So ran the headline in a national daily newspaper today. The ugly grimace of the ‘Green Councillor’ at the centre of this controversy was pictured snarling out the Islamic catchphrase, so often used by terrorists with the intention of intimidation, ‘Allahu Akbar’. The words mean ‘god is the greatest’. The god referred to is the Islamic idol, known as ‘Allah’ and not the God of the Bible, Jehovah.
We have thus the situation developing in the nation of those who come to the United Kingdom for reasons of bettering themselves from under the privations of an Islamic state but with the real agenda of destroying what remains of the Protestant heritage which has been enjoyed for centuries in this land.
In the early days of the New Testament Church, the enemies of righteousness were compelled to disguise themselves and their intentions and this is made plain by the warning of Jude in his epistle. “There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ,” Jude 1:4.
However, those bent on destroying the remnants of gospel liberty left us in the United Kingdom, be they political or religious activists, need no disguise. They can come in with ‘trumpets blaring’, as do the Islamic councillors recently elected in England and who make no secret of their intention of imposing their perverted religious and political views on the nation.
These individuals care nothing for the culture or heritage of the land to which they have come. They are intent upon changing this nation, destroying this nation by imposing their own heathen notions upon it and reducing it to the impoverished state of the land from which they sought to escape.
What blindness and idiocy this indicates!
This is a case of the suffering ‘leper’ seeking to infect the world with his incapacitating, miserable leprosy in order to make it a better place!!
These ‘invaders’ have been aided in their venture by the cowardly stance adopted by religious and political leaders and other ‘influencers’ who demand that nothing be said by way of honest and practical criticism of the religion, the practices and the pro-subversive ideology these interlopers are intent on scattering by every means possible. This ‘politically correct’ strategy pervades the pulpits and parliamentary benches of the UK!
It has resulted in would-be destroyers of the traditional way of life here having virtually unrestricted, unchallenged access to the many means of setting forth their views. Such a strategy, attempted by any in a Muslim land who would seek to overthrow its regime, would be followed swiftly by the death of those who dared act so. Let anyone mount a campaign to overthrow Islamic ideology in the Moslem lands of this world and they will meet with the whip, the stone and the beheading sword!
All this is well known to the leaders and the citizenry of the United Kingdom and yet the tactics go almost unchallenged, with mere token opposition by those in newspaper offices, acting under the restraints of the ‘politically correct’ harness of modern thinking!
WHY????
How can this be explained? To answer that we turn to God’s Word, the only fount of true wisdom. In it we will find similar circumstances arising as those which we see advancing in our nation.
Consider these verses.
In Leviticus chapter 26:1-13, the Lord sets forth the multiple benefits that will be enjoyed by Israel if they faithfully obey His Word.
BUT!!
But he clearly warns of the consequences of disobedience.
“And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.
And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: and your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.
And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied. And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins,” Leviticus 26:15-28.
The chapter continues on with an increasing measure of severity befalling the wayward Israelites until we see them enduring the terrible deprivations that was their common lot until recent times.
God’s threats are not empty hot air!
There has been a rejecting of God’s truth in the United Kingdom, growing and increasing for over a century. A declining from the embracing of the gospel, preached by the likes of C H Spurgeon in the latter part of the 19th century, has marked that time until the present day!
Parallel to that has been the slaughter and sufferings of millions of our fellow citizens during two world wars and innumerable lesser conflicts. There has been a declining from the position occupied by the nation when it truly was ‘GREAT’ Britain.
The afflictions that came upon the land were not seen by the people for what they were, because pulpits were largely occupied by ‘false prophets and time-servers’. Such did not believe or understand the Word of God and therefore could not read the ‘signs of the times’ and give guidance to the people regarding the errors being embraced.
A reading of the book of Jeremiah will reveal the warning of the man of God being rejected by a people influenced and misguided by false prophets. The description given by the Lord through Jeremiah of the moral state of the nation is summed up for us in these two verses:
“Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall inherit them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace,” Jeremiah 8:10-11.
That is the ‘gospel’ of the ecumenical deceivers of today!
May I refer back to Leviticus 26 again. “Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD,” Leviticus 26:42-45.
The time when the Lord promises to remember His covenant with Israel is upon us, I believe.
The dispersal amongst the nations, spoken of here in this chapter (verse 33), has been evident for centuries now since AD 70 and the overthrow of Jerusalem and the selling of the Jews into slavery. However, I believe there was a turning of the tide in 1948 when the ’state of Israel’ was reborn. Ezekiel said that there would be a regathering of the Jews to their land again.
“For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them,” Ezekiel 36:24-27.
Please note that the ‘regathering’ takes place first and then after that the ‘regeneration’ of the people. The regathering has begun but the regeneration will only take place at the personal intervention of the Lord Jesus, the Messiah they rejected some 2000 years ago. As was the case in the Exodus, the Lord will intervene to strike their enemy and lead them forth to ‘the promised land’.
“Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south,” Zechariah 14:3-4.
That day lies in the future though it has to be very near now.
In the meantime, our nation will continue its decline and come more and more under the influence of apostasy and rebellion against God, which will naturally entail, as these ‘Green councillors’ of the newspaper article we have referred to clearly indicate, an ‘anti-Israel’ crusade. That will terminate in the splitting up of the present ‘United Kingdom’ and England and Wales being involved in the ‘anti-christian’, ten kingdom union under Antichrist, meeting with God’s judgment in the vicinity of Jerusalem at the return of the Saviour.
“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” Revelation 6:12-17.
What Isaiah wrote of God’s knowledge of all is so true.
“Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure,” Isaiah 46:9-10.
But dear Christian, He has shared that knowledge with us that we might find comfort in this world dominated by folly and doomed to the misery that such folly gives birth to.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Friday, 10th May, 2024