Recognising and overcoming our spiritual enemy

The Irish political game: North and South.

Have the lives of unborn children now become pawns in the political game? How low can we sink in the United Kingdom?

Satan’s cleverest lie is that he does not exist. Once that lie is accepted, the guard is down and a stream of further lies and deceptions can follow among which is the lie that there is no God presiding over the affairs of men.

In the course of just one generation, the majority of the people of the United Kingdom have become beguiled in this way: as a consequence, the laws of God have become trampled under our feet and some strange concoction of so-called ‘human rights’ has replaced the fear of the Lord. And this has happened in a nation whose Monarch made an Oath before Almighty God in the 1953 Coronation (whose 65^th anniversary is celebrated this very week) to maintain the laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel, to the utmost of her power.

Was it not the God of the Bible to whom the Oath was made? The personal God who does exist and cares about the affairs of our nation, to the extent shown in the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus Christ, the total focus of the Gospel which the Queen, on behalf of the entire nation, vowed to proclaim!

satan’s cleverest lie is that he does not exist. Once that lie is accepted, the guard is down.

A multitude of our laws have changed over one generation to reverse what was once a much better reflection of the laws of God. Is it any wonder that God’s protection is being removed from our nation when we ourselves have reversed laws that were themselves intended to protect?

Thin End of the Wedge

This week, once more the protection of unborn children is in focus, wrapped up in the more clinical language of ‘abortion’ and the misguided language of human and feminist rights. The surprise referendum result in southern Ireland - a rebellion against the hold of the Roman Catholic religion - has sent a shockwave of opportunism up to Northern Ireland to those also wanting to legalise abortion there.

In 1967 a law was passed in Britain to counter back-street abortions so that women whose lives were at risk could find help in the NHS. We were concerned even with that first partial legalisation of abortion, and now we find that step by step, as the mindset of our nation has turned away from Almighty God, that law has become the thin end of the wedge.

Abortion is now more like a method of contraception than a questionable and sensitive measure in the most extreme circumstances of need to protect a mother or her baby when difficult choices have to be made on the grounds of health. And this week I would suggest that we have gone even beyond this, with the lives of unborn babies becoming pawns in the political power game.

Does God Approve?

Before taking this point further, let us pause and consider whether the Most Holy God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob approves of taking the lives of unborn babies. Does he really work on the principle of a woman’s ‘right’ to take control of her own body?

1967 was the thin end of the wedge.

The God who has protected Britain over hundreds of years until this day calls us to be like him and protect the vulnerable of society - and who can be more vulnerable than an unborn child? This is made clear by a principle of his laws found in Exodus 21:21-24. God shows his concern that we protect unborn children by imposing the penalty of the law when an unborn child is harmed. The penalty is: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, would for wound, stripe for stripe - life for life!

This is the seriousness before God of our taking the lives of unborn babies so casually - as if what is hidden in the womb to us is also hidden to him! How foolish!

Crossing Another Line

I believe we crossed yet another line on abortion this week. This is highlighted by the attempt of the Shadow Attorney General, Baroness Chakrabarti, in seeking to goad the Prime Minister on the grounds of feminism to enforce the Northern Ireland Parliament to take steps to bring in an abortion law to match the result of the referendum in southern Ireland. This was front-page news on Monday of this week.

Let’s unpack this a little more to see how far we have fallen before Almighty God since the Coronation of 1953. The Attorney General is the senior legal advisor to the Crown and should therefore interpret, on behalf of the Monarch, how to bring the laws of the Bible into the laws of our nation. The Shadow Attorney General, aspiring to this job, should be amongst the most devout Bible students of our nation, trembling daily before the Throne of God in prayer.

Instead, this particular politician has seized an opportunity to attempt to drive a humanistic political wedge between the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), knowing the strength of resolve of the DUP not to allow abortion in Northern Ireland. Against this, the figure of more than 100,000 lives saved in Northern Ireland because of the resolve of the Northern Irish has been quoted by members of the DUP: 100,000 testimonies of children who lived rather than died.

How wonderful it would be to hear about some of these children who were protected and now can grow up and contribute to our world, rather than to have been cast onto the waste heap before they could even take their first breath.

The God who has protected Britain for centuries until this day calls us to be like him and protect the vulnerable of society.

Inferring the Real Motive

God knows if I am right in my further appraisal of this situation: God is the Judge and his judgement will one day be fully applied. Nothing escapes his notice.

I cannot help observing that politics at times is a game of words and we are left to infer what the real motive is behind what is sometimes said. Members of the Labour Party in opposition are likely to seize any opportunity to bring the Government down. It is known that for important issues, including Brexit, the Government needs the support of the DUP. Therefore, much can be achieved if an issue can be highlighted to break this co-operation.

If the abortion law is such an issue, with motives veiled to what this law would really be doing in taking lives of innocent babies, then even this could be a bargaining chip in the quest for political control.

Almighty Spiritual Battle

We are in an almighty spiritual battle in Britain not even considered by those whose minds have been so veiled by Satan himself. Those who understand what is going on in the spiritual realm must continue to sound the trumpet as watchmen appointed by God.

