Why has God blessed Britain so much?

As we bring our short series to an end it is clear that we have barely scratched the surface of what God has done for Britain.

When God cut a covenant with Abraham, that he would be the father of many nations, and even when Jesus suffered on the Cross, making the New Covenant available to the whole world, it nevertheless remained hidden just how much God would do for nations such as ours. Yet history is full of testaments to God’s loving kindness towards the people of the British Isles.

But why have we chosen to write a book of remembrance, echoing Malachi 3:16?

Pleasing God Through Obedience

One reason is that we learn from the Book of Malachi that it pleased God for the people of Judah to recall his goodness to them (Mal 3:16-18). So, surely our remembrances might please God today in the same way – it is a good thing to do at any time.

Secondly, remembering is a principle built into the yearly cycle of the Feasts of the Lord. For example, at Passover deliverance from Egypt is remembered, which in New Covenant terms brings remembrance of the Lord’s sacrifice for sin – “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Quite simply, if we do not remember, then we will forget.

History is full of testaments to God’s loving kindness towards the people of the British Isles.

Thirdly, we live in days of great decline from the ways of God, particularly in Britain. In such days we can easily meditate only on the negative aspects of our times. Remembering God’s help in times past can give us a balanced perspective and, indeed, kindle our hope again, leading to thankfulness and renewed prayer:

Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:2)

Fourthly, we live in a generation where more and more people, especially the young, have little knowledge of what God has done for us in the past. They must be taught.

Understanding His Deeper Purposes

But I think there is also another reason, deeper down, to be understood. As we set out all that God has done and consider it in prayer before him, we may find that he grants us a new perspective on what he is doing now, today.

God is always moving forward in fulfilment of his covenant promises. Historically, Britain has been greatly used as part of this – as a base for sending forth the Gospel message around the world, and also in helping to fulfil God’s purposes for Israel – working to prevent satan from annihilating the Jewish race in World War II, and participating (albeit imperfectly) in enabling the Jews to re-establish the land of Israel.

If we can understand some deeper reasons behind the blessings God bestowed upon Britain, we might wake up to what he is doing in our day.

As we consider what God has done for us in the past, we may find that he grants us a new perspective on what he is doing now, today.

As the nations fall into disarray, having had 2,000 years of opportunity for hearing the Gospel, the scene is set for God’s final plans for Israel to be fulfilled prior to the return of the Messiah. To put the past in perspective might enable us to understand where the time-clock of covenant history is now, so that we might participate in rather than oppose the work of God today.

Would God be pleased with us if, in our Bible study and prayer groups, we spent some more time recalling past blessings and asking him to show us how to prepare for and pray concerning the future? I think this is the deeper reason why we have been led to begin writing our Book of Remembrance.

This is the final instalment in our short summer series 'Our Book of Remembrance'. You can read the rest of the series by clicking here.

It is time to remember what God has done for Britain.

When Judah returned from Babylonian captivity under the ministries of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Prophet Malachi rebuked the nation for the corruption of the priests, the wickedness of the people and their presumption towards God. Some responded to the Prophet; they were those who feared the Lord, who spoke to one another and to the Lord and who recalled what God had done for them in times past. They wrote a book of remembrance that was pleasing to God (Mal 3:16-18).

There has been tremendous decline in our own nation over the present generation. Yet we have been a nation greatly blessed by God for hundreds of years of our history – blessings beyond our deserving.

Week after week, we bring warnings to the nation. Perhaps it is time, as in the days of ancient Judah, to write our own book of remembrance – a book of remembrance of what God has done for both Britain and us personally.

But where to start! There is a multitude of possible things to call to memory, including:

• How the Gospel came to our island in the early days of the Apostles and how God prepared people to accept its truth.
  
• How the truths of the Bible gradually took root and became part of our island culture.
  
• How the nation was united and increasingly governed through the laws of God.
  
• How many of our leaders gave personal witness to their faith in the God of Israel.
  
• How, at times of decline, God sent revival after revival.
  
• How God prospered our nation.
  
• How God protected our nation.
  
• How God used Britain to translate the Bible so that every person could read it in the English language.
  
• How God raised up British missionaries to send the Gospel across the world.
  
• How God gave British Christians insight into the significance of Israel, resulting in the Balfour Declaration.
  
• How God gave Britain custody over the Land of Israel, called the British Mandate, to prepare her for the return of her people.
  
• How God taught us how to care for one another through such institutions as the NHS and through protective laws.

The list is immense.

Over the remaining weeks of August at Prophecy Today we will replace the normal Editorial with extended versions of our ‘Thought for the Week’, our writers concentrating on a selection of themes such as those above.

We would like readers to respond by sending in other points of remembrance so that this can be our Book of Remembrance, through which we can join together to thank God for what he has done for Great Britain over many years.

The same remembrance events happen each year, but how Britain has changed.

Remembrance Day this year, the 11^th day of 11^th month, coincided with the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The battle, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was from July to November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders, as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917. The objective was accomplished on 10 November.

