iceberg ahead!
Most of us don’t believe God can sink our ‘ship of state’,so we keep steaming ahead ignoring clear Biblical warnings
It was with a somewhat sinking feeling that I approached Sheffield’s beautifully-restored Lyceum Theatre to watch Titanic – the musical. Much as I love musicals, I wasn’t quite sure how uplifting it would be to witness a staged account of a night of disaster that sent 1,500 people to a watery grave in an icy North Atlantic. But I was quite taken aback by a brilliant piece of theatre that was actually very inspiring and had much to teach the audience about the foibles and failures of early 20th century society.
It also applied equally well to current Western culture which, having jettisoned the lifeboats of Judeo-Christian morality, is rapidly heading for an iceberg of social chaos big enough to sink our entire civilization. With wonderfully choreographed singing and dancing around the hopes and dreams of passengers, along with romantic liaisons that brought tears to your eyes – knowing the fate that awaited them – it had all the feel-good ingredients you would expect from an upbeat show. And yet it is based on true accounts!
But there were disturbing messages too. “Even God can’t sink this ship” was among the lines of a script that was surprisingly God-friendly. For the record, the Belfast built liner was reputed to be ‘unsinkable’, but struck an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, on its maiden voyage to New York. Warnings of an ice field ahead were ignored and the captain kept increasing the ship’s speed, apparently under pressure from the owners (the White Star Line) who were keen to break the trans-Atlantic record.
Lifeboats?
In the chaos that followed the collision, it turned out that there were not nearly enough lifeboats – only 20, in fact, when 54 would have been required to save the 2,200 passengers. Even so, more than 400 seats were not taken up in the boats that were available! Most of us don’t believe God can sink our ‘ship of state’. Not only do we ignore warnings of impending judgment on ungodliness, given throughout God’s Word, but we actually increase the speed at which we introduce new laws that will inevitably end in tears, not to say bloodshed, for our society. I am thinking, for example, of efforts to further liberalise abortion.
An amusing scene involved a frustrated radio operator struggling to get any response to appeals for help, saying that it was hard to remain a Christian in the circumstances. Communication breakdown remains one of our besetting problems despite all the new technologies available. No-one listens to what others are saying – least of all to God. The difficulty with remaining a Christian has a familiar ring to it as well, echoing today’s habit of casting off restraint in the matter of morals.
A particularly moving scene focused on a couple who had been happily married for 43 years. Despite being offered the chance of escape in a lifeboat, the wife simply refused to leave her husband, proving that love is stronger than death.
I came away with another thought: Are there enough Christians warning of the dangers ahead in a lost eternity for those who reject the gospel and pointing to the secure lifeboat of faith in Christ?
Christchurch
Now wind the clock back 250 years and picture the scene at Whitby, North Yorkshire, where (in 1768) Captain James Cook was about to set sail on his first great voyage of discovery aboard the ship Endeavour, paving the way for the settling of Australia and New Zealand. On our recent holiday near Whitby, I learnt much more about Cook – how he cared for his crew with nutritious food, for example, so that none of them got scurvy. It turns out that he spent his long apprenticeship under the watchful eye of a Quaker family – in fact Quakers dominated the shipping industry at Whitby – whose strong Christian example clearly contributed in no small way to opening up a new world. Christians are the salt of the earth and without their influence we are lost as a nation.
Picture now the scene at Christchurch harbour (near Bournemouth) alongside which stands a magnificent 900-year-old Priory. The story is told of how, when it was being built, a massive beam had to be cut down from the nearby New Forest to support the roof. But to the embarrassment of the builders, it proved too short.
Then one day they noticed a stranger among them – a carpenter evidently skilled at his trade. But he didn’t join them for meals or when wages were being handed out. Suddenly he disappeared and, to the astonishment of his colleagues, they discovered the beam was now a perfect fit! So in honour of the Carpenter from Nazareth whom they surmised had continued his miraculous ministry among them, they changed the name of their place of worship from Holy Trinity to Christ Church. Even the town, Twyneham (village between two rivers), became known as Christchurch and is today twinned with the New Zealand city of the same name.
