FLAG ‘G’ to ‘STAY OR LEAVE?’ (Neil Mackereth Discussion Paper)

Peter Horrobin, founder-director of Ellel Ministries International, posted his ‘thoughts on the coming referendum on membership of the European Union’ on his blog of 24 March 2016 under the title ‘In or Out?’ (click/tap read in full).  Neil copied the whole post as the final Flag ‘G’ to his paper.

After a brief introduction to the matter Peter writes, ‘As I meditated on the situation and prayed about how I should vote, God turned my thoughts to the story of King Jehoshaphat, as it is told in Chapters 17-20 of 2 Chronicles….

He’s drawn to the following conclusion:

‘After Jehoshaphat realised what he had done through his marital, political and military relationship with Ahab, God gave him an opportunity to repent and change direction once more. He took it and the subsequent years were the most prosperous and God-protected of his entire reign. In some ways I now see this coming referendum as being like an opportunity for the whole nation to repent of the decision it made in 1975, in ignorance of what membership of the EU would mean.

‘But now we know what it has meant and what it will mean, and we have a one-time opportunity to choose whether or not we are going to remain in alliance with a type of Ahab or Ahaziah, through which we lose both our sovereignty and the potential to be a God inspired nation. Or, we can choose to take back into our own hands the future destiny of our government, our laws and our finances.

‘You may say that it won’t make any difference, for our own government has not shown any desire to return to our spiritual foundations, an opinion with which I, sadly, have to agree. But the difference is this: with the UK inside Europe, if leaders were to rise up in the future with the intent of changing things, to bring the UK more in line with God’s laws, they would have no legal authority to change anything – because everything would be subservient to our masters in Brussels. Even if God were to raise up a modern day ‘Joseph’, ‘Daniel’ or a repentant ‘Jehoshaphat’, inside the EU they would be impotent.

‘But, released from the shackles of what I now see as an ungodly alliance, who knows what God could still do in and through this nation?

‘I do not believe that God has forgotten our history, or the blood of the Christian martyrs who have laid down their lives and I would agree with the implication of what Archbishop William Temple said during the second world war – that God still has a purpose for this nation in the times that are yet to come before Jesus returns.

‘There are those who are saying that for the economic benefit of the nation and our workers we need to remain within the trading community that is the EU. However, let us not forget the painful lesson that Jehoshaphat learned the hard way – that trading alliances with the wrong partners will not be a source of blessing.

‘So, for deeply spiritual reasons – reasons that you will not see talked about in the Newspapers, or hear about on TV, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for the UK to cut itself free from alliances which undermine our sovereignty and limit our capacity to make our own laws. On the 23^rd of June I will be voting to leave the EU – but I’m already praying for those hidden ‘Jehoshaphats’, ‘Daniels’ and ‘Josephs’ to come to the fore of public life, and start steering our nation back to the godly roots from which it has currently wandered so far.’