Royal Wedding, Stoicism And The Great Wedding In Heaven

How I enjoyed watching on television the wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton!

The sight of thousands of people lining the route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey raised my emotions, and the cheers as first the Groom, then the rest of the Royal Family, then the Bride, at that stage still considered a commoner, made their short car journey to the Abbey.
And as the Groom placed his ring on her finger, the Bride's status changed from a commoner to the Duchess of Cambridge and a Royal.
Endless commentaries were given for Catherine's dress, comments like "fantastic!" and "Spectacular!" Everyone loved it. Catherine herself grew up to be startlingly beautiful, and little wonder that she was the perfect fit for the Groom who will one day become King of England.
Equally impressive were the crowds who attended the pageantry. Estimates reckon around two million spectators gathered in Central London for the occasion, a small proportion of the two billion who watched it on television globally.
What I loved about the whole spectacle was how the crowds lining the route cheered vocally and allowed their emotions to show amidst the sea of Union Jack flags waving in the mild air.
I believe too that the prayers of many were answered when not a drop of rain fell throughout the whole occasion. During the last three of four days preceding the Wedding, the Met Office warned that a scattering of heavy showers, in places even accompanied by thunder, would attempt to put a damper on the celebrations. But even if that had been the case, I doubt that it would have spoiled much, with the exception that the journey from the Abbey to the Palace would have had the newlyweds in a closed-in coach instead of the open-top one which made the couple clearly visible to the bystanders and TV audience alike.
And how the spectators cheered as the newly married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were driven back to the Palace!

High emotions! Does this make Britain less stoic? No, I believe it does not. Stoicism is a reaction, in contrast to panic, in the face of a crisis, whether it's an airline in distress or financial difficulties. Stoicism is about getting to grips in solving the problem instead of running away, flustering or getting tied in knots with panic. The 33 Colombian miners who were trapped for six weeks in a sealed chamber underground were a good example of stoicism. They prayed daily and waited patiently for rescue to begin. The South American disaster was also proof that stoicism is not uniquely British.
As stoicism being uniquely British is the opinion of some newspaper journalists which at times really ruffle my feathers!
Amanda Platell and Melanie Phillips, both Daily Mail columnists, have written articles about "the decline of stoicism in Britain" since the death of Princess Diana in 1997. According to Platell and Phillips, the British have become a sentimental, mawkish, weepy and emotional society, with Phillips adding of the decline of masculinity.
To them, that's bad. Is It? Does it really weaken masculinity?
If so, then the Lord Jesus Christ was a wimp. He wept in public on two separate, recorded occasions. The first was over the fate of Jerusalem, the second over the death of Lazarus.
But it would also mean that today's pageantry would have been different if Platell and Phillips had their way.
Instead of cheering crowds, the route would have been lined with an orderly crowd of stiffly dressed men and women, gently clapping without a single voice heard as the Royal procession passed by. The Queen would have looked ahead sternly instead of waving to the crowds and the newly weds would have also been concealed inside a coach, almost oblivious to the sound of clapping outside. In short, the day's event would have resembled more like Remembrance Sunday than a wedding.
As it was the crowds expressed their emotions of excitement and joy without reserve, as it should be. A wedding is a joyous occasion, a cause for celebration.
Having been to a wedding reception in the Middle East myself, I can assure that the Bible indeed sees a wedding as a joyous occasion. The wedding at Cana was attended by Jesus Christ himself, who turned water into wine, not wine into water as these columnists believe should have been done.
In the Book of Revelation, John gives us a glimpse of the unrestrained emotions of rapturous joy as the Bride is presented to the Groom.

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang:
"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and
wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise!"
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:
"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honour and glory and power,
for ever and ever."
The four living creatures said, "Amen",
and the elders fell down and worshipped.
Revelation 5:11-14.

And also this:

Then what I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like a roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
Hallelujah!
For the our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and the bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear."
(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)
Then the angel said to me, "Write:
'Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!'" And he added, "These are the true words of God."
Revelation 19:6-9.

The heavenly Bride of Christ is the Church. We are the Bride of Jesus Christ if we trust in him to save us. On that wedding day in heaven emotions will run high. No British stiff upper lip then!
The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton was a joyous occasion. Everyone there had the right to shout with joy!
After all, in heaven, it would be impossible to hold under restraint any emotion then!
Wishing the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge a happy future together.
HOORAY!!!

Newspaper Journalism - a Reflection of Middle Class Arrogance

This blog is written on the wake of the massive earthquake just off the Japanese coast on Friday March 11th, 2011 - and the resulting tsunamis which killed thousands of inhabitants and wiped towns off the map. This is just another show of Nature's anger, after the earthquake which flattened Christchurch in New Zealand just a few weeks earlier, and another earthquake which caused the tsunami disaster at the Indian Ocean which killed an estimated 230,000 people in 14 nations, on Boxing Day, 2004.
Among many reports of the latest disaster, one in particular really struck me above the rather monotonous stream of newspaper journalism.
Daily Mail Robert Hardman wrote an article on page 11 of Saturday's (12th March)issue of the paper with the headline screaming out -
What fools we are to think we can tame the wrath of nature.
This at first looks to be a humbling article, with setting our human achievements in their rightful place, subservient to nature, no matter how dizzying high our achievements have reached, whether they meant building a skyscraper over a piece of ground once inhabited by a few animals, communication wizardry, or sending someone into space. Hardman says that when nature unleashes its forces, everything we are and our attainments goes flat like a house of cards. So far, so good.
But it was how the article opened which caused me to gasp, "Wow!"
This is what he wrote:

