History, Goodbye!?

At the Rochdale Hope Chapel Heritage Centre, we are convinced that understanding our own history has a vital role to play in our lives. Particularly the incredibly rich Christian history of our land. In all sorts of ways, this history is being airbrushed out, undermined and twisted in our present day. For example, already generations of our school children have been insidiously robbed of the knowledge of their own nation’s history through the fact that almost exclusively, 20^th Century history has been taught in our schools during the past 40 years. Most British children, young people and even adults of 50 years old are almost completely ignorant of the testimony of how God has worked great wonders of His grace through the past 600 years of British history, in the Reformation, the Puritan era, the Great Awakening and in the 19^th Century.

Another insidious influence is the theory of evolution. We do not realize the impact that this theory has had on the modern man’s understanding of the whole of his existence. It has become common to believe the lie that living things evolved from simplicity to complexity, that the world has progressed from a primitive to a civilized state, that today is always better than yesterday, and that our eyes only need to look forward. The past represents degradation and backwardness. There can be no more deceitful theory that feeds modern pride and conceit. The philosophy of historicism makes people think that the modern age and the future age are better, the past is not worth mentioning, and emphasizes the present and not the past is the mainstream characteristic of today’s world. This tide is very difficult to turn.

However, imagine going to the supermarket in the afternoon and seeing some vegetables at the right price. You joyfully buy them and take them home, thinking they are a good price, but you don’t know that the morning sale is over, the vegetables were fresher and cheaper, and you have just bought the leftovers. Or maybe you catch some fish in a small river, big and fresh, but you do not know that several lorries dumped large amounts of toxic factory waste into the river the previous day.

Similarly, the fact is, when people think that the present is the most progressive, it is more due to ignorance of the past, or one-sided understanding, and a skeptical attitude towards historical data. Man has been reduced to looking at everything from a purely material dimension, thinking that what is eaten, drunk, used and enjoyed is better, and believing that this is progress. Of course, this is not surprising in a world that embraces the theories of evolution, materialism, etc. Because to such persons, the world is nothing but natural and material. For modern man, who considers this world is a purely material one, it is extremely difficult to raise him to a higher pursuit and value. If there is any rational wisdom left in man, even if he falls into the grip of the purely material world, at least he will humble himself before the vastness of history and will admit that what he knows is but a drop in the Pacific Ocean, a moment in a thousand years. Those who study history cannot trace everything back to its source, let alone those who close their eyes. How partial and superficial is our knowledge of all that exists. However, divine revelation in the Bible can make up for human limitations, otherwise we would be completely ignorant of the true meaning of history. Yet sadly, there are fewer people who are humble in the face of God’s revelation than in the face of history! So, blindfolded, people happily eat contaminated fish, happily buy outdated goods, do not care about the past, and do not care about the future life.

Ignorance of history leads to great blindness and fatal conceit. This combination is incurable, and yet this is the situation of our present age. To lose history is like a man who loses his memory. All the skills he has worked hard to hone and develop, all the precious relationships he has formed, are all forgotten. The man swaggers along the street, thinking he is the most knowledgeable and able man who has ever lived, on his way to a better future. However, he who has lost his memory doesn’t even know who his father is. Just as people today know little about the history of their ancestors.

We believe that history is linear, not cyclic. This means it has a beginning and an end. However, it is not a straight upward line, but a line written by the hand of God, from Creation, the Fall, redemption through Christ, and the Judgment Day. History does not last forever, but has an end. If man’s wisdom and reason were not so imperfect, he would know that divine revelation is more convincing than all the fragments of history that man can gather together, which add up to less than one millionth of the whole of world history.

Christianity is the religion of memory. God has repeatedly charged His people to remember: “Forget not all His benefits” (Ps. 103:2); “That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Ps. 78:7), “Remember His marvellous works that He hath done; His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth” (Ps. 105:5). Forgetting is a sin, or at least the source of many other sins. To forget grace shown is the most inexcusable ingratitude, forgetting is the smoothest path to lead people astray. For Christians, history is God’s dealings toward mankind. History is a warning, a doctrine, it reveals God’s nature and His purpose, and leads us to the knowledge of God and to obedience. This causes us to have a grounded hope for the future, rather than a blind optimism. This hope is based on God’s abundant faithfulness in history, which will continue until the end of history, which is the end of the world.

Hope, as the name of this church expresses, and in the words of John Warburton: was begun in hope, continued in hope, and is a hope that maketh not ashamed. More than two hundred years of history still tells the story of hope in this church of Hope. Today, the story continues, and I sincerely invite you to listen to the story with us, and to write the story together.