Well, thank you very much for the invitation here. It's a privilege to be with you at your midweek meeting again. I've been here a number of years ago and it's always a delight to renew fellowship. And we trust that the presentation will be helpful to you. And that's correct. Not many people have picked up, but this is the Institute's 30th year. And we do raise our Ebenezer and we say hitherto if the Lord helped us and we return the praise and the glory to him. I have a presentation that will address some of the issues facing us in our nation at the present time. We'll be looking at the definition of gender, as the Word of God defines it. We'll be looking at the sanctity of human life, as God has defined it, and also some gospel freedom and liberty of conscience cases. But before we look at the issues of our nation. We want to think about what the Word of God has to say, because what matters most is not what my opinion is, or your opinion is, or even our church's opinion is, or the Christian Institute's opinion is. What matters is that the Word of God is our yardstick. It sets our perspective on all things in life. So if you turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 2, 2 Corinthians 2, and we want to read from verse 14, sorry, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, that is 2 Corinthians chapter 5 from verse 14 through to chapter 6 and verse 1. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse number 14. For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh. Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. Well, may God bless his word to every one of our hearts. Identity is a key fixation in our culture at the present time. How many times have you heard people saying things like, be who you want to be or stay true to yourself? Certainly that is the message our children are receiving in Disney's Frozen 2 movie to give but one example. A character finding themselves is at the heart of many films, many novels, many storybooks, and very often that journey of self-discovery is a selfish journey. Identity comes down to the question, who am I? It goes deeper than the relationships, the roles and the responsibilities that every one of us has in life. So for example, a man may be a husband, he may be a father, a son, a brother, he may be an employee in a workplace, he may be a citizen in a nation, and all of those things are true about that man, but really they answer the question, what am I? However, they are often used as things in which people look for their identity. But when we ask the question, who am I? We are driving at the core identity that underpins every other feature of our lives. And this question of who we are is not just aimless philosophy. It is a crucial question to answer because it determines how you and I live. And of course, the word of God has the answer. In fact, it has several answers because it addresses the question on different levels and from different standpoints. And we want to unpack some of those in the next few moments. The first thing to say is that from a biblical perspective, our identity is not something that we as human beings choose for ourselves or construct for ourselves. Our identity is not fluid. It does not change as human beings reinvent themselves. Our identity is given. It is revealed. God as creator tells us as creatures who we are. The Bible is clear, for example, in Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, that we are created in the image of God. That is true of every human being from conception It has fundamental implications for how we value human life. And I'll address that later on this evening. The Bible is also clear in the same verse that we are created as either male or female. And this must have a profound impact upon how we think about and engage with the current challenge of radical gender ideology. And again, I'll address that in some moments time. Another universal truth about the identity of every human being is that all of us are sinners. As Romans chapter three famously declares, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We are sinners by our nature, sinners by our choices, sinners by our behavior, sinners by our desires, sinners by our thoughts, by our words, and by our deeds. Every one of us was created to worship God. But because of sin, we worship created things rather than the creator. We exchange the truth of God for a lie, as Romans chapter one explains. And instead of finding fulfillment in relationship with God, we look for that fulfillment in other things. But of course, the good news of the gospel is that the Lord Jesus Christ can transform and reform our identity. And I want to spend a few moments thinking about what scripture has to say regarding a Christian believer's identity. In verse 17 of the passage we read, it states, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. In the Lord Jesus Christ, we are new creatures. We are taken from sin and reconciled to God. A Christian believer has this one core identity through which everything else in life is to be viewed. We are in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not who we used to be. We're not who we once were. Outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible tells us that we were, by nature, children of wrath. And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, it lists those who identify themselves by their sinful practices, the greedy, the thieves, the drunkards, the sexually immoral, and several other categories. And then comes that glorious verse 11, which says, and such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. So the answer to the question, who am I, changes from sinner to child of God and joint heir with Jesus