we need to think outside of our current man-made form of government.

Part 7

Now we get to see Mr. Cliff’s view of the appropriate response to the authority over us Christians in our context. Under the New Covenant, he claims, “[T]he Christian approach to law and government is characterised by holding together two complementary biblical commitments: [Respectful submission to civil authorities and unwavering primary allegiance to God.]^[xxx]

Mr. Cliff takes on the view of the authorities whereby you must, essentially, obey whatsoever they ask you unless it contradicts Scripture (and/or their conviction, generally). In his listing of the Christian approach to law and government, he neglects to include the obligations of the government (ruler) to function as a “minister of God.” (Romans 13:1, 4; 1 Peter 2:14) I will allow Bahnsen to speak for himself on Mr. Cliff’s view taken from Theonomy in Christian Ethics^[xxxi]:

“The positivistic approach to Romans 13 has been found to produce highly suspect conclusions in the past, some being willing to go so far as to grant autonomy to the state. Others have maintained that Paul is saying that all governments have divine approval of such a character that the Christian would be morally culpable for disobeying the government except where preaching the gospel was prohibited. Beyond that no ethical criteria can be laid upon the state, and the believer has a strong obligation to have a positive and patriotic attitude toward whatever government is in power.”^[xxxii]

I don’t have doubt in my mind that Mr. Cliffe wants to be as reasonable as possible with the circumstances we are in, but to submit to the government without having a higher law for them to submit opens up totalitarianism. Bahnsen again,

“It is quite clear that Romans 13 has two elements in it: practical ethics and normative description …what is expected of the Christian and what is expected of the state.”^[xxxiii]

Final thoughts

In conclusion, all that is said about the theological foundations of Theonomy, it is founded upon the Word of God; the whole Word of God. Matthew 5:17-19 is clear that Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfil (the antonym for abolish).^[xxxiv] In the end, what indeed is Mr. Cliff’s view of the state? How ought it function, and by what standard do they operate under?

Surely the state is not a law unto itself; autonomous. We can agree that the covenant community is not a nation-state, but it is the Universal Church. But that isn’t what is at stake. What’s at stake is what then ought the state be doing as God’s deacon (Romans 13:4)? And, what ought they not be doing?

I do not believe you can be doing “salt and light ministry”^[xxxv] while neglecting the very point of contact of those various ministries; doing Matthew 5:13-16 while ignoring 5:17-19. If law and order is not founded upon the whole council of God, then it is founded upon a different foundation; a foreign and pagan foundation. We know that the Word of God contains everything we need for being equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and we also know that the Law is good if one uses it lawfully (1 Timothy 1:8-11). God’s minister, the powers, is a good work that God’s Word encompasses. To finish full circle with Bahnsen,

“The civil magistrate has been commissioned by God to punish workers of evil in society; this is his task and proper function. His ministry is not in vain as he executes penal justice on criminals, for he has been “ordained” and “sent” by the Lord of Justice Himself…not simply [in] God’s decretive will, but God’s preceptive will––and he sins should he fail to do so [as God’s instrument].”^[xxxvi]

[i] Cliff, Matthew, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 3.

[ii] Ibid., 6.

[iii] See Ibid., 8.

[iv] Ibid., 9.

[v] Ibid., 5-6.

[vi] Matthew 5:17-19 LSB

[vii] In the 3rd (2002) edition.

[viii] Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nacogdoches: TX. Covenant Media Press, 2002), 54

[ix] Bahnsen, Theonomy, 208.

[x] Bahnsen, Theonomy, 213.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] See Cliff, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 10.

[xiii] Joseph Boot, Think Christianly: Developing an Undivided Mind (Ontario: Canada. Ezra Press, 2025), 98.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Cf. John 18:36.

[xvi] See Cliff, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 12

[xvii] Ibid., see 16.

[xviii] Ibid., 12.

[xix] Along with the Catechisms, See Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, 35.

[xx] While I can see a “General Equity” function within the revealed form of government in adjudication, General Equity Theonomists, however, want to Legislate the “General Equity”.

[xxi] Cliff, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 14.

[xxii] See ibid.

[xxiii] Chris Hume, Seven Statist Sins (Lancaster: PA. The Lancaster Patriot, 2023), 48.

[xxiv] Cliffe, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 16.

[xxv] Ibid.

[xxvi] Ibid., 16.

[xxvii] For a further read of my objection to having “Christian Values,” the link to my article is found here: https://www.caldronpool.com/p/are-christian-values-enough?utm_source=publication-search

[xxviii] See Cliffe, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 16

[xxix] Ibid., 16-17.

[xxx] Ibid., 18

[xxxi] Greg Bahnsen spends an entire chapter, titled “The Civil Magistrate in the New Testament,” addressing and looking closely at Romans 13 and relevant passages.

[xxxii] Bahnsen, Theonomy, 357.

[xxxiii] Ibid., 361.

[xxxiv] Bahnsen deals with what “fulfil” entails in Matthew 5:17 on pages 54 to 74 in Theonomy, comparing and refuting various interpretations of it.

[xxxv] Cliff, “Abortion Abolitionism”: A Theological Critique, 18.

[xxxvi] Bahnsen, Theonomy, 369-370.

Marxism is intellectual terrorism. It negates everything human.

So wrote ex-Communist Jacques Ellul in Jesus and Marx.

The 1979 work functions in part as a criticism of the French leftist elite who were reading everything through the Marxist lens.

For the disciples of the dead Das Kapital author, his model of decoding history through the dichotomy of oppressor vs. oppressed is a religion.

As Simone Weil wrote, Marx’s obsession with what he called historical materialism created a badly constructed one at that.

At the time, Ellul noted that Marxism is “the only terrorist line of thought in Western intellectual circles.”

This terrorist position, he argued, consists of situating everything with respect to Marxist ideology.

For Ellul, the banal acceptance of this has led to the brutalisation of Christianity, where the Gospels are prostituted out like modern-day call girls.

That outcome was inevitable because Christianity cannot be reinterpreted through Marxism and vice versa.

Like abortion “care”, the term Christian Marxist is essentially an oxymoron. They’re both as far away from “care” as Zyklon-B is from a shower.

“Christians,” Ellul stated, “have every reason for not being Communists. They have almost no reason for being Communists.”

Ellul wrote that it was Marx’s ideas, not Jesus Christ’s, that gave birth “to the world’s worst sort of dictatorships, and strictly totalitarian dictatorships (including China and Vietnam).”

He also argued that forcing Marx into the same Messianic light as Christ was deliberate. For example, the term “religious right” was created by the Left to undermine conservative Christian theological legitimacy.

‘Jesus and Marx’ largely answers Daisy Mai Inglese’s question on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Restoring the West: Is Liberation theology costing the Catholic Church in Brazil?

Ellul does so with a big fat ‘Yes’.

Inglese holds that Brazilians are turning away from Catholicism towards Evangelicalism, and says that its likely cause is the left-wing takeover of the church.

She writes that “Liberation theology took hold in Brazil in the 1960s, as millions still lived in poverty despite the country’s rapid modernisation.

“Catholic Action, and later Vatican II, had rightly been encouraging priests and lay Catholics to work more closely among the poor.

“Yet their desire to understand why families remained trapped in poverty misled many towards a theology misguided by Marxism, with a language shaped by class and oppression.

“As politics assumed a greater place in the Church, less attention went to passing on fundamental truths: radical life in Christ, the impact of sin on our eternal salvation, and how we are to live a truly moral Christian life.”

That Marxist fusion, Inglese correctly states, tried to pack Christianity into an ideology that promised liberation through political programs instead of the transformative power of the Cross.

The church displacing Christ has put Marx’s irreconcilable dialectical and divisive paranoia about power on the throne.

Marx is no saviour, victim or hero. Jesus is all three.

Christ is King.

Marxism should be read in the light of the Gulags, not squeezed into the Gospels.

Put simply: Liberation theology is not a theology of Christian liberation.

Both major parties in Victoria have pledged to use taxpayer funds to pay for abortions in exchange for votes in the upcoming November state election.

Under a $30 million election commitment, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has vowed that Labor—that is, the taxpayer—will cover out-of-pocket costs for medical and surgical abortions up to 16 weeks, including associated consultations and other expenses.

Carroll warned voters that One Nation wants to roll back access to abortion, while Labor-aligned unions have suggested the Liberals won’t have the courage to stop them.

