Part 1: The Balfour Declaration

Holocaust refugees airlifted to Lakeland tranquillity

Prayer and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588.

As I write this, it is the uncelebrated 430^th anniversary of the service of national thanksgiving held in St Paul’s Cathedral for the defeat of the Spanish Armada and, consequently, the preservation of a Bible-based Britain.

By the late 16^th Century, trouble between Spain and England had been in the air for some time. Preparations for the Armada had begun in Cadiz in April 1587 under the Admiral Santa Cruz. In the same year Francis Drake had carried out a pre-emptive raid, damaging many vessels and supplies by fire, so causing appreciable delay. Early in 1588 the experienced and skilful Cruz died of typhoid and was replaced by the inexperienced and unwilling Medina Sidonia.

In late May the Armada set sail from Lisbon, made up of 130 ships and 18,000 soldiers. Its destination was the Netherlands, where it was to be reinforced by some 30,000 troops before attacking England. Its purpose was to remove the Protestant Queen, Elizabeth I, and bring the nation back under Papal authority. The Pope himself had authorised the mission, which was masterminded by King Philip of Spain.

The English fleet at the time had only 80 ships, 50 of these being privateers (i.e. not part of the Navy). But Admiral John Hawkins, writing to Sir Francis Walsingham (Principal Secretary to Queen Elizabeth I) on 1 February 1587, had said “God will defend us, for we defend the chief cause, our religion, God’s own cause, for if we would leave our profession and turn to serve Baal (as God forbid, and rather to die a thousand deaths), we might have peace, but not with God”¹.

The purpose of the Armada was to remove the Protestant Queen of England, Elizabeth I, and bring the nation back under Papal authority.

A Nation Prostrate Before God

The nation was called to prayer and fasting. Rev Thomas Lathbury, writing in 1840, described the situation thus:

While the military preparations were going forward, the Queen and her council were not unmindful of the source whence success and preservation were to be expected. They well knew that unless the Lord should keep the city, the watchmen might wait in vain.

In this emergency, therefore, the nation was called to humble itself before God. Public prayers were enjoined to be used weekly…and a Form of Prayer was composed for that special purpose. The clergy of London were summoned to meet together, when they were strictly charged to observe the appointed days of fasting and prayer.Undoubtedly the clergy in other parts of the country were charged in a similar manner. 

Strype² quotes the following words from a manuscript of one of the London clergy of the period: “That being called together, they were required to be zealous in prayers and almsgiving, namely, on Wednesdays and Fridays; and to stir up the people thereunto; and proper homilies to be read for fasting, praying and almsgiving.”³

Thanks to clergyman and historian John Strype, we have a record of one of the prayers used in the Queen’s chapel during the time when the invasion was expected. It had this title: For Preservation and Success against the Spanish Navy and Forces. It was written by Henry Marten, the Queen’s Steward. The following extracts clearly show its nature:

O, Lord God, heavenly Father, the Lord of Hosts, without whose providence nothing proceedeth, and without whose mercy nothing is saved; in whose power are the hearts of princes, and the end of all their actions, have mercy upon thine afflicted Church; and especially regard thy servant Elizabeth, our most excellent Queen; to whom thy dispersed flock do fly in the anguish of their souls and the zeal of thy truth…

Consider O Lord, how long thy servant hath laboured to them for peace; but how proudly they prepare themselves unto battle. Arise, therefore, maintain thine own cause, and judge thou between her and her enemies…

To vanquish is all one with thee, by few or by many, by want or wealth, by weakness or by strength. The cause is thine, the enemies thine, the afflicted thine; the honour, the victory, and triumph shall be thine…

Give unto all her councils and captains wisdom, wariness, and courage, that they may speedily prevent the devices, and valiantly withstand the forces of all our enemies, that the fame of the Gospel may be spread unto the ends of the world.⁴ (my emphasis)

A prayer written by the Queen’s Steward beseeched God for success, “that the fame of the Gospel may spread unto the ends of the world”.