Christ. Christian believers are no longer defined by our sin, either our past sin or our present sin. Rather, we are defined by who scripture teaches we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. As Galatians chapter 2 tells us, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. So believers now live a different kind of life. We live a life centered upon the Lord Jesus Christ. We are united to him. We are identified with him. As the passage puts it, we are ambassadors for Christ in a fallen and a decaying world. We no longer live to please ourselves, but we live for our heavenly King, the one who died for us and the one who was raised to life again. That's a privilege. It's a high calling that falls to every Christian believer, no matter where you and I go. We are representing the Lord Jesus Christ. He is with us. He is working in us and working through us. As Ephesians chapter two describes believers as his, that is God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. So being a Christian believer defines everything else that may be true of a person, that man we thought of by way of example in opening, the husband, the father, the son, the brother, the employee, the citizen. Well, that man is a Christian husband, a Christian father, a Christian son, a Christian brother, a Christian employee. He's a Christian citizen in a nation. We are to be Christians above and before everything else. Being in Christ is who we are. It must change everything about us. We are not to receive the grace of God in vain. Now obviously how you and I fulfill the various roles in life that we have been given must be shaped by our identity in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to be ambassadors for Him in every one of the different contexts we find ourselves in. And one thing this means is that you and I need to conduct Christian witness. We need to share the gospel. As the passage puts it, we are to beseech people, to implore people on Christ's behalf to turn from sin and to be reconciled to God. That is of central importance. We have been given this message and we are to carry it into every sphere that God calls us into. We want the Lord Jesus Christ to be honored. We want him to be glorified by as many people as possible, turning to him in repentance and saving faith. And being Christ's ambassadors also means obeying the great commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. We cannot sit silent, we cannot sit idly by when we see God's good design for human beings being undermined, because we know the damage that this will cause to our neighbor. As ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a duty to respond. So we must resist radical gender ideology, which is teaching, falsely teaching people that they can choose their own sex, and in so doing is distorting creation. We must defend the sanctity of all human life from conception because of the dignity, because of the worth that God has given human life. And we must defend our heavenly Father's gracious design for marriage and the family unit. Deviating from the maker's design inevitably brings harm and heartache and pain. In our fallen world, men and women need kindness. They need love. but they do not need endorsement. If you and I affirm things that we know to be wrong, then we lead people further and further away from the God who has created them. We are commanded to call all people to be reconciled to God, but we cannot separate God from the truth of God revealed in his word. So tonight, as we consider various contemporary issues facing us in Northern Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom today, let's remember that we speak out because we are living out our identity in the Lord Jesus Christ as ambassadors for him to speak the truth in love and to love in truth. Well, with those biblical thoughts in mind, we want to come to our first issue tonight, the issue of gender ideology. We know from Genesis chapter 1 that our identity as either male or female is central to God's creation of human beings in his image. God has deliberately created men and women different from one another, but interdependent upon one another. Men and women are equally made in the image of God, but equal does not mean the same thing as sameness. Each sex has its own distinct role to play in God's design for the family unit, in God's design for his church, and in God's design for human society. But radical gender ideology is seeking to completely destroy the distinction between men and women that God in his wisdom has set in place. This ideology claims, falsely claims, that every person has a gender identity which may or may not match their biological sex. It says that our subjective internal feelings of gender are who we really are, and that those subjective internal feelings override the physical biology of our bodies. Well, of course, the truth is that your body is not separate from the real you. The Bible teaches that a person is a coherent whole, both body and soul together. But this ideology that a person can be trapped in the wrong body, or as society puts it, that they are transgender, is a belief that has taken hold in many areas of our nation's life. The Gender Recognition Act of 2004, which applies across the United Kingdom, allows an adult to change legal sex, providing they have lived for at least two years as if they were a member of the opposite sex, and providing their application is supported by the signatures of at least two doctors. So under this law, which has been in place since 2004, a man in his 50s who has fathered children can be issued with a birth certificate stating that he was born female. And in fact, around 5,000 such certificates have been issued in the UK under the