There are two kinds of Isolations, there is social and emotional:

1. Social isolation is an almost or near-complete non-contact with any individual; and
2. Emotional isolation is a state of isolation where one may have a well-functioning social world of people and things; and are isolated emotionally because they keep their feelings entirely to themselves. In this case emotional support from a brother, sister or friends is impossible.

Many of God’s people heretofore have experienced both kinds of isolations noted above:

1. Young Joseph experienced social isolation when he was cut off from the company of his family that he so dearly loved. His own brothers orchestrated Joseph’s initial isolation. They lowered him on the bed of the pit before they sold him to foreigners. Because of Joseph’s walk with God he suffered emotional isolation in Potiphar’s house and then in prison the place he was incarcerated after being falsely accused for attempted rape (see Genesis 37:12-end; 39).

2. Jeremiah was placed in a cistern that was his new residence because of his belief in God and his proclamation of God’s Word (see Jer. 38:1-13).

3. Paul was imprisoned on several occasions for the defense of the body of Christ.

4. John the apostolic leader of the church at Ephesus in A.D 70, a teacher of the Word and a witness for Jesus Christ (see Rev.1:9) was banished to the Island of Patmos. Just like the others above, they were all not imprisoned for criminal behaviour; they were all incarcerated for political reasons.

These men were prisoners for their consciences’ sake. Their freedom was violated by such detention simply for their thought, conscience and their belief.

5. In the country of China Christians are enduring social and emotional imprisonment in light of a government-backed cross demolition campaign; it is in the thousands of church crosses that have been destroyed. Hundreds of church leaders are detained without trial dates in sight and numerous church buildings have been torn down. Pastor Zhang was imprisoned for several months and he was convicted on made up charges of stealing, spying, illegally providing state secrets or intelligence to bodies outside of China.

It must be noted that all the imprisonment that are mentioned and the others in Scripture have all resulted in the furtherance of the Gospel of Christ (see Phil.1:12-13). Their social and emotional isolation took away the men of God’s happiness, but their joy remained intact. This is how the Apostle Paul puts it, “ I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.

By: Bertram Charles

Scripture: Matthew 16: Verse 15

After the Pharisees had tried unsuccessfully to ensnare and to entrap Jesus and to bring him before the civil authorities to prosecute him and to put him to death, Jesus warned his disciples to take heed and be aware of the doctrines of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Jesus compared their doctrines to leaven and advised his disciples to examine the hypocrites; watch them; be on guard lest they should become corrupt and infected with their teachings.

After performing his day’s work of teaching, performing miracles and defeating the enemy, Jesus and his disciples went away from the crowd for prayer and meditation. When they were alone at Caesarea, Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is ? “ Jesus called himself the Son of Man because he was truly and really man. He was subject to the infirmities of human nature. He was afflicted, abused and humiliated. He suffered pain, anguish, hunger, thirst, trials, tribulations and hurt. He was bruised, disgraced, insulted, scourged, mocked and scorned but of a Divine Nature and without sin.

Jesus was willing to hear the account of the people from his disciples and posed the above question to bring out their confession of their faith in Jesus. The disciples answered: the common people said John the Baptist; some Elijah; Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. These were the sentiments of the masses that followed Jesus. They had a good opinion of Jesus on account of his ministry and miracles but they fell short of the true knowledge of Christ as the Divine Son of God. The Scribes and the Pharisees opined that Jesus was a friend of publicans and sinners; a gluttonous man; a drunkard; a liar and a lunatic.

Then Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Have you settled the question of who Jesus is?

By: FAIR SHARE FOR ALL

For how Timothy Harris and the rest of Team Unity platform used to go on, I never thought that after nearly two and a half years of them in power I would have even had to lock a window in my house.

I never hear more “if you see something, say something”. The prime minister. The deputy prime minister. The commissioner of police. The top brass of the police force. All repeating the same chorus, “if you see something, say something”.“The government cannot do it alone. The police cannot do it alone. All hands must be on deck. We must come together to solve crime”.

These sayings are becoming popular too as the government tries to shift the focus away from themselves as having failed to provide the leadership that they said they had to solve our crime problem.

Similarly, for how Timothy Harris and the rest of the Team Unity cabal used to criticise the Music Festival, I never thought that it would still have been in existence today. I never thought that I would have lived to see the day when the same benefits that Labour touted as reasons for the festival are the exact reasons that Team Unity is using to justify having it.

“Muddoh” with deception!