But the Liberal Party in Victoria isn’t just promising not to change Victoria’s abortion laws. They’ve promised to match Labor’s taxpayer-funded slaughter scheme.

According to The Guardian, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson confirmed on Thursday afternoon that a Liberal-National Coalition government would also cover out-of-pocket abortion costs up to 16 weeks’ gestation. This includes GP and specialist consultations, scans, tests, and medication.

In other words, regardless of which major party forms government in November, Victorian taxpayers have been promised the bill for mothers who want to kill off their unwanted kids.

The language, of course, is entirely sanitised and dishonest. It has to be. So, we’re going to hear a lot about “healthcare,” “access,” “choice,” and “reproductive rights.”

But don’t be duped by the euphemisms. What we’re talking about here is the state’s imagined authority to decide which innocent human beings can be legally and freely put to death in exchange for votes.

Which is all the more ironic, considering the outrage we’ve seen from Australian politicians over news that US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth backed a proposal to livestream the December 3 firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of murdering 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood massacre.

Although President Donald Trump has since cancelled the proposed broadcast, the announcement provoked considerable outrage among Australian politicians.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the proposed broadcast “abhorrent.” Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young described it as “barbaric” and urged the government to prevent Australians from viewing it. Even Barnaby Joyce compared it to a Roman amphitheatre.

One of Hasan’s victims, a 21-year-old Private Francheska Velez, was three months pregnant at the time. Witnesses at Hasan’s court-martial testified that they heard her pleading, “My baby, my baby,” immediately before further shots rang out.

She and her unborn child were murdered.

Think about the absolute moral inversion here.

Australian politicians recoil at the execution of a man convicted of deliberately murdering 13 people, including a pregnant woman. Meanwhile, Victoria’s major political parties are promising to take money from hard-working citizens and use it to fund the deliberate killing of unborn children who have committed no crime whatsoever.

The public execution of a convicted mass murderer is “barbaric” and “abhorrent,” they say, all while promising to cover the cost of abortions with taxpayer funds. We don’t kill terrorists here; that would be backwards. We kill unwanted babies, and then we call it progress.

Of course, the two are not morally equivalent. And that’s the point, really. Not all killing is morally identical. In Scripture, murder is the shedding of innocent blood. It is condemned because man bears the image of God (Gen. 9:6). Civil government, meanwhile, is given authority to punish genuine evildoers with lethal force. Paul says the magistrate “does not bear the sword in vain” (Rom. 13:4).

The state possesses delegated authority to punish the guilty. It does not, however, possess the authority to redefine who is and is not innocent—and what is and is not evil.

This is why the abortion debate matters, and why it should matter even to those who would rather not think about it, or who believe there are bigger, more pressing political issues to confront.

To put it simply: A government that refuses to recognise the most basic human right, the right of an innocent human being simply to remain alive, has already abandoned the foundation upon which every lesser right depends.

Read that again.

A government that refuses to recognise the most basic human right, the right of an innocent human being simply to remain alive, has already abandoned the foundation upon which every lesser right depends.

Do you care about free speech?

Free speech matters because human beings possess dignity and value.

Religious liberty matters because human beings possess dignity and value.

Property rights, parental rights, bodily integrity, due process, and equality before the law all matter because human beings possess dignity and value.

But if dignity and value are things that the state may confer according to arbitrary characteristics, such as age, location, dependency, or convenience, then none of these are inherent “rights” at all.

They are permissions. They are privileges granted by the government that can be withdrawn by the government.

So, the question that should be fundamental to Victoria’s upcoming election is not merely whether taxpayers should fund abortions, but whether human rights exist independent of the state.

Do we really want to live in a country where our right to life depends on the political expediency of those in power? Is that the country we want to leave to our children and grandchildren?

Once the state claims the authority to decide that an entire class of innocent human beings possess no enforceable right to life, every other right is an imagined fiction.

A political party that doesn’t respect the most basic, most fundamental human right will have little difficulty finding reasons to violate all others.

If a political party won’t defend the right to life, why trust them with any other?

Here are just a few of my thoughts on public executions from a few social media posts I have written in the last couple of days. I believe the death penalty is just and righteous. I believe we have erred greatly in moving away from it in much of society. Here are some of my thoughts on public executions in particular.

Are they evil?

No, even Jesus himself supported the death penalty.

When people say Jesus did not support the death penalty or public executions, they are just wrong. You don’t even need to quote the Old Testament, which he, as God the Son, inspired, to prove it.

Matthew 21: Jesus words are one example. In this parable, he is the Son, and he affirms his Father’s actions.

And since virtually all executions were done in public in his day, and he never once rebuked the practice, appealing to Jesus to call them morally wrong is simply a false appeal. It is not an appeal to the Jesus of the Bible. But another Jesus, recreated in the sentiment of the modern mind. Here are our Lord’s own words,

“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. 34 When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants[c] to the tenants to get his fruit. 35 And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ 39 And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Allowing the state the power to kill people in secret is far more dangerous, and far more common (for example, abortion, euthanasia). We have an inverted sense of morality today that causes us to have outrage at the wrong things.

Is deterrence the only reason for them?

No. There are other very good and righteous reasons for them.

Whether public executions are a deterrent is debatable. I think in some periods of history they have proven to be. For instance, after the Peace of Westphalia, newly affirmed states went around and very publicly rounded up roving gangs of criminal men and executed them, as a warning to what would happen to people if they rejected the state’s monopoly on violence. This worked at the time. But perhaps there are times when it has not worked; the French Revolutions might provide examples of that. But, either way, deterrence is not the only reason a punishment should be meted out; vengeance is another very important reason:

1 Peter 2:13-14 “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.”

Romans 13:1-5 “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.”

People seeing the government harshly punish those who have hurt them or would hurt them has a satisfying and calming effect on a society. Because it is just, righteous and good to see evil punished. People want to know the government will protect them from disorder. It is the government’s primary role.

The law has a responsibility to seek vengeance against evil. This is a vital aspect of its role. Christian societies have understood this, which is why every single Christian society in history, until very recently, did public executions of the evil.

This serves the purpose of making sure citizens never feel any need or any desire to take vengeance into their own hands. Christians know God forbids revenge, because vengeance is his and his alone. The state is one of his arms of vengeance.

A lot of people are increasingly becoming disenfranchised with the legal system because genuine evil often goes unpunished. Even serious rapists and violent criminals are often let off with minimal punishments. Famous cases go viral on social media. This creates instability in a society.

Hence, the government correctly applying vengeance is not just a deterrent; it is also a pacifier of the decent population, as decent people are more likely to trust and respect governments they know have their best interests in view.

Of course, states can take this too far. They can become too harsh, too quick to use the sword. This too is an evil. But a refusal to use it is an overcorrection. Another evil of its own.

So, there are multiple reasons to support the reapplication of such punishments by governments. And I believe this high tolerance of crime period will end with just such an approach, because the pendulum has swung so far in one direction it will likely swing back hard the other way.

Governments are running the calculation right now that rapid population growth is worth the increased crime people are experiencing. But they are not accounting for the unforeseen social effects this will have that will cause people to seek governments that are much harsher on crime. The pendulum has probably started swinging back as many governments across the West are making a tougher approach to crime an election platform.

What about spiritual reasons?

I genuinely think one of the biggest problems of our modern affluent societies is how easy it is for people to entertain themselves, drug themselves, amuse themselves, drink themselves, and otherwise convince themselves that death is not a problem they should really think about.

But the Bible says that being forced to number our days gives us a heart of wisdom.

“The days of our lives are seventy years;

And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,

Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

11 Who knows the power of Your anger?

For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.

12 So teach us to number our days,

That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:10-12

I don’t have any intention of watching a public execution, especially not one from a foreign country. But it would be good for a lot of people’s souls if people were not so sheltered from seeing the face of death, so much.

The way we have sanitised it, moved it behind closed doors, made it the consideration of people far off, or a different age, is not good for our souls.

It is not an accident that people who are so easily able to deny the reality of death so easily in their experience of life are so foolish.

“So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” I genuinely and truly believe that there is a direct connection between how easy it is to shut off our minds to the reality of mortality and how atheistic, agnostic and apathetic we are to things of eternity.

Death is unpleasant. Deeply sad. Deeply painful. And it is part of our lived experience until Jesus returns. Something that is just and righteous and drives that message home is good for people’s souls. We should think about that.

