I believe I have mentioned before that someone — Napoleon I think — said that imagination rules the world. Discounting what we need to discount here — Napoleon not being a font of spiritual wisdom, and adjusting for different meanings of the word imagination, this remains quite true, profoundly true.
The imagination that I refer to is not daydreaming. It is not wishful mental meandering. What is it that overcomes the world? Is it not our faith? And faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And one of the things I hope for, one of the great things I see without seeing, is a Christian Great Britain.
Evangelical Christians in the UK need to fix in their minds what they believe the condition of their country will be fifty years from now. And they need to run a little thought experiment. Suppose the Lord asked them what they believed that future would be. (Note that the question is not about ultimate future, the future in which the dead are raised, the future concerning which there is no disagreement among orthodox Christians. We are not talking about that.)
The question concerns the historic future of Great Britain fifty years from this day, in the year 2058. That island will still be there, and people will still be on it. What kind of nation will it be? So, in this thought experiment, the Lord asks you what kind of nation it will be, in your imagination. And so you give Him your understanding, and suppose the Lord then said, Be it to you according to your faith. Would you then rejoice, or despair?
Imagination governs life, practice, and attitudes. If your imagination is historically defeatist, then that is going to help determine the outcome. A sports team that has given up prematurely is defeated primarily for that reason, even if there is enough raw talent on the field to still win the game.
The restoration of the British nation is coming in Christ, but an important preliminary move is for the Holy Spirit to restore the British imagination, to restore the faith of evangelicals. Just as there is no crop without plowing and planting, so there will be no restoration of the faith in Britain without a restoration of faith. One of the things that is enervating the evangelical Church in the UK is that people have been led to believe that a morale issue is a doctrinal issue.
After the resurrection, the Lord Jesus was given this invitation — ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. Does any Christian seriously want to say that Jesus was given this invitation and that He didn’t ask for Great Britain?