Everyone can see that Britain is in a mess! The humiliating sight of our MPs all shouting at one another like children in the infant school playground has been beamed to the world. But there is a very simple explanation for the chaos…
The Brexit debates of the last few months have grown in heat but not in light because none of our politicians can agree on the way forward. They each have their own agenda and there is
a lack of shared vision.
So, our House of Commons, the mother of Parliaments that has widely been regarded as a template for world democracies, has been the scene of confusion and chaos instead of a forum for quiet and reasoned debate.
There is a very simple explanation for this. The Bible says that when a nation departs from the Word of God it brings judgement upon itself, the fruit of which is that its leaders are afflicted with “madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do” (Deuteronomy 28:28-29).
Confusion
We have certainly seen plenty of ‘confusion of mind’ in recent days because there are no political solutions to our problems which are rooted in spiritual blindness rather than defective social or political concepts. Spiritual blindness comes from the absence of truth which affects our perception of all issues.
If you do not have a basic grasp of truth you have no yardstick by which to measure the value of anything. This is why our politicians are unable to find agreement on the true way forward for the nation, for its economy, its security and its health and prosperity.
When there is no understanding of truth, fake news and lies prosper. This causes a lack of trust in all our relationships and results in confusion that can quickly descend into violent confrontation. There have been small foretastes of that in the demonstrations outside Parliament in Westminster calling for a people’s vote.
If the demonstrators have their way and Parliament agrees to a second referendum, then the divisions in the nation, stoked by social media, will reach new heights of violence approaching the level of civil war. This would be the intensification of judgement upon the nation that would bring disagreement and aggression into families and communities that could affect relationships for a generation. It would also have a disastrous effect upon the economy through the uncertainty and confusion that would engulf the country for many months.
Spiritual battle
Christians need to recognise the nature of the battle that is taking place, which is primarily an attack of the forces of darkness upon truth and righteousness. This is why we are seeing the spread of lies and fake news. And we also see the campaign of the ‘Remainers’ who share the secular humanist values of the European Union and will do anything to prevent Brexit for which the nation voted in 2016.
Sadly, the desire to prevent Brexit at any cost is shared by many of our politicians of all parties. This is a result of the lack of understanding of the spiritual basis of the problems afflicting our nation because over many decades we have rejected the Word of God enshrined in our Judeo-Christian heritage. We have a Parliament in which the majority of our politicians have little or no knowledge of the Bible.
No truth
But why is this? Who is to blame for the fact that our politicians lack an understanding of biblical truth? They are men and women who have been elected as our representatives in Parliament but very few are Christians. Why have Christians been so reluctant to get involved in local politics where they could witness to others in their neighbourhood and have some influence in putting up godly candidates for election?
Answers
The answers to all these questions lie within the Church. The simple reality is that many church leaders and preachers do not rightly handle the Word of the Lord, sothe whole truth of God’s Word does not get embedded in the lives of churchgoers or of those who have some loose connection to the Church. The Word of God does not get out into local communities and it does not reach those who get involved in politics, so the Bible is never quoted in Parliament as it used to be in Victorian times.
This is largely because most preachers lack prophetic vision – preachers no longer fearlessly declare the Word of the Lord in their churches, or prophetically relate biblical teaching to social and national issues. They give nice cosy little homilies on biblical themes that lack the dynamic thrust of the two-edged sword of the Lord.
So we now have a generation of closet Christians with no mission to transform the nation. If the whole Word of the Lord is not heard in church, it will not reach out into the nation.
Prophetic mission
We can all see that there is a crisis in the nation that only the truth of the Word of God can penetrate. But the Gospel of salvation – which is the mission of the Church to declare – will never be heard in Britain until the Church wakes up or the faithful remnant of Bible believers become emboldened by the Holy Spirit to fulfil the wish of Moses.
Moses said: “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).
This does not mean that Moses wanted to see a bunch of amateur soothsayers! He wanted to see ordinary believers filled with the dynamic power of the Spirit of God declaring the Word of the Lord wherever they go – in their families, among their friends and in the nation.
The reformation of the nation does not start in Westminster: it has to start in the Church – and with you and me.