Steve Grace’s vision for a mobile stage is gaining some serious momentum.

Hit by COVID restrictions, the concept of a Mack truck towing a transforming trailer that turns a showground into a concert hall almost came to a halt.

A new GoFundMe campaign is helping complete the Eternity Truck project, which is costed at $48,000 to finish.

So far, 107 people have backed the mission rig. Talking with Steve for the Daily Declaration, he said the truck will “facilitate outdoor events.”

“Aussies,” he explained, “are more likely to go to a football field to hear the Gospel than sit in a pew.”

Promoting the fundraiser on Sonshine FM, Steve said, “My family and I have done laps and laps of Australia, and one thing that I’ve realised over the years is that, especially in remote Indigenous tribal communities, there are no big buildings to do an event.

“Most Aboriginal folks like sitting out in the open and listening to the message, listening to the songs.

“I thought, wow, this is really where the whole vision started. I’d need to start doing more outdoor events.”

That’s where The Eternity Truck’s operational capabilities shine.

The concept was born in 2016, and hit a wall when lockdowns forced Steve off the road after 36 years of touring and sharing the Gospel.

Despite that, he and his wife have never wavered. Still in ministry, Steve and his wife Kerrie have been based on a remote farm in the Northern Territory for nearly four years.

Alongside a website and logistics to streamline coordination with local churches, the truck will be part of what Steve hopes will be three -day evangelism events.

These events might include local talent, collaborations with bigger-name artists, and other outreach platforms.

Steve said that, while still a work in progress, the Eternity Truck will be “less about Steve Grace, more associated with bringing hope to hurting towns, pumping out the Gospel and good music.”

The design also honours the legacy of the late Arthur Stace, an Australian cultural icon whose Eternity chalk branding on the footpaths of Sydney made history.

Still in the set-up stage, an equipment pod is needed. The slick black paint job, artwork, and branding need to be done. Lighting gear also has to be secured.

A PA system was donated.

The fundraiser, launched by Sonshine’s Paul Morrison and the WA Kingsmen, has now raised $66,262.

The page also provides a way for people to participate in helping get Steve’s Eternity Truck touring.

He told the Daily Declaration that ministry funds will be placed in a trust, and that his goal is to be a blessing, not a burden to local churches.

If you’re looking to support a ministry that will bring the Gospel to the outback and local towns, please consider a one-off contribution. Any amount helps. All donations are appreciated.

The best place to reconnect with Steve Grace’s music is through his website and iTunes Store.

To contribute to the Eternity Truck’s GoFundMe transformation, click here.

I once heard a preacher say about the Bible that it does not tell us what happened; it tells us what always happens. That is correct. The Bible teaches us how to live in light of the wisdom offered by the Lord of creation. He shows us in his word how the corrupt will always act if they are not restrained.

I’ve written many articles about how our immigration policy is a form of exploitation.

Both to create a vulnerable workforce (do a bit of reading into slaves in the massage business, for example), but also to suppress Australians’ own wages.

Now a prominent politician is actually saying the truth out loud about big business, governments, and mass immigration,

“Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie has accused “big business” of agitating against migration reform “because they like having a vulnerable workforce” on temporary visas.

Labor, the Coalition, and One Nation have all targeted temporary visa holders in proposed reforms to Australia’s migration system.

However, business leaders, including the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have warned significant cuts to that cohort would hit some sectors hard.

The Coalition has proposed reducing the overall number of temporary visa holders by 650,000 over four years, with certain priorities for aged care, healthcare, and construction workers.

Addressing the pushback, Mr Hastie told the ABC on Friday big businesses were “making noise” because they “like having a vulnerable workforce on temporary visas”.

“There’s a reason why they want that. Because they’re non-unionised. They can pay them less. And they have an element of power,” he said.

“Because, of course, someone on a temporary visa is not going to make a whole bunch of noise.”

A government that is not solely focused on serving its own people, but that has the power to replace its people with others easily, will disrespect both. It is just a fact of human power dynamics.

I came to the conclusion that this is how big business and the corrupt act towards the worker, not through studying social studies, or things like that, though I have studied those things. I came to this conclusion by reading the Old Testament prophets and seeing how the powerful would exploit the weak when they were not restrained. And human nature has not changed.

Of course, you can look at how immigration suppresses wages, drives up rents, puts pressure on social services, and more to see that it does not serve the populations upon which mass immigration is imposed, and see the same problems. But really, it is God’s word that reveals the heart of man and how he will act when he is given too much power over the worker and not enough incentives to act justly. Other research just confirms this.

And now a prominent politician has said this is the case out loud.

Things are changing. Australia is a hard left country. We are on track to become the new Argentina in my lifetime; that is a basket-case economy that was once one of the richest per capita countries in the world. If more leaders start speaking the truth on issues like this, we have a chance to turn this situation around.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced plans to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the Islamist terrorist convicted of murdering 13 people and attempting to murder 32 others at Fort Hood in 2009.

The execution, which is scheduled for December 3, will be carried out by firing squad at the scene of Hasan’s massacre.

But the decision has provoked international condemnation, including from some public Christian voices.

Pope Leo XIV condemned the death penalty, describing it as “inadmissible,” and claiming it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.

Live Action founder Lila Rose argued on X that Hasan admired suicide bombers and wanted to die. She questioned whether publicly executing a suicidal terrorist would deter terrorism rather than serve his desire for martyrdom.

That might be a fair point, but she also went further, describing public executions as “bloodlust,” claiming they will “breed vengeance, violence and dehumanisation.” She added, “Satan loves this.”

But there’s a fundamental problem with the insinuation that public executions are inherently immoral, barbaric, or even satanic.

God Himself prescribed public executions in His Law.

In Leviticus 24:14, God commanded that the congregation participate in carrying out a capital sentence.

“Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him.” (Lev. 24:14, ESV)

In Deuteronomy 21:21, he explained that such punishment would purge evil from Israel, and that the people would hear of it and fear it.

“And all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” (Deut. 21:21, ESV)

Public punishment wasn’t some unfortunate barbarism that God reluctantly tolerated for a time. It was part of His revealed system of justice. It was His just answer to particular crimes.

So, when Christians condemn the principle as immoral, outdated, or unloving, the question that must be asked is: By what standard can something God explicitly commanded be declared evil?

Such a moral judgement necessarily appeals to an imagined moral authority that sits higher than God Himself.

Jesus declared that He had not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it (Matt. 5:17). Paul affirmed that God’s law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom. 7:12) and that love fulfils the law (Rom. 13:10).

As such, God’s commandments are not contrary to goodness, justice, or love. They reveal what goodness, justice, and love require.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every judicial procedure must be exactly reproduced by governments today. But Christians can’t condemn a principle God prescribed without implicating the character of the Lawgiver.

Public execution isn’t intended to be a morbid form of entertainment. That is a gross caricature of our ancestors, conjured up by those who despise God’s justice. Instead, it’s intended to communicate the seriousness of evil and the certainty of its consequences.

God knows something modern sentimentalism often overlooks: not every human being considers the consequences of their actions. Some are governed by their own immediate desires, passions, and “animal” impulses. The public administration of justice vividly brings the consequences of wrongdoing into the present.

Like it or not, leaders throughout history have understood that some people only learn when confronted with the consequences of their actions. Public executions were intended to deter wrongdoing, particularly among those who lacked the moral restraint to govern themselves. If their own virtue would not restrain them, fear of punishment might.

And that was precisely God’s stated purpose of public punishment under biblical law: that others would hear, fear, and refrain from evil.

Today, society has largely concealed death from public life. We sanitise it, institutionalise it, and remove it from ordinary view. In the minds of many, death is something that only ever happens to other people. It’s something we only ever witness in movies or on television. It’s as removed from our reality as dragons and caped superheroes.

And yet, death remains the one appointment none of us can escape. We are all, in effect, on death row.

Public executions, however, confront the public with that uncomfortable reality most people would rather ignore. The condemned man faces an immediate sentence. But every spectator is also under a sentence of death.

As Hebrews 9:27 reminds us, it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.

This isn’t an invitation to celebrate another man’s death. It’s a warning to everyone to consider their own.

Indeed, as Ecclesiastes 7:2 teaches, confronting death is profitable precisely because the living take it to heart.

A public execution should therefore produce national sobriety, not bloodlust. It should remind us that sin is serious, justice is necessary, human life is sacred, and death is certain.