terms of this Act. 5,000 is a lot of people. compared to the population of Cumber. But this is 5,000 right across the United Kingdom, a population of 60 to 65 million over a 17-year window. So actually, it shows what a tiny, tiny number of people are involved. But despite the small numbers, The activists are campaigning to take the law further. And in 2018, Westminster held a public consultation on making it even easier and quicker to change legal sex, to do away with the two-year requirement. But thankfully, at the end of last year, the government announced that it was abandoning these plans. This is an encouraging reprieve on an issue that many Christian Institute supporters wrote to their MPs about and responded to the public consultation on. We do give the thanks and the praise to God for answering our prayers and restraining plans that would have taken the law even further and made matters worse. But campaigners have not given up. The Women and Equalities Committee at Westminster has been conducting an inquiry into the same issue. And so we must pray that the proposals will not return. And despite this reprieve on this matter, the impact of gender ideology upon children and young people in our nation is vastly increasing. There has been a dramatic rise in recent years in the number of under 18s claiming to be transgender. In the year 2009 to 2010, the Gender Identity Development Service in London, the only NHS facility that treats under 18s, it received 77 referrals. But last year, 2019 to 2020, the same clinic received 2,728 referrals, a massive increase over a decade. and now nearly three quarters of those are girls. Many experts are concerned that this trend is being driven by social influences, particularly online influences. Teenagers going through what are fairly common adolescent struggles are being encouraged to think about themselves as transgender. The Christian Institute has prepared a number of briefings on this issue to make Christians aware of the key arguments going on and the key issues behind those. And under the present circumstances with the pandemic, I'm not putting out literature tables at meetings. But I have given pre-packs of literature on your pews, so there should be one for every household. If you didn't get one, I can give you one at the end. And they contain a number of briefings, some of which address the gender issue. And there are other resources available on our website. Every year now, hundreds of gender-confused children are being put on courses of puberty-blocking drugs. And the drugs are being described as a living experiment. They have largely unknown long-term consequences. But we do know that they affect bone density, they affect fertility, and possibly brain development. And what is more, in up to 90% of cases, Childhood confusion about sex and gender resolves itself around puberty. But of course, puberty is the very process being blocked by the drugs. So almost all of the children taking the blockers go on to receive more damaging hormone treatment. Some of you may recall that there was encouraging news on this issue in December past. The High Court in London ruled that in order to be given puberty-blocking drugs, children need to understand their potential life-changing consequences. Three judges said it was highly unlikely that children aged 13 and under could ever grasp enough to genuinely consent, and that it was very doubtful whether 14 and 15-year-olds could do so. The case was taken by Keira Bell, the lady in this picture, who is now aged 23. She brought the case against the NHS after she had been given hormone-blocking drugs as a teenager. Sadly, This ruling, which could have helped and protected many children from being given puberty-blocking drugs, this ruling was overturned at the Court of Appeal. The NHS appealed the decision, and the Court of Appeal ruled in their favour. But Keira Bell is now seeking to take the case to the UK Supreme Court. Christian believers need to be clear about the Bible's teaching and clear about how to answer the challenges this issue is presenting. That is true both at a public level, as a church we declare biblical truth, but it's also true on a personal pastoral level as well. Some of us may have been affected by this issue through friends, through family members, through work colleagues, through neighbors. Profound pastoral concerns are often involved, and Christian believers need both grace and wisdom as we seek to love our neighbor. As believers, we must show grace but also truth to those who live a transgender lifestyle. We must hold faithfully to the Word of God, showing compassion, but not showing compromise. In 1 John chapter 3 and at verse 18, believers are called to love in deed, that is in our action, but we're also called to love in truth. And specifically, we must continue to hold that it is wrong for the medical profession to deliberately mutilate a healthy body to match the mental wishes of someone who thinks themselves to be trapped in the wrong gender. Instead, the medical profession should be working to help people come to accept the body they have been born with. We are seeing lives damaged by the current approach. The number of detransitioners is increasing. These are people who undergo reassignment surgery and then regret the decision and revert back to their birth sex. One detransitioner told Sky News that she had heard from hundreds of people expressing regret over going down this line, but many of them have left themselves in desperately sad situations where they have done major damage to their physical bodies. I want to play a short video interview now with one such individual, a lady simply called Lou, who explains her own story and situation. So