Lightning from Heaven

A dark day for the Church of England, but a victory for the Gospel

On July 9th 1984, Dr Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, stood outside York Minster, among the burning embers of a fire that had been raging all night and uttered these words, “the Lord was on our side as we battled with those flames”. He may have been the highest ranking churchman in the land … but he may also have been very wrong!

Early that morning a massive fire had engulfed the historic church, causing an estimated £1m of damage and taking 150 fire-fighters two hours to bring it under control. The roof of the 13th Century South Transept was totally destroyed and staff had risked life and limb rescuing priceless artefacts from the blazing building. The roof was eventually rebuilt, including designs submitted by children responding to a feature on the Blue Peter TV programme. It took four years to complete repairs at a final cost of £2.25m and the church was re-dedicated in November 1988 in a service attended by the Queen.

So why suggest that the Archbishop may have been wrong? He may have identified God as the solution to a problem, but he had misunderstood both the problem … and the solution ! To understand the problem we need to consider an ecclesiastical event that had taken place at York Minster three days earlier, the consecration of David Jenkins as the Bishop of Durham.

Are you serious?!

This position was the fourth highest ranking office in the Church of England, after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. This would have been an auspicious occasion if it wasn’t for the fact that David Jenkins was a most unsuitable candidate for the position. The tabloid press was later to call him “the barmy Bishop”, the broadsheets came up with the more telling ‘the unbelieving Bishop’.

Unbelieving? What’s that all about? Firstly he doubted the virgin Birth, “I wouldn’t put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if He wanted, but I very much doubt if He would”. Then there was the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, with his (actually misquoted) quote regarding it as a “conjuring trick with a bag of bones”. Whether these were his exact words or not, he could very easily have corrected this, rather than to be remembered as a Bishop who doubted what is the minimum requirement for defining yourself as a believing Christian.

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith (1 Corinthians 15:14)

There is much more that could be said regarding his suitability for the role, but a clue as to how other more orthodox believers felt was shown by the £2000 raised by an Essex vicar from his congregation to mount a campaign to try and stop the consecration.

The events unfold

So we now fast-forward three days to around 2am on July 9th 1984. What had started the fire in York Minster. Eighteen witnesses are said to have reported seeing a bolt of lightning strike the Minster, even though it was a clear night. Here is a report from one of these witnesses:

“I was washing my dishes at 2.00 am that day for some reason I’ve long forgotten I lived in Barlby at the time, and my kitchen window faced North. I couldn’t see York thanks to the imposition of the cattle feed mills just behind my house, but I did see the northern sky light up twice with sheet lightning. I counted the seconds, hoping to be able to calculate the distance of the storm, but gave up after about 150. Like all other witnesses I heard no thunder. Stacked t’dishes on t’drainer – went to bed – woken at 7.30 by Radio York informing me that t’Minster wor ablaze! The rest is history.” (Letter to York Press)

Lightning was identified as the most likely reason for the fire. Divine intervention was put forwards by many Christians, most noticeably in the letters page of The Times but this was poo-poo-ed by Dr John Habgood, the Archbishop of York, who said this in his letter to the same newspaper:

“I grant that if we still lived in biblical times, and if it was customary to treat thunderstorms as some kind of messengers from God, then the connection might seem inevitable… But to interpret the effect of a thunderstorm as a direct divine punishment pushes us straight back into the kind of world from which the Christian Gospel rescued us. Is illness a divine punishment? Ought we to ask after a car crash whether the car was carrying some outstanding sinner?”

How do we unpack this? It throws up more deep questions about the Archbishop himself than about the matter in hand. Does God act differently now than He did in Bible times? Is Divine punishment a real thing? What has the Christian Gospel rescued us from … a wrathful God? Is God really not in charge? This puts the spotlight on many in the Church who have serious doubts about God’s role in our world.

Habgood, as well as Runcie and many in the liberal Church establishment, were astonished that God would deign to act directly when the Church offends Him at surely the deepest level i.e. the consecration of a non-Christian (dare I say ‘heretic’?) They were convinced that God simply doesn’t do these things any more. Lightning strikes from heaven? How Old Testament!

The world responds …

Here are some more letters from The Times:

“Sir, The news recalled to my mind the prophet Elijah calling down the “fire from heaven” which consumed the altar to the Lord which he had built in the presence of the prophets of Baal; and I wondered wryly if the fire in the Minster was also the almighty fire threatening to burn down a cathedral in which recently there had been consecrated a bishop of our Anglican Church, who publicly expressed disbelief in several tenets of the Christian faith shared by all confirmed members of the Church. I am, Sir, yours sincerely, ANTHONY J. PETTITT, Bromley, Kent”

“Just lightning” says the Bishop dismissively. To those as old-fashioned as I, lightning is the wrath of God. Yours etc. DOROTHY J. RUSSELL, Croydon, Surrey

But to get closer to an understanding behind the thinking of these archbishops and Jenkins himself, here is a quote from the recent obituary of David Jenkins, who died recently:

“The heart of Jenkins’ mission was his demand that no one should believe in the kind of God who would care more about the opinions of academic theologians than the suffering of children in Auschwitz. Why should lightning strike York Minster when God conspicuously failed to stop the Holocaust?” (Andrew Brown, Guardian, Obitiary 6/9/16)

An unfortunate choice of illustration but the gist is that it is humanity that calls the shots and not God. Apparently He is more answerable to us for His “failings” at Auschwitz than we are to Him for ordaining heretics. They have redefined God as one who fits into the mould of their liberal theology. It’s a form of the prevalent anti-God Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) mindset, with the focus on our good behaviour and needs and the fact that God just lives on the margins of our life unless we summon Him to deal with a particular issue. MTD, in one form or another, may be what a lot of Christians believe but the reality is very different, it’s all about the Sovereignty of God. He really is in charge of our World and requires us to acknowledge this and act accordingly.

The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all (Psalm 103:19).

Does God still speak?

There is another example of this in recent history. On the night of the 22nd/23rd June 2016 a massive storm hit London and the South East. According to the Met. Office there were 20,000 lightning strikes in that period with lots of localised flooding and many transport blockages in London. The significance? This event was just a few hours before possibly the most key political decision many of us would make in our lifetime. It was the European Referendum and we all know the (unexpected) results.

On a personal note, my wife and I were kept awake right through that night by a celestial sound and light show that was relentless. It was the angriest storm we had ever experienced in our memory. In London, the seat of political power in our country, I felt we were hearing the God of the storms clearly speaking to us, on the eve of that momentous political event.

God was reminding us that He was very much still involved and interested in our world and the decisions we make for ourselves. He dragged many of us reluctant voters (me included) to the polling booths … and He gave us Brexit, something a huge number of concerned Christians were fervently praying for.

There is an important question to answer regarding the event at York Minster. For many Christians, the bolt of lightning was wielded by the Hand of God to show His displeasure at the earlier consecration. Yet, for the majority of Christians, this was just a random event (ironically known as an ‘Act of God’ by insurance companies) and God had nothing to do with it. Who was right?

If God was speaking then who is to tell us so? Let’s return to the Scriptures: Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7)

God has provided us with prophets to tell us when God is speaking. In 1984 we had such men as David Pawson and Clifford Hill, who were most vocal in their pronouncements, even if most of the Church had blocked ears. Remember, these men would have been vocal at the very consecration itself and, when God acted three days later, then had visible Divine approval for their pronouncements.

Where are the prophets who will speak up for God in this current generation?