Above all, it should remind us that something is fundamentally wrong with this world. We live under the curse of sin and death. The grave awaits us all. And no amount of social progress or sentimental moralising can deliver us from it.

That’s why our greatest need isn’t a society that attempts to soften the blow of death or remove it from public view. Our greatest need is reconciliation with the source of Life, the One True God.

Justice reminds us that sin deserves judgment. The Gospel reveals that Jesus Christ alone can save us from it.

They smeared pro-lifers as extremists. Now a bombshell national poll reveals millions of Australians want stronger protections for unborn babies, leaving the abortion establishment spectacularly out of touch.

There is something perverse about a political establishment that condemns the views of fellow Australians as an extremist, fringe minority when their views are actually extremist, fringe, and in the minority.

I talk about the topic of abortion, which I define plainly and clearly as killing babies in the womb.

That’s the harsh and unvarnished reality of the topic that’s often buried beneath slogans, euphemisms, and sanctimonious speeches about a woman’s “right” to choose. Whenever anyone proposes limits to this unholy sacrament of the Left, the familiar accusations arrive.

If you’re even mildly pro-life, you must be an extremist, misogynist, religious fanatic. Apparently, thinking of human life inside the womb as… well, life, makes you unfit for polite society. A deplorable.

Well, Australians have now been asked what they really think about abortion, and a lot of us are in that deplorable bracket. Jokes aside, the results should embarrass every politician and commentator who has treated opposition to unrestricted abortion as the preserve of a lunatic fringe.

A national poll conducted by McCrindle and commissioned by CitizenGO, where I serve as Australian campaigns director, found that 58.6 percent supported banning abortion after 24 weeks or earlier, when the question’s named exceptional circumstances, such as serious health risks, fetal disability, or sexual assault, did not apply.

That figure includes respondents who chose earlier limits. In fact, an absolute majority of 50.4 percent supported a ban after 20 weeks or earlier.

So much for the supposedly settled consensus around abortion.

Just 18.6 percent of respondents said it should never be banned. That’s what you call a real fringe minority. Yet the champions of killing babies in the womb have behaved as though they possess an unquestionable mandate to silence everyone else. Their certainty deserves to be shattered.

The survey involved 1,513 Australians aged 18 to 80, questioned online between 25 August and 2 September 2026. It used quotas for gender, generation, and state or territory. The poll is substantial evidence that Australians want extreme abortion laws rolled back, with time limits and protections for babies and vulnerable pregnant women put in place.

Across Australia’s various states and territories, abortion laws permit killing babies in the womb right up until birth. Bizarrely, I have heard the very politicians who support such laws trying to deny how permissive they are. They point to conditions requiring two doctors to sign off on late-term abortions and insist that this provides a real safeguard.

But what protection does that offer when the two doctors can be from the same clinic or hospital performing the procedure? What reassurance does it give when both doctors support the very abortion regime whose limits they are supposed to enforce? And what safeguards are there when the breadth of the conditions doctors take into consideration practically makes the system function as abortion on demand?

The grounds considered in jurisdictions such as Queensland include current and future physical, psychological, and social circumstances. That means any impact on finances, education, employment, or a social life is a legitimate reason to kill a baby in the womb.

The politicians and bureaucrats who designed such laws and presented them as safeguards have blood on their hands, no matter how hard they’ve tried to wash it off. And their extremist views are absolutely rejected by the Australian public.

In the CitizenGO poll, 54.5 percent said abortion after 24 weeks should be illegal when the reason was interference with education, career, or life stage. For personal preference without specified hardship or medical risk, 51.8 percent said it should be illegal. So Australians are willing to draw lines that too many politicians refuse to draw.

Now consider One Nation. The party’s published pro-life policy seeks lower gestational limits, a ban on sex-selective abortion, counselling and safeguards, equal care for babies born alive, fetal anaesthesia, conscientious objection, restrictions on the use of aborted babies’ organs, and abortion data reporting.

That agenda has been treated as a political horror story by the left-wing legacy media.

The Guardian told us that One Nation’s rise was encouraging to activists pursuing American-style abortion restrictions. The ABC declared that One Nation’s pro-life stance was somehow a negative political gamble, and Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald talked of One Nation’s policies as a threat to “abortion rights,” whatever they may be.

It goes beyond One Nation, as well. In June, the Guardian presented NSW Libertarian MP John Ruddick’s proposed ban on sex-selection abortion as part of a wider dastardly campaign to restrict “abortion access”.

But the polling shows Australians want that agenda well and truly inaccessible. On sex-selective abortion up to 24 weeks, 67.0 percent wanted it to be illegal. After 24 weeks, the figure jumped to 69.2 percent. In an election, such a result would be an unprecedented landslide. No wonder. Killing an unborn child because the child is the “wrong” sex is a hideous form of discrimination.

On babies born alive after an unsuccessful abortion, an even greater majority of 74.8 percent supported requiring the same care as for any other infant at the same stage and in the same medical condition. Only 4.5 percent, another extremist fringe minority that most politicians seem to be in, opposed that requirement. Why would anyone oppose equal care for babies born alive? A child’s medical treatment should not depend on whether someone wanted that child dead.

On safeguards for women, the findings were overwhelming: 83.4 percent supported checks against pressure from another person, 77.5 percent backed counselling from an independent organisation with no financial interest in the abortion procedure, and 73.6 percent supported a required waiting period of a few days.

Fully 80.8 percent agreed that nobody should feel forced into abortion through financial or social hardship. More than four in five supported information about available pregnancy support. This is where the rhetoric of “choice” meets its most uncomfortable test. What freedom does a frightened pregnant woman have if she is being bullied into abortion by a partner? What meaningful choice exists if she believes she cannot afford to keep her baby and cannot find support?

A majority of 52.6 percent also agreed that Australia should try to reduce abortion numbers even where abortion remains legal. Only 18.4 percent disagreed.

Support for One Nation’s pro-life policy agenda continued to shine through the poll results. A 59.2 percent majority supported fetal anaesthesia or pain relief during third-trimester abortions. A 55.5 percent majority backed public reporting of anonymous abortion totals, with majorities also supporting reporting across every other category tested.

On conscientious objection, 40.5 percent supported allowing healthcare workers to decline to perform or assist in abortions that conflicted with their conscience, against 36.4 per cent opposed. On banning fetal tissue or organs obtained through abortion from use in medical research, support was 42.6 percent, against 22.9 percent opposed.

Across every question in the poll that aligned with One Nation’s policies, support exceeded opposition. Most attracted clear majorities.

There is another finding that the political class should confront. Some 43.6 percent of respondents agreed that the human right to life begins at conception, compared with 28.9 percent who disagreed. Read that again. The question asked of people was not whether or not life begins at conception but whether the right to life begins at conception.

That’s perhaps why support for banning abortion at or before 24 weeks, excepting in extreme circumstances, was near unanimous across the political divide. It reached 59.1 percent for Labor voters, 58.8 percent for Liberal voters, and 65.0 percent for One Nation voters. The combined Liberal, LNP and Nationals cohort recorded 60.7 percent support for that limit.

Among the combined Independent/Teal group, it was 62.5 percent. Although with only 88 respondents, a welcome sign of the dwindling support, treating those number as reliable warrants caution. Nonetheless, it still challenges the notion that support for restrictions stops at a party boundary.

Even among Greens voters, 49 percent, just shy of a majority, wanted a ban on abortion at or before 24 weeks, and absolute majorities supported a sex-selection ban up to 24 weeks, equal care for babies born alive, independent counselling, coercion checks, and a waiting period.

Women, incidentally, recorded 59.9 percent support for a ban after 24 weeks or earlier, compared with 57.1 percent among men. The women whose opinions matter in this debate include the women who want stronger protection for unborn children.

These results make me angry.

They make me angry because this debate concerns children who cannot speak for themselves and women whose vulnerability deserves more than a slogan. They make me angry because humane pro-life reforms have been treated as extremist, fringe, while this poll exposes their most extremist and fringe position has been presented as unquestionable.

And they make me angry because too many politicians appear more frightened of a hostile headline than willing to defend an unborn child. The evidence gives them reason to act.

Ultimately, the polling shows that the Australian public want our parliaments to lower gestational limits and end late-term abortion for non-medical reasons. They want our parliaments to prohibit sex-selective abortion and guarantee equal medical care for every baby born alive. They want them to protect women from coercion by requiring safeguards, independent counselling and practical support to choose life. They want them to respect the consciences of healthcare workers and require anonymous abortion data to be collected and published so Australians can hold the system accountable.