hopefully you should all be able to hear this. Lou, not a real name, was born a girl. As a child she experienced gender dysphoria which intensified with the onset of puberty. I became very self-conscious of my body. I was developing breasts and periods which for me felt like there was an alien crawling out of the inside of my body. I became very depressed. I thought the only explanation for my gender dysphoria must be that I was actually a man. I was struggling with self-harm and had attempted suicide on a number of occasions. and was very much told by the community that if you don't transition you will self-harm and you will kill yourself. I became convinced that my options were transition or die. I didn't understand that the degree of disconnect from and hatred of my body could be considered At 20, Lou had her breasts removed in a double mastectomy, a decision that now haunts her. The darkest moment was when I realised that I had actually looked normal for a girl, that I had actually been slim and pretty, that my body hadn't As a result of having transitioned, I will always have a female body that is freakish. I will always have a flat chest and a beard, and there's nothing I can do about that. Well, we must pray about this serious issue. We do give thanks to God that the government did drop its plans to make it easier and quicker to change legal sex and for the court ruling on puberty-blocking drugs. But we need to pray for the protection of children and adults from this very harmful ideology and pray that the dangers of puberty-blocking drugs will be publicly exposed. Pray for people like Lou, the lady in the video, who have already been victims of this ideology. And pray for churches and individual Christian believers that we will be courageous and wise, but also gracious in upholding biblical truth that we are created as either male or female in the image of God. The second area I want to talk about this evening relates to the sanctity of human life. And again, our starting point as Christians must be Genesis chapter 1 and its description of human beings as created in the image of God. This is foundational. It should determine how we view ourselves and other people. All sorts of other creatures were created after their own kinds or according to their own kinds. But human beings alone were made in the image of God. And that remains true, not just in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 1. It remains true as well after the fall. In Genesis chapter 9, after the flood, God declares to Noah, So every human being is made in the image of God, whether they are believers or not. And so Christians must defend the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. It is God who gives life. It is God who sustains life. And it is only God who has the authority to take life away. Now, of course, those issues are not only issues of doctrine. They are doctrinal issues, but they're not just doctrinal issues. They are pastoral issues as well. It's possible They may have painful association for some of us gathered here. As with transgenderism and all the other issues the Institute deals with, clear biblical principles have to be applied to many different practical situations with compassion but without compromise. The Bible is clear that human life begins at conception. The Bible is clear that it's created in the image of God and intrinsically valuable. And so we can conclude that abortion, that is destroying human life between conception and birth, that embryo experiments that are destructive, that cloning, that euthanasia, and assisted suicide are all wrong. But what do we find in our United Kingdom today? Well, sadly, during the year 2020, there were 223,732 babies aborted in England, Scotland and Wales in that one year alone. That is approximately 600 babies being aborted every day for all 365 days of 2020 on the mainland. And of those colossal abortion figures, only 0.06% were carried out because there was any risk to a mother's life or health. the vast majority, 98.5%, were carried out for what are basically social reasons. Well, as Christian believers, we must defend the sanctity of all human life from conception, This is true even if a child might be born with a disability. An unborn child who has a disability has no less entitlement to life than any other child. And sadly, on top of the colossal abortion figures on the mainland, politicians at Westminster imposed new abortion regulations here in Northern Ireland. They did so during the lockdown period. The regulations were laid at Westminster the day before the House of Commons went into early lockdown because of the Covid situation. and they came into effect in April of last year. The new regulations go even further than the 1967 Act on the mainland in some respects. They allow babies to be aborted for any reason up to 12 weeks in this province. Then as with the 67 Act, abortion is legally available for most reasons up to 24 weeks. right up to birth on grounds of disability. And this category of disability has routinely been interpreted to include conditions such as Down syndrome on the mainland, as well as cleft palate, clubfoot and hair lip, which are treatable conditions. And the regulations here in Northern Ireland allow a baby to be aborted with authorisation from one medical staff member, one nurse, one doctor or one midwife, whereas the 67 Act on their mainland requires the signatories of at least two doctors. So the new regulations came into effect in April of last year, and during the first 11 months of their operation, over 1,350 babies were aborted in this province. That compares with only 22 in the previous 12 months from the 1st of April 2019 to the 31st of March 2020. At the present