October 2011
“I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off. They also that seek after my life lay snares for me: and they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the day long. But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. Thus I was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs. For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.” (Psalm 38:8-15)
I was born in 1941 in the town of Wolverhampton. We still live around fifteen miles from the spot where I first opened my eyes to the light of day. I taught modern languages for many years just thirty miles away from here in Birmingham. Like Peter whose Galilean brogue gave the game away to those around him (Matthew 26:73), “thy speech bewrayeth thee”, it would be difficult for me to hide my ‘black country’ origins, even should I wish to do so. German bombers were flying overhead. Coventry was receiving punishing bombardment. The fires lit up the night sky and this could be seen from our home on the outskirts of Walsall. We were kept safe. Thankfully, I remember little or nothing of those days, save for some experiences of the ‘blackout’ and gathering coal from an open cast mining site in deep snow.
Meanwhile, over a thousand miles away, my future wife’s family, she then but a toddler, was forcibly removed from their small farm by the Nazis under threat of incarceration. Ethnic Germans, they were moved from what is now Western Ukraine into the homes of dispossessed Polish farmers just south of Warsaw. This was a Nazi version of what we would now call ‘ethnic cleansing’. Not long after this, the family fled from the advancing Russian army amid tales of appalling brutality by the soldiers. Dad had been previously conscripted into the German army, despite being well into his fifties. We had a roof over our heads and whilst we collected coal to warm our modest home, Valerie along with her mother, brothers and sisters joined literally millions of others in a six-month trek west through the bitter winter of 1945. Exposed to the cold and attacks from the air by marauding fighters, many died en route. On reaching West Germany they were not well received. Billeted on unwilling farmers, they were seen, not as proper Germans but as ‘dirty Poles’. Few, even today, have any understanding of what they endured and the marks it left upon these people.
Valerie has pleasant memories of being brought a cup of tea in the morning by British soldiers who pitied the plight of these hapless refugees, who often lived two families to a room. They gave out chocolate to the children, a commodity they hardly knew. What a strange folk were these British enemies! It did not stop her getting caught up in shouting, “Go home Tommies!” Little did she know then she would later marry one! Valerie and I met in France in the early sixties when we were both students. The deprivation of those war-stricken days left its marks: positively, Valerie wastes absolutely nothing; negatively, her health suffered. She survived a severe childhood attack of rheumatic fever, the effects of which have now resurfaced to plague her evening years. Had we both lived something other than modest lives, she would possibly no longer be with us.
How mysterious are the workings of our loving heavenly Father! We marvel so often. How our Saviour protects His erring sheep and gently leads us, caring Shepherd that He is! Often I mull over the Psalms even at night before falling asleep in the darkness. They have such blessed and real meaning to us both. How God orders our steps and does not suffer our feet to slide whatever we face. We experience still daily at first hand the knowledge of His presence and His loving kindness. We praise Him continually for His constant mercies, nothing do we deserve of what He gives so freely.
Yet at a time when, humanly speaking, we should both be slowing down and doing less, we find ourselves unavoidably caught up in serving others. Furthermore, we find ourselves under a constant constraint to make known the Gospel of God’s grace. Why? I ask myself why? Are there not so many others who could do these things more ably, who have more aptitude and strength? But then, why are they not doing it? These days, unlike in my youthful past, I now positively hate the limelight and unavoidably pushing myself forward to make my voice heard. Are there not many other things I would rather be doing? Occupying myself with reading, gardening, indulging my love of languages and of music, travelling about, taking photographs and video shots, all this would make life considerably easier. Particularly in times of weariness and loneliness, I confess to being a reluctant servant.
I love the land of my birth. It is good and right that I do so. I have benefitted much from living here, we both have. How God has in the past blessed Britain. Yet today our people are set on a course to inevitable disaster, calamity of the worst kind. They have set their sights on a ruinous end. Like many of you reading these words, I am appalled and outraged at some of the godless laws enacted by our parliament, laws that can only bring yet more misery and tragedy upon our people. Each day more and more light is shed upon the corruption and wickedness in high places. I am deeply saddened that a substantial majority our people assume they can with impunity commit the most grievous sins against God. Wickedness and godlessness is rampant and men sin assuming nothing will happen to them, no retribution will visit them. They see no instant fire of God’s wrath, no storm, no wind of judgment and assume they are safe, shaking their fist in God’s face, blasphemy on their lips.