These findings make a powerful case for rolling back Australia’s extreme abortion laws. You can read the research yourself at AbortionViews.au, and then sign CitizenGO’s petition here, or, better still, put the findings in front of your MPs and demand a written response.

Pro-abortion politicians have spent years claiming that killing babies in the womb is solid ground upon which the majority of Australians stand. Now that the lie has been exposed, they need to explain to us why they’re the ones standing outside the real mainstream.

What is the relationship between Christians and the Law of Moses? It is a question that dates back to the formation of the early church (Acts 15:24-29), but to this day, many believers still aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do with the first five books of the Bible. Often, they’re entirely avoided. Sometimes they’re treated like off milk that passed its expiration date with the coming of Jesus. Other times, they’re presented as cruel, harsh, and unforgiving rules, reflective of the barbaric and uncivilised era from which they emerged.

Whatever the case may be, portraying the Law as anything short of “holy, righteous, just, and good” is to present the Law in a way that is contrary to the New Testament (Rom. 7:12). Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and James all summed up the Law in a word: Love (Mk. 12:31; Rom. 13:9; Jam. 2:8; cf. Lev. 19:18). In other words, in the New Testament, “love” was not some arbitrary sense of affirmation or positive vibes. Love was a summary of God’s Law.

To love God “with all your heart, soul, and strength,” was to love him in accordance with the commandments he had given (Deut. 6:4-5; 10:12-13). To love your neighbour as yourself, was to treat your neighbour the way in which God prescribed in his statutes, and to do so from the heart (Lev. 19:18-19). To relax even one of the least of the commandments was to love God and man less than God required (Matt. 5:19). It was to act presumptuously by elevating yourself to the level of the Law Giver. In fact, the preservation of love was so important in Israel that violations were regarded as a crime punishable by death (Deut. 17:12-13).

It is at this point that many modern Christians recoil. The Law required capital punishment for sins that our culture does not. And sometimes, it demanded death for sins that our culture celebrates. To affirm the Law as “love” is perhaps the most counter-cultural thing you can do. It could cost you your family and friends, your career, and in some instances, your freedom. Wouldn’t it be easier, for the self-preserving Christian, to pretend God’s Law was no longer relevant? To opt rather for a definition of “love” that’s defined more so by current social sentiments than by Scripture? After all, didn’t Jesus dismiss the harsh demands of the Law for the higher road of compassion and forgiveness? That is what we’re told.

It’s rare that the subject of God’s Law and it’s relevance today is discussed without someone making an appeal to John 8:3-11. The incident of the woman caught in adultery is often raised as evidence that Jesus disobeyed the Law demanding death to establish a new “Law of Love” that operates, at times, contrary to the Law. Arguments regarding the account’s placement in Scripture aside — let’s just assume it belongs here — a question worth considering is whether the incident demonstrates an example of Jesus, at best, lowering the standard of the Law, and at worst, directly violating it.

It’s an important question to consider, as our understanding of this will determine whether we believe Jesus transgressed God’s Law, thereby sinning, and consequently rendering himself an unfit sacrificial substitute for our sins (1 Jn. 3:4; Heb. 9:14). Of course, this would be at odds with the witness of the New Testament which tells us that Jesus, who was born under the Law (Gal. 4:4-5), never transgressed the Law, nor could he be found guilty of any sin (Jn. 8:46). This is a claim that the Apostles also reaffirm in the epistles (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22; 1 Jn. 3:5). So, if Jesus did not sin, then he did not transgress the Law. How then do we make sense of his interaction with the woman caught in adultery?

The fact that Jesus never sinned by transgressing the Law is highlighted by the scribes and the Pharisees who were “searching for a charge that they could bring against him.” In John 8:6, we’re told that Jesus’ opponents wanted to put him to the test. So, they brought before him a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. The scribes and Pharisees then said to Jesus, according to the Law, “Moses commanded us to stone such women. So, what do you say?” The scribes and Pharisees were appealing to Leviticus 20:10, which states: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

The scribes and Pharisees were setting a trap for Jesus. Under Roman rule, the Jews were not at liberty to put anyone to death (Jn. 18:31; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 1.1; 7.2; Palestinian Talmud, Sanhedrin 41a). If Jesus upheld the Law of Moses, he would be violating the law of Rome. If he upheld the law of Rome, he would be violating the Law of Moses. Whatever his answer may be, he would either be guilty of a sin against God or a crime against Rome. Either way, the scribes and Pharisees would have their charge to bring against him.

They were clever, but they were no match for Jesus. At their challenge, we’re told that Jesus stood up and responded to his opponents saying, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” When the scribes and Pharisees heard this, John tells us they all walked away, one by one, until only Jesus and the woman were left. Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” So, Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more.”

It’s at this point that it’s often assumed Jesus effectively lowered the “harsh” and “unforgiving” standard of the Law to get himself and the adulteress woman off the hook. In many modern minds, Jesus dismissed Moses, upheld Roman Law, and justified his answer by adding an unattainable criterion to God’s Law that only the sinless should obey it. But are we supposed to think that the scribes and the Pharisees who had a murderous hatred for Jesus (Jn. 5:18) and wanted to bring a charge against him were suddenly fine with simply disregarding the Law because, after all, we all violate it in some way or another?

Sinlessness was not a prerequisite for obedience, and Jesus’ opponents knew it. In fact, the sacrificial system built into the Law presupposed that its adherents were not without sin. There is obviously more to this story than we’re usually told. How often have you heard it said that Jesus set aside the Law in this instance to establish “forgiveness” and “grace” in its place?

In retellings of this account, the scribes and Pharisees are often presented as villains for their strict obedience to the demands of the Law. In contrast, Jesus is portrayed as kind and compassionate, willing to dismiss the Law’s severe demands and lower God’s high standards in favour of a more “loving” approach. But if this were the case, as we’ve already noted, Jesus himself would be guilty of transgressing the Law he was supposed to fulfil. Yet, we know Jesus didn’t transgress the law, as just a few verses later, he admits that his opponents were unable to convict him of any sin (Jn. 8:46). So, what is going on here?

Our problem is that we have the story entirely backwards. It is not the scribes and the Pharisees who are the strict adherents to the Law, but Jesus. It is not Jesus who is lowering the strict standard of the Law, but the scribes and Pharisees. It is not the scribes and the Pharisees who are preserving and upholding the Law, but Jesus. It is not Jesus who is deviating from the Law to establish a new standard, it is the scribes and the Pharisees. But how was this the case if Jesus pardons the woman when the Law required her death?

Jesus’ opponents did not up and leave because they suddenly realized that only the sinless could hurl the first stone. That was never a requirement for obedience under the Law. The scribes and Pharisees left because Jesus highlighted the fact that they had sinned by failing to meet the requirements of the very Law to which they were appealing (i.e. Lev. 20:10). Moses did not just command Israel to “stone such a woman,” as Jesus’ opponents claimed. He also demanded that no one be put to death without sufficient evidence. This included the testimony of at least two eyewitnesses.

As Deuteronomy 17:5-6 states: “…you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.”

When the scribes and Pharisees brought the woman before Jesus and accused her of committing adultery, there were no eyewitnesses to act, evident by Jesus’ response: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” This was not Jesus’ effort to dismiss or lower the standard of the Law, but to maintain it. The very next verse in Deuteronomy 17 stipulates that the first stone to be hurled is to come from the hand of those who testified as witnesses to the act.

Verse 7 states: “The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

The absence of the first stone meant the absence of sufficient witnesses. The absence of witnesses meant the scribes and the Pharisees were guilty of violating the requirements of the Law. The first stone, if it were to be thrown, could therefore only be hurled in sinful defiance of Deuteronomy 17:7. If there were no witnesses, then a false witness was necessary. And Jesus’ opponents knew well that to be exposed as a false witness is to sentence yourself to the same fate as your victim (Deut. 19:18-20). No one was prepared for that, and so we see the scribes and Pharisees departed, “one by one, beginning with the older ones.”

Jesus was not setting aside the Law of Moses (Heb. 10:28), but the opposite. He was upholding it. This incident is not a lesson in dismissing God’s Law, but in preserving it. It was in Jesus’ obedience to the Law that the guilty woman escaped death. Jesus knew that she had sinned. That is why he charged her to “sin no more.” What her accusers lacked was the lawful grounds for warranting the execution in keeping with the Law of God.