The War to End All Wars

It was a controversial battle from the start. British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was against the offensive, as was General Foch the Chief of Staff of the French Army. In 1938 Lloyd George wrote in his memoirs that Passchendaele was one of the greatest disasters of the war and that no soldier of any intelligence would by then defend the senseless campaign.

Even the number of casualties was unknown, with wildly differing estimates, so that an individual was lost among the multitude counted. Sometimes the numbers were exaggerated to lessen the impact of loss for the costly victory. Somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million casualties from the Allies and the same from the Germans seems to be an acceptable approximation.

Australian wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele. See Photo Credits.Many of those missing soldiers have still not been identified, each one spurred on through national loyalty, obedience to superiors and with the promise that this would be the “war to end wars”.

Personal Points of Contact

Last weekend the nation paused for two minutes to remember, as best we could, the sacrifice of these and so many other lives in succeeding wars. The number of wartime casualties has amassed through the years following the armistice of 1918. Over 60 million people were killed in the Second World War alone, about 3% of the entire 1940 world population.

Not many of us have memories of family and friends who fell in the First World War but quite a few of us are left who have had direct involvement with those who fought the Second World War and succeeding wars.

My RAF service brought me into contact with some who survived the conflict. I also recall the sombre tones of my father whose best friend lost his life as a pilot in the Battle of Britain.

One of my close colleagues told me of the lasting impact that was made on his father who was among the first to enter the death camp of Belsen after the Allied victory. The shock of finding the emaciated, all-but-dead Jewish survivors and the horrendous job of clearing up the carnage left by the Nazis scarred him for the rest of his life.

Somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million casualties on each side were suffered at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Honouring Survivors

I have personally tried to honour those who survived the conflict when I could. For example, I travelled to an air show at Duxford last year with the main aim of shaking the hand of two 617 Dambuster Squadron Air Crew. One was Johnny Johnson, the last British Dambuster. He was the bomb-aimer who released the bouncing bomb on the Sorpe Dam after the ten passes needed to get altitude and speed correct for the drop.

The other was Ken Trent, a later pilot in 617 Squadron, who took part in the horrific 1,000 bomber raids over Germany towards the end of the war, covering his fear on every sortie with the motto “just do it”.

I sometimes wonder about my continued interest in these world conflicts – have I not yet lost my boyhood glamorisation of these heroes? Or do I keep studying just to try to understand why war? Perhaps in truth it is a bit of both.

Faithfully Remembering

Year after year we, as a nation, have faithfully obeyed the call to remember, ensuring our poppies are visible so that we can be seen to be taking part. Yet, this year, when watching the nation’s dignitaries on the television broadcasts of the Festival of Remembrance and Remembrance Day Service in London, I felt something different, something deeper stirring within me. I felt a real unease.

Why? Was it because I thought we who are left are paying tribute to the fallen but in a way that has become unreal? Was it because I sensed an unease from God himself, even though we heard the great hymn sung by those of Christian faith and others of no real faith, “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come”?

I am being honest here, saying something that may be against the grain for many so soon after the remembrance services. I am truly troubled, even with all my personal involvement and interest in the way our nation has been helped by God.

Year after year we, as a nation, have faithfully obeyed the call to remember.

God Our Help and Hope

I have had personal involvement with the Bible College in Wales where God called for prayer through the Second World War, where every battle was followed and victories were first proclaimed in prayer.

Then, afterwards, the prayer vigil was continued for the resettling of the Jews in their homeland, and victory was proclaimed in prayer even as the UN voted. God surely brought us through these wars and gave their homeland back to the surviving Jews, after great loss to the spiritual enemy through the horrors of the Holocaust by the hand of Adolf Hitler.

Perhaps, knowing this, I was hoping for more recognition of what God has done by those leading the remembrance services. I think though, my unease is because we at Prophecy Today have come to the view that God is displeased with Britain today, so much that he will allow us to go through a time of difficulty. This after all he has previously done for us.

Defending Righteousness

Those who fought the battles on behalf of our nation did so under the principle that they were defending a way of life. That way of life that was fought for is not now, in increasing ways, followed or cherished in this nation.

Once, with a righteousness to proclaim and defend, we were in a much better relationship with God. I think it was the knowledge of this that gave me my unease, mixed in with our remembrance this year of those who fell in the wars.

True remembrance takes account of purpose, or we drift into unreality. With continued respect for those who fell so that we might live, I would ask that we continue to seek God for how he wants us to remember what has been accomplished. Remembrance, in biblical understanding, is not just calling to mind an event, but acting on that prompt in a way that is worthy of the sacrifice.

Biblical remembrance is not just calling to mind an event, but acting on that prompt in a way that is worthy of the sacrifice. 

Sadness and Regret

On reflection, the sadness that I felt at this year's remembrance services was twofold. First it was for the fallen in all the recent wars, tinged with the regret that much was avoidable.

Secondly, it was for the leaders of the nations in our present day. God’s judgments on nations fall when the leaders (shepherds) fail to do their job, and that is what is happening in our day.
The world is still volatile and we are vulnerable as a nation, more so because we are not living under the sure protection of God: we have changed our way of life to accommodate much that is sinful and evil in his eyes.

