"Is there any word from the Lord?"

I am reading Andrew Robert's great book Churchill: Walking with Destiny and am amazed at how his warning voice was so loud and clear during the wilderness years of 1935-39. Churchill spoke again and again of the coming conflagration that would consume the youth of the world between 1939 and 1945 in World War II. His speeches were so rousing and stirring that members of the House of Commons, where he was a back-bench MP, often stamped and cheered him afterwards, but did nothing in response to his pleadings. He was a virtually lone figure during that period as Hitler's Nazi Germany re-armed and prepared for war on a massive scale. The voice of the prophet was being sounded in the wilderness but just about nobody was listening, at least not those in power. The result was that Britain was so unprepared for war when it came that it is only by the grace of God - and the leadership of Winston Churchill in the crisis - that the total disaster of a Nazi occupation of the UK was averted.

We need a prophetic voice today in the corridors of power or the front pages of our media. An Old Testament king once asked the pertinent question "Is there any word from the Lord?" and that query rings loud and clear at this time in our land. There is a national crisis of violence, of corruption in huge corporations, of extremism in political views, of racism, of knife crime, of bullying and disrespect for authority, and political impasse that threatens the future well-being of our great democracy. What would Winston Churchill be saying if he was an MP today?

And where are the Christian prophets? I know that Mrs May, the British Prime Minister, has had at least one audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury over the Brexit issue and that's good. But let's pray that God will raise up a person, or a people, of such prophetic lives and words, that in this wilderness of human need, those in power, and those around us, will have to admit that there has been a word from the Lord'!

And, when it comes, let's hope that our leaders will be more responsive to that word than were the government of Great Britain in the 1930's!