What we find in this account is that it was the scribes and Pharisees, the villains of the story, who were guilty, once again, of setting aside the commandments of God (Matt. 15:6; Mk. 7:8-9). It was Jesus’ opponents who lowered God’s righteous standard, who relaxed the Law, and whose definition of “love” was not within the bounds of the Law.

Jesus, on the other hand, upheld the Law. He demanded that its requirements be fully met. It was the lowering of the Law’s standard that demanded the adulterous woman’s immediate execution. It was the strict adherence to the Law’s standard that preserved her life. John 8 is not a lesson for us in pious disobedience to God’s Law. We cannot set aside what God has decreed under the guise of “love” or “justice” because it is God alone who defines what these things look like.

So, the next time you hear somebody appealing to Jesus’ supposed selective obedience in John 8 as an indication of how we are to relate to the Law, remind them that they’re really siding, not with Jesus, but with the villains of the story.

If you’ve ever baked a cake, you know that every ingredient plays a crucial role. You can’t just throw random things into the mix and expect a perfect outcome. The same principle applies to society. If we want a community that upholds a specific set of values, then the individuals within that society must also hold to those values. When the values of the individuals change, the values of the community will inevitably follow.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Western nations undergoing the so-called “multicultural experiment.” Once thriving, free, safe, and prosperous, the West was the envy of the world. As a result, it saw an influx of migrants—an influx that has only increased over the years. However, many of these migrants did not come from culturally similar backgrounds. They did not necessarily share the Christian religion or Christian values. Instead, they sought the economic advantages of a prosperous society.

Yet, in this pursuit, many failed to recognize why Western societies became prosperous in the first place. The foundation of the West’s success was its Christian culture, which was rooted in Christian values, which in turn were drawn from the Christian faith itself.

In effect, we altered the recipe without realizing how it would impact the final product. And now, we face the consequences: fragmented, low-trust societies where foreign conflicts spill onto our streets—whether through protests, threats, or, worse, through violence.

Governments now find themselves between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they have been conditioned to celebrate multiculturalism as an unquestionable good. On the other, they are forced to confront the reality that not all cultures are compatible with one another.

What’s more, Australians have long been told that no one holds an exclusive claim to truth. That there is no transcendent moral standard to which we must, as a collective, conform. That all cultures are equal, and that Australia, by definition, is multicultural—without a distinct, unified culture of its own.

But this belief system is a recipe for division, and division spells disaster. A society cannot function cohesively if its people are separated by conflicting cultural practices and moral frameworks. A society cannot function cohesively if it is superficially united, but fundamentally divided.

If you want to bake a cake, you need the right ingredients. You can’t just throw in anything and expect the same results. You also can’t blame the correct ingredients for the inevitable failure—yet politicians often do just that to avoid accountability.

Ultimately, the people, and therefore, the values we introduce determine the societies we create. Communities will naturally reflect the beliefs and principles of their dominant groups. If a significant influx of people does not share Christian values, it is unrealistic to expect the communities they form to uphold those values.

Simply put, “whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Gal. 6:7).

Today, the world claims to have outgrown Christianity. And yet, it hasn’t stopped making moral demands. The question is, by whose authority?

One person calls abortion “healthcare.” Another calls it the murder of the innocent. One person condemns the death penalty as barbaric. Another argues that it is a just punishment for the most severe crimes.

Both sides appeal to justice. Both claim the moral high ground. But by what standard can either of their claims be judged?

As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”

When we call something unjust, we are doing more than expressing a personal dislike. We are claiming that something is objectively wrong, regardless of whether others approve of it or agree with it.

But if morality is merely a matter of opinion, on what grounds can we condemn another man’s actions as evil? By what authority is our opinion superior to his?

As such, to call something unjust is to assume that justice means something more than personal preference. Disagreement does not eliminate the need for an objective standard. It makes that standard indispensable.

Christianity identifies it in the character and law of God.

When Jesus commanded us to love our neighbours as ourselves, He was not replacing the Old Testament with a softer, “more Christian” morality. He was citing Leviticus 19:18. He was quoting Old Testament law.

Indeed, Christ said that loving God and loving our neighbour are the two commandments upon which all the Law and the Prophets depend (Matt. 22:37–40).

They are not substitutes for God’s commandments; they are their summary.

Paul is even more explicit. Prohibitions against adultery, murder, theft and covetousness are summed up in loving one’s neighbour, because “love does no wrong to a neighbour” (Rom. 13:8–10).

God’s law does not compete with or contradict love. It defines the conduct love requires.

If the unborn child is our neighbour, love cannot justify killing him. If murder is evil, justice can’t be reduced to our feelings about what we imagine is a fair punishment. Scripture gives civil authorities a real, though accountable, duty to punish wrongdoing (Gen. 9:6; Rom. 13:4).

Our age pretends it can discard God’s law while throwing about words like rights, justice, equality and compassion. But detached from an authority higher than man, these are mere labels that competing groups attach to their preferred policies.

But the question we must continually ask is, by whose standard? Who gets to decide what is just and unjust? Parliament? The courts? The majority? Whatever opinion happens to be ideologically fashionable at the moment?

The secular state prides itself on being “neutral.” It’s not. Every law permits some acts and forbids others. Every law embodies a moral judgement about good and evil.

Reject God’s authority, and religious authority does not disappear. Human opinion simply takes its place, and the only thing distinguishing one opinion from another is who has the power to impose his views on everyone else.

Western nations, having cast off their Christian moral inheritance, now drift like ships without rudders. And they’ve mistaken the direction of the current for moral progress. If you’ve read the book of Judges, you’ll be familiar with the pattern: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg. 21:25).

We don’t need a morality above God’s law. We need the humility to recognise that no such morality exists.

If God’s law commands love and reveals what love requires, every alternative appealed to will be less just, less righteous, and less loving.

New research has revealed a dramatic expansion in access to abortion medication following government reforms, with thousands more pharmacies now ordering drugs used to end an unborn human life.

The availability of abortion medication across Australia has increased substantially following regulatory changes introduced in 2023, according to new research published in JAMA Network Open.

The study, published on 7 October, found that the number of Australian pharmacies ordering MS-2 Step, a medication used to terminate pregnancies up to nine weeks’ gestation, increased from 2,228 in the two years before the reforms to 4,107 in the two years following them.

Researchers estimated that by July 2025, the number of pharmacies ordering the medication each month was 48.6% higher than would have been expected without the regulatory changes.

The number of Australian postcodes containing at least one pharmacy ordering the medication also increased from 915 to 1,292.

The increase followed a Therapeutic Goods Administration decision to remove additional certification requirements for prescribers and registration requirements for dispensing pharmacists.

The changes, which took effect on 1 August 2023, made abortion medication more accessible through ordinary pharmacies.

While the study confirms a substantial expansion in pharmacy distribution, it does not establish whether the reforms increased the total number of abortions performed.

The findings do, however, raise concerns about the growing normalisation of abortion as a natural form of birth control, despite its fundamental distinction from contraception, that is, the intentional ending of an unborn human life.

Beyond the fatal consequences for the child, the increasing ease of access risks encouraging women to make an irreversible decision without fully considering its moral implications or psychological consequences.

More than 7,200 high school students and youth leaders gathered in the Blue Mountains for this year’s KYCK conferences, with organisers reporting nearly 100 first-time commitments to Jesus Christ.

In an update published on October 2, organisers reported that attendees represented 267 youth groups from 34 denominations across four weekends in Katoomba. Groups travelled from across Australia, including the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory.

Across the conferences, organisers recorded 98 first-time commitments to Christ, 507 recommitments and another 132 young people expressing a desire to learn more about Jesus.

The final weekend alone attracted more than 1,200 attendees, with 26 making first-time commitments.

Run by Katoomba Christian Convention, KYCK brings high school students together for Bible teaching, worship and encouragement to follow Christ. This year’s teaching focused on God’s deep mercy.

For many of us who are accustomed to a newsfeed filled with cultural decay, stories like this are an encouraging reminder that God is still at work.

We regularly report on nations rejecting Christ, governments undermining biblical morality, and institutions abandoning the truths that once guided them. There is plenty to grieve. When a society rejects God’s authority, Christians should hardly be surprised to see confusion about good and evil follow.

