Amongst all the trouble, God is doing something among his people.

In last week’s editorial, ‘Days of Confusion’, we looked at the complex forces of change that have created the strife and uncertainty in the nation today.

During the past week we have seen George Soros, the arch secular humanist, adding to the confusion by trying to undermine the democratic vote of the British people to get out of the European Union. Volatility on the stock market and demands for Brexit clarity from the business world have all added to the clamour in the nation. But, of course, none of our leaders ask the most obvious question – “Is there any word from the Lord?”

I was really encouraged by the comments on last week’s editorial. They confirm my own sense of excitement that despite all the bad news and the trouble in the nation, God is doing something among his people – those who are not just praying, but who are also listening to him.

I’ve been drawn to Psalm 127 with the familiar words “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain.” The second part of that verse is of great significance for us today: “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.” From this we can derive the biblical truth that unless the Lord watches over the nation we will be wide open to every spiritual attack of the enemy.

This is precisely what happens when a nation such as Britain has a heritage of centuries of biblical truth; but in a single generation discards that truth, turns its back upon God to go its own way, and then is surprised when everything goes wrong.

What Can We Do?

What can we do about this? Well, first we can turn to what the Bible says about a nation that is facing disaster. A significant promise was given by God to the Prophet Jeremiah:

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. (Jeremiah 18:7-8)

This promise was not just for the nation of Israel in a covenant relationship with God, but for any nation at any time, which makes it the most significant promise in the Bible for Gentile nations. It is of particular significance for nations such as Britain, the USA, Europe and other Western nations that have a Judeo-Christian heritage.

Unless the Lord watches over the nation we will be wide open to every spiritual attack of the enemy.

The reason for this is that the promise speaks about God having warned the nation.¹ It is only nations that know the God of the Bible that could recognise a warning from God. It is only nations that have known the truth that could justifiably be charged with having deliberately turned their backs upon truth and embraced false values.

Just look at the values that our politicians are promoting as ‘British values’: “equality, tolerance and the rule of law”. These are not British values! They are an invention of secular humanists drawing on atheist philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Marx!

Traditionally, British values have been drawn from the Bible. They are: JUSTICE and RIGHTEOUSNESS, TRUTH and INTEGRITY, FAITHFULNESS and LOVE. These used to be the values upon which all our political relationships, our business relationships and our personal relationships were founded! They are fundamental and eternal: not the trivial rubbish peddled by politicians!

One Example: Britain and Israel

Today, I want to take just one example of the way Britain has forsaken godly standards of truth, leading to the situation in which we now find ourselves.

It’s a well-known fact that the British Foreign Office is anti-Semitic and always votes with the Arabs against Israel in the United Nations. They even voted against the USA when President Trump had the courage to declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, which every Bible-believing Christian, every Jew and every educated person knows is simply a plain statement of fact: Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital since the time of King David, 3,000 years ago!

Traditionally, British values have been drawn from the Bible – they are not the secular humanist rubbish being peddled today.

Records show how the Foreign Office civil servants fought against Churchill in the 1920s when, as Colonial Secretary, he strove to implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration that the historic land of Israel should be a homeland for the Jews. In 1938 and ‘39 when the Jews were being murdered on the streets in German cities, Britain refused to let Jewish families come as refugees. We took several trainloads of Jewish children but let their parents go to Auschwitz to be murdered in the Nazi gas chambers.

The Exodus, after the British boarded in 1947. Public domain.An even more horrible crime was committed immediately after the Second World War, when the survivors of the death camps from around central Europe fled to Palestine but were prevented from entering by the British army. A leaky old ship called The Exodus carrying 4,500 survivors was rammed by two British cruisers and forced to turn away from Haifa. The most heinous crime was that all these people were deported back to prison camps in Germany! This was at the time when Britain was beginning to reject its biblical heritage and its values of truth and righteousness.

It was just at this time that the British Empire began to unravel. The greatest Empire the world had ever known began to collapse when it started to despise its own heritage, despite the miracles we had seen during the war that saved Britain when we stood alone.

Of course, I’m not saying that the Empire was perfect – we made lots of mistakes, but from my extensive travels around the world I have seen at first hand some of the good things that British rule brought to those countries. Also, today there are countless millions who embrace the Gospel because it was brought to them through the British Empire: that in itself is a godly heritage.

The Way Ahead

The peace and prosperity Britain enjoyed until the present generation was the fruit of a nation that honoured its biblical heritage. God watched over this nation because of its faithfulness.

This is surely significant: the hope for the future lies in the chaos and confusion in the nation forcing a recognition that we have departed from the ways of righteousness and truth.

If this recognition leads to repentance, there is no doubt that God will honour his promise not to destroy the nation, but to restore times of peace and prosperity…“If that nation that I warned repents of its evil…” As I said last year: I cannot just pray unconditionally for God’s blessing on the nation. But the promise of Jeremiah 18:7-8 is something worth praying for!

Notes

1 A possible exception to this is Nineveh. But there were significant settlements of Israelites in the region around Nineveh since the time of Shalmaneser in 722 BC (See 2 Kings 17:6). So the Ninevites might have known the God of Israel from them which would have prepared the way for Jonah’s warning.