Into 2019
An open letter to whomsoever might be interested to read it.
“If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.” (Jer. 18:7-8)
“A Good New Year”.
This is the traditional greeting at the beginning of each January, and indeed at this time last year one might have hoped that things in our nation would get better: not least as things, we might have thought, could hardly get much worse. But they have.
 We are very worryingly divided in Scotland, Ireland and the UK over both nationalism and Brexit – to the point of being a serious threat to social cohesion. Our health service is crumbling, homelessness is on the increase and the social welfare cost of the breakdown of the traditional family unit is crippling. Scotland is now boasting to the universe of being the first nation in the world to introduce gender confusion into the curriculum and minds of the youngest and most innocent of children. Added to this, a recent report has highlighted that we are well on the way to adopting a parallel legal system in our land with Sharia law now being recognised by a high court judge. (Described as a “Landmark Ruling” this adopting of a dual legal system is a recipe for judicial and societal chaos.)
Political and societal chaos
 Yet we have not arrived at this situation overnight; and the serious problems now afflicting us are not-so-much sociopolitical or economic as they are spiritual.
Rev. Dr. Clifford Hill spoke in November at a church leaders’ forum in London. In his new book entitled ‘The Reshaping of Britain’ the sociologist and theologian charts the downward spiral of legislation and social mores that have successively being introduced since the 1960s; and which now beset our nation with a whole gamut of ills. In a recent editorial he wrote:
"The turmoil in the House of Commons and out on the streets of Westminster is something never before seen in my lifetime. There is a simple reason for this: we are a nation under judgment. Since the 1950s, one law after another has been passed in our Parliament that violates biblical values and teaching. The final red line was the passing of The Same-Sex Marriage Act in 2013."
In concluding his most recent address Dr. Hill stated:
“We have deliberately created this kind of culture that we have in our nation today. We are a nation under judgement. There are no political solutions….”.
Indeed the late economist Milton Friedman – speaking back in 1975 in Australia – asserted that the problems even then were quite beyond political repair.
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.
Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
What both Friedman (then) and Hill most recently have stated is that what our nation really needs is not a political change (indeed that will not do) but a change of heart.
An Orwellian state
 “Dear Bigots, You can’t spread your religious hate here.
End of Sermon. Yours Scotland”
And yet at the end of 2018, the Scottish Government published cleverly-worded public notices, endorsed by Police Scotland, which effectively demonise any expressed opinion which rejected the current amoral philosophies being promulgated by the Government. The posters were and are replete with motifs which identify Christians as being the ‘Bigots’ of our day.
A Scottish lawyer has opined on the matter:
“Hate speech is whatever the Government chooses it to be”.
Citizens of ‘One Scotland’ are being invited and encouraged to report fellow citizens to the authorities. In so doing the process of defining a crime has moved from the courts to the street and to the pub.
In all of this, rather than encouraging respect for one another, the Government’s language is demonstrably that of “hate”. It is – cloaked in ‘honourable intent’– setting citizen against citizen, clamping down on freedom of speech and criminalising those who exercise the right. This is radical social re-engineering being enforced through and by the police.
European subservience
 “There was a time in Europe in which the law, as well as the consent of the people, clothed kings with power almost without limits. But almost never did it happen that they made use of it.” Alexis de Tocqueville
At a UK level we are facing the shambles of Brexit and the Herculean effort required to free us from this godless invasion of our sovereignty.
Over the centuries Britain has been used as an instrument against aspiring dictators bent on European domination: Phillip II of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler were all defeated.
Even today we still speak of the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ and that period of which Churchill opined:
“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation”. And again:
“ I sometimes have a feeling of interference. I want to stress that. I have a feeling sometimes that some Guiding Hand has interfered. I have a feeling that we have a Guardian because we have a great Cause…”
But Churchill went on to qualify the above remark,
“…and we shall have that Guardian so long as we serve that Cause faithfully”. In fact the principle of conditional blessing was similarly expressed over two thousand five hundred years earlier:
“And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.” (Jer. 18:9-10)
"In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:30-31)
He again fixes a certain day, "Today," saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, "Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts”. (Heb. 4:7)
As we move into a new year we have a choice before us. What we need, what we really need in our nation is a spiritual turnaround – collectively and as individuals. We need the aforementioned change of heart. As Clifford Hill put it in his final words to the November conference: “
…the only solution [to our problems] is repentance and turning to the Word of God”.
Endnote:
 At the above-mentioned leaders’ forum a second speaker was Rev. Dr. Gavin Ashenden – a former Anglican clergyman and chaplain to the Queen – who spoke on the subjects of what he referred to as “Cultural Marxism”, gender confusion and capitulation within the Church of England to the mores, policies and opinions of our current age. He spoke also of the increasing hostility in public life to the Christian faith.
His address can be heard and/or dowloaded here. (Scroll to foot of article.)
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