NORTHERN STYLE NEWSWATCH No.20
CREDO `He has set eternity in their hearts '
The title for this Newswatch comes from the Book of Ecclesiastes wherein the Teacher is reflecting on the vanity of worldly things, for in the hearts of the people of the world's past and present civilizations there lies this aching and empty longing for eternity - which can only be satisfied by a relationship with God through acceptance of His Son Jesus. Religion in its many and varied forms is the foundation upon which civilizations are built, and cultures that evolve from this can never be sustained if religion is `torn' from them.

For many long centuries in the West disciples of Jesus who compose the true Church of God have sought to assimilate into, and have been cushioned by, western civilization's popular religion (and we have hesitated to call it by the more correct title of `folk religion' for fear of offending) usually said to have sprung from Judaic/Christian roots, although we have constantly and on many occasions reasoned that it actually springs from Judaic/Greco roots, based as it is on a Scriptural, Levitical religious system combined with and hammered into classical Greek reasoning. Greek philosophy, adopted by the Romans as the epitome of human endeavour, enabled it to be bound intrinsically to western civilization and its evolved culture, due to the Roman Emperor Constantine embracing Christianity as the `protected' religion of the State. The fact that the `popular religion' of the West contains similarities found in true Christianity does not negate this statement, for indeed in most if not all of the world's religions similarities can be found which are common to all men for God has indeed placed eternity in their hearts. And so through all generations of popular religion in the cultures of the West there has been found the true Church of the Firstborn. However we would suggest that we are seeing changes taking place in the religious, political and social events of these days which are manifesting themselves almost daily in our lives, and we can indeed see that `things will never be the same' after the events of `September 11th'.

To give more understanding to these opening remarks we need to pause and look again at what the world calls history in order to see the awesome changes that are indeed unfolding. Without wishing to offend, it must be said that Christians - and here we speak particularly of Christians in the West, and even more particularly of Christians in the western peninsular of Europe - have an almost `blinkered understanding' of the historical background of the countries in which they live, and have, as we have already said, so assimilated into western popular religion that they fail to mentally grasp the minority position they are truly in. Amongst Christian leaders there has been much talk over the past few years of the disintegration of British social life, with strident urging for a return to the times when this kingdom was believed to be at its height of a moral social position. The call usually urges a return to re-establish the family unit, with all that that implies, last seen in `the glory days' of yesteryear, particularly the Victorian era with its mighty British Empire on which `the sun never set'.

We have been led in the past to call this a form of `Christian Imperialism', for all it seeks to do is to return the true Church of God once again to the popular religion of western culture. The `pomp and circumstance' of British Pageantry, as we see it today in all its faded glory, indeed reached its height during the reign of Queen Victoria, but in fact it was pageantry copied from the Moghul Empire when it reigned over India - later, Britain's `Jewel in the Crown'! The Great Assemblies, the Durbar, as they were called, brought in submission the ruling princes of the Indian Provinces to meet their imperial masters, awed by their wealth and power. The pageantry of the Moghul Empire, which held together the many and independent provinces of India, was then copied and combined with western ceremonies to great effect by the new Imperial Power of Great Britian. That which is believed to `always have been', centered upon the British Monarchy, actually has a very short history, and still today keeps the people enthralled by its colourful pagaentry - such is the pull of imperial power coupled with popular religion which, we believe, the true Church of God in these islands needs to awaken from! But we have moved too quickly to our point and need to retrace our steps somewhat.

In an earlier study we set out our understanding of the religious formation of western Europe in a booklet entitled `Beyond the Storm . . a Ripened Harvest' and space prohibits us from repeating ourselves. Sufficient to say that a rereading of that earlier essay would be useful in greatly understanding what follows here as we wish to consider first these islands' religious-political development within the historical framework of western Europe. For that we need to open our minds to the probability that history, as taught over the past generations, had a very narrow viewpoint, heavily biased and used as a political tool to instill nationhood in its students. To emphasize this: The often-quoted Magna Carta, the so-called bedrock of our western liberal democracy, was, as we know, the result of a rebellion by French-born noble families against the excesses of a king who himself sprang from the French Plantagenet line - England being but one of his kingdoms. (The early history of western Europe was dominated by continuous wars between the many kings and princes of Europe and had nothing to do with our modern concept of nation states.)

The early battle ground of western Europe reached its zenith with the crowning of Charlemagne in AD 800, in St Peter's Rome by Pope Leo the Third, as the Holy Roman Emperor, seeking to bring together the many warring factions of Europe. In particular this led to what was probably the defining moment for the establishment of a earthly kingdom and spiritual kingdom which would become the essential hallmark of the continual wars between the Pope of the Roman Catholic religion and the kings and princes of Europe. Who is the greater . . . he who blesses or he who appoints those who bless? (The answer we find recorded in the Book of Revelation as `the Beast out of the sea' and `the Beast out of the earth'.) This has been the primary cause of the wars and conflicts that have dominated Europe and which, Scripture records, will continue to dominate Europe and beyond until the Kingdom of Righteousness is established. The ruined castles scattered around Europe are reminders to us of the terror of the dominant kingly powers of those days - and of the temporary curtailing of them by the rise of liberal, democratic authority. We also need to remind ourselves that the massive Norman Churches and Cathedrals seen on every side were not built so much to the glory of God as to the glory of a religious system which sought to establish itself as the dominant power over the kings it crowned. (This religious power, although weakened, still stands seemingly triumphant, and in the last days will rise again when the Beast and the False Prophet in their last battles seek for an earthly kingdom.) The warring kings and princes finally exhausted themselves, and it was the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that set in motion the formation of nation states as we know them today.