The deception continued with the Citizenship by Investment Programme. In fact, nothing was spared. So after having launched such a vicious attack on the programme, saying that passports were being sold like black pudding on a Saturday afternoon, I never expected that nearly two and a half years later, Team Unity would have been trying to keep the programme going.

And paying people BIGLY to try to sell our passports like black pudding on a Saturday afternoon.

So having recognised that it might be beyond resuscitation, he tried, at a press conference, to say that the programme would be phased out and replaced with agriculture which he, himself, considered many years ago, was dead.

And that is why I have serious problems with this government.

If they had really believed that they had the solution for crime, if they had really believed that something was terribly wrong with the Citizenship by Investment Programme, if they had really believed that the Basseterre High School was contaminated, if they had really believed that the Music Festival was a wasted government investment, I would say forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.

By: Thinking Citizen

Some people might remember while others may not that in the latter half of the 1970’s or thereabout, the Agricultural Land Development Authority (ALDA) made plans to put down a Food Production Project on lands in the Basseterre Valley belonging to Pond/Needsmust Estates.

Dr. Joseph Christmas, who was then Head of our Water Services Department, objected to the idea of locating the Food Production Project on the said lands in the Basseterre Valley belonging to Pond/Needsmust Estates.

I cannot at this stage with any degree of certainty state the reason or reasons for Dr. Christmas’ objection to the proposal to locate the Food Production Project in the Basseterre Valley on lands belonging to Pond/Needsmust Estates. All I can say at this stage is that both Departments, the Department of Agriculture and the Water Services Department keep files. Someone should check back in those files to see if they can uncover the reason or reasons for Dr. Christmas’ objection to the site in question for the proposed Food Production Project.

In my humble opinion, the Team Unity gang has allowed its guest for money, power and position to cause it to spend millions of unnecessary dollars and make a fool of itself.

At this stage, the wisest thing for Team Unity to do is to forget its plans to build a new Basseterre High School on the Basseterre Valley Aquifer and consider going back to the old Basseterre High School on Victoria Road after the school has been adequately scrubbed and washed-down.

We must all remember that the High School on Victoria Road was abandoned not because of any sound technical or scientific reason but because it suited the personal and political plans of the members of PAM and Team Unity.

The Team Unity government has recently passed a Bill. The firearms Amendment Bill, 2017, the Prime Minister said, among other things that the Bill had just one substantive provision which is to amend the law to increase the penalty of illegal possession and use of firearms.

The effect of this amendment might very well not turn out to be what the government expected. It might only cause the criminals to be extremely circumspect where illegal guns are concerned.

By Earle Clarke, 10th June, 2017.

“Men of genuine excellence in every station in life, men of industry, of integrity, of high principle, of sterling honesty of purpose—command the spontaneous homage of mankind. It is natural to believe in such men, to have confidence in them. All that is good in the world is upheld by them and, without their presence in it, the world would not be worth living in: Martin Luther King jnr.

Dear reader: I would like to encourage you to borrow a magnifying glass or borrow your neighbour’s thick lensed glasses to assist me in the search for the materials of which our present day leader is made, so that we can conclude unanimously, why there is, cannot be, and will never be any positive development in the Federation of St. Kitts-Nevis. On numerous occasions I have advised my readers that we all give off vibrations of positivity or negativity and these vibrations are easily picked up by those with whom we come into contact. We should also be aware that our actions of yesterday could affect us negatively or positively tomorrow, so that we have to be careful about what we say and do today.

As we look at the antics of our leader yesterday, we observe a man who was impregnated with personal ambition and who played people against people like in a game of chess, in order to achieve that personal ambition of becoming the leader of the land – nothing more, nothing less. His impregnable heart and soul bore no love, no compassion and no thought for those who failed to use a magnifying glass to screen the man. Did they not pick up the vibrations exuding from him that he was all of self and none of thee? Didn’t they detect that this man was an imposter?

That his heart and soul were fortified only with the personal ambition of bulldozing his way through the political quagmire to become the third leader of an Independent Federation and, upon obtaining that goal, the country and its people could go to hell and burn up? Were we so blinded with hatred for Dr. Douglas and anything Labour, that we failed to see these signals which were perspiring from the man forcefully in heavy drops?

His very utterances should have sent up RED FLAGS of warning that this man meant no good for the Federation and its people! “Our CBI Programme provides terrorists with our passports and citizenship?” “St. Kitts is poorer than Haiti!” Do you remember these comments? Did we assail him on these erroneous and unjustified attacks on the integrity of our country? Didn’t we laugh and clap and thought it to be true when he uttered them? Did we chastise him for uttering those treacherous comments about us and our country?