To abandon God is the height of folly, but to be abandoned by God, to be given up by Him to reap the consequences of our evil-doing, at least according to Romans 1, is itself irremediable judgement. This is where we seem to be right now.
The greatest tragedy, for any people, is that God sends a famine, not of food or of water, but of His Word – when God no longer makes His truth freely available.
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.”(Amos 8:11-12)
Such a nation is living beyond poverty despite being surrounded by physical and material wealth.
In one more final step, God not only removes access to the truth, but deliberately sends a lie in its place for men to believe and perish. False teachers go about propagating lies, more often than not in God’s own name – the purpose being that men should believe them and perish. In view of all the confusion that surrounds modern Christian testimony is this not already upon us?
“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
(2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)
This all grieves me deeply, though I do heed the warning of God, through the lips of His servant, David, (see Psalm 37), not to fret because of evil doers, for their end has already been set by God: instead to trust Him, to delight in Him, to commit my way unto Him, to rest in Him. I am to cease from anger when I see the evil around me and not recompense it with yet further evil. And why? Because: “the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble” (Psalm 37:39). Where else can we go, to whom but the Lord can we turn in our distress? Who else can deliver the righteous in the evil day? Then I remember how God has preserved us both thus far.
My mind turns frequently to William Cowper and his poem Expostulation. I am reminded that spiritual declension is nothing new. It just seems to me that godlessness has arisen in our nation with a renewed vigour, hitherto unmatched in all her history; all this despite God’s manifest goodness to us. Men sin in the wilful knowledge of what they do, whereas perhaps once it was more done in some ignorance.
Why weeps the muse for England? What appears
In England's case to move the muse to tears?
From side to side of her delightful isle
Is she not clothed with a perpetual smile?
His observations of the role of the Church and the clergy are telling and parallel much of what we see today:
When nations are to perish in their sins,
'Tis in the Church the leprosy begins:
The priest whose office is, with zeal sincere,
To watch the fountain, and preserve it clear,
Carelessly nods and sleeps upon the brink,
While others poison what the flock must drink:
Or, waking at the call of lust alone,
Infuses lies and errors of his own:
His unsuspecting sheep believe it pure,
And, tainted by the very means of cure,
Catch from each other a contagious spot,
The foul forerunner of a general rot.
All Churches seem to be much the same. They have left the orthodox, historic and God-centred biblical faith, (if they were ever part of it) that has come down to us through the centuries, and is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. They have rejected the revival of true religion that took place at the time of the Reformation, branding it a mistake. In its place they have taken sides with Christianized rationalism, pseudo-psychology, left-wing liberal politics, ‘happy-clappy’ sentimental mysticism – and a whole host of other leaking cisterns that can hold no water. Gone is the Bible, now read just as a formality and then only in a sanitized modern version. They have left us exposed to all kinds of religious quacks and conmen, who have not an ounce of the truth in them.
Then there are the pseudo-Christian religious peddlers, carrying their novel doctrines from door-to-door like brush salesmen in smart suits; they generally claim some special revelation from above to which they only hold the keys of understanding. Many have their roots in the 19th and 20th centuries; but they are simply new and buffed up versions of some old Christ-denying teaching like Arianism.
Then there are others, a very sizeable group, who say they have rediscovered the faith of the apostolic age; they say they enjoy the power of the New Testament Church, exercising its charismatic gifts of healing, tongues and prophecies. This movement has swept across the divide of denominational party boundaries to enclose all and sundry: Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Free Church and no church, the Dissenter and the deluded, the sophisticated and the simple-minded. Experience is everything, biblical doctrine counts for little. Upon close examination we see that their inflated claims are bogus, fraudulent. They bear no resemblance to what is actually recorded or taught in the New Testament, their ‘tongue-speaking’ amounts to little more than gobbledygook, their ‘miraculous healings’ remain unsubstantiated.
Cry aloud, thou that sittest in the dust,
Cry to the proud, the cruel, and unjust;
Knock at the gates of nations, rouse their fears;
Say wrath is coming, and the storm appears;
But raise the shrillest cry in British ears.