How we chuckle at those primitive civilisations with their sun-worshipping superstitions, their pagan ways. How we pooh-pooh those Creationist Bible-bashers clinging steadfastly to their crackpot beliefs in Noah and his Ark. The only real threat to the world, we are always told, is the human race itself. Because we are the ones in charge.
(Emphasis mine)

This statement seems to me that the author is at worst, an atheist, at best an agnostic, but certainly not a Bible-believing Christian whose beliefs in Divine Creation and the Flood were the foundations of British society throughout its history, simply because Jesus Christ and his apostles upheld these two Old Testament events as historic, not fable, and was the conviction held by many throughout English history which even cost them their lives.
Robert Hardman seems to me, to be one of a growing number of journalists and reporters who totally refute any historicity to the Bible, because to them, all truth in Scripture has been refuted by science. And that despite that the laws and constitution which formed the basis of English society was founded on principles based on the veracity of the Bible.
Yet even to this day, journalists cry out over the watering down of traditional Englishness. One time Daily Mail political columnist Simon Heffer, a self-confessed atheist, once wrote,

What defines a British gentleman is that even while just out shopping on a Saturday afternoon, he'll go out in public wearing a suit and tie.

And he described himself as a "radical Englishman". His quote also means, in reality, that "the British Gentleman" is extremely far and few between, "as rare as an oasis in a desert", being my pet expression, particular on a warm summers day, where his definition of a gentleman would be totally non-existent, unless on duty whether in the Forces or in Retail.
Heffer's statement leads me to his replacement after he left the newspaper post some years ago. His replacement was, and is, Amanda Platell, who on a Daily Mail online article, she criticised Prince William for touring Australia with an open neck shirt during one of their hot summer days. The number of comments she received disagreeing with her might have been the reason why her article was scrapped before the paper went to print.
But she, along with fellow journalist Melanie Phillips, lashed out at the "emotional, sentimental and mawkish attitude" of the British since the death of Princess Diana in August 1997. This weakening of the stiff upper lip to a trembling lower lip is the diluting of the spirit of the British Bulldog, which to them, made Britain unique.

Platell also wrote a complete page long article on how stoicism not only made Britain unique and head of a mighty worldwide empire, but as an Australian backpacker, decided to settle in London permanently some 26 or 27 years ago.
I once watched a clip based on a movie about an airline in distress mid-flight. On one side of the central aisle was a crowd of panicking Italians shouting and screaming. On the other side a crowd of English passengers, in business suits, in total stoic silence, some even reading a newspaper, as if nothing out of the usual was happening.
Admirable stuff.
In reality, only last year 33 Chilean miners were trapped in an underground cavern after the roof of an access shaft collapsed, blocking the exit. If ever there was stoicism displayed by these guys, all of Spanish descent, it was by these miners who were trapped underground for six weeks. Some became ill, but none panicked. Their secret of survival was hope in prayer. In the cave they built a makeshift chapel, where daily prayers kept their hopes alive. And amazingly, Amanda Platell was away the week such a spectacular and successful rescue operation was completed, with no fatalities.
And according to TV news reports, at present the Japanese seem to show stoicism while coping with the recent tsunamis catastrophe. Instead of screaming and panicking, engineers have got to work in making safe the nuclear power plant which was threatening to leak radiation, risking their own lives in doing so.
And so I could go on. The point is that the British are not unique in stoicism as these journalists would like us to think.
And added to this, journalists such as Hardman had added insult to injury to many who are devoted to the Bible as historical.
People have died for the cause of Biblical truth, reverence and historicity. The best examples are the three Oxford Martyrs, who set the course for the rise of the Church of England. They were bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. They were burnt alive on the stake outside Balliol College on the 16th October 1555, for insisting that the bread and wine of the Body of Christ was meant to be spiritual not literal, as taught by Rome. Five months later, on 21st March 1556, Thomas Cramner was burned at the stake at the same spot as the other two, for similar convictions. Cramner composed the Book of Common Prayer in 1548-49, a liturgy read in churches throughout the land of centuries afterwards.

Nicholas Ridley

Hugh Latimer before the Council

Death of Thomas Cramner

Which gave to the rise of the Church of England, headquartered in Canterbury, Kent.

Belief in the historicity of the Bible did not turn a nation into savages but an ordered civilisation. Basically, such convictions and belief in a Triune God who Created everything, the Noachian Deluge, the birth, Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ and belief in the resulting afterlife kept evil under check.
True enough, there were some appalling stuff within British history, such as the slums, the workhouse, poverty, disease, capitalist greed and extortion using child labour in deep underground mines and grim factories and mills, and a strong and rigid class system. All these things were very bad in those days.
But belief in the Bible was the underlying cause of social reform. One good example of this was the rise of the Trade Unions, originally a Christian organisation for the welfare of manual workers, along with the rise of the NHS, and societies for fairer trading, etc.
And most important, as Robert Hardman pointed out, perhaps unwittingly, the Bible plays an important role against pagan child sacrifice and cannibalism.
Then there is the most important truth in the Bible - our salvation.
And salvation is the free gift of God, given to all who trust in Jesus Christ as Saviour.
Nothing pooh-pooh about that.