Bonfire Night – A Celebration of Ignorance

Usually the week before (at least) and the week after Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes night) on the 5th November fireworks are going off throughout the evening. And last night proved that to be no exception. It was laughable in some ways. Here’s the scene if you can picture it. American friends might struggle to picture it though.

We are in Church, one of the members leads the Church in a time of public prayer. All the time he is praying (and right from the start of the service actually) there are loud explosions and a continuous loud crackling of fireworks going on all round the Church building. All through the singing and through the preaching there continues to be loud explosions.

What is Bonfire Night you may ask? Originally it was designated by Government (Parliament) to be a day of public thanksgiving.

The Observance of 5th November Act 1605 (3 Ja. I, c. 1) also known as the “Thanksgiving Act” was an Act of the Parliament of England passed in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

Even though there might be some faint knowledge of the event – here’s how I read the significance: So here we are in a secular society that has all but forgotten God letting off fireworks that point back to an Act of Thanksgiving to the very God whose knowledge they seek to repress.

To be honest, back in my non-Christian days I was just as ignorant as those outside the Church last evening.

A Collect for 5th November, in Book of Common ...
A Collect for 5th November, in Book of Common Prayer published London 1689, referring to Gunpowder Plot and Arrival of William III (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the prayer on the right note the following prayer to God in giving thanks for the ‘Loving kindness to our Church and Nation, in the preservation of our Religion and Liberties’. Then later note further thankfulness to God that our ‘Holy Religion, which now again thou hast so wonderfully Rescued and Established a Blessing to us’.

What a contrast to our present day when for the State only the hypocritical husk of a true and lively religion remain. What a turn round from former days! The Christian Religion is under attack, of this there can be no doubt. But it is a double-edged sword because once Christian freedoms disappear it’s only a matter of time when other freedoms too will disappear. There’s a reason why so many freedom loving people want to live here – but that will change.

How the mighty have fallen! Here’s the opening paragraph to a prayer from 1606 upon the deliverance.

‘Forasmuch as almighty God hath in all ages showed his power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of his church, and in the protection of religious kings and states, and that no nation of the earth hath been blessed with greater benefit than this kingdom now enjoyeth’.

It would be worth Prime Minister Cameron, his cabinet and government thinking on these things to discern how far we are removed from past glories and a reliance upon the grace of God to our Nation. The irony is that we as a Nation are just as reliant on the grace of God as we have ever been. But now it’s not openly confessed. Instead it is repressed.

These reflections I confess are based on one service in one Church on one evening. But I think the evening illustrates the chasm that is opening between the True Church of Jesus Christ and the sham of religiosity.

See my post from 2011.

Remember Remember the 5th of November…

The cellar underneath the House of Lords, as d...
Image via Wikipedia

It’s day early but hey: Remember Remember the 5th of November Gunpowder Treason and Plot.

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day and Bonfire Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure.Observance of 5th November Act 1605

Also from Wikipedia:

The Observance of 5th November Act 1605 (3 Ja. I, c. 1) also known as the “Thanksgiving Act” was an Act of the Parliament of England passed in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

The Bill was drafted and introduced on 23 January 1605/06 by Edward Montagu. It called for a public, annual thanksgiving for the failure of the Plot.

A 1606 etching by Claes (Nicolaes) Jansz Vissc...
Image via Wikipedia
Forasmuch as almighty God hath in all ages showed his power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of his church, and in the protection of religious kings and states, and that no nation of the earth hath been blessed with greater benefit than this kingdom now enjoyeth, having the same true and free profession of the gospel under our most gracious sovereign lord King James, the most great learned and religious king that ever reigned therein, enriched with a most helpful and plentiful progeny proceeding out of his royal loins promising continuance of this happiness and profession to all posterity: the which many malignant and devilish papists, Jesuits, and seminary priests much envying and fearing, conspired most horribly, when the king’s most excellent majesty, the queen, the prince, and the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, should have been assembled in the upper house of Parliament upon the fifth day of November in the year of our lord 1605 suddenly to have blown up the said house with gunpowder, an invention so inhuman, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of.
There is another reason to celebrate and remember the 5th November. This is the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when with a large invasion fleet in November 1688, William of Orange landed at Torbay. This is hugely significant because William and his wife Mary were Protestant and saved England from reverting back to Catholicism and essentially being ruled by the Pope.
William of Orange (1650-1702)

From Wikipedia: ‘The Revolution permanently ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England. For British Catholics its effects were disastrous both socially and politically: Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over a century, were denied commissions in the army; the monarch was forbidden to be Catholic or to marry a Catholic, a prohibition that continues to 2011. The Revolution led to limited toleration for nonconformist Protestants, although it would be some time before they had full political rights. It has been argued that James’s overthrow began modern English parliamentary democracy: never since has the monarch held absolute power, and the Bill of Rights has become one of the most important documents in the political history of Britain.’

Funny how it’s all slowly changing back. I would see this essentially as summed up by the phrase ‘we will not have this man reign over us’. This man being The Lord Jesus Christ. By nature men and Nations would rather be ruled by anyone than the Lord of Glory. I see this as a further out working of the text found in Romans 1:18  ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.’ It’s the nature of sinful man to suppress the truth, or Hold down the truth in unrighteousness. So forget any balderdash about neutrality: man is consciously anti God and deliberately suppresses the truth. That includes everybody.