On 15 July Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, right after the first sighting of the Armada, wrote to Sir Francis Walsingham, “Sir, the southerly wind that brought us back from the coast of Spain brought them out. God blessed us with turning us back. Sir, for the love of God and our country, let us have with some speed some great shot sent us of all bigness; for this service will continue long; and some powder with it.”⁵

Then, on 19 July, the Armada was sighted off the south-west coast of England by Thomas Fleming on the Golden Hinde. According to Emma Mason,

On July 22nd, the day after the first naval encounter south of Plymouth, Howard had arrived with his ships and starving crews at Harwich in Essex. In the evening, while Elizabeth was still at the English army camp at Tilbury, there were rumours that Parma and his invasion force had embarked and “would be here with as much speed as possibly he could”. The Queen refused to return for her own safety to London, declaring that she “would not think of deserting her army at a time of danger”. The next day her troops kept a public fast for victory.⁶

According to Richard Hakluyt, the great geographer, during these times “all people throughout England prostrated themselves with humble prayers and supplications unto God”.⁷ Such was the spiritual nature of the times.

‘Unexpected’ Events

Some totally unexpected things then occurred. On the very same day, the Spanish ship San Salvador was blown up, apparently by a German saboteur, and the following day the Rosario surrendered to Francis Drake without a fight. On 24 July the Spanish fleet departed from the original plans and attempted an attack on Southampton, but was frustrated by a change to unfavourable winds during an engagement off the Isle of Wight.

The Spanish fleet then proceeded with its plan to join forces with the Duke of Parma’s army in the Netherlands, anchoring off Gravelines, near Dunkirk, on 27 July. On 29 July Drake attacked with fireships and the Spanish fleet escaped in haste by cutting away their anchors. They were chased into the North Sea, where a change of wind drove them further north, causing Francis Drake to write to Walsingham, “God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward, as I hope in God the Duke of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days”.⁸

By 9 August, still fearing invasion by the Duke of Parma’s army, Queen Elizabeth visited her troops at Tilbury fort, where she gave a speech. According to William Leigh’s account in 1612, this included, “We commend your prayers, for they will move the heavens, so do we your powerful preaching, for that will shake the earth of our earthly hearts; and call us to repentance, whereby our good God may relieve us, and root up in mercy his deferred judgments against us, only be faithful and fear not.”⁹

Unseasonal storms and gale-force winds forced the Armada north around the British coastline, and onto Scottish and Irish rocks.

Then, unseasonal storms and gale-force winds struck the North Sea. Having cut away their anchors at Gravelines, the Spanish ships were unable to obtain safe anchorages. They were driven further north and half the remaining ships were destroyed. By 11 August the survivors had rounded Scotland, but more storms in late August wrecked even more ships on the Irish coast, where surviving crews were killed by the Irish. Meanwhile, Parma would not invade without naval support and instead turned to besiege the English garrison at Bergen op Zoom, where he was defeated.

Rejoicing in Prayers Answered

On 20 August a service of national thanksgiving was held in St Paul’s Cathedral in London, amid much rejoicing. Hakluyt remarked,

…there was in England, by the commandement of her Majestie, and in the united Provinces, by the direction of the States, a solemne festivall day publikely appointed, wherein all persons were enjoyned to resort unto the Church, and there to render thanks and praises unto God: and the Preachers were commanded to exhort the people thereunto. The foresayd solemnity was observed upon the 29 of November; which day was wholly spent in fasting, prayer, and giving of thanks.¹⁰

On the Spanish side, King Philip of Spain acknowledged the defeat of his forces as the result of what he called ‘The Protestant Wind’, whilst the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira, having commented on God not being “moved by the pious prayers and tears of so many”, concluded, “It is both necessary and advisable to seek and consider the causes that may have moved God to punish us in this way.”¹¹

Figure 1. See Photo Credits.Coins and medallions were struck to commemorate the English victory, attributing success to God, as shown in Figure 1. The left one, struck at Dort in the Netherlands, shows people at prayer and reads: Homo proponit, Deus disponit (‘man proposes, God disposes’). The right one carries the text, Flavit JHVH [in Hebrew letters] et dissipati sunt (‘God blew and they were scattered’).

God indeed answered prayer - and the long-term outcome was that the Gospel truly was spread to the ends of the world! Let’s be encouraged in prayer and thanksgiving. Let’s also recognise that, given the current desperate state of our nation, it is surely time to follow the example set by our Elizabethan forebears. Their calls should be taken up anew with urgency – for powerful preaching, for repentance, for fasting and prayer, to seek God’s mercy and intervention. Such is the need of the hour.

