Tide of Judgement

On Boxing Day, my family and I went for the day’s traditional walk. Storm Bella was due to visit from the USA later in the afternoon, so we made the most of her absence. We walked along Morecambe’s promenade; we all agreed that the chill sea breezes blowing thereon were rather ‘bracing’, and a mug of hot chocolate the only remedy. While walking, I noticed several improvements which had been made to protect the town from the sea’s spiteful incursions, an example of which can be seen in the video:

Enhanced, taller flood walls have been erected, between which barriers may be inserted into the gaps, which happens several