The economy is unexpectedly buoyant in the wake of the Referendum - were the doom-mongers wrong?

What has happened to all the forecasts of doom and gloom that were heard in the run-up to the Referendum, predicting what would happen if Britain voted to leave the EU? George Osborne, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, even said that he would be forced to bring in an autumn budget with swingeing tax increases.

The Governor of the Bank of England hinted at a collapse of the British economy. The President of the IMF predicted dire consequences and even President Obama said that Britain would be last in the queue for trade deals with the USA. A whole army of world leaders conspired to scare the British people into voting to remain within the European Union.

Well, the British people demonstrated their independence! As an island people we have been used to standing alone. We have faced a hostile world many times in our history and we have not only survived but thrived. So what is happening today?

Certainly the pound has fallen in value which has affected British holidaymakers going overseas (although it has staged a partial revival in the past 24 hours), but apart from that there's been little noticeable change. We have certainly not seen unemployment rising, house prices falling and the economy collapsing.

General Feel of Buoyancy

In fact, unemployment has fallen – at least the number of those claiming unemployment benefits has fallen. Share prices have risen and the market seems buoyant. Retail sales were up by 1.4% in July; house prices continued to rise; lots of tourists came taking advantage of the weaker pound. Even the weather was good through much of August and our Olympic athletes came home with pockets full of gold. So there's been a general feel of buoyancy in the nation and hope for the future. The doom-mongers have been defeated – or so it would seem!

An army of world leaders conspired to scare the British people into voting to remain – have the doom-mongers been defeated?

Most of the nation is slowly going back to work. The children will soon be going back to school. The MPs will be returning to Westminster. The 'silly season' for journalists will soon be over and the real issues in the nation will have to be faced. Of course, before we really get down to business we will have to live through the annual political circus of the 'conference season' and the media moguls can flex their muscles with the entertainment provided by the Corbyn/Smith contest in the Labour Party and the delights of division among their supporters.

No doubt unemployment will fall farther in the next few months as we recruit thousands of new employees into the Civil Service to deal with the complexities of disentangling our legal system from the European Union. We also need to recruit a small army of skilled trade negotiators and lawyers to deal with the trade arrangements and constitutional agreements in everything from leaving the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Market to dealing with immigration and the multitude of foreigners living in Britain and Britons living in Europe.

Time of Unprecedented Change

But what is the real situation in the nation? Apart from all the constitutional and commercial complications, what can be said about Britain's health? No, I'm not talking about the NHS, or the junior doctors' strike and waiting times for operations. I'm concerned about the cultural and spiritual health of the nation in a time of significant upheaval.
What we are facing as a nation is unprecedented. We don't know where we're going or what the future holds and we have never been in such a position before.

During the 20^th Century our fathers and grandfathers reluctantly fought two world wars to preserve our independence, democracy and concept of civilisation. As a nation they did not want to go to war but they saw no alternative. They did not know the future or the outcome but even in the darkest days they had confidence that what they were doing was right and that in the end righteousness would prevail – it was a matter of faith. They believed in the God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and they took a stand upon the conviction that the hardships they were enduring would be justified by the outcome, because God blesses those who take a stand for moral and spiritual righteousness.

During the darkest days of two world wars, the British people did not know the future, but faith carried them through.

Today, the majority of the nation does not share that faith. Only 43.8% of the nation regard themselves as Christian and 48.5% say they are non-believers – they have no faith in any kind of supernatural being – they are alone in the universe.¹

The big question Christians have to face is whether or not the strength of our faith is sufficient to carry the nation. We know that Abraham pleaded with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah and he was told that if he could find 10 righteous individuals God would spare the city. Jeremiah was told "Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find that one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city" (Jer 5:1). So clearly God does not wait for everyone in a city or nation to be righteous before he pours out his blessings.

Blessings for Faith

Is God blessing Britain today through the many thousands of Christians who prayed for a vote to leave the EU? They believed that God wanted Britain to separate from the un-godly and unrighteous institutions of the European Union and to find a new relationship with our European neighbours through which God would demonstrate the blessings of righteousness and faith.

Is the strength of faith left in Britain sufficient to carry us through?

The Prophet Malachi faced a similar situation in Israel when he was told that if the people put their trust in the Lord and behaved in righteousness, God would not only bless them, but use them to evangelise their neighbours. He said, "'Test me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,' says the Lord Almighty. 'Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty'" (Mal 3:10-12).