The powers of the `ancien regime' were curtailed and over the years became subject to Parliaments, who alone had the power to levy taxes to fight wars on behalf of kings living in areas marked out by national boundaries, behind which were people who began to adopt a national identity. From such events began the shaping of the nation states which have come to dominate the history of Europe over the past three hundred years. The earlier establishment of a coherrent religious power, separate from the state, yet protected by it through the actions of the Roman Emperor Constantine, now also needed to redefine itself in order to maintain dominance over `earthly kingdoms', and through the religious Reformation of the Catholic Church it gave birth to the Protestant movement. As a result national churches began to take shape, for kings and princes needed the authority of `the Church' to legitamize their positions over the emerging nation states. The national churches also needed the protective hand of secular authority against the vengeful hand of `Mother Church', and so within much of western Europe Protestantism took firm root in the popular religion of the people. Although at this stage we are focussing on western Europe we need to keep in mind that, further west `our cousins' who peopled the lands of the first British Empire in America, were fleeing from the wars and conflicts of western Europe centered upon Church and State, and even today, with that clear separation of Church and State in their national psyche, the Protestant religion plays a dominant role in their culture - always in conflict with government, to the point that conspiritorial sensationalism dominates the talk of the people of popular religion in that part of western civilization.

We now need to bring these thoughts into our contemporary setting, where we find that, to the consternation of conspiritorial theorists in church circles the nation state is now redefining itself into regional groups, particularly seen in the European Union but also further west in, at this stage, regional trade groups in the Americas. In this `redefining' we find smaller nations coalesing, coming together, around a dominant or core-state. In doing so they are preparing to forfeit their sovereignty, submitting their identity to that of the core state - and in the case of the European Union this core is centered upon the German/Franco axis. You may recall that this was the central thought set out in our booklet `Beyond the Storm . . a Ripened Harvest', the continuing conflict between two dominant Frankish dynasties, the Merovingian and the usurping Carolingian lines. The British Isles were never part of that earlier conflict and have historically kept apart from the European landmass with its continuous vicious upheavals, having instead a distinct and unique cultural ethos within the western civilization.

However, the UK does have a `natural weakness' (seen since the Roman times) that, after `enjoying' the protection of a strong dominant protector, as that protector's power wanes it seeks another to keep it in its comfortable state. With the withdrawal of the Roman armies the Saxons were invited into these isles, and later, when the rising power of the Normans threatened, little was done by the indigenous people of these isles to reject them. That was left to a Saxon king! Now, centuries later, after enjoying the protection of the Plantagenet kings, we find the covering protection of the European Union holding out its welcoming arms - the outcome of which is, as they say, in the balance! With the increasing redefinition of the nation state coalesing around a dominant core-country and merging with a religious power, there is now no need for a national Protestant religious system as we have known it over the past centuries for it has no national secular power to legitimize or to provide its protection, and we will increasingly find the Protestant religious system drawn back into the womb of the `Mother Church' from whence it came. What we now see forming in the west are major regional groupings centered upon a core-country, all of which are held together by a common popular religious system formed on what is commonly called Judaic/Christian principles. We have here in fact a regrouping of the many western nation states into a recognisable western civilization, its boundaries reaching to those of the old Roman Empire as it split into the two empires based upon Rome and Constantinople.

There we would leave the West and briefly cross over the boundaries into the eastern half of the old Roman Empire. Here we find a different picture, for in the East we find many civilizations have emerged over the centuries: Orthodox; Islamic; Hindu; Chinese, to name but four, yet with eternity set in the hearts of their people each civilization has a dominant religion which gives them a purpose in life. But because there is no common religious system in the East this area has always been at the mercy of the universality of western civilization, which with its common Judaic/Greco religious system has had at various times in the course of history sufficient grounds on which to pursue its cultural hubris - the subjugation of `the East' to its political-religious beliefs. We find this outworking with the collapse of the once-mighty Soviet Union, once the core idealogy around which most of the eastern European countries coalesed. But the expected triumphant progress of `enlightened' western Judaic/Greco liberal democracy did not occur . . the so-called `end of history' did not materialize . . and we are left with a redefining of the many eastern countries which are seeing themselves as an emerging civilization with its own distinct culture, not in any way inferior to the West and bolstered by a well-educated and wealthy middle-class.