References

1. Lawton, JK (Ed), 1894. State Papers Relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Vol 1, p58.
2. Strype, J. Annals of the Reformation, III, ii, p15 (John Strype was a curate, lecturer and author, 1643-1737).
3. Lathbury, T, 1840. The Spanish Armada, A.D. 1588: Or The Attempt of Philip II and Pope Sixtus to Re-Establish Popery in England. London: Parker, pp63-67.
4. See note 2, p546.
5. See note 1, pp288-289.
6. 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Spanish Armada. BBC History Extra, 16 April 2015.
7. Hakluyt, R. The Vanquishing of the Spanish Armada: Anno 1588.
8. Wilson, AN, 2011. The Elizabethans. Random House, p255.
9. Ridgeway, C. 9 August 1588 – Elizabeth I’s Tilbury Speech. The Tudor Society.
10. Richard Hakluyt, op.cit.
11. Martin, C and Parker, G, 1999. The Spanish Armada. 2nd Edition, Manchester University Press.

Divine deliverance during World War II.

Continuing our ‘Book of Remembrance’ looking back on God’s faithfulness to Britain through the ages, this week we dwell on instances of divine intervention in our nation during times of conflict and threat.

Alongside David Longworth’s article on the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, it is also important to remember God’s intervention in World War II, not a century ago – a topic on which we often reflect on Prophecy Today, not least because it laid the groundwork for the re-establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 – the most important prophetic fulfilment of our times.

For example, both Dr Clifford Hill and David Longworth have discussed the miracles which allowed the safe rescue of British troops from Dunkirk in 1940, after the King called the nation to prayer and repentance. Thousands assembled outside packed churches to intercede for the Lord’s help, with thanksgiving and rejoicing in the aftermath also turning into intercession for deliverance in what became known as the Battle of Britain. You can read these articles here:

• The Miracle of Dunkirk (Dr Clifford Hill)
  
• Dunkirk: Divine Deliverance (David Longworth)
  

We have also been alerted recently to a leaflet featuring testimonies about God’s intervention from six of the most senior figures of the War. The Wartime Miracles leaflet is currently being circulated around UK churches by the Strengthen the Faithful team as part of a campaign “to give true Christians hope, encouragement and reassurance, which is so greatly needed in these unsettling and frightening times.”¹

Elsewhere on Prophecy Today, David Longworth has written about the lesser known Allied victory at El-Alamein (Egypt) in 1942, also preceded by a national day of prayer, which marked a turning point in the war and prevented the Nazi genocide of Jews in both Egypt and Palestine. You can read David’s article here:

• The Battles of El Alamein: Prayer and the Sovereignty of God
  

Finally, of course, these and many other points of divine intervention in the war were accompanied by faithful intercession from British Christians, especially at the Bible College in Wales, where students were led in fervent prayer by Rees Howells. This spiritual warfare has been mentioned many times on Prophecy Today, but we recommend particularly the following article by Dr Clifford Denton about how the Swansea intercessors supported the re-birthing of Israel:

• Israel Re-Born: the Fruit of Prayer
  

May God be praised as we give thanks for his marvellous action on our behalf in times past – and may we be inspired to give ourselves afresh to prayer for our otherwise helpless nation. The Lord has not finished with Britain yet!

Notes

1 Free paper copies of this leaflet can be obtained by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., stating ‘Wartime Miracles’ in the subject line.

Passion for the Gospel must be our motive in spiritual warfare.

My recent visit to the birthplace of the Welsh Revival has prompted me to add a third reflection on that great movement – with particular reference to the ministry of Rees Howells, whose biography I have recently rediscovered; a veritable treasure half-hidden on our bookshelves.¹

Rees was a product of the 1904 revival whose influence spread across the globe, but is perhaps best remembered for the intercessions he led during World War II which, in the opinion of many, probably did more for Allied victory than any amount of military firepower.

But when Rees and his Bible College students fought the great battles of the war on their knees, it wasn’t just for our freedom. Their prime motivation was to clear obstacles to the preaching of the Gospel, because Hitler’s regime blocked the path to fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission.

Not only was the Nazis’ atheistic ideology the very antithesis of Christianity, but the upheaval of ongoing war would continue to distract people everywhere from a consideration of their soul’s destiny.

