My Knees visit the Mariposa Forest, Chris Packham, and the Amazonian Firemen

And they drove me to the Kingdom Hall on Sunday.  They have had a busy time.  Martin gave the talk and I wish every one of you could have been there.  The Inspired Scriptures locate us in time, and he was talking about the march of the world powers, as prophesied in the book of Daniel.  Pretty much everything about that prophecy has been fulfilled, except for its dramatic ending, when the incoming Kingdom of God destroys all earthly governments.   We are living in the time of the feet of iron, mixed with clay.  And it is the feet of the image that are hit by the stone of God's Kingdom.

Then there is the Monarch butterfly. The Mariposa. For anyone who says they will only believe in God if he shows them a miracle - Jehovah has surrounded us with miracles.  We see fragments of the original glory and perfection of Eden all around us.   We just watched the documentary about the migration of the Monarch butterfly on iplayer. A miracle. Then we went to see Chris Packham in Horsham.  It was a  fascinating talk - this is our third year of going.  He had some amazing photos of wildcats in Africa, and of pond-skaters on his local stream.  I had no idea what aggressive little creatures they are.  He also caught us up with the latest doings of Itchy and Scratchy.

I was in trouble kneewise though, and if it hadn't been for the help of Captain B, one of the attendants, and the guy sitting next to me, I would not have been able to get in and out of my seat.

And last night we watched a fascinating new series, starting with a local fireman going over to work with a tiny fire crew in Brazil.

It was wonderful. The valiant Brazilian fire fighters, with minimal equipment, work night and day to tackle fires in the Amazon rain forest - fires on a scale its hard to imagine.  And so many of them. The problem is that cleared forest land is very valuable, at least in the short term, so there are fire setters constantly at work. The night we watched, there were following someone setting fire after fire after fire.

In his talk, Chris showed us photos of the South American rainforests taken from the air.  And it is devastating.  The forest is being sectioned up, with vast bleak prairie farms in between -leaving stretches which rainforest creatures cannot cross, isolating whole populations in a shrinking bit of forest.

Jehovah has promised us that he will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth".    A century ago, I suppose we could not have imagined we could ruin the whole planet, but now it seems only too clear we will, if left to ourselves.

But we are not left to ourselves. Not one of Jehovah's promises has failed, or ever will.