Dear Friends,

May we continue to pray for the perception, both by ourselves and by many, of the manifestation of the Providence of God over the Cayman Islands at this time, apparently about to enter the darkest days of their history when political authoritties and even banks, lighting their headquarters up in the incomplete faux-spectrum of their 6 colours display their sorry ignorance of the wisdom and power of the Lord who has "founded upon the seas”, as we are pleased to put it, a people that is now in a time of grave danger. The danger is inflicted mainly from outside the community, but not to be discounted is the willingness of many among us to remain silent, compliant with external forces, and with only the faintest sense of the real peril that we and especially the generations that follow us now face. 

I have at times spoken of the approaching Third World War. What we are facing is indeed a war that the whole world is going to face, and it is not so much a war of guns and other weaponry as a war of our minds. The enemy of our souls is nudging us all the time, with the media as the great tool, to pick up only the fragmentary ideas of the powerful in this world, and to avoid the disciplines of a sustained clarity of thinking that can reveal the incomparable truths only supplied by our Lord and God, through Jesus the Messiah.

Since I believe we are approaching a "Third World War" I consider it to be helpful to consider again the circumstances of the beginning of the Second World War, or at any rate the scenario that is most well known. This is when Mr. Neville Chamberlain as the U.K. Prime Minister, along with French, Italian and of course German authorities signed at Munich the agreement that conceded the Czechoslovakian area of Sudetenland to Germany. This became later characterised as Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. While it was widely seen at the time and celebrated as the way to avoid a major war on the continent, historians rightly see it as having the exactly opposite effect in the context of an expansionist totalitarian state (of which actually there were more than one in Europe at the time).

At best, what we might see in the recent images and policies of the Governor and the Premier and others is a policy of appeasement in the context of a totalitarian worldview - the worldview of Colours Cayman and its allies - that is absolutely as expansionist as was Hitler’s Germany in 1938. In order to lay the groundwork for the Cayman Islands to continue on the right side of the current War, the Governor has to be called out in his failure to adhere to the terms of his engagement with the Cayman Islands. It should be remembered that the Constitution governs the Governor in his representation of government, and he is not a free agent empowered to act outside the terms of the Constitution, which enshrines Christian values as a guiding principle. Of course the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, having been the UK’s Cayman Constitution negotiating partner with Caymanian partners, should be fully aware of this and I am pretty sure that the Chairman of the negotiations Mr. Ian Hendry would be prepared to agree if in his retirement he were to be asked closely about it.

Whether the FCDO would “want to know” is, of course, another issue. But in either scenario the Governor and whatever family he has here might well be encouraged to begin packing their bags. 

A priest friend of mine has written today:

"Dear Bishop Nicholas

The powers of darkness are steadily encroaching upon the West. The EU project after the war committed Europe to a godless form of government, rejecting Europe’s Christian heritage, beliefs and values and substituting a particular philosophy of human rights for the godly tradition, Catholic and Protestant, which has shaped the continent since St Peter became Bishop of Rome.

At the same time what has been termed cultural Marxism has captured almost the whole of the American university campus, influencing politicians, the Supreme Court of the United States and the great bulk of the media, rejecting in revolutionary terms all of the foundations, concepts and building blocks of society and family which have formed and sustained us as Anglicans and as Christian societies in the West.

The Coronavirus pandemic has been a foretaste of precisely the third world war of which you write, sweeping away our security, our freedoms, and occupying our attention for 18 months already. 

A totalitarian mind is gathering its forces to impose upon us permanently a world order in which we are all prisoners of a political ideology which entirely disregards our faith, our values our identity, and seeks to dissolve all of the ties which bind us together in Christ and in our nations. 

We must recognise that a great spiritual and political war is under way, and pray hard, and do all we can to oppose it, and to continue our way of life in faith and in societies which are founded upon Christ. 

Every blessing …"

The Collect for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity is

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful; that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is certainly a prayer for anybody who is afflicted by a spirit of worry, as I suppose the words of this letter may have induced in some. Let us turn from worry to the reliance upon the Lord and his free gift to those who ask Him for “the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful”. There will be natural reactions to such situations as we are entering that are not “rightful”. Indeed, as the prayer affirms, we “cannot do any thing that is good” without the guidance of the Lord. And that does not at all mean that we cannot in any circumstances do anything rightful. But for this we do petition that we “may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will”. We are praying that we may be taken out of the “boxes” of our own will and into the abundant life of His will - “through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Amen. 

For directions about the services this Sunday the 1st August and the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, please see the website www.TruthWithLanguage.com  . 

In reliance upon the mighty power of the Triune God to keep us faithful to and in all truth, I am in your service 

Bishop Nicholas