But we must be careful that our attention to those developments does not leave us blind to the work happening beyond the headlines.

Every week, parents open their Bibles with their children. Pastors faithfully preach the Gospel. Youth leaders answer questions, pray with teenagers and invite them to trust in Christ. Young Christians bring their friends to church. And much of it happens quietly, without any public recognition.

Stories like this give us a glimpse of that work. Thousands of young people gathering to hear Scripture taught should encourage Christians who have begun to wonder whether the next generation has any interest in the things of God.

There are also signs of renewed interest elsewhere. Barna research published in September found that 34 per cent of surveyed American adults aged 18 to 35 were attending church more often than a year earlier, compared with 21 per cent attending less. Prayer topped the spiritual reasons they gave for showing up.

This should give us reason to question the assumption that younger people are moving inevitably and uniformly away from Christianity.

We should stop treating the next generation as though it already belongs to “secularism.” These young people need to hear that Christ offers forgiveness, that His Word is true, and that their lives have a purpose beyond satisfying the demands of an increasingly confused culture.

“Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says, ‘I’m in favour of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.”

That was Pope Leo XIV’s assessment. But that accusation collapses the moment we ask a question that should hardly need answering: Is there a moral difference between killing an innocent child and executing a convicted murderer? Is there a moral difference, for example, between killing a child and killing a child killer?

One sheds innocent blood. The other, when justly administered, punishes the person responsible for shedding it.

But treating these acts as morally equivalent blurs the distinction on which justice itself hangs.

A Christian doesn’t become inconsistent by opposing murder and supporting a just punishment for murder. Both convictions can flow from the same foundational truth that human beings are made in the image of God, and their lives must never be treated cheaply.

That is precisely the reason God institutes capital punishment in Genesis 9:6:

“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood,
by man shall his blood be shed:
for in the image of God made he man.”

Notice the rationale here. God grounds the punishment in the dignity of the victim. The murderer has destroyed someone who bears the image of his Creator. As such, the gravity of that crime warrants the severity of the sentence.

It is the sanctity of human life that is the foundation of the penalty.

Anyone claiming that a high regard for human life necessarily rules out capital punishment must reckon with this passage, because God expressly connects the two. It is because human life is sacred that its deliberate destruction demands such a severe reckoning.

The Pope’s formulation declares these convictions incompatible. Genesis brings them together.

For Christians, that should settle which authority requires correction. If someone’s moral assessment makes God’s judgments appear inconsistent, it is the assessment that must change. God does not answer to our standard of justice. We answer to His.

At this point, the obvious objection is that the murderer also bears God’s image. Of course he does. But bearing God’s image does not place a man beyond judgment for what he does to another image-bearer.

Human dignity includes moral responsibility. We are creatures capable of answering for our actions. The murderer’s humanity makes him accountable; it does not make his victim’s blood irrelevant.

Of course, Genesis 9:6 was not given in ignorance of the murderer’s humanity. The God who created man knew perfectly well whom He was commanding to be punished.

So, why should taking human life more seriously require treating its deliberate destruction less seriously?

A murdered person cannot be restored to his family. His children cannot recover their father. His parents cannot recover their son. The life taken is beyond the power of any court to return. Justice must reckon with that loss.

However, compassion becomes morally distorted when it has endless words for the murderer and scarcely anything to say about the person he murdered. The victim’s life mattered. His blood matters. A society’s response should make that unmistakably clear.

But it’s not just about punishment for the crime. Capital punishment also permanently restrains the offender. An executed murderer cannot kill another victim, whether in prison or after release. Society’s responsibility to protect life extends to those who might otherwise become his next victims.

Yes, imprisonment can restrain an offender too. But it is still less than just, as a life sentence could still only be carried out at the expense of the society that was wronged.

Yet, whether a murderer can be confined is distinct from whether death is a just punishment for the murder he has already committed. Justice concerns both the protection of potential victims and the punishment deserved for an actual crime.

A prison cell does not, by its mere availability, render God’s prescribed penalty immoral or unjust.

The Bible also recognises the warning carried by punishment. Deuteronomy 19:20 says that others will “hear, and fear” and refrain from committing the same evil.

This principle reflects a sober understanding of fallen human nature. Some people will refuse to do evil because they love what is good. Others may be restrained by fear of its consequences. A just society has reason to care about both.

We should therefore be slower to congratulate ourselves on our “moral superiority” over previous generations—especially at the rate at which we execute the unborn. Their willingness to impose severe punishment does not prove that they valued life less. It may reveal that they took the destruction of life far more seriously.

Of course, this is not an argument to give the state a licence to kill anyone they wish. A wrongful execution sheds the very innocent blood that justice is bound to protect. It turns the judge, jury, and executioners into the murderers themselves. It blurs and inverts the distinction between the innocent and the guilty.

The same God who authorises punishment for the guilty forbids the execution of the innocent. Exodus 23:7 commands: “The innocent and righteous slay thou not.” Deuteronomy 17:6 requires adequate witnesses before a capital sentence can be carried out.

The state must establish guilt, judge impartially and act within its lawful authority. A government cannot make an execution righteous merely by paperwork or decree.

As such, those who support just capital punishment should insist on rigorous safeguards precisely because innocent life is sacred. God’s law demands a high standard of evidence and holds malicious witnesses accountable: anyone proved to have deliberately given false testimony faces the very punishment he sought to bring upon the accused (Deut. 19:16–19).

And the New Testament gives Christians no reason to treat God’s justice as something embarrassing that must now be explained away.

Paul calls the law “holy, and just, and good” in Romans 7:12. That does not mean every Mosaic penalty transfers unchanged into every modern legal system. It does mean Christians should never condemn as inherently immoral a punishment God Himself commanded.

More directly, Romans 13:4 describes the governing authority as God’s servant, bearing the sword to execute judgment against wrongdoing. The sword is a weapon of execution.

Civilians are forbidden to pursue private vengeance. Civil authorities are charged with punishing evil. A Christian can forgive a murderer while recognising that the murderer deserves punishment. He can pray for the offender’s salvation while supporting a just sentence.

Abortion deliberately takes the life of an innocent unborn child. Just capital punishment takes the life of an offender whose guilt and liability to that punishment have been lawfully established.

The unborn child has committed no crime. The convicted murderer is being sentenced for one.

Any definition of “pro-life” that requires us to disregard that difference is a definition Christians should reject.

God forbids murder. God authorises capital punishment. And He grounds that punishment in the value of the human life the murderer destroyed.

There is no contradiction for Christians to apologise for here.

The Pope’s assertion fails because it treats the defence of innocent life and the punishment of its deliberate destruction as competing and contradictory convictions. Scripture treats them as consistent demands of justice.

We should too.

The argument over migration numbers is important. But before asking how many people Australia should admit, we need to answer a more fundamental question: What is Australia actually for?

Australia’s migration debate has finally shifted.

The Albanese Government has now committed to reducing net overseas migration to 225,000 by 2027–28, after the latest ABS…

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The Albanese Government’s latest online safety laws would expressly authorise Australia’s eSafety Commissioner to operate fake online identities and generate content using artificial intelligence.

The proposed Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill defines a “sock puppet identity” as a false or fictitious identity assumed while using an online service.

Under the government’s exposure draft, the eSafety Commissioner would be permitted to assume such identities to perform regulatory functions.

What’s more, the draft expressly authorises the Commissioner to use these identities to “generate material using an online service (including by means of artificial intelligence),” provided producing, possessing or disseminating that material is not otherwise illegal.

The independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act specifically recommended giving the regulator authority to use fake, anonymous or pseudonymous accounts to observe or interact with online services.

The government says the accounts are intended to test platforms and their algorithms, not to surveil individual Australians.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has said such accounts could, for example, allow the regulator to test whether platforms are actually applying age-assurance measures as claimed.

But why should an unelected government regulator require the legal power to create fake identities, interact anonymously with online services and generate AI material?

The powers come as the broader Digital Duty of Care proposal would impose obligations on online services to mitigate government-defined categories of harm. According to the Prime Minister’s announcement, failure to comply could attract penalties of up to $109.2 million.

But even if we assume the best intentions here, the issue is always bigger than what the present eSafety Commissioner intends to do.

Laws always outlive their initial architects. Powers granted for one supposedly benevolent purpose can later be exercised by different people, against different targets, under different definitions of “harm.”