Nearly a thousand years on, the beautiful church still stands. All of which goes to show that “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain.” (Psalm 127.1) This applies also to our Parliament, currently being shaken to the core – literally! It is a fact that its foundations are crumbling and are in urgent need of repair. It is also a fact that the scripture verse “Unless the Lord builds the house…”is inscribed in Latin on the floor of the House!
Global battle for truth
We are currently witnessing a worldwide battle between truth and lies. And in recent days much of this has been focused on Israel – specifically at a conference in Jerusalem called GAFCON and on the northern borders of the Gaza Strip.
At the Global Anglican Future Conference, attended by nearly 2,000 Anglican leaders from around the world, a British evangelist warned of the Holy Spirit departing from the traditional Anglican church if it continued to despise the authority of Scripture. Rico Tice was giving an interview at the third such convocation of this body since its inception ten years ago for the purpose of maintaining the truth of the gospel in the face of growing apostasy including support for ‘same-sex relationships’.
Not many miles away, on the borders of Gaza, another battle for truth is being waged as the media is (largely) determined to spew out lies and propaganda in support of the Palestinian narrative. It was reported that Israeli soldiers had killed a baby caught up in the riots over the alleged right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. But it later emerged that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwarhad paid a Gazan family to lie about eight month-old Leila al-Ghandour dying from tear gas inhalation rather than from a pre-existing medical condition 1.
Such shocking deceit. But many Palestinians have no problem with this because Muslims are permitted to lie to ‘infidels’ in service to Islamic causes, a concept known as taqiyya 2. The prophet Isaiah spoke of such wickedness when he wrote: “…Justice is driven back and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.” (Isa 59.14f)
Totalitarian?
What a shoddy business. And the same people who are so ready to condemn Israel for defending her right to exist are engaged in the systematic brainwashing of Western nations on an unprecedented scale into believing that ‘same-sex relationships’ are equivalent to heterosexual – and therefore “normal”. Nazi Germany’s lies about the Jews, led to the systematic murder of six million people. With few exceptions, the German people blithely accepted the doctrine that Jews were a cause of all their economic and other problems. Much like today’s new teaching on sexual ethics, it was a doctrine that brooked no dissent, with the result that those who objected often paid with their lives. Today, going along with the world’s agenda on “gay rights” is seen by most as the only way to maintain respectability and acceptance in social circles. This is why, in Australia, where they held a referendum on the issue, ‘same-sex’ won the day. Ironically, were all those who voted for it to practice what they preach, that great southern continent would soon become extinct! The 1930s propaganda of Josef Goebbels seeped through the German national consciousness, almost without a whimper of opposition, just as the ‘same-sex issue’ has done in Britain and the West where the general populace is bombarded with stories and images on national television and elsewhere glamorising, justifying and sanctioning LGBTQI+ lifestyles and choices.
Some church leaders have succumbed to it. At GAFCON Rico Tice, a gifted evangelist on the staff of All Souls, Langham Place,and co-author of the much-acclaimed Christianity Explored course, revealed he had resigned from the Archbishops’ Evangelism Task Group because it meant having to submit to the authority of a bishop – Paul Bayes of Liverpool – who validates ‘same-sex’ choices. “It’s a different religion,”Tice said, adding: “I think it’s a great wickedness to tell people who are on the road to destruction that they are not.” 3 He went on: “There is no power in evangelism unless you submit to Scripture.” Lies about Gaza stir up trouble and strife in the Middle East which could erupt into a major war. And spreading lies about human “sexuality” could well cause as much, if not more, damage to the world at large than the tendency amongst at least some Arabs to be economical with the truth through the doctrine of taqiyya.
Prince William, on his tour of Israel, will hopefully have learned from his visit to the Holocaust museum that the antiSemitism displayed by Palestinian Authority has all the hallmarks of another attempt at genocide. After all, that is the oft-stated aim of Israel’s opponents. The Prince’s great grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, took sides in a previous conflict by hiding Jews who would otherwise have been murdered by the Nazis. Did the British Foreign Office allow the Prince to take sides when Jews, now living in their own land, are equally threatened? He says he wants peace – most of us do – but Neville Chamberlain’s experience should be a lesson to us all.
1 Jerusalem News Network, 22nd June 2018, quoting Ynet
2 A Nation Reborn, Charles Gardner (Christian Publications International), p93
3 Christian Concern, 19th June 2018