|
The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
SOVEREIGNTY POOLED IS SOVEREIGNTY LOST
Once fiercely proud of its freedom from foreign alliances — the ‘splendid isolation’ of
its heyday — Britain is deeply enmeshed in the European project. Such
participation, by its very nature, requires the abrogation of essential elements
of national sovereignty and is indicative of Britain’s decline as a truly
independent nation. Depending on the results of the ‘Remain-Leave’ referendum on
June 23, Britain’s political and economic fate will be decided for the next
generation or beyond.
Trapped between its supine relationship with the United States on the one hand, and its entanglement in the European Union on the other, Britain's sovereignty is now very far compromised, the notion of patriotism often derided as ‘nationalistic’ at home. The fact that the current President of the U.S., Barack Obama, on his current (April 2016) visit to this country, feels justified in urging (the whole of) the U.K. to remain in the EU serves to highlight the nature of the problem – that Britain is no longer seriously regarded as master of its own fate, not even by those who claim to be its friends.
For patriots and lovers of this remarkable land, which has contributed
uniquely and powerfully to the cause of democracy and religious freedom across
the centuries, and which in its heyday laid the foundations of the modern world,
the present situation is painful to behold. But taking the biblical view, we may
derive some consolation from the fact that God rules in the affairs of men. He
alone promotes and demotes the nations of earth, until His glorious ends are
achieved (Dan. 2:20, 21).
As noted elsewhere in these columns, the rise of Britain as the chief
industrial, economic and naval power in the nineteenth-century world was the
proximate and providential cause of
the return of the Jews to Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel
(1948). In the decline of one and the rise of the other, these two nations were
linked together in modern history.
God proclaims that He will bless those who favour Israel (and Jews in
general) and disfavour those who curse her or work against her overall interests
(Gen. 12:2, 3). And like it or not, the future well-being of the whole
world is irrevocably coupled with the fate of Israel (Isa. 2:1-4 [‘Jerusalem . .
. chief among the mountains (nations) . . . all nations stream into it’];
KJV). – Selected
_________
2016 ukbiblestudents.co.uk