Clear Scriptural Goal

And because the Swansea college’s chief concern was for the Gospel, they were also greatly burdened for the Jewish people, who were under threat of genocide. After all, the gospel is “to the Jew first…” (Rom 1:16). And if the Jews were destroyed, they could never be restored to their ancient land as the prophets had predicted, and Jesus could not return, for the Bible clearly states that the Jews must be back in the Holy Land before this happens (see Zech 12-14).

Rees and his students fought the great battles of the war on their knees – not just for our freedom, but to clear obstacles to the preaching of the Gospel.

The college company, however, knew what must take place (it is so important that Christians are familiar with scriptural prophecy) and thus had confidence to pray for victory as the Holy Spirit led them.

Their prayers during the Battle of Britain, for example, were informed by a very clear scriptural goal: “Every creature is to hear the gospel; Palestine is to be regained by the Jews; and the Saviour is to return.”²

An illustration of the influence of the Welsh Revival on the United Kingdom is among exhibits at the Moriah Chapel, the church where it all began in October 1904. Photo: Linda GardnerLaying Their Lives Down

Time and again the German forces were on the point of winning crucial battles when, quite inexplicably, the tide suddenly turned – and the only reasonable explanation was that God must have intervened miraculously in response to prayer.

These Bible students were laying down their lives as much as those young men at the front. From the time of Dunkirk, through the rest of the war years, the entire college (about 100 strong) prayed every evening from 7 o’clock to midnight, with only a brief interval for supper, in addition to an hour-long prayer meeting every morning, and very often at midday.

Passionate Young People

I have already mentioned how the Welsh Revival was ignited (humanly speaking) by passionate young people determined for God to come down and use them as his instruments.

Tragically, few of the UK’s young generation have even heard the Gospel, but among the few are outstanding men and women whom God has already touched, and the mantle is falling on them to usher in a new era of radical Christianity, filling the vacuum created by the hopeless, lifeless and meaningless ideologies of secular-humanism.

Will they be up for the task? Remember Gideon, who only needed 300 men to defeat the enemy, and young David – the anointed ancestor of Messiah Jesus – who required just a single well-aimed stone to slay an intimidating giant. I have met, come to know and even work with some passionate young people who are up for the fight.

These Bible students were laying down their lives as much as those young men at the front.

Just as the 1939-45 battles were fought chiefly by young men, so must the spiritual warfare for our nation be fought in the main by millennials.

If we are to pray for nations, we must first have the kind of passion for individual souls that Rees possessed in bucket-loads; he would fast and pray for a tramp, or drunkard, or village trouble-maker until he had gained victory – however long it took. He also learned to walk by faith for every move he made, refusing to make his financial needs known, trusting God for every penny. In the case of the Bible College, he began with just two shillings and saw God send him £125,000 (the equivalent of millions in today’s money) over the next 14 years.

In 1915 he and his wife Elizabeth went out to Africa as missionaries and witnessed marvellous revivals, accompanied by extraordinary healings, blazing a trail for a future student, Reinhard Bonnke, who would see millions drawn into the kingdom through his huge rallies across the continent.

Even the Queen of Swaziland came to faith. Rees reported: “I told her that God had one Son, and he gave him to die for us; and we had one son, and had left him to tell the people of Africa about God. She was very much affected by hearing that my wife and I loved her people more than we loved our own son.”³

The Bible says: “Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37). It’s that sort of commitment to which we are called.

Same Battles Today

Some of the issues that burdened the intercessors at Swansea are very similar to those we are faced with today. Anti-Semitism is once again raising its ugly head all over the planet, though no longer led by Nazis but by an unholy alliance between the hard left and fanatical Islamists. Are we going to let these tyrannical groups complete what Hitler failed ultimately to achieve – the destruction of the Jewish race and of civilisation as we know it?

Those wartime intercessors prayed Israel back into their own land, where they would be safe. But now the 70-year-old Jewish state is surrounded by implacable enemies bent on their annihilation. And even in Britain their future is threatened as a potential Prime Minister is apparently unable to deal with anti-Jewish sentiment in his party.

If we are to pray for nations, we must first have a burning passion for individual souls.

How can we forget? We hold Holocaust Memorials every year so successive generations will learn from history, but it cuts no ice with God-haters. The reason they despise the Jews is because they reject the God who has chosen them as the apple of his eye. He is, after all, the God of Israel, whom we Christians also worship. He wrote the Law on how to live – summed up in the Ten Commandments – at Mt Sinai. But the brave new world has replaced it with an ideology that makes our genes responsible for bad behaviour.