When lives of unborn babies become bargaining chips in the political power game, how far have we fallen? We raised this point in July last year. The battle has intensified even more this week.

Theresa May replaces David Cameron as Prime Minister and forms a new Government - but what will her leadership be like?

It used to be said that "a week is a long time in politics" – now political change is measured by the hour! The incredible changes that have taken place in the past three weeks since the Referendum have left the whole country breathless. The political landscape at Westminster has been turned upside-down. Only Jeremy Corbyn remains unchanged (at the time of writing!)!

It is really sad to see the tumultuous upheavals in the Labour Party at a time when we need to have a strong Opposition in order to make democracy work. Government should always be challenged when proposed legislation is under consideration. A strong and effective Opposition ensures such scrutiny for the good of the whole country. It ensures that we are not being ruled by a one-party system that favours those already in power.

Not Just the Privileged Few

The new Government being set up by Prime Minister Theresa May signals a wholesale change from David Cameron's Government, which was often accused of being a posh boys club. May's inaugural statement on reaching Downing Street said "The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours."¹ This was a brave statement for an incoming Tory Prime Minister, and sounded more like the sort of thing that Harold Wilson or Jim Callaghan would have said.

Theresa May's new Government signals a wholesale change from David Cameron's.

In the same speech she had signalled her intention of working for social equality.

That means fighting against the burning injustice that, if you're born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others. If you're black, you're treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white. If you're a white, working-class boy, you're less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.

If you're at a state school, you're less likely to reach the top professions than if you're educated privately. If you're a woman, you will earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there's not enough help to hand. If you're young, you'll find it harder than ever before to own your own home.²

It may be that Mrs May has been impacted by the biblical values that she would have heard many times in her childhood from her Anglican clergyman father. Biblical values always favour the poor and powerless because they are based upon the two central values of love and justice that are part of the nature of God. Of course, it's part of our human nature to prefer love to justice, but if we wish to be righteous in the eyes of God we have to embrace both: we cannot have one without the other.

Our new Prime Minister has signalled her concern for those who are not the favoured ones enjoying the fruit of prosperity and good health: those who need assistance to enable them to achieve their full potential and contribute to society. A society that cares for its weaker members in biblical terms is 'a just society'. That is the kind of society that God blesses with peace and prosperity.

Our new PM has signalled her concern for the poor and powerless in our society – has she been influenced by biblical values?

A Transformed Future?

The prophets in the Bible roundly condemned those who misused their power to oppress others and gain personal advantage. Amos berated those who "oppress the righteous and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts" he said that God would not even listen to their worship or their prayers. "Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream!" (Amos 5:12, 23-24).

If Theresa May has appointed men and women to her Cabinet who share a commitment to lead Britain out of the entanglement of EU laws and regulations – re-enacting those that are just and righteous, and discarding those that are not – the future for Britain could be totally transformed in the next decade. It could become a land of peace and prosperity in a world of inequality which would be a model for other nations.

The Seeds of Destruction

The new PM comes to power at what keen observers see as the most difficult and threatening time since the days of World War II. The tensions in Europe are growing daily with increasing social unrest in many nations within the European Union, where inequality and poverty are the daily lot of millions and the financial crisis and austerity policies are impacting unfairly upon the poor. Far right parties are vying for power – a recipe for revolution; while the banks in Italy, Portugal, Spain and France are struggling and Deutsche Bank in Germany is heavily exposed to all of them.

May comes to power at what is the most difficult and threatening time since the days of World War II.

You don't have to be a Marxist to see that Marx was right when he said that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction – what he didn't say was that those seeds are greed and corruption. America is engulfed in election fever, faced with the choice between a 'corrupt' Democrat and a 'lunatic' Republican (that's how they describe each other!) so the future looks highly uncertain.

Both Europe and America, bastions of Western civilisation, are coming apart at the seams while the Islamic world continues to tear itself apart with increasing violence in the Middle East. Tensions are growing between Russia and the West: and in the Far East China's ambitions to take possession of all the islands in the South China Sea and North Korea's nuclear ambitions pose a very real threat of war.

Everything That Can Be Shaken...

If we add to all this political and social instability the effects of climate change, drought and famine, storms and floods, hurricanes and earthquakes – the only conclusion is that the world is highly unstable and the biblical prophecies are coming true. We are indeed seeing God shaking everything in the world of nature and among the nations. The prophecy of Haggai 2:6-7 is being fulfilled in our lifetime – "This is what the Lord Almighty says: in a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations".

Surely it is time for Christians to seek the Lord to discover why God is shaking everything and what he is saying to his people today. Maybe this is the time when Britain can truly become a nation used by God – a nation founded upon biblical values of love and justice and exercising a powerful influence for good in the highly unstable world that faces us.

Wise word for the week -

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all the alternatives." – Abba Eban (Israeli diplomat)³

References

1 Statement from the new Prime Minister Theresa May. Prime Minister's Office, 13 July 2016.

2 Ibid.

3 Quoted in The Week, 7 July 2016.