time, Each health trust oversees abortion provision in their own local areas, but activists have been demanding that abortion services be commissioned centrally. The Human Rights Commission took legal action earlier this year to force the Secretary of State to do this. Commissioning is the centralized organisation of abortion on a province-wide basis through the Department of Health. Specifically, it includes recruiting dedicated staff to the NHS to carry out abortions, allocating specific budget funding for abortion, increasing capacity within the NHS to abort up to 6,500 babies per year in the province, and a public awareness-raising campaign so that the general public in Northern Ireland are made aware that abortion is readily available. In June of last year, MPs and peers voted by overwhelming majorities to grant the Secretary of State power to commission abortion services in Northern Ireland, sorry, June of this year, over the heads of our Stormont Executive Ministers. And in addition to this development in Northern Ireland, there are campaigners seeking the complete decriminalisation of abortion on the mainland, further liberalising a law that has seen more than nine million babies aborted during the last five decades. Please pray that the sanctity of all human life will once again be upheld in our nation. And we also need to pray that current attempts to legalise assisted suicide in England and in the Scottish Parliament will fail. Just like the unborn, The elderly, the disabled, and those with degenerative illnesses are created in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect. Baroness Meacher, a member of the House of Lords, the former wife of Labour MP Michael Meacher, is bringing a bill before the House of Lords to allow those deemed to have less than six months to live to get assistance to kill themselves. And her bill had its second reading at the end of October. And similarly, in the Scottish Parliament, an MSP called Liam McArthur is bringing forward a private member's bill to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland too. So we must be much in prayer about those issues. The final area I want to talk about tonight relates to the legal defence work of the Christian Institute. There have been many examples of believers in the UK facing hostility because of their faith in recent years. Most of us here are well aware of the case of Asher's Baking Company and Newton Abbey, who were taken through the courts in a four-year legal battle after they declined to decorate a campaign cake with slogans calling for same-sex marriage. And through our legal defense fund, the Christian Institute was able to support the MacArthur family who own the bakery. And we've had the privilege of supporting many other faithful Christian believers in their stand for biblical truth. There's not time to mention all the cases we've dealt with, but some of the leaflets in the literature packs will give you details about others. But tonight, I want to briefly mention two cases that we've been supporting at the present time. They involve Stirling Free Church in Scotland and Mr Kenneth Ferguson, the man pictured here, both of whom have been taking legal action against the Robertson Trust, the largest grant-making trust in Scotland. Kenneth Ferguson was chief executive of the Robertson Trust, a position he was appointed to in 2011. He is also an elder in Stirling Free Church, which paid an annual fee to use trust premises for their services each Lord's Day. And to avoid any conflict of interest, Kenneth Ferguson declared his involvement with the church on the trust's register of interest, and he took no part in the negotiations about the rental agreement. However, the trust's chairwoman, Shona Macpherson, objected to the rental. According to legal papers, this was because Stirling Free Church did not believe in same-sex marriage. In fact, Shona Macpherson is said to have become enraged on learning about the agreement and blamed Kenneth Ferguson. The church had its contract torn up. They were ordered to leave the premises with the trust claiming it had a policy of not renting its buildings for activities that promote religion. But again, church lawyers discovered that no such policy existed. The trust began disciplinary action against Kenneth Ferguson and he was dismissed from his post in March of last year with the trust citing vague performance issues. This was despite him previously having been given glowing appraisals and despite him overseeing substantial growth during his tenure as chief executive of the trust. Kenneth Ferguson was highly thought of by his colleagues. They were shocked, and in some cases tearful, at the Trust's treatment of him. He had worked under four different chairpersons at the Trust, and his relationship with the previous three was entirely positive. So Kenneth Ferguson challenged the Robertson Trust for unfair dismissal, for religious discrimination, and for religious harassment. His hearing took place at an online employment tribunal in May of this year. And in July, the tribunal ruled that Kenneth Ferguson had indeed been unfairly dismissed by the Robertson Trust. It also found that he had been subjected to religious discrimination by the trust and by its chairperson, Shona Macpherson, for believing that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman. Stirling Free Church has also taken the trust to court alleging religious discrimination over the cancellation of the rental agreement. The church's case was heard at the end of April and a ruling is awaited. Please pray for a just and fair outcome and please give thanks for the faithful stand of Kenneth Ferguson. It is important to show that