Jan | 18 | The Dance of Death

Dream Word – CHANGE

Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. NKJV

The Dance of Death

The local soccer team in the city in which I presently reside, bears a name similar to many soccer teams in the United Kingdom. It is called Brighton & Hove Albion.

‘Albion’ of course, has become the ancient name for these islands of mine, this other Eden, this demi paradise, this little world, this nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, feared by their breed and famous by their birth, this precious stone set in a silver sea. (Well on Sunny days anyways!) Yes, Albion refers in particular, more to the spirit of the ancient people of these islands, that happy breed of men.

It was Leanardo DaVinci, who around 1492 drew what is now the growing medical icon of ‘Vitruvian Man.’ Da Vanici, drawing heavily on a treatise on the geometrical proportions of man, written by the Roman architect Vitrivius, drew this nude male figure in two superimposed positions. Both with their arms and legs apart and each one simultaneously surrounded by both a circle and square. Believing the workings of the body to picture the workings of the universe, Da Vinci acknowledges the symmetry of this and also the spirituality of it, by placing the centre of the man’s hips in the centre of the square (material) and the man’s naval in the centre of the circle, (spiritual.)

It was this Da Vinci drawing that some 400 years later, William Blake took, and in both picture and in prose, released ‘Viturian Man’ from both the confines of circle and square, of the material and the spiritual. Depicting a dancing and naked man, Blake penned the following inscription above released Viturian, “Albion rose from where he labour'd at the Mill with Slaves: Giving himself for the Nations he danc'd the dance of Eternal Death.”

Blake, commenting on the social revolutions at the time and in particular on the American revolution, associated himself most fully with that freed and democratic spirit and pictured his people, the people he associated with, as offering themselves as living sacrifices for the sake of the nations and America in particular.

This post-Christian land of lost Albion, has in the past offered up hundreds of thousands of living sacrifices for the nations. My fellow countrymen, this muddied, yet green and verdant land of ours, has not only been the birth and womb of parliamentary democracy to the world but in its past, has birthed such members of the Holy Nation and Royal Priesthood, that hundreds and thousands of them, danced with gladness the dance of death, giving themselves as a living sacrifices, that the nations might know Jesus Christ as Lord.

The glad days of Albion are now long gone and a gross spirit of indifference, fear and sordid selfishness has stained the chalky cliffs of white, upon which we daily build our lives. Unless a new and dancing generation arises in these islands and raises it up above its broken parapets, the waters of the world shall rise and flood in upon us and drowned us in their sea and then like Atlantis of old, Albion and it’s glorious dancing spirit shall be lost forever more beneath the angry waves. Selah.

Listen: - "Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.” Psalms 2:6-8 NKJV


Pray:- Along with the other ‘blessed of the Lord,’ we put our trust in You, yes, we rejoice with fear and trembling and we kiss the Son, lest He be angry with us all the time and we perish beneath these angry, pounding waves. Lord, let your anger diminish. Lord, let it become little toward us. Lord, have mercy upon these islands and its people. Lord, revive Your remnant and set our feet to dancing. Give birth O Lord, give birth to a new and dancing generation and then, within these stained and fallen walls of ours, give us a happy land once more. Yes Lord, as an inheritance, as an eternal reward for us and as an eternal emblem of Your love, give us all the nations that now lodge in Albion, long since gone. In Jesus name we ask it, amen!