We are no longer categorised as either male or female, but there are now some 70 other ways to identify our gender – all of which makes Alice in Wonderland sound positively sane. No wonder we are faced with a shattering breakdown of family life along with a vicious attack on the sanctity of life and sexual morality.

But the word of God teaches that we are born sinners whose natural tendency to rebel needs dealing with. This was achieved by Jesus on the Cross, where he took the full punishment for our sins, paying for it with his blood. God’s own precious Son chose to die in our place so that we would not perish, but inherit eternal life.

The devil tries every trick to prevent us from acknowledging our deep need of life, love, hope and peace which can only be found at the Cross.

Sharpening Our Vision

When, as a Church and nation, we recover a passion for the Gospel as the only means of mending our broken society and restoring truth and righteousness to our once great country, then I’m sure revival will follow.

Most Western Christians have only a blurred vision of what the Gospel stands for, but our focus must be sharpened to the point where we are prepared to lay our lives on the altar for its truth, and for the freedom to proclaim it on our streets, in our prisons, in our churches, and in our schools and universities.

With such a sharpened vision, we will also gain a fresh understanding of God’s great end-time purpose for the Jews and be better prepared for the return of our Lord to this troubled world. Come, Lord Jesus!

Notes

1 I am indebted to Rees Howells, Intercessor by Norman Grubb (published by Lutterworth Press) for much of the background to this article.

2 Quoting the prayer journal entry for 14 September, 1940.

3 Samuel was brought up by Rees’s uncle and aunt, and later succeeded his father as Bible College Director.

The story of a remarkable Christian soldier who risked his life for Jewish men.

72 years after the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, Britain and other nations are acknowledging Holocaust Memorial Day at a time when anti-Semitism is once more on the rise.

Israel itself, which has since risen from the ashes of that dreadful scourge that wiped out six million European Jews, is under dire threat from enemies on all sides while attacks on synagogues and other Jewish centres are still being carried out in the ‘civilised’ West. Only this last weekend in north-west London, a swastika-daubed brick was hurled through a Jewish family’s window while others were pelted with eggs.¹

The fragile borders to which the United Nations expect Israel to agree (just nine miles wide in places) have for good reason been described by politicians as ‘Auschwitz lines’, because they leave the Jewish state highly vulnerable to attack from neighbouring states who have repeatedly threatened to wipe them off the map.

It was also in January 1945 that one of the most heroic accounts of the war took place. But the incredible story has only just surfaced because the hero concerned never spoke about it.

The truth was finally unearthed by his granddaughter when asked to focus on a family member as part of a college assignment. Her widowed grandmother gave her the diary kept by her husband during his time in a prisoner-of-war camp which revealed the astonishing fact that, by standing up to the German commandant, Master Sgt Roddie Edmonds, of Knoxville, Tennessee, had saved the lives of 200 American Jews.

Israel is under dire threat from enemies on all sides, whilst Jews in the ‘civilised’ West are increasingly under attack.

‘We Are All Jews Here’

As the highest-ranking officer there, Edmonds was made responsible for the camp’s 1,292 American GIs, 200 of whom were Jewish. Then one day the Germans ordered all Jewish POWs to report outside their barracks the following morning. Knowing what awaited them – being moved to a slave labour camp at the very least – he decided to resist the directive, ordering all his men to fall out the following morning.

The commandant, Major Siegmann, duly ordered Edmonds to identify the Jewish soldiers, to which the sergeant responded: “We are all Jews here.”

Holding his pistol to Edmonds’ head, the commandant repeated the order. But the sergeant – a devout Christian – refused.

“According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our name, rank and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes,” Edmonds had said, according to one of the men saved that day.

Edmonds’ pastor son Chris regards all of them as heroes as they could easily have identified the Jews among them to save their skin. But they all stood together.

Neutrality Not an Option

Late last year, Roddie Edmonds was posthumously awarded the Yehi Or (‘Let there be light’) Award by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. He has also been honoured by Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.²

But as Jews were herded into cattle trucks for transporting to death camps, there weren’t many Roddies about who dared to speak up and stand up on their behalf. These days, where controversial issues are concerned, leaders still prefer to keep their heads below the proverbial parapet while remaining ‘impartial’. But there is a time when we must take sides. We must choose between life and death, between God and evil. If we claim to be Christian, we have no option.