the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman is a belief worthy of respect and protection in our democratic society. As I've said, those of you who are in the church building, the literature packs give more information about our legal defense fund. But I would also say that if you or any Christian believer you know experiences difficulty because of your stand on an issue of biblical truth, then do get in touch with the Institute, with a legal team, they're at the end of a phone line or an email message, and it may be that they are able to help you. So don't, please, Pass on our details to any Christian you know who's in trouble for their faith, obviously. If someone gets a speeding ticket or a parking fine or in trouble for dropping litter or dog filing, don't ring. But if there's an issue of biblical principle at stake, do get in touch. Well, in closing, you may be saying, that's all very well. We've considered our identity in the Lord Jesus Christ and the dignity and the value of the human person, of marriage, of gender. We've looked at some of the challenges facing our society. But what can we do in response to these issues? Well, I want to leave you with three practical points. First of them is a very obvious one. It is simply be informed. If we want to be, an effective Christian influence in our society, we have to know what's going on in that society. And there are many ways of being kept informed. We can read the newspapers every day. We can follow debates in Parliament on television, on the radio, on the internet. But most of us don't have the time to go through all that level of detail. So there are easier ways of staying informed. If you're not already on our mailing list, in your literature packs there are little cards like these. There's also a pen. You can simply fill in your name and address on the card and I will leave these grey baskets on the chairs by the door on the way out. You can drop the card in the basket and you can join our mailing list and for any other Scots people here tonight It is completely free. So you've got a free offer from a Scotsman. It doesn't happen very often. But those of you who get the literature already, a number of you do. I know I'm sure you'll testify. It is informative. It's helpful. It does keep you up to date with what is going on. So if you're already on the mailing list, you don't need to fill in the card. But for any who are not already on it, don't leave tonight without dropping the card in the basket and you will see the difference that you can make. And if any are following online, You can go to our website, christian.org.uk, and there's opportunity to sign up there. The second practical point is to pray, and the last time I was with you in Cumber, I spoke from 1 Timothy 2, verses 1-4, the call to pray for kings and for all that are in authority. Christian believers are called to pray for those ruling our nation so that we would have the freedom to live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty, and so that we would have the freedom to share the gospel in our nation. Those things are being challenged in certain areas today. And so as Christians, we must be much in prayer for those who bear rule, that they would rule in the fear of God, that they would rule to protect gospel freedom and liberty of conscience for future generations of Christians and that the gospel may go forth right across our land. So we'd encourage you to pray. The only reason prayer is not my first practical point is because if you haven't been informed about it, how can you be praying about the issues? But once you've been informed, the next thing you must do is to pray. And the third and final thing is to take action from time to time. We do ask those on our mailing list to write to their MP or to respond to a public consultation. And some people say, oh, we wouldn't know what to write. I wouldn't know what to say. Well, guess what? If you get the mailings, we'll tell you. We'll give you the name of the person to write to. We'll give you the address to write to them. We'll tell you three or four things you can say in the letter. The only thing we won't give is the envelope and the stamp to do it with. But we make it very straightforward. And some people say, what's the use in writing? Well, it does make a difference. Westminster was bringing forward very radical plans to extend the gender recognition laws just until last year. And some of these things would have made a bad situation even worse, but thankfully those plans were shelved. Now that did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because believers prayed, but it also happened because believers wrote letters to those in authority and responded to the public consultation. And God, in his providence and in his mercy, used these efforts to restrain plans that were wrong for the protection of his church and for liberty of conscience in our nation. So we'd encourage you to respond when we ask you to. It does make a difference. It does, I'm not saying we win on every issue, we don't, but it does make a difference, and it is an act of Christian witness, testifying to truth and defending truth in the public square. Well, thank you so much for allowing me to share this evening. It's been a privilege to be back with you in Cumber, and I will hand back to the Reverend Martin. We're still live, gentlemen, yes? So just before we come to our season of prayer, we'd like to thank our online listeners for tuning in, staying with us, and we trust the Lord will bless you. We're going to switch off now and we'll get down to our season of prayer, but we do appreciate your presence and we trust you will pray for the Christian Institute and we wish you God's blessing as you've tuned in.