Continue to pray! Britain's fate, spiritually and even nationally, is hanging in the balance. Britain's glorious King Alfred the Great, was this editor's boyhood hero. He saved his nation, Wessex his own kingdom, as well as most of England when it was overrun by the Vikings and about to be utterly destroyed forever as an Anglo-Saxon people and nation. He had to hide in the woods and swamps at one point, as the Vikings forces rode and marched triumphantly across his own kingdom--but Alfred believed God for victory, and God came through, showing him ways to defeat the seemingly invincible hosts of Viking invaders. Alfred not only regained his nation, he restored his nation, with Bible scholarship, with schools, with the revival of literacy--when all such had been virtually wiped out by the Vikings. Almost singlehandedly, he pulled England back out of barbarism into which the Viking invasions had cast the people and country.
King Alfred is given highest credits by Winston Churchill, for his Bible translation, personal scholarship, his insurgency against the Vikings, his reign as king over a more united England, and his pacifying the defeated Viking rulers with a Christian peace treaty (not a vengeful spirit at all in Alfred over a defeated foe, insuring that the Vikings would lay down their arms in peace, not just to wait for another time to stage a comeback with more attacks on the Alfred and his kingdom).
All these things he accomplished, and deserves immortal fame for them, indeed.
How can we forget Britain now in her hour of greatest need? Should all that King Alfred fought and sacrificed and lived for be thrown now on the trash heap by the anti-Christ forces of humanism and secularism in present-day Britain? God forbid. They have a real fight on their hands!
But is it Christian to fight for our nation, not just our faith and our own family? After all, Paul did not advise fighting the Roman authorities of his time, a well-meaning but mistaken Christian friend tells me over and over. I have to remind him each time that Roman citizens did not vote, nor did the huge amount of slaves in Roman times have any say about the state--as we do, having the vote, along with it the responsibility to use it, and our various means of letter writing, calling representatives in Congress and other types of persuasion, to affect the state authorities over us regarding issues vital to Christians and the best way for our nation to go. As my friend says repeatedly (and I must respond to, as it is from the scripture) Paul said to just pray for those in authority (but I must remind my friend that was all they could do, and was their duty--but I believe Paul would have to say now, pray and vote and use whatever godly persuasion you have as citizens.
We are not Roman citizens, but citizens of democracies, quite a different kettle of fish! We have certain rights and responsibilities Paul did not even dream about.
He said what was necessary for his day--in that respect of civic responsibility. Yes, he never spoke against public authorities--there was no point, as he had no influence over them whatsoever. It was only to pray for them--that was the only way to influence them, and he certainly advised influencing them in that one proven, godly, effective way.
Influence your legislatures and legislators too, fellow Christian, first through prayer, then by using your only civic and individual power, your vote as your means of persuasion, as well as take advantage of getting out vital information to fellow Christians about various issues we need to know about in order as Christians to make our Christian voice heard in this erring, God-abandoning, secularist humanist-run society.
To be apolitical, to hold up holy hands and retreat from the public sphere, when nations like America and Britain hang in the balance, the sword of God's judgment hanging like Damocles' sword over us, is to give up and let the enemy has his full way.
That is the way of the foolish ostrich, to deny there is a problem and not get involved, by sticking its head in the sand (does an ostrich really do that? But I know many people do!).
To delay dealing with unpleasant things, Churchill warned Britain and Europe of his day, such as Hitler's rising power, would only make it more costly for them when they finally were forced to deal with Hitler. How true his words were! Millions of lives lost, Britain bled white and pushed to near bankruptcy, untold suffering and destruction spread all the way across Europe! Is that what we want for us? Being apolitical, withdrawing from having any influence on issues and events and our elected leaders--that is the way of the British ostrich prior to World War II! It got them nothing but grief, winning them only a respite of a few years of relative peace while Nazi Germany built up its war machine and seized one country after another.
To deny reality is self-destructive, ultimately. To cease fighting for life is also self-destructive. Homer Boren, a World War II vet and Japanese prison camp survivor said about his fellow POWs to his interviewer Paul Fridlund in the article, "The Will to Live," in American History Illustrated, Sept.-Oct. 1993: "When men quit, they died."--Editor]
Your rulers faithfully honored me--Victoria, and Alfred, George (the father of Elizabeth II), and others. Your present queen honors me (though her son does not). Her son will not rule over you, because he is not honoring Me, and he dishonored his parents and nation by disobedience to his vows to the Queen his mother. He showed Britain and the world that he despised his vows when he took an adulteress to his bed for thirty years. He has married her now, but that is not an act of repentance. But you like him have turned like a harlot from Me too, to a dead religion of pomp and cold hearted-creeds.
You dishonor Me with your laws against the sanctity of human life. You practice immorality and adultery and think nothing of it. You champion these evils in your pornographic playhouses and show your evil deeds to the world to make money and boast how liberated you are!
Odious Britain, you are no longer great. But one thing you do well, you remembered your ally (once your son) and served with him to free an oppressed people. You also did not follow the world and turn entirely against My People of Israel. So I will not let the fell thing you have eaten to serve you, like the snail in the Bay of Naples eats a small creature it cannot digest, devour and destroy you off the earth as it will do to the others unless they repent.
I will preserve those of you who love and serve Me, and will for their sake preserve your Nation. But you must not go further down the path with your odious allies in Europe, for they hate and despise Me and My everlasting kingdom, though they claim to honor and love my earthly mother! You must remember your own godly roots, and the faith of your Fathers must be revived—or you will continue to backslide into the moral slime pits of the Continent. Repent, cleanse yourselves, and worship Me in spirit and in truth. I will love you, and gather you to my breast, and make a new thing of you, a Holy Britain beyond what you ever were in the past. You will be a sheep and not a goat and satyr.
Greatness will be yours once again—-high and noble thrones will be set up in you to judge the nations that have gone astray—-but only if you turn back in your heart to Me.
David Hathaway advises us, not to give up and become monks, or despair, but: ""Who is going to confront the devil today? You are! Who is going to work miracles of healing? You are! Who is going to release the power of the Gospel of evangelism? You are!...If you don't let God use you, God will use somebody else. Don't let God give your job to somebody else!"
We, then, as David Hathaway testifies from experience all over Russia and former Soviet Union nations, as well as in Britain, that WE CHRISTIANS are the instruments of God's coming revival in Europe and the world--if we obey the call of God upon our lives--only then. God can only use those who trust and obey--the others will be passed over, as he warns us. I don't know about any of you, but I want to be of use to the Lord, to finally hear at the end, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" from the Lord Jesus.--Ed.