We should have objected vehemently and beeped sirens of displeasure when he foisted the concoction called the unity mirage upon us, claiming that those land filled materials were the best crew he could muster and that they were worthy representatives our beautiful paradise of a Federation? Church bells, the JNF General Hospital ambulance sirens, the Fire Brigade truck sirens should all have blared loudly when this unworthy and ragged crew boarded to man our Ship of State. Were we in a drunken stupor when all these shenanigans were taking place right in front of our very eyes? Instead of taking cognizance of these happenings, we willfully and totally ignored all of them; we stifled our consciences, we buried our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich and this is why, today, we and our Federation are in dire straits!

Scripture records that, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1-4).

When we pray for a monarch or for a government, that is not a sign that we approve of either. Our prayer is not about approval, it is about love. Our prayer for a monarch and their advisors are offered not because we support them but because they are human beings whom God loves and wants to come to the awareness of the truth. Besides, they are in a location of immense advantage and spiritually exposed to assist God’s children in ways that He has made them well able. Hence, they are in need of our prayers to bring honour and glory to God.

The church is not at work at worship! Rather, the church is at rest and restoration in worship in preparation for continued work in the respective disciplines in the Kingdom of God here on earth. It is during that time of rest and restoration that all of God’s children are equipped to display their Christly principles and values with themselves and others within communities.

So then, what do we ask for in Prayer? We ask that all may know the truth and be saved. We ask that Christ Jesus may be very real to them, as they live in a very real relationship with them. Only when this lifestyle is realized by monarchs and political leaders, they will make policies and laws for the country with spiritual effervescence become contagious among our people. What is paramount then, is for, the powerful to strive to become personally like Christ by being transformed by His Holy Spirit to live in His likeness and substance. The advent of this will see self being sped into the background and honesty come to the fore; forgiveness of the enemy will be meted out and the weal, vulnerable and destitute will be nurtured.

In prayer, we ask God to make alive the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and skill specifically given to those called to such high office, to know the best way to translate their Christ-instincts into policies and law of the land.

There can never be biblical leaders who are truly mature until they come to realize that God has called them to be examples to others. Our Lord Jesus pointed out, “A disciple is not greater than his teacher, but everyone when fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). In this context, therefore, the Lord is showing that one’s true spirituality, or godliness – or lack thereof, is revealed in our actions and that such actions will of necessity influence others either for good or for evil. Students, sons, daughters, and groups, tend to emulate; they want to be like their leaders, parents, guardians, teachers, or heroes. Today’s reality, is tendency to shy away from this responsibility and reality, but in order to be a truly mature leader, one must accept this as a reality of leadership.

In a recent speech by the Prime Minister given in the National Assembly he declared that his Government has never hesitated to do the right thing and his government has always done the right thing not for the sake of EXPEDIENCY, but because it is the RIGHT thing to do.

Our Prime Minister has been telling the public so many lies that he does not know when he is telling lies from when he is telling the truth.

Take for instance the matter of the establishment of the “Public Accounts Committee.” The Prime Minister hesitated and hesitated and when he finally decided to establish the Public Accounts Committee it was done on the basis of EXPEDIENCY.

In a further matter, the matter of the Basseterre High School, the Prime Minister has gone along with the whole set of “stupidness”, not because he knows or thinks it is right, but because it is EXPEDIENT to do so.

Surely our Prime Minister could not have believed that his government was doing the right thing when it disciplined CMO Dr. Patrick Martin, most severely, and allowed the evil-doers involved to escape without any form of discipline or punishment. The Timothy Harris government dealt with CMO Dr. Patrick Martin on the basis of EXPEDIENCY. Even a fool would have known that Dr. Martin was not deserving of any discipline or punishment.

The nasty thing about the whole affair is that the Bishop is not known to be a scholar or someone who loves Learning and Teaching.

He is not a person who could easily attract the respect and admiration of the other Principals or teachers. He was appointed Principal of the School just for the sake of Expediency.

Team Unity promised the general public Openness and Transparency. All we are getting now that Team Unity is government is Secrecy, Hypocrisy and misleading Propaganda.

Team Unity promised the electorate good governance and Financial Stringency. Instead what Team Unity has given us is A Stem Cell Research Project and the saga of a Chinese Refugee and paying people in St. Kitts-Nevis for protection.