If all those who prayed (and voted) for Brexit would now seek to live in right relationships with God and their neighbours, sharing their faith and concentrating their prayers upon seeking God's blessing upon the nation, the promise given to Malachi could become true for Britain. The British people, who have long been a thorn in the flesh of the EU, would then become a blessing to Europe!

References

1 British Social Attitudes survey, published May 2016. See also coverage by The Guardian. The proportion declaring no religion peaked in 2009 at 51% and has since been falling, reports Inspire Magazine.

The Government's propaganda may put people off, or it may deceive them - just as the nation was deceived in the 1975 EU Referendum.

British people dislike bullies. We have a strong sense of fair play and on big issues we like to weigh the evidence and make up our own minds. We are an island people and we value our independence. We do not like being bullied. This is why the huge pressure being put upon the electorate by the Government and their overseas friends, international leaders, big business corporations and bankers may prove to be counter-productive.

The Government promised to help the undecided by publishing the facts. Instead, they have spent £9 million on a blatant piece of propaganda trying to persuade us to stay in the European Union. The front page title of the booklet gives the game away. It says nothing about a presentation of the facts. Its title is "Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK". It then states "The UK has secured a special status in the reformed EU".

We should surely be entitled to ask, what 'special status'? And in what way is the EU 'reformed'? Are the British people once again being deceived by lies from powerful politicians - as we were 40 years ago?

More Deception?

What is happening today looks very similar to how we were tricked into entered the European Union. Ted Heath, the Prime Minister who did the original deal in 1973, readily admitted before he died that he had lied to Parliament and to the British people because he knew that we were not simply joining a trading group but that the intention was always to work towards the formation of a United States of Europe in which we would all lose our sovereign identity.¹

This fact was deliberately kept hidden from the British public when we voted at the 1975 referendum on whether or not we should stay in the 'European Economic Community' ('Common Market') as it was then described. In those days it was largely a trading group with nine member states, whereas today the EU is a very different beast, with 28 members in a tightly regulated organisation bound by treaties, such as Maastricht and Lisbon, and controlled by an unelected Commission backed by an enormous bureaucracy, with institutions such as the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice exercising enormous power over our own parliament and legal courts.

In 1975, we were asked to vote on whether we should stay in a small trading group of nine countries. Today, the EU is a very different beast.

When the Maastricht Treaty was being negotiated there were attempts by churches to get some reference to the Judaeo-Christian heritage of Europe but this was strongly resisted by secular humanists, who prevailed.² The resultant European Union is not only deliberately a godless - in fact, God-denying - organisation, but it is also systemically corrupt, as demonstrated by the fact that it has not been able to persuade the auditors to endorse its accounts for at least the past five years.³ In this country, if a company were in that situation they would not only be prosecuted but they would not be allowed to continue in business.

Miracles in the Past

So how should Christians decide on such an important issue? We surely have to recognise the moral and spiritual battle for the soul of Britain that is involved in the present referendum debate. Christians need to know what God is saying to us, not least by looking at the recent history of Britain in a biblical context. This enables us to understand the purposes of God and what he requires of a nation with a strong Judaeo-Christian heritage such as Britain's.

There are still many people in the older generation who remember that God worked a miracle at Dunkirk in 1940, saving our army from annihilation and giving us victory in the Battle of Britain in the skies. Even Churchill acknowledged in Parliament that it Dunkirk was a "miracle of deliverance".⁴ Those were days when the whole nation turned to prayer.

It was also at a time of national prayer that Hitler took the irrational decision not to invade Britain. It is now recognised that if the German invasion had taken place in 1940 nothing could have stopped them conquering Britain. Dad's Army would no doubt have fought valiantly but German Panzer tanks would have been rolling down Whitehall within days. 

When a nation puts its destiny in the hands of God it can expect miracles to happen. It has happened in the past and it can happen again today – if there is a sufficiently strong believing remnant in the country.

When a nation puts its destiny in the hands of God it can expect miracles to happen. It has happened in the past and it can happen again today.

Opportunity for the Remnant

Of course we know that as a nation we have spurned our spiritual heritage: we have passed many ungodly laws and we no longer deserve to be called a Christian nation. But there is undoubtedly a strong remnant of believers in the older generation and there are many indications of young people coming to faith in Jesus – possibly in reaction to the mess their unbelieving parents have made of the nation. It is the middle generation who are missing in many churches up and down the country today.

Believing Christians know that as a nation we deserve judgement but we also know the love and mercy of God who has given a solemn promise, "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" (Jer 18:7).

