Dear Friends and Family in Christ,

1) Following is an interesting article that recently appeared in the Australian newspaper stating that the Christian vote was the primary factor in the Rudd Labor Party’s rise to power in the recent election:

‘Why Labor Won the Federal Election On a Swing and a Prayer’ Christopher Pearson – March 8th, 2008 The Australian

JOHN Black is a former Labor senator from Queensland. These days he leads a demographic research and marketing group called Australian Development Strategies.

Across the political class he’s regarded as one of the most astute observers of electoral politics and his analyses of federal elections are awaited with keen interest by the secretariats of the main parties.

He’s just produced his profile of the 2007 Australian Election. The most surprising of his findings is that the religious affiliation of swinging voters played a more decisive role in determining the outcome than any other single factor. This cannot conceivably have been true in any other federal election since the Menzies era and the heyday of the Democratic Labor Party in campaigns fought over state aid to church schools and communist infiltration of the trade union movement and the ALP. Plainly commentators who’ve blithely assumed that religion is an increasing irrelevance in Australian politics will have to think again.

Black says: “The strongest correlate of the swing to Kevin Rudd’s new Labor Party was Pentecostal churchgoers, alongside Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Lutherans, Salvos, Seventh-Day Adventists and the Uniting Church.

Click the link to read the article from The Australian newpaper

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23336628-7583,00.html

2) Following is a excellent analysis on the above article by Harvey Brice from New South Wales who is a Christian standing for the truth of the Word of God!

This article from the Australian highlights the very interesting fact that the Christian vote, in particular the Pentecostal and Uniting churches, played a decisive determining role in the outcome of the Federal election.

The Christian votes were significant among those swinging vote areas that turned to Labor. The implication of this is that the Word given by Pastor Danny about the election is validated: for it was not the lefty university students who swung the vote to Labor, nor was it the factory workers worried about work choices, nor the “Warm Earthers” wanting to see Kyoto signed.

It was, rather, the Christian church that swung the vote.

As a Pentecostal friend of mine said the other day, many Christians he knows voted Labor because of the Coalition’s work choices. That means they chose work choices as a more important issue that abortion, Homosexual marriage, religious vilification laws, and such things.

We deserve the government we get. That is for sure.

I thank God for Kevin Rudd, for he would seem to be the proverbial finger in the dyke that stops the whole ocean from sweeping in and consuming the land. [cf. The fairy story from Holland.]

But there is a limit to what he can do in a party in which the majority would seem averse to anything Christian. And even though he is indeed a Christian, for which we must praise God, many of his policies are, in my humble opinion, based on popular but false scientific myths of our times.

We, the church, knew what we were doing in this election. But let no one lie to themselves and falsely say that the church was “united in prayer” before this Federal election. It was utterly disunited in this election which may yet prove to have been the most crucial in Australia’s history.

Some say Pastor Danny overstepped the mark in letting the arena of politics become an area in which specific prayer, specific words, specific advice, specific warnings, could be made.

However I think to the contrary, many Christians overstepped the mark when they let their party-political pride stand higher than the justice and righteousness of God for the nation.

People are entitled to their opinions. I also respect those who may have superior knowledge about politics and who may have special reasons for how they decided to vote.. I have some such friends.

However, there is a certain line we as Christians must cross when it comes to certain moral issues, and sadly it has been the slackening and libertine parts of the body of Christ that have dropped the ball in this case.

I don’t claim to be an expert. But the words of warning concerning the last election came from many corners, from many proven godly Christians who are at the heart of politics and who have stood faithfully for Australia’s Christian nationhood and for religious freedom for Christianity in this land.

We even had a pentecostal preacher, Pastor Danny, give a stern and solemn word. Now who was that addressed to: Catholics? The Baptists? The Lutherans? I’m sure all were welcome to it, but by and large this word was for the Pentecostals, for that is where the word needed to be heeded!

And the Pentecostals for the most part understood the conditionality that was incorporated into this word. Others may not have quite so understood it. Regrettably, some have been devastated. I hope God gives them clarity. But for the Pentecostals, I think those who rejected this word knew what they were doing and why, but I believe they were wrong reasons.

It was just wrong of people to despise the courageous step of these humble men like Pastor Danny and others in sticking their necks out to speak on what is necessary for our nation.

And wrong of people to choose those pseudo-moral issues of economics and “science fictional” ecology as having precedence over the abominable and anti-Christian things that hung in the balance in this election.