God is making us an offer of loving forgiveness and prosperity, if we would come before Him seeking His help
It is dangerous for any writer to comment on the outcome of a General Election before it has been held.
We can, however, make some general comments about the state of the nation which will be faced by the new government – whatever its composition.
The three major parties who have held varying degrees of power over the past 50 years have succeeded in passing a string of laws that are deeply offensive to God – and have broken every one of the Ten Commandments.
Rejected heritage
We are a nation that has rejected its Judeo-Christian heritage and has broken the first commandment, that we should have no other God than the God of the Bible.
We worship many other ‘gods’ of wood, stone and gold.
The Lord’s name is taken in vain in all parts of the media.
The nation desecrates the sabbath, making it a day of trading, sport and any other activity.
We no longer honour our fathers and mothers.
We have polluted the land with the blood of 9 million unborn babies
We have legalised the murder of babies in their mother’s womb.
We legalise adultery by allowing adulterers to marry and have polluted family life through same-sex marriage which the Bible says is detestable to God.
We have stolen our children’s innocence through sex education.
We distribute lies and deception through social media.
We covet the fortune of those whose wealth is greater than ours.
The Church declaring the Word of God has not been heard for the past 40 years
God’s promise
At the end of the exile in Babylon, God made a promise to the people of Israel:“I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:25-27).
God promised prosperity and good health
God also promised to increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, to give prosperity and good health for the people. This would be the result of being in a right relationship with God and with each other.
Renewal does not start with the politicians – it starts with the people of God
God is making a similar offer of loving forgiveness and prosperity to us in Britain if we would come humbly before him seeking his help. But renewal does not start with the politicians – it starts with the people of God, with the Bible-believing remnant of faith – it starts with you and me, in our lives and intercession.
Seven points for renewal
If we had a godly, Bible-believing Church in the nation, what should such a Church be calling the new government to do? Can we set out a new vision for Britain that would bring blessing and prosperity to the nation? Such a plan has to begin with confession and repentance for the past before determining a new path.
Seven points for renewal:
- First, we need to renew our relationship with God through repentance and confession of the way we have brought judgement upon ourselves through cutting down forests, covering the land with concrete and building houses on floodplains. We have further polluted the land with the blood of 9 million unborn babies. We have allowed injustice and inequality in social relationships. We have wrecked family life and damaged two generations of children through sex education and unregulated social media.
- We need to renew relationships of love and unity within the United Kingdom as one nation under God. We need to confess the things that we have done to each other – especially the English to the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh which would be the beginning of new relationships of love and trust.
- We need to review our relationship with Israel, confessing that we broke the sacred trust of the Mandate that we were given and our promise to establish a homeland for the Jews. We signed the deal agreed by international lawyers at San Remo in 1920 and we broke our promises to Israel. We need to confess and repent of the wrong we did in turning away ships loaded with Holocaust survivors that sank in the Mediterranean in 1947 and all the suffering and hardship we caused. We need to establish new relationships of love and trust with Israel.
- We need to establish new relationships with our European neighbours confessing our attitudes of superiority and xenophobia. We need a spirit of humility in seeking fresh trade agreements and the establishment of new social as well as economic relationships.
- We need to seek new relationships with all the countries of the British Commonwealth where we have not treated them fairly but sought to dominate and to exploit them, misusing our power and authority – countries such as India, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, as well as the more Western countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. We need to repent of the way we broke trade agreements when we joined the European Union, confessing the great harm we did to countries such as New Zealand.
- We need to seek new relationships with our former colonies such as the West Indian islands which we exploited for 300 years through slavery, while Britain grew rich from unjust gain. We need to acknowledge the legacy of slavery today in our great cities that were built on the profits from slavery, yet no compensation has ever been given to the African slaves set free after 1833.
- We need to seek new relationships within the Christian churches in Britain where disunity, fragmentation, false prophecy, liberal theology and unbelief has torn the Church asunder. We need to confess that we have not exercised godly leadership in the nation.
The prophetic voice of the Church declaring the Word of God has not been heard in the nation throughout the past 40 years of rapid social change. We need to recognise that the Church is responsible for the state of the nation and come weeping before our God, asking him to cleanse and renew the church.