01. WWII, The Blitz, Blackout Church Culture

Opening Prayer:

Sovereign Lord, you created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. Have mercy on us for you are perfect and we are sinners. Your grace and mercy is unending. Holy Spirit we beg your presence in this place. Allow us the gift of clarity; that we may hear your words today and not our own. Continue to guide us along the path you have laid out before us. Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. The King of Glory, The Lord of Heavens’ Armies, Yahweh. Amen.

Topic:

World War II (1939 – 1945)

The Blitz (September 1940 – May 1941)

Nighttime bombing raids against London and other British cities by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The raids followed the failure of the German Luftwaffe to defeat Britain’s Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain

The daylight attack against London on September 7, 1940, marked the opening phase of the German bomber offensive against Britain, which came to be called the Blitz after the German word “blitzkrieg,” meaning “lightning war.”

Daylight attacks soon gave way to night raids, which the British found difficult to counter. The British lacked effective antiaircraft artillery and searchlights, as well as night fighters that could find and shoot down an aircraft in darkness.

The scale of the attacks rapidly escalated. In that month alone, the German Air Force dropped 5,300 tons of high explosives on the capital in just 24 nights. In their efforts to ‘soften up’ the British population and to destroy morale before the planned invasion, German planes extended their targets to include the major coastal ports and centers of production and supply.

The infamous raid of November 14, 1940 on Coventry brought a still worse twist to the campaign. 500 German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives and nearly 900 incendiary bombs on the city in ten hours of unrelenting bombardment…

“I stood on the footway of Hungerford bridge across the Thames watching the lights of London go out. The whole great town was lit up like a fairyland, in a dazzle that reached into the sky, and then one by one, as a switch was pulled, each area went dark, the dazzle becoming a patchwork of lights being snuffed out here and there until a last one remained, and it too went out. What was left us was more than just wartime blackout, it was a fearful portent of what war was to be. We had not thought that we would have to fight in darkness, or that light would be our enemy.”

Daily Herald journalist Mea Allan wrote those words in 1939 as she witnessed the introduction of universal blackout.

From Thurso to Truro, from Hastings to Holyhead, Britain was plunged into darkness at sunset on 1 September, two days before war was declared.

Street lights were switched off at the mains, vehicle headlights were masked to show only a crack of light, and stations were lit by candles.

In the months leading up to the declaration of war, women made and hung blackout curtains and blinds, and sealed any gaps round the edges with brown paper.

Did the blackout have any beneficial effects?

Burglary and mugging increased, and looters took advantage of deep blackout and bombed-out houses.

By the end of the first month of war there had been 1,130 road deaths attributed to the blackout, and coroners urged pedestrians to carry a newspaper or a white handkerchief to make them more visible.

A coroner in Birmingham told old people to keep off the streets after dark, suggesting routine visits to the pub in the evening had to be relinquished for the war effort, as so many were killed when they stepped from pub into darkened street.

Thousands struggled to work

Consumer Goods and Public Rail travel, too, was made more difficult by the blackout.

In darkened railway goods yards, porters struggled to read labels on freight travelling by train at night, which led to increasing delays for passengers.

After the blackout was lifted in 1941, doctors had diagnosed a new condition among factory workers on the home front: blackout anemia.

Just as seasonal affective disorder is recognized today as being linked to a lack of natural light in winter, so depression was a recognized consequence of the blackout during the second world war.

Ultimately, 43,000 British civilians were killed and another 139,000 were wounded during the Blitz.

The blackouts in defense of the German blitzkrieg had little to no effect what-so-ever minimizing or preventing the overall destruction of the bombing raids.

Why do I believe events in history, such as these are important?

The Church culture today seems to have taken a “blackout” approach to sharing the gospel. Taking extra care and precautions not to shine to bright and reveal our location to the enemy. We’ve allowed our preaching and our reading of the scripture to be watered down; catering to the beginner believer, instead of challenging new believers to increase their knowledge and understanding of the Bible.

In our seemingly noble and intelligent effort to defend against the onslaught of raids by Satan, we’ve darkened our hearts and our minds to the thought of Satan, attempting to survive by hiding our light and not shining to bright for the world to see. Holding onto the false hope that if we don’t share our faith too strongly, Satan will just fly over us and maybe even ignore us all together.

We’ve adopted a new way of living for Christ that seems, so dim compared to our ancient ancestral Christian men of the Bible

We’re only hoping to survive another raid and live another day in fear and ignorance until Jesus comes again.

The light shining today often feels like the false light in our world with false teachers and celebrities spewing false gospels of “discovering your individual inner light because all roads eventually lead to a heaven or better place.”

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it,” Matthew 7:13 (CSB)

Lucifer, translated to “morning star, the light-bearer or light-bringer.”

Satan “fashions himself into an angel of light,” Corinthians 11:14

We’re losing the light that comes from the Holy Spirit

The Holy Fire light, the “divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them,” Acts 2:3.

In our inability to recognize the power of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives and in our churches, we have quenched its light.

Little did we comprehend, in our effort to survive in an ever-changing and increasingly evil world, that when we quenched the Holy Spirit’s light in us and in our Churches, we gave territory to the enemy.