Whether we have reached a fulfilment of Isaiah 1:14-15 I cannot say with certainty, but this is something worthy of prayer:

…your appointed festivals…have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!

Israel got into this serious position with God and so can Britain.

Diana's death was a merciful release for an undeserving nation.

Near my home there is a bridge on a bend of the road where a young man lost his life in an accident. Friends and relatives decorated the bridge with bunches of flowers in plastic covers which have remained for more than a year.

Little shrines like this are now to be seen throughout the land in towns as well as the countryside in what appears to be a new form of religion as Christianity declines in Britain.

With Bible-believing Christians becoming an endangered species, an agnostic population is developing its own religion. Grieving relatives who have little hope of seeing their loved ones in the life hereafter worship at these plastic altars to the dead, creating a kind of necropolis.

Flowers marking the spot of a fatal road accident. See Photo Credits.The Areopagus

It reminds me of the Apostle Paul arriving in Athens and seeing the vast array of shrines to Greek gods. He began telling people about the resurrection of Jesus and some of the local philosophers who loved to debate new ideas invited him to address the Areopagus, an outcrop of rock known as the hill of Mars, which served as the seat of the ancient and venerable supreme court of Athens (Acts 17:19-34).

Paul saw the opportunity to tell them about Jesus but wisely began by referring to an altar he had seen dedicated ‘To an unknown god’. In their polytheistic society, the Greeks were keen not to offend any of the gods by missing one of them, hence this shrine which Paul used to begin his message. His objective was to introduce them to the true God of Creation.

Death of Diana

The plastic altars that are spreading across Britain are symbols of the ‘unknown god’ that have become widespread in the past 20 years since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when a vast mountain of flowers in plastic bags was built up outside Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace.

With Bible-believing Christians becoming an endangered species, our agnostic population is developing its own religion.

The 20^th anniversary of Diana’s tragic accident was recognised in August this year with more flowers in London and the two princes paying homage to their late mother.

The People’s Princess

The vast outpouring of grief 20 years ago was something never before witnessed in this nation and it took most people by surprise, including the Queen and our political leaders. Newly appointed Prime Minister Tony Blair described Diana as the ‘people’s princess’ which neatly encapsulated the public mood.

Diana was seen as a tragic figure – a beautiful woman deserted by her husband – millions of women in Britain could identify with her. Her TV interview about her divorce in which she had said that there were always three in her marriage touched a chord in millions of hearts. She was the lonely girl deserted by a heartless husband. In crying for her, millions were crying for themselves in socially acceptable grief.

An Orphan Spirit

Diana epitomised the ‘orphan spirit’ that is prevalent in Britain today as family life continues to crumble under the relentless attacks of those who wish to destroy the whole structure of our civilisation by attacking its Judeo-Christian foundations.

Her dispute with 'The Firm' – Prince Philip's nickname for the monarchy into which she had married - became the driving force in her life. She cleverly manipulated public opinion so that she was seen as the helpless victim of a cruel, all-powerful Establishment.

Diana epitomised the ‘orphan spirit’ that is prevalent in Britain today as family life continues to crumble.

Destroying the Monarchy

Her desire for revenge became far more than a personal dispute with her husband. It took on the character of a demonic force determined to destroy the monarchy, bringing chaos and confusion to the nation and tearing down all its major institutions that have held the United Kingdom together for centuries.

In taking as a lover the Muslim son of Mohamed Al Fayed, a man who hated Britain and who had acquired ownership of Harrods by disputed business dealings, Diana struck a blow, not only at the House of Windsor but at the Christian heritage of the nation.

If she had married him the consequences for the future of the nation were incalculable. This is why many people suspected that her death had been engineered by the Establishment to preserve the nation, but Christians saw it as the hand of God and his mercy towards an undeserving nation.

The plastic altar in The Mall in the heart of London at the funeral of the people’s princess represented the new religion of the British people – a nation grieving for its lost soul, deserted by the God of our fathers – now worshipping at the altar of ‘the unknown god’. Our condition is like that described by the faithful remnant of Israel after the destruction of Jerusalem who cried out to God for his forgiveness:

Our offences are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us. Our offences are ever with us, and we acknowledge our iniquities: rebellion and treachery against the Lord, turning our backs on our God, fomenting oppression and revolt, uttering lies our hearts have conceived. So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled on the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. (Isaiah 59:12-15)

Our nation is grieving for its lost soul.

Turning the Nation

Do we have to wait until ultimate tragedy and social disintegration strike Britain before we cry out to God for forgiveness, as the faithful remnant did after the destruction of Jerusalem? Those who understand the times and can see the destruction looming over Britain if the social anarchists continue their divisive and destructive ways must break their timid silence and proclaim truth into the nation!

The plastic altars to unknown gods will not save us! There is no other hope than confessing our sins before the Lord and asking him to heal our land. The loving promise of God is:

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 18:7-8)

Originally written for HEART of Sussex, October 2017 issue.