David Pawson - The Challenge of Islam to Christians Pt2 - Islam's attraction
Thoughtful Thoughts 13.10.17
The Challenge of Islam to Christians; part 2.
The spiritual vacuum in Britain...
This series came about because God gave David Pawson a prophetic warning about the rise of Islam in Britain. David preached it at some cost to his health. He says God is allowing Islam to come in, in order to try to bring about repentance. (Cf. the O.T. warnings to Israel.) God always warns first.
As the introductory message in part 1 is being passed over, we will use the blog as an introduction and you can watch Part 1 available below.
In Part 1, David Pawson introduces the series by talking about the spiritual vacuum in Britain. He makes his point by referring to a survey done by Reader’s Digest magazine. The Reader's Digest conducted a survey which resulted in the findings that the British are now the second most atheistic nation in the world. Japan was the only nation with a greater percentage of atheists. Up until the first half of the last century, the Japanese had believed that their Emperor was divine and that he would lead them to world domination as it was impossible for a deity to fail. When the Emperor finally surrendered at the end of WW2, he also publicly admitted he was not divine. This was such a shock to the citizens it resulted in atheism. (In the church I go to, there are so many Japanese looking for God, they have their own mid-week service in Japanese).
In Britain almost everyone went to an Anglican church before the second world war. The two world wars resulted in the deaths of more people than all the wars in all of human history combined. Men returned from the wars in such a state of shock that church became irrelevant. Even being traumatised by the savagery was seen as cowardice back then, for which you could be shot. When the two armies played each other at soccer on Christmas Day in WW1, the army high command intervened with a severe warning against any repetition.
The things which Generals ordered men to do resulted in the poisoning of hearts and souls. What may not be so widely known is that because of Generals like Hamilton at Gallipoli and Godly at Passchendaele in WW1, both the New Zealand and Australian governments passed laws forbidding their troops from ever being put under the command of British officers again. What they may not have realised is that these incompetent Generals were appointed because the elite class required their own people to be given these job creation schemes, and they treated the British soldier with just as much callous disregard. In India it was a commander by the name of Dyer, who used troops to murder hundreds of Indians at Amritsar in 1917. The behaviour of these commanders today would result in war crimes tribunals. (In Australia the Aborigines had once been treated even worse and the Irish and Scots didn’t fare much better.)
What I am coming to is this…
The common denominator between these dehumanised elites was the religious boarding schools they were sent to for their so called education. From there you either became an army officer or a vicar. When my father was at army officer’s training school, a failed officer-to-be simply went into the Anglican church because it was expected of him. At that time, army chaplains were mostly comprised of Anglican or Catholic clergy, (with some free church clergy). When the soldiers returned to England after the war, the men left the church at the average rate of 1,000 a week and have been doing ever since. The church was finally recognised for being another emperor who had no clothes. Church leaders were so blind in their understanding for the reason why two churches a week have been closing, that the answer they came up with was to water down their theology to try for popularity. In trying to become all things to all men, it has become effeminate in its theology and leadership, resulting now in a largely female attendance. The disproportionate number of women to men is evident with the broadcasting of Songs of Praise from churches, where the absence of men becomes obvious. The slide has continued and the remaining churches in trying to become “with it” or “up to date”, turned morning services into ‘Sunday School’ type services called “Messy Church”.
Now the churches that are being closed are being bought by property developers and to Muslims for mosques and there are so many, you can “Google” ‘UK churches for sale’ and get an instant result.
The church now continues as a nostalgic remnant of history for women and children;- a place for births, deaths and marriages, (that is, if churches are even going to be chosen for weddings). Even as late as the 70s my father once explained his reason for becoming a vicar, saying ‘the Church of England must be saved’. At a prayer meeting attended by David Pawson, a quietly spoken man in a very long prayer meeting for revival stood up and said, ‘Thus says the Lord, “I will not revive what I did not ‘Found’ ”. (Google it’s history). An ex Archbishop of Canterbury (George Carey) went public saying this denomination will be closed within a generation.
Well this blog is being used as an introduction to the series, as we skipped part 1 which was about Britain’s spiritual vacuum brought on by the Anglican Church. (In France it is due to the Catholic Church).
Next week the video is Part 3 in “Sounding The Alarm”, where David reveals the side of Islam that is factual but not politically correct to talk about.
I’m John Dunning and that’s “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.
