GOD Tech: The Mark of the Beast by David John Jeffery
Onwards and Upwards Publishers

As the world approaches the year 2028 Christians have found themselves increasingly marginalised, a process that began imperceptibly some fifteen years earlier.

This work of fiction is an exciting, yet worrying glimpse into a future where GOD is now a term to describe a fearful and controlling World Government, A place and a Time where dissent and freedom of speech ahave been completely lost. This book serves as a warning to complacency.

This is a well written, fictional tale that could very easily occur now. It is set in a climate where the war on terrorism caused a third world war. This new war cause such devastation that the world would do anything for peace, even give up some of their freedoms. The controlling world government took authority on everything including religion. This is a story about a Christian family’s struggle to resist this government. It was a great read and would recommend it to anyone.

I just join you in prayer that those affected find employment quickly and God blesses them mightily

Anyway, it’s good opportunity for me to highlight the site’s the Comments Policy. Here’s the introductory paragraph:

The basic ground rules are simple, however: please keep your comments clean, polite and on-topic. Please remember that comments are conversation and comments that the blog owner or administrator (“we”) regard as abusive, inappropriate, off-topic or just plain snarky will either be deleted without notice, edited or marked as spam. Edited comments will normally be flagged accordingly; deleted comments will simply disappear.

In the ideal world we’d never have to apply that, of course, but as Roger’s redundancy demonstrates, we don’t live in an ideal world — I too am appalled that he’s the one who drew the short straw on the reps team: he is indeed worth his weight in gold and was unfailingly helpful, always cheerful and willing to go the extra mile in my time at LST. STL/TMD are the poorer for his departure and I for one will be contacting them about this decision: my thanks to you for letting us know.

As you say, yes, I am extremely annoyed at the cavalier way that STL have treated their loyal staff and want all who deal with this outfit to know about it and then send them a message, that it is just not on to sack staff with the experience and loyalty that Roger Compton has shown to them over the years.This employment practice of throwing people on the scrapheap, is NOT what you expect to hear about from a supposedly Christian company. My view is, if they really need to lose some people, leave the loyal foot soldiers alone and start with some of the (too many) management they have running their operation now who are causing no end of problems for the staff who have worked for them so faithfully and making their, hithertoo happy jobs, now a misery. As I said, i hope others will post on the STL blog (http://tmdistribution.blogspot.com/) and make their feelings known.

http://christianbookshopsblog.org.uk/2010/03/10/christian-resources-together-last-few-days-for-awards-nominations/#comment-13045

Perhaps a sorry might be a nice gesture?

Yes I can tell you are angry – possibly rightly so as I don’t have Roger’s side of the story as to how it played out – I was really upset when STL ditched my longstanding rep, Tim Alban, virtually without notice and since then I haven’t seen an actual rep from STL/TM despite asking – though I do get emails from Lawrie who again is a very nice person and whom I have known for a great many years, but it’s not quite the same – I used to see a Ritchie/Penfold agent too, I don’t see one of them now either strangely. So I can apprieciate how deeply sad this situation is.

My prayers and thoughts are with Roger Compton at this time, I used to see him many years ago just after he first joined STL and he was always a wonderful person to deal with. His customers will surely miss him – I pray he soon finds new employment and a new peace and contentment. Redundancy is a painful thing indeed. My prayers are also with the remaining staff at TMD too and those entrustred with their care and the care of the business, may God grant them wisdom, compassion and insight so they may always do the right thing and understand the things that are done.

I presume he was writing for a specific audience: one that knows, for example, what is meant by terms like pre-mil and pre-trib. I didn’t but was sufficiently curious to search the meanings down from the Internet. At heart he writes about matters that help one to determine the difference between being ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’. The study and discussion questions that end each short chapter prompt reflections about how, with spiritual and human help, one might refocus one’s own life.

I particularly appreciated the author’s stress on the importance of mutual sharing of all that we are in smallish groups: cells, house groups and such like, as part of our individual and collective spiritual growth and worldly contributions.

In his introduction Howard Snyder explains how he believes North American 1980’s Christians had drifted into individualism and praises John White’s exposition of how we might overcome our drift to worldliness through our corporate lives.

My regret with John White and many doctrinaire Christians is their certitude that grace and salvation require specific beliefs: the Bible is right about everything, homosexuality must not be practised, and all that pre-millennialism and pre-tribulation business!

I agree with John White that at the core of a healthy spiritual life is openness to God, or whatever mystical power you recognise as being capable of human influence that can result in life changing positive renewal, and a desire that one might daily seek to carry out only what ‘God’ inspires and requires. We also perhaps need to explore these ideas within our families: that is indeed quite a challenge!

Andrew Hatton 29th July 2011.
(I am a 62 yo Quaker who lives in Essex, England)