By Charles Gardner — 
These are the days of Elijah¹. It’s the title of a wonderful worship song composed by Northern Ireland’s Robin Mark. It’s a call to recognize that the Lord’s return is near, and it surely applies now more than ever.
Malachi, the last of the prophets to speak before the coming of Messiah 400 years later, concludes by saying that Elijah will precede “the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Malachi 4:5).
This was to be fulfilled, I suggest, in two parts – first, with John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord’s coming among his people by calling for repentance, and then again, in the last days, in a generally godless world when the spirit of Elijah causes many to seek God in the ‘wilderness’ – away from the noise of the city and our crazy woke world with all its humanistic thinking where nothing seems to make sense.
Such seekers want to find reality and purpose as they turn from sin and selfishness through repentance and baptism. And it’s happening today in a big way. On the Californian coast, it is reported that as many as 12,000 people went through the waters of baptism in a single service – 6,000 at a beach event and the rest simultaneously in churches across the state. And on the streets of London, many were glad to receive free Bibles pointing to the answer for our troubles.
Such an answer certainly won’t come from today’s politicians, with all we are hearing these days, such as British Foreign Secretary David Lammy announcing that climate change is the biggest threat facing mankind. True, strange weather patterns abound; my South African friends in KwaZulu-Natal have been blanketed by snow at a time when they are normally well into spring!
But Jesus did say: “People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” (Luke 21:26)
Meanwhile the new Labour Government leaders are discovering how the uncomfortable biblical warning to “be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23) is so true. Those who castigated former PM Boris Johnson for various misdemeanors are now being forced to own up to their hypocrisy.
And all the while, the Middle East is up in flames with talk of World War III having already started. With terrorists to the north, armed to the teeth, Israel faces a renewed threat to its existence as the entire world turns on her – in fulfilment of biblical prophecies of the end times.
Yes, she still has ‘allies’ in theory, but they can no longer be relied upon – perhaps because, in the final analysis, they don’t fully grasp God’s purposes for his chosen people, or for anyone else for that matter. Like the good Father that he is, he loves them with an everlasting love despite their repeated waywardness. He will never let them go and will one day reveal himself to them as a nation.
His promise of the land of Canaan is plainly stated in the Holy Scriptures; it’s there in black and white for all to read (Joshua 1:4, for example) in a text that has proved conclusively to be thousands of years old.
Their claim to this land (especially Judea, Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem) is also in a black and white international treaty (San Remo, 1920) which gave rise to Britain’s Mandate of what was then known as Palestine. The UK was thus charged with preparing the Jewish people for statehood in the modern world.
Palestine became free when the Jewish state was re-born in 1948. There has never been a state of Palestine; it was merely a generic term for the region the Romans re-named Philistia (after Israel’s ancient enemy the Philistines) as a final insult to the exiled Jews. The Philistines, by the way, are now extinct.
Britain thus had the great privilege of helping to free ‘Palestine’ from centuries of darkness under foreign rule. And they were enabled to do so thanks to the influence of courageous Bible-believing figures such as Lord Shaftesbury, William Wilberforce, Arthur Balfour, Charles Spurgeon and Bishop J C Ryle.
But since Britain and the West in general turned their backs on the God of Israel whose laws and prophets provided the foundational bricks of our civilization, the rot set in and our great institutions (including our Parliament and the established church) began to crumble – quite literally, in the former case, as building inspectors have discovered.
So Western leaders today, with few exceptions, simply do not understand that God’s Word is true, that he has sent his Son to free us from sin and bondage, and that one day – perhaps very soon – he will come again as Prince of Peace to free the world of oppression and violence.
That peace doesn’t begin at a political negotiating table. It begins when we open our hearts to Jesus, who says: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
And when whole communities who have received him come together – as happens even in Israel today where Arab and Jewish believers share Yeshua’s love – then there is true peace!
¹ These are the days of Elijah
Declaring the word of the Lord
And these are the days of Your servant Moses
Righteousness being restored
And though these are days of great trial
Of famine and darkness and sword
Still, we are the voice in the desert crying
‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord!’
