Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler and a host of other people sought to aggrandise themselves and build an empire by military might.  Karl Marx and his followers want to change the world by political revolution.  Jesus Christ is doing it by Christian love, and has been doing it for two millennia, with many more to come.

Love and hatred co-exist in this world.  They are not morally equivalent but some people have chosen to hate others, often out of jealousy, but often because they have themselves been victims of hatred from a young age.  Hatred and violence  breed more hatred and violence.  The Gospel of love preached by Jesus Christ brakes this cycle of hatred and violence.

However, very few people know the Gospel.  It can take a long time for people to discover those who know the Gospel.  Mohammed Fyaz was raised in a muslim home in the north of England.  He rejected islam and wandered aimlessly through life until he eventually he came in contact with a Christian congregation.  His biography Letting Love Win: How I left Islam and found God, British Pakistani Christian Association, 2017, p. 101 relates: “I enjoyed the friendship.  These people cared about others.  They appeared happy.  They were warm towards me, even though they knew nothing about me.  It had taken me years to find people who accepted me for who I was, and now I had a whole church full of them.”  Commenting on the love he discovered among Christians, which he never found in islam, he writes p. 124: “Whenever I had come across people doing ‘good works’, they always turned out to be Christian groups.  To me, these role models mirrored the way Jesus helped the sick and suffering while he was on earth.”

The pity is that it took Mohammed so long to come across such Christians.  We have the Government to blame for this, with its poor education policy.  This results in the unwillingness of many people to even speak to the godly, being influenced by their irreligious peer group.

Political leaders do not know how to stem the rise of hatred.  Antisemitism and so-called racism are but one manifestation of the anger and resentment in the human breast, unsanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and sadly found even among the godly.

Social media enables hate-filled persons to vent their spleen in an indiscriminate manner.  In the past one could choose one’s friends and neighbours and thus be rather isolated from ‘how the other half live’, but now a thief and a scammer is only a telephone call away and being slandered is not simply a mouse-click away but a mere fingertip away, hatred hovering over its mobile phone.

Such spreaders of hate cannot complain when God’s fingertips begin to finger them, as surely they will.

Meanwhile Jesus said: ‘If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you’ Lk 11:20.  This is what we need, to cast out the devilish spirit and loutish behaviour so evident in today’s society.

It is coming and it will not be a moment too soon.  However, it will be too late for many – please make sure it is not too late for you.

‘God says: behold, now is the day of salvation’ 2Cor 6:2.