To use modern jargon, what we find on the cutting edge of this boundary of the old Roman Empire are Islamic countries which do not have a dominant core-country to coalese around. This makes for a very volatile scenario as each one seeks to be that core-country through military might. Pan Arabism has long been the dream of these countries - in modern times this has been seen in Colonel Nasser of Egypt, and later, by Syria and Iran. Added to this cauldron is the rising power of China, also seeking to become a core-country and seeing in the political/economic distress of Japan its opportunity to become the dominant power in East Asia. We hardly need record the tensions that are in danger of tearing apart the various Hindu principalities that compose modern India, and in the re-emerging power of Russia we see the awakening of a core-country around which the Orthodox countries will orbit. The world news we read or listen to is merely reporting the emergence of a long-dormant eastern civilization containing many and varied cultures which is seizing the opportunity to throw off the dominance of western power with its universal idealogy of liberal democracy.

The hubris of the West will not allow itself to see that its economic power is declining, that its population is ageing, that its ability to dominate the world has been curtailed through the excesses of its people who demand more and more natural benefits without the driving force that once motivated it. Such is the end of all civilizations if we care to pay attention to history. Arrogant pride also refuses to see that the economic wealth and power of secular authority has been shifting steadily eastwards. The countries in the eastern half of the world, who once looked to the West for their support, and who sought to imitate the lifestyle of their `masters', now begin to see its slow but steady decline and are swiftly looking to the rising giants of the East for their protection and support. With a clear fault-line appearing between an `ageing' West, and an `awakening' East composed of countries seeking to be the dominant core-country, we see a volatile world rapidly moving towards the conflict of the ages. But we need now to widen these thoughts to a global perspective and at the same time ground them in Scripture.

As we have said previously, the `Church in the West', so deeply imbedded in the popular religious system of its national countries, and with its universal idealogy, often fails to look at the wider canvas that God is working on. We set out in an earlier booklet entitled `The LORD has a Controversy with the Nations' a Scriptural basis for a Probation Period of fourty years in which the character of God's people was tested, and we stated in that essay that our understanding was that such a Probation Period began in 1967 with the retaking of east Jerusalem (thereby enabling Jerusalem to be the eternal and undivided capital of Israel) by the Israeli army. That event in 1967 coincided with a move of God in the western churches, releasing what is now commonly called `the Charismatic Movement', a glorious outpouring of the Holy Spirit empowering and reviving the saints of a weary Church. Its present steady and dismal drift into apostacy is but the outworking of the testing of the character of His people allowed by God, and we find the churches now in the grip of a spiritual `captivity', which has been the Scriptural end of past Probation Periods - as we set out in the before-mentioned booklet.

Unfortunately, because of the narrow, blinkered eyes of western triumphalism, we failed to note that the religious awakening in the late 1960's swept through the whole world, with a dramatic resurgence in popular religions in all the various civilizations in the world. It has left the world with militant Islam; a Hindu awareness not seen for generations; Shintoism in Japan has re-emerged; and Buddhism - ever the gel of East Asian countries - has strengthened in all their communities. Orthodoxy, the nationalist religion of Eastern `Christianity', has re-awakened, triumphant after its long `winter' under Communism, and is fast becoming the coalesing religious force in the many Orthodox countries of the East. In the West the popular religious system found a new status, and armed with guitars many of the populist clergy brought new life to a declining religious system. Truly `God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform' - to quote from an old Anglian hymn - for within that religious revival which swept the whole world God was restoring His people, the true Church of the Firstborn, in every country `for such a time as this', if we have an understanding of the `bigness' of our God!

But now we need to `narrow' our view to see what the Lord of the Church is saying in and through these events. If indeed a faultline is developing, revealing the boundaries last seen in the old Roman Empire of East and West, the power which will emerge will be that which in the Book of Daniel is described as the Fourth Beast which terrified him. A world conflict is developing between the eastern and western civilizations that you can read of in the Book of Daniel in chapters 11 and 12. In the centre of those battles, on the actual faultline itself, stands the tiny state of Israel, hated by the East and increasingly an irritant to the West - not really part of either eastern or western civilizations and caught in a geographical nutcracker which is closing fast! As many are aware, the Church and Israel are joined together on a parallel journey to meet their Lord, joined together by the New Covenant spoken of by Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the house of Israel and Judah. And as the Gentile believers of the true Church, along with the natural branches of believing Jews, are grafted into the Olive Tree which is Israel, spoken of by the apostle Paul, we understand that what happens to Israel naturally and spiritually will also happen to the true Church of God naturally and spiritually. Both are caught in a `nutcracker' which will lead to increasing persecution and distress as God calls out His people from amongst the nations of the world to proclaim His glory!

Persecution comes in many forms. In the East it mainly comes through physical torture and death, whilst in the West it is at present coming through the soft-coating of a popular Judaic/Greco religious system into which the true Church of the Firstborn has assimilated over many centuries. Will we heed the warning from God through the events of `September 11th' and prepare for the coming spiritual and physical battles that lie ahead in the immediate future? With the Lord's enabling power, the answer must be `Yes', for we find that always within a Probation Period there will be found a remnant who are watching and waiting for His return.

May we be found amongst these people! Amen!

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