At the very least, a government that wants the power to police fake accounts while simultaneously authorising its online safety regulator to operate fake accounts of its own should expect Australians to question its credibility.

When it comes to defining biological sex, we already know the Albanese Government’s position is silence for the sake of appearing “tolerant.”

So, there’s no real surprise that pro-LGBTQ+ Senator Penny Wong would mislabel Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash’s biological reality bill a “stunt.”

Last month, when responding to questions from Cash about Labor rejecting her Restoring Common Sense and Recognising Biological Sex bill twice, Wong accused Cash of being divisive, stating, “The reality is you are never for equality when it comes to women.

“Do you know what you are for? You are for a stunt which is nothing more than division, and everybody can see that.

“This is not about delivering change that improves the lives of women and girls.”

The exchange was fierce. Cash challenged Wong, and the Labor Senator responded by repeatedly asserting what she described as a policy of respect, equity, equality and Albanese’s focus on domestic violence as proof the party is pro-women.

This was Cash’s second attempt to introduce and debate the common-sense amendment to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act.

The Labor-Green-controlled Senate rejected Cash’s first submission 21 yes, 30 no in July, and again on 15 September, 22 yes, 32 no.

If passed, the Liberal Senator’s bill would have:

1. Affirmed that “women and girls, and men and boys, are entitled to privacy, dignity and safety.”

2. Recognised “biological sex as a real and enduring characteristic.”

3. Recognised that biological sex is how men and boys, women and girls are identified.

4. Protected single-sex spaces in accord with “the principles of fairness and common sense.”

5. Restored clarity and certainty to the law by defining the meaning of biological sex.

Contrary to critics like Wong, Cash argued that the bill would not have violated or hindered current protections against discrimination.

Section 4C was the most important.

Under the senator’s amendment, the law would again recognise that a man is someone whose sex is male, and a woman is someone whose sex is female.

The law would also have acknowledged that “nothing after birth affects a person’s sex. Including, for example, any subsequent medical, surgical or hormonal intervention or any change to the person’s birth certificate or other identity document.”

After the biological reality bill was defeated the first time, Cash took to social media in protest, stating on X that Albanese had “betrayed Australian women and girls.”

“Labor and the Greens killed it before it could even be debated,” she said.

“Our bill would protect the rights of women and girls in single-sex spaces. For example, in toilets, change rooms, domestic violence shelters and sporting facilities.

“That isn’t radical. It isn’t controversial. It’s common sense.

“Instead of standing with Australian women and girls, Anthony Albanese chose political ideology over their privacy, dignity and safety.”

The July bill was reintroduced by Cash in September.

This followed the High Court’s refusal of special leave, ruling that Sall Grover could not appeal, after losing her free speech and female-only spaces battle in Tickle v Giggle.

Remarking on the September outcome and Wong’s “stunt” smear, Cash said on X, Wong and Albanese “have told Australian women what Labor thinks of us when we stand up for our biological rights.

“A woman is a woman. A man is a man.

“Acknowledging this biological reality in the law is not ‘a stunt.’ It’s common sense.”

Kudos, Senator Michaelia Cash.

“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” (Ephesians 5:11)

Western Australia is preparing to overhaul its discrimination laws, potentially restricting the ability of Christian schools to require staff to actually be Christian.

The Cook Government has committed to amending the Equal Opportunity Act 1984, after broadly accepting recommendations from the WA Law Reform Commission in 2022. The final bill has not yet been released, so its precise provisions remain unknown.

But one recommendation should concern Christian parents.

The Commission recommended that religious schools only be permitted to discriminate in employment where conformity with their religious beliefs is an “inherent requirement” of the particular job, among other conditions.

OK—so, who decides which jobs actually require Christianity?

Is it just the school chaplain? The Bible teacher? Well, what about the principal, maths teacher, science teacher, counsellor, receptionist, or gardener?

Christian schools told the review that maintaining a community of practising Christians was essential to preserving their religious identity.

The Commission recorded arguments that Christian formation extends throughout the school community, not merely to those explicitly teaching religion.

And that’s the point.

A Christian school isn’t supposed to be a secular school with Bible classes attached. Christianity shapes what the school believes about truth, morality, human nature, authority, sexuality, family and the very purpose of education.

A Christian maths teacher doesn’t need Christianity to calculate an equation. But neither does a Christian school employ teachers merely to transmit isolated pieces of information, disconnected from the world in which God created, or from the purpose for which He created them.

They are helping form children—children whose faith impacts every aspect of life.

This is why parents deliberately choose Christian education.

Yet an “inherent requirement” test potentially gives an outside authority the power to determine whether Christianity is sufficiently relevant to a particular position to justify employing a Christian.

It gives a government bureaucrat authority to decide the extent of Christ’s Lordship.

Think about how strange that is.

Nobody seriously expects the Labor Party to employ people committed to advancing Liberal Party values. We all know that organisations need people who believe in their mission.

So, why should Christian organisations be different?

The state has every right to prohibit genuine abuse and wrongdoing. But it is another matter entirely for the state to decide which parts of a Christian institution actually require Christianity.

As Abraham Kuyper famously declared, there isn’t a square inch of human existence over which Christ does not declare, “Mine!”

A Christian school should not have to confine its Christianity to chapel and Bible class, because central to the Christian faith is the fact that Christ is Lord over all of life.

If a Christian school can’t require the people responsible for shaping its Christian students to share that Christian conviction, well then, it’s Christian in name only. Maybe that’s the goal.

New South Wales MLC John Ruddick has a message for Australians debating immigration: before we argue about how many people Australia should admit today, we should remember who built the country in the first place.

Speaking in Parliament last month, Ruddick took aim at South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, who recently argued that migrants built Australia.

Ruddick called the claim a “historical absurdity,” and said the foundations of Australian civilisation were laid long before the era of mass post-war migration.

“Australia was built by settlers,” Ruddick argued, particularly British settlers who arrived in a remote and largely undeveloped land and set about establishing farms, roads, bridges, factories, towns, cities and institutions.

That distinction matters, he said. A migrant arriving in an established country is entering an existing civilisation. A settler arriving in a wilderness is attempting to build one.

And the decision to establish a permanent British colony on the other side of the world was hardly an undertaking for the faint-hearted.

The First Fleet arrived in 1788. The colony that followed faced isolation, shortages, disease, enormous distances and the constant possibility of failure. Even while Britain was facing the threat of revolutionary France and Napoleon, the experiment at New South Wales continued.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, millions of people from the British Isles came to Australia. They cleared land, established farms and businesses, built infrastructure and founded the communities that would eventually become the Australian nation.

Ruddick argues that modern Australians should recognise the magnitude of that achievement.

And he extends the argument to immigration itself.

Why, he asks, do migrants fleeing poverty, instability or authoritarianism so often seek out English-speaking countries?

Because they are not merely seeking geography.

They are seeking the institutions and inheritance that make those countries prosperous and peaceful: the English language, the common law, representative government, private property, stable institutions and a culture shaped by centuries of British political and legal development.

Australia’s prosperity did not appear from nowhere.

It was inherited.

That doesn’t mean immigrants don’t contribute to it. It means they contribute to something that already exists.

And Ruddick argues that this should produce something increasingly rare in public debate: gratitude.

A person who arrives in Australia and receives citizenship has been given access to a country whose institutions and prosperity were built over generations.

That citizen should be welcomed as an equal Australian.

But equality before the law doesn’t require historical amnesia.

Australians whose families arrived seven generations ago and Australians who became citizens yesterday should be treated exactly the same under Australian law.

But both, Ruddick argues, should be capable of recognising the extraordinary achievement of those who came before them.

The evidence of that inheritance is written across Sydney itself.

Macquarie Street.

Phillip Street.

Hunter Street.

George Street.

Pitt Street.

Castlereagh Street.

And Sydney itself.

These names are reminders of the people who established the institutions and communities upon which modern Australia was built.

Australia can treat every citizen equally while still remembering the people who laid its foundations.

And Ruddick believes that remembering those foundations should inform how Australia approaches immigration today. As such, he is calling for a five-year pause on immigration.

And that would be entirely consistent with the growing consensus among Australians—though some would argue that five years is nowhere near long enough.

Last month, 7NEWS reported on a Newspoll survey finding that 66 per cent of Australians want fewer migrants allowed into the country—a notably high proportion given that around one-third of Australia’s population was born overseas.

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