Evangelicals Now
<< August 2007 >>

The Commentary

Prayer and bombs

The ways of God’s providence can sometimes hit us quite forcefully.

It was our church prayer meeting on June 28, the day after Gordon Brown had become our new Prime Minister. A Muslim convert to Christianity, with much experience of the workings of Islam, was speaking.

He expressed many concerns to us for the future of our country. Did we realise that the firm which provides security at all our airports, seaports and at the House of Commons is owned by a Muslim, although he is not involved in the day-to-day running of things? Did we know of the growing influence of Islam in the armed forces and the possibility of the head chaplain being a Muslim in the next few years? Did we realise that the Government plans to set up a panel of religious advisers comprised of 12 bishops and 12 Islamic clerics, and with the track record for spinelessness of our bishops it would not take a genius to know in which direction that will go? Did we understand that there are far more ‘honour killings’ of young women in this country than are actually reported?

He was asked a question. ‘Isn’t Islamic Banking simply parallel to ethical banking and we should not be too alarmed by its introduction?’ The answer was that it isn’t parallel but will be used to spread the power of Islam in our country. He cited what has happened recently in Switzerland, where, under threat of removal of massive reserves of money, the Swiss were cornered into introducing Islamic banking even though they did not want it.

He was also asked: ‘If Islam is on the brink of taking over behind the scenes in Britain, isn’t the terrorist campaign detrimental to its cause?’ Here he pointed to the division in Islam between moderates and extremists and replied that the extremists believe Britain needs to be ‘taught a lesson’ and that the Islamisation of Britain was not proceeding fast enough.

Now, certainly, some people might feel they have reason to dismiss all this as alarmist and mere scare mongering. And perhaps our speaker is misinformed, prejudiced or was overstating things. But you can imagine that, with such warnings ringing in our ears, when it was time to pray there was a great outpouring of intercession for our land in the prayer meeting. In particular, prayers were said that ordinary people would be kept safe, that God would preserve our freedom and that something might happen to alert the new Prime Minister to the nature of what he is dealing with.

Next morning

What a shock to the system it was, therefore, to wake up the next morning to the news of the attempted terrorist attack in London, with the two cars packed with explosive material in Haymarket. Thankfully the devices failed to explode. Thankfully the intelligence services, therefore, were able to garnish much information. Within a few hours there had been a number of arrests. Then, on the Saturday, came the car bomb attempt at Glasgow airport where again, ‘miraculously’, no innocent bystanders were hurt. We could not help but feel that God had indeed been listening to our prayers and taking them very seriously.

What is the lesson from all this? It seems to be that the best way for the church to respond to threats to freedom in this country is to find out what is actually going on, ask questions of those in power, and to pray. ‘Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray’ (James 5.13). Prayer meetings are a must right now.

John Benton