[COLLEEN TINKER]
Richard and I slowly opened bleary eyes about 3:20 AM on Monday to watch the livestream of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral service at Westminster Abbey. No one does pomp and circumstance like the British, and the funeral cortege, the pageantry, the vestments and uniforms, the soaring cathedral architecture, and the English choral music echoed centuries of Western tradition.
Heads of state from the whole world were invited to attend, men and women from every spiritual and political worldview. Because Elizabeth II had reigned in Britain for over 70 years, she had met or interacted with essentially every person and nation represented. Her death was personal in some way for everyone there.
Nevertheless, the death of a stable monarch always precipitates uncertainties and power shifts, and the attendees’ underlying agendas were probably not primarily driven by Christianity. Yet even at that moment, the Lord of kings was sovereign.
The Anglican service which was said to have been carefully planned by the Queen before her death proclaimed the gospel. The live audience of about 2,000 and a viewing audience which may have been the largest in history heard Scripture read and and sung, including passages explaining Jesus’ death and resurrection and His command to believe in Him because He is the only way to the Father.
Among the texts read in full were these two:
Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:20–26, 53–58).
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” Thomas saith unto him, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” Jesus saith unto him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” Philip saith unto him, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Jesus saith unto him, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:1–9a).
Whether or not Queen Elizabeth was a true Christian I cannot say. Opinions about this subject abound, but ultimately the Lord knows. Regardless, as I blinked my sleep-grainy eyes and listened to the music reverberate in the vaulted ceilings and heard the dignitaries read the living word of God, I thought about King Nebuchadnezzar. Millennia ago he called all the leaders of the world together to worship the golden colossus he had built on the Plain of Dura in honor of himself.
When three of his best and brightest, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused to bow and worship, his rage abounded, and he had the three tied and thrown into a furnace heated to its maximum potential. What happened next revealed the true God.
The three men, unbound, were walking visibly inside the flames, and they were accompanied by a fourth man whom, the astounded Nebuchadnezzar said, looked like “a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:25). Immediately the king called the three men out, and all the assembled leaders and rulers who represented “all the nations and men of every language” (Dan. 3:7) crowded around and saw for themselves that not a hair nor a corner of a garment on any of the three was even singed. There was no smell of smoke clinging to them, and had the the assembled satraps and governors not been eyewitnesses, they would never have imagined that those men had just been inside a blazing furnace!
Then Nebuchadnezzar made a decree that applied to every people, nation, and tongue (he had conquered the then-known world and reigned with exclusive power): if anyone said anything “against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” he would be “torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap, inasmuch as there is no there god who is able to deliver in this way” (Dan. 3:29).
Clearly Nebuchadnezzar’s tendency to rage had not yet been subdued—his full submission would occur later when God would humble him for seven years to live as a beast of the field until he acknowledged that “heaven rules”—but in spite of Nebuchadnezzar’s slowness to believe, God revealed himself to every nation, tongue, and people through the self-serving event of the king’s golden image.
I watched the royals and the clergy standing, sitting, praying, and singing—realizing that, no matter how hard individual hearts might be, God’s word is alive and does not return to Him empty. It always does what He sends it out to do (Is. 55:11).
As these thoughts were running through my mind, Richard, in the glow of the iPad, said words to this effect, “This is like Nebuchadnezzar. The whole world heard the truth about God through the staging of the king’s self-worship.”
Yes.
Sovereignty In Uncertainty
I can’t shake the sense that in some way the death of Queen Elizabeth marks, even in a subtle way, a new era in the world—a world which has been both numbed and awakened by the unprecedented events proceeding from the first announcement of a pandemic in March, 2020. Countless people—perhaps especially in the western world which has been the most shaped by the culture and traditions displayed in England this week—have had their predictable lives shaken. Furthermore, the shaking has not stopped.
Then—at the time the Lord of kings chose—the world’s most stable monarch died, and God used the moment to bring His word into the ears of approximately half of the world’s population at the same time. God used the queen’s unprecedented funeral with an audience of world rulers and watchers of every language and nation to declare that Jesus alone gives us victory over death. No one comes to the Father except by Jesus, and Jesus is God.
God was in charge of the timing of Elizabeth II’s death, and He delivered His words of life to the world.
As news of earthquakes, wars, famines, displacement, death, and power struggles welter around us, there is a certainty which God has been delivering to a fractured world as long as time has existed: Heaven Rules.
We are not at the mercy of evil forces. Our God reigns, and even “the king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever he wishes” (Prov. 21:1). As Nebuchadnezzar finally acknowledged,
How great are His signs and how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and His dominion is from generation to generation” (Dan. 4:2).
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