The Referendum debate is bringing believing Christians to prayer throughout the country. Many prayer meetings are organised for this weekend, St George's Day, 23 April, and many more are planned between now and 23 June. These prayer meetings give us a chance to seek the Lord and know what he is saying to the nation so that we can pray in line with God's will and vote accordingly.

Word on the EU, 2015

We have already nailed our colours to the mast in this magazine but we know many Christians who are still undecided. We respect their integrity and we therefore encourage them to join other Christians in prayer where they can spend time spreading the whole issue before the Lord who will surely answer in clarity.

If you have not yet decided which way to vote, we encourage you to join with others in prayer and spread the issue before the Lord.

Alongside this article we are printing a prophecy from David Noakes that has already been widely circulated. I was with him when he received this prophecy towards the end of last year. David and I have been close friends and colleagues since the early days of the old printed magazine, Prophecy Today.

We have shared a platform at hundreds of meetings over the years and I have heard him prophesy many times, but I have never heard him bring a word that is as directional as this. In publishing it today, please understand that we are not saying that this is a direct word from the Lord. We offer it in love and humility to our fellow believers for weighing and testing, and we offer it as part of the process of seeking the word of the Lord for Britain today.

References

1 E.g. Quote from PRO/FCO 30/789, Sub-committee of official committee on monetary aspects of UK entry to EEC, 1970. The Heath Government's positive response: PRO/CAB 164/771, Informal talks with the European Commission and the exchange of views with member countries during the negotiation period, 1970.

2 E.g. Anderson, MJ. Ungodly Ways: The Dark Side of the European Union. CRISIS Magazine, 1 June 2003.

3 Waterfield, B and Dominiczak, P. EU auditors refuse to sign off more than £100billion of its own spending. The Telegraph, 4 November 2014.

4 Speech to the House of Commons, 4 June 1940. Transcript available via The Churchill Society.

Ian Farley reviews 'God and Churchill', by Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley (SPCK, 2015, 352 pages, hardback £19.99)

This is an extremely thought-provoking book and one that is easy to read. It claims to be the first biography of Churchill to focus on the Christian motivation behind his style of leadership, speeches and eventual success. But it is important to note the title carefully. The order, God and Churchill, is significant, as is the subtitle – 'How the great leader's sense of divine destiny changed his troubled world and offers hope for ours'. Together, title and sub-title lets the reader know what to expect.

The title is not 'Churchill and God'. Those with some knowledge of the wartime prime minister will be aware that he did not express personal faith in Jesus nor particularly call himself a Christian or indeed claim to be religious. If enthusiasts of him are looking to find that actually he was one or all of these things, then this book will disappoint.

Rather the argument of the joint authors (one of whom, Sandys, is Churchill's great-grandson) is that God is active and sovereign in history. In particular, he appoints saving leaders and uses them to achieve his purposes. Churchill, they argue, was one such instrument in God's hands.

Churchill did not call himself a Christian or express personal faith in Jesus. But this book argues that he was still an instrument in God's sovereign hands for a saving purpose.

Churchill had, they believe, a high sense of Christian civilisation and a deep knowledge of Scripture, imparted to him by his nanny whose photograph was still by his bedside at his death. Of particular interest is the claim that as a boy of 16 he was already envisioned with a sense of purpose from God, one that would involve him saving the nation and its capital from invasion. His perseverance in this belief in his destiny, often against all the odds, is at the heart of this story.

Certainly Churchill was preserved from death on several occasions and equipped through the vicissitudes of his life to stand up to the evil of Hitler and Nazism. There are interesting chapters on the sources of this evil and Churchill's different perspective especially on science, the role of the church in society, the philosophy of Utilitarianism and the importance of history.

At the heart of this story is Churchill's sense of destiny and perseverance in his belief that he had great purpose.

All of this is a good read but there is more. As the subtitle suggests, his sense of destiny offers hope for our world too. The authors very expressly link the state of the world today with the mess of the 1940s. ISIS is the current equivalent of Hitler. The moral mess of the 1920s led to the Second World War and the moral mess of the 1960s has led to today's chaos. Is there a leader-saviour for today? There is a review of the danger of equivalency as an acceptable way of thought and a very good overview of patterns of history from Judges. But be warned, tempers may fray in this part!

Altogether a book to enjoy and be stimulated by, but not one that will assure you of the great man's salvation. However, it is a timely addition to the corpus on Churchill - especially in the year of the 70^th anniversary of Victory in Europe. The book's release is also timed to coincide with Churchill's birthday, 30 November, on which date the author will speak at a national press launch in Westminster.

Altogether a book to enjoy and be stimulated by, though not one that will assure you of the great man's salvation.

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.