There are those, professing to enjoy the benefits of faith in Christ, who seem reluctant to share this faith with others. Perhaps they have little to share. Many seem little different from those around them, pursuing the same materialistic and hedonistic lifestyles. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who feel themselves so apart from the concerns of this life that the eternal destiny of those around them fails to rouse them. What if the rest of the nation is hell-bound? They and theirs are safe, waiting to be whisked away to another life. Yet others await an extraordinary working of God, before they will stir themselves. Without it they say all is but the work of man. O that God would grant such an awakening, but this does not relieve us of the commandment laid upon us to preach the Gospel. Let us wait upon God until His compassion constrains us with an irresistible love for our fellowmen so that we are compelled thus by His Spirit to call others to repentance and faith in Christ alone.
We are not part of the machinations of ungodly men, designated in Scripture as ‘the world’. Some, although professing faith in Christ, have an inordinate affection for this world and what it offers. They have reached a compromise, where they believe they can embrace the things of Christ whilst enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season. On the other hand, neither are we cut off entirely from life and the ungodly men and women around us the moment we believe. Being subject to Christ, we are not, nor can we ever again be part of their world, living according to their mores and standards. Indeed, all men ought to live according to the revealed Word of God. How else can they be called to repentance? What account can they give to God, if they are not accountable to Him? Genuine Christian believers are the salt in a rotting world preventing total putrefaction, the light on a hill that cannot be hid, even in darkest England.
Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36): a much misquoted and misunderstood statement. The sense is not that Christ’s kingdom is in some way otherworldly, unrelated to anything concerning our day to day living. Rather, the sense is that the kingdom, or rule, of Christ does not have its origins within this world as do all other kingdoms. One day the kingdoms of this world shall be broken into pieces by that great stone cut out of the mountain without hands (Daniel 2:45). But of the Kingdom of Christ, Daniel predicts:
“I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”
(Daniel 7:13-14)
Christ our Saviour is the rightful king with whom all men, particularly the rulers of men, should now seek to be reconciled. They should seek to enter His Kingdom, submit to His rule willingly before they shall be surely broken into pieces.
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.” (Psalm 2:8-12)
The apocalypse of John explains and extends the teaching of the prophecies of Daniel: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15)
My friends, for as long as God permits, for as long as there is but one sinner left on earth how can we, how can I, keep quiet? How can I thus be culpable? How can silence rule my life as long as I see what is going on all around me with so few proclaiming the Gospel of God’s truth? Often what is preached is a truncated message, a misleading one, an erroneous one or a downright lie. Cut out my tongue and I shall use my hands. Slay me, only then shall I be silent. But then my task will be done and God will raise up a dozen others. Old, who is too old? I shall die with the message of the love of Christ in my heart and on my lips. There are many who wish I would keep quiet, those who have told me to my face I suffer a kind of madness. With this form of insanity I am in good company (Acts 26:24). David, you read too many books! (I love but one.) You take things too much to heart! (God, increase my compassion!) You do not belong to the right kind of Church and have no mandate - and much more that I will not repeat. (The love of Christ is my mandate.) We suffer at times many cruel and wicked accusations. Yet, how can I rest, when many whom I love so dearly are treading the broad road to hell? I simply cannot do anything else. Men were created to love and serve God not to perish in the bowels of hell. Let us cry perpetually to God that He will light up the Gospel in the hearts of those who hear it and believe.
Muse, hang his harp upon yon aged beech,
Still murmuring with the solemn truths I teach;
And, while at intervals a cold blast sings
Through the dry leaves, and pants upon the strings,
My soul shall sigh in secret, and lament
A nation scourged, yet tardy to repent.
I know the warning song is sung in vain;
That few will hear, and fewer heed the strain;
But if a sweeter voice, and one design'd
A blessing to my country and mankind.
Reclaim the wandering thousands, and bring home
A flock so scatter'd and so wont to roam,
Then place it once again between my knees;
The sound of truth will then be sure to please,
And truth alone, where'er my life be cast,
In scenes of plenty, or the pining waste,
Shall be my chosen theme, my glory to the last.
My friends, my times are in God’s hands and I am glad of that. Do I fear what the future will yet bring? Not a bit. Not as long as I have still my Saviour close by and can nurture the sure hope of one day seeing Him face to face whom my soul loves, do not fear the days ahead. How quickly life has fled from us.
“Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” (Psalm 39:5)
Sincerely in Christ Jesus
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