“Neutrality is only an illusion,” writes Robert Stearns. “Those who are not for God are against Him. (Matthew 12.30a) The German public’s unfortunate legacy during World War II lies not in what they did in response to their despotic leader and his horrendous practices, but in what they did not do.”³

These days, where controversial issues are concerned, it seems easier to remain ‘impartial’. But there is a time when we must take sides.

Righteous Among the Nations

This did not apply, however, to Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, young Christians who led the White Rose leaflet campaign of resistance - for which they paid with their lives. Prophetically, they asked the question: “Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes…reach the light of day?”⁴

Garden of the Righteous, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

Stearns also points out that, when the Nazis invaded European nations, many monarchs vacated their thrones and fled. But King Christian X stayed in Denmark as he defied the bullies. And thanks to his example, most Danish Jews survived the war.⁵

Princess Alice, the Queen’s mother-in-law, has also been recognised by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for saving a Jewish family during the war, and is buried on the Mount of Olives.

As Princess of Greece, she hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children in her home. Rachel’s husband had in 1913 helped King George I of Greece, in return for which the king offered him any service he could perform, should he ever need it. When the Nazi threat emerged, his son recalled this promise and appealed to the Princess, who duly honoured her father’s pledge. Prince Charles last year fulfilled a longstanding wish to visit his grandmother’s grave.⁶

It’s interesting in this respect that Prince Charles has compared the dangers facing minority faith groups across the world today with the “dark days of the 1930s”.⁷

Are we courageous enough to tell the entire world that we are followers of Jesus and, as such, willing to do all we can to stand up to evil?

I Am One of Them…

The Queen herself is a wonderful example of someone who is prepared to make an uncompromising stand for faith and truth, declaring in her latest Christmas message to the nation: “Jesus Christ lived in obscurity for much of his life and was maligned and rejected by many, though he had done no wrong. Millions now follow his teaching and find in him the guiding light of their lives. I am one of them…”

Are we, like the Queen, courageous enough to tell the entire world that we are followers of Jesus and, as such, will do all we can to stand up to the evil that lurks in every dark corner of our land?

Roddie Edmonds was prepared to die for 200 Jewish men. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. But the greatest sacrifice of all was when Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus), “though he had done no wrong”, laid down his life for both Jews and Gentiles on a stake outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, after being “led like a lamb to the slaughter” during the Passover feast (Isa 53:7). He bought our pardon; he paid the price.

Notes

1 Jerusalem News Network, 24 January 2017, quoting Algemeiner.

2 Gateway News (South Africa), 1 December 2016, originally published by The Times of Israel.

3 The Cry of Mordecai by Robert Stearns (Destiny Image).

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Torch magazine, Christians United for Israel – UK, Dec 2016-Feb 2017.

7 Saltshakers, 24 December 2016, quoting Premier.org.uk.

In celebrating the 75th anniversary of Dunkirk, Britain has conveniently forgotten that it was God's intervention that saved the day...

In recent days the nation has been celebrating the 75th Anniversary of 'Operation Dynamo', the evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk between 27 May and 4 June 1940. The emphasis has been, once again, on the "Dunkirk Spirit" – on the sacrifices and heroism, the grit and determination of the British people, on the collaboration between the Navy, the RAF, and (especially) the "little ships". Services have been held in places such as Dover and Ramsgate, Dunkirk and Westminster Abbey, with media reports on these continuing the same emphases. National pride has been on parade again.

Selective National Memory

Conspicuous by their absence have been any substantial element of thanksgiving to Almighty God and any recognition of the role of prayer and the miraculous. This is the result of the secularisation of British society – a process almost unthinkable to most who lived and died in those dark days. In some cases it results from ignorance; in others, the result of wilful attacks upon the testimony of the participants at the time.

In the Dunkirk exhibition in Dover Castle there is no mention of the spiritual dimension of those times. On its website, the word 'miracle' is only used to credit the director of the operation: "Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay pulled off a miracle".¹ Furthermore, the BBC website includes an article entitled Spinning Dunkirk,² in which the 'miracle' is attributed to clever manipulation of the media by the politicians, creating a "myth" that the British have preferred to believe. Other authors have also scorned the miracle.

Conspicuous by their absence this memorial year have been any substantial elements of thanksgiving to God, or recognition of the role of prayer."

