Everyman’s Hut

Camp News, Volume 2, Issue 64, 14 March 1941, Page 8

Everyman’s Hut

In view of His Majesty’s request for another national day of prayer to be held on March 23rd, the following article, published in 1915, and bearing upon the Great War, seems singularly appropriate to our own times and conditions.

A GOD OF DELIVERANCES. By the late John Ritchie. (Written for “Believer’s Magazine,” 1915.) By men of the world, natural and visible agents are accredited as givingprosperity in days of peace, and deliverance in times of danger. But the Christian should see the hand of God in everything. The fact that he has been severed from the world by the Cross of Christ, and has now become a sojourner in it, does not make him indifferent to its dangers, or oblivious to the operations of God’s hand in the deliverances He works for it. Although he takes no part in its politics, he prays incessantly for its rulers, and in times of crisis he “carries to the Lord in prayer” what he knows to be with God alone in His Providence to control, and in His Power to bestow. To “regard hot the operation of His hands” (Psa. 28:5) is to disown God as the Supreme Governor of His own universe, and to dishonour Him as the One who “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph. 1:11). Nothing comes by chance, but is either sent or allowed by God, all for some wise purpose and all in mercy. The present war is no exceptio n. . . Our firm conviction is that it is neither with great Generals and their armies on the fields of war, nor with skilled Admirals and

their great navies on the high seas, but with the saints of God on their knees, that the issue of this tremendous conflict lies. If we do not realise this, Satan does, and will seek by every device at his disposal to hinder prayer.

Three hundred and twenty-seven years ago the Spanish Armada sailed from the coast of Spain for the shores of Britain. It consisted of 132 warships, manned by 8000 sailors, carrying 20,000 soldiers. Its object was to.subjugate Britain, and make Rome the sole teaCTier of “culture” and religion to the British nation, and ultimately to the whole of Europe. The secret agents of the Papacy had been preparing for the event, while nominal Protestants were irresolute and unexercised. True saints of God, who were in the secret of His counsel, continued in earnest prayer that the God in whom they trusted might make bare His arm, and overturn the devices of the enemy His and theirs. And thus the answer and the deliverance came. The skilled Admiral of the great Armada died before it had sailed. It encountered two great storms before* it reached the English coast, where it appeared on July 30th, 1588, extending seven miles at sea. Disaster followed disaster; artifice and tempest scattered the great fleet, causing what of it remained to flee to the northern seas, where furious winds dashed the vessels against rocks to utter, destruction.

Throughout the British. Isles this was recognised as an Act of God, and national thanks' were given to Him. Even the people of Spain acknowledged the Divine Hand that ,was against them. All Europe'was solemnised, and a medal struck to commemorate the event bore the text, “The Lord sent His wind, and scattered them.” Would to God the same spirit of submission under God’s mighty -Hand, with confession of our failures and sins, and dependence on God as expressed in prayer, were more found among God’s people in the present crisis! Then we should soon have to acknowlege that “His right hand and His holy arm” had brought us deliverance.