Call to Prayer

What do the eyewitness accounts have to say? Did you know, for example, that the main operation was preceded by a National Day of Prayer? In a broadcast on 24 May 1940 to the nation and the Empire, King George VI called his people to a day of repentance and prayer on Sunday 26 May.

John Richardson, in Dunkirk Revisited, writes:

It says much about the times, and about Dunkirk, that it had then taken centre stage in the nation's life. Every church and synagogue had been packed. Petticoat Lane's market closed for the only time in its history so that traders could attend church. On the forecourt of Southampton's Guildhall, an overflow of 2,000 had assembled to hear relayed the united service within.³ [emphasis added]

British Pathe's film commentary refers to "the mighty congregation" at the service in Westminster Abbey, at which King George VI, Winston Churchill, members of the Cabinet and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands participated. The photograph here shows the queue for prayer outside the Abbey. The Daily Sketch, reporting the following day, said "Nothing like it has ever been seen before".

Answered Prayer: Halted Forces

So what followed? Contemporary accounts refer to three or four aspects of the miraculous. First, the Panzer forces were unexpectedly halted for two days on 24 May, enabling the Allies to re-group. Even now, historians puzzle over why this happened; not even the German generals could agree the reason for the call to halt the German armoured divisions.

This clearly preceded the National Day of Prayer – was it a case of "Before they call I will answer" (Isa 65:24)? Perhaps God was blessing the king's very decision to call for prayer, itself a step of faith preceded by several days of debate, commitment and preparation. It is also important to realise that prayer was already well underway. Consider this excerpt from Norman Grubb's 'Rees Howells – Intercessor':

When the war broke out the prayer meetings at Wales Bible College became a daily event...Every week and often for days at a time there were whole days of prayer. It seems that God would lay one or another aspect of the war on the heart of Rees Howells or one of the others praying, and the whole community would intercede...⁴

Dunkirk was bathed in unprecedented levels of prayer all around the country, and then the miraculous happened."

Bad Weather over Flanders

The second miracle of Dunkirk was that within 48 hours of the National Day of Prayer, a great storm broke over Flanders, giving cover to the Allied troops, softening the marshlands which lay before the German armoured divisions and grounding the Luftwaffe for all but 2½ days of the operation. General Halder, head of the German Army General Staff, wrote in his diary on 30 May:

The pocket would have been closed at the coast if only our armour had not been held back. The bad weather has grounded the Luftwaffe, and we must now stand and watch countless thousands of the enemy get away to England right under our noses.⁵

Calm Conditions for the 'Little Ships'

The third miracle was strangely calm conditions in the Channel during much of Operation Dynamo.

German author Hans Frank states that over the 9 days of the operation "the sea was leaden and calm, unusual for the Channel."⁶ Even the rather cynical comedian Spike Milligan was later to write "...the Channel was like a piece of polished steel. I'd never seen the sea so calm. One would say it was miraculous."⁷

The Daily Telegraph wrote on 8 July, 1940:

Those who are accustomed to the Channel testify to the strangeness of this calm; they are deeply impressed by the phenomenon of nature by which it became possible for tiny craft to go back and forth in safety.

This was particularly helpful in evacuating over 98,000 soldiers from the beach zones, as opposed to from the harbour area.

Large-Scale Rescue

By the end of Operation Dynamo on 4 June, a total of over 338,000 troops had been rescued (almost 140,000 of which were French, Belgian, Dutch and Polish). This contrasted greatly with the Admiralty's best estimate in planning – 45,000 over a two-day period.

In the House of Commons on 4 June, Churchill confessed that he had only hoped for 20,000-30,000 successful evacuations: "I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history."⁸ The graph to the left shows the unexpectedly miraculous scale of the rescue.

On the same day, the BBC reported: "The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, has described the "miracle of deliverance" from Dunkirk and warned of an impending invasion."

Notable Reactions

Looking back on Operation Dynamo, Vice-Admiral Ramsay wrote to his wife: "The relief is stupendous. The results are beyond belief."⁹ General Pownall, Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, noted in his diary at the time: "The evacuation from Dunkirk was surely a miracle."¹⁰ Admiral Sir William James, who later led the evacuation of remaining Normandy and Brittany ports, was later to exclaim, "Thank God for that miracle at Dunkirk".¹¹

C.B. Mortlock wrote in the Daily Telegraph on 8 June 1940:

...the prayers of the nation were answered...the God of hosts himself had supported the valiant men of the British Expeditionary Force...One thing can be certain about tomorrow's thanksgiving in our churches, from none will the thanks ascend with greater sincerity or deeper fervour than from the officers and men who have seen the hand of God, powerful to save, delivering them from the hands of a mighty foe, who, humanly speaking, had them utterly at his mercy.

When services of national thanksgiving were held in all churches on the following Sunday, it was with great feeling that many a choir and congregation sang the words of Psalm 124, for they were seen to apply to that situation through which the nation had just passed:

If the Lord had not been on our side- let Israel say -if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us; the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.

Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

No other passage of Scripture could have more aptly described the nation's experience on that day.

In the aftermath of Dunkirk, the nation was awestruck at God's deliverance. Surely 75 years on, it is time to recognise afresh the hand of God in our history, and give him all due worship."

Remembering Today

Surely, it's time for us to recognise anew the hand of God in our history, and to give him all due praise and thanks.

It's time, too, for those of us who are Christians to repent of any national pride and complacency and to intercede on the nation's behalf – that the Almighty will have mercy and by the power of his Holy Spirit bring conviction and conversion once more to this disturbingly secular land.

References

1 English Heritage: Operation Dynamo

2 Spinning Dunkirk. BBC News, 17 February 2011.

3 Dunkirk Revisited, 2008, p139.

4 Chapter 34: Intercession for Dunkirk.

5 Shirer, W L, 1959. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, p883.

6 2007, Seaforth Publishing.

7 Games, A, 2003. The Essential Spike Milligan, p.198.

8 We Shall Fight on the Beaches, Speech to the House of Commons, 4 June 1940.

9 Barnett, C, 2000. Engage the Enemy More Closely. Penguin Books, p161.

10 Lord, W, 2012. The miracle of Dunkirk. Open Road Media.

11 Ibid.

The 70th anniversary of VE Day is a nostalgic event for many of our older readers. After five years of war, hardship, rationing, bombing, destruction and death, a new day had dawned with endless possibilities. But could the past really be left behind?

Most British cities bore the scars of bombing but the whole of Europe had been trampled on by tanks and infantry and its cities left in ruins. Was there any hope of a return to normal? Most people could not even remember what normality was.

Britain was still at war in the Far East; it would be another year and two atomic bombs before the war with Japan ended. The cost in human life was enormous. The Second World War with Europe and Japan cost Germany 7,000,000 lives, France 550,000 lives, Britain 450,900 lives, the USA 420,000 lives, Russia 25,000,000 lives, China 15,000,000 lives and Japan 2,500,000 lives.¹

Was it all worth it?

Certainly the scourge of Nazi Fascism had to be cleared out of Europe and the ruthless imperialism of Japan had to be cleared out of the Far East, or between them they would have ruled the world and there would have been no freedom for anyone. But what kind of freedom had been won? The ink was hardly dry on peace treaties with Germany than Europe was plunged into the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and it was not long before hostilities broke out in Korea, followed by war in Vietnam.

The 20th century was the bloodiest in the history of the world and the weapons of mass destruction acquired by many nations (including some of the world's most unstable nations such as North Korea and Pakistan) now make the 21st century highly dangerous too."

Present-day conflict zones in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Aden, Nigeria and South Sudan are all claiming lives and appear to have no solution.

Will there ever be peace?

Pacts and treaties do not provide the answer because they can be easily torn up and discarded. The problem lies in human nature. We are born self-centred and aggressive- as anyone can testify who has seen a baby in a temper tantrum, or a group of infants wanting the same toy in a nursery.

The problem of warring nations will not be solved until we deal with the problem of human nature, and there is only one power that can deal with that: the power of God the Creator."

The problem of warring nations will not be solved until we deal with the problem of human nature, and there is only one power that can deal with that: the power of God the Creator. He made our human nature and only he can redeem it. He sent Jesus our Lord and Saviour for this very purpose, but we crucified him and rejected his teaching. But God, who alone can bring good out of the worst human disaster, raised Jesus from the dead and through him new life is available to everyone.

This is the message Christians have to bring to the world. God has not only given us the message, but the power to deliver it through the Holy Spirit. What are we waiting for?

References

1 Conservative estimates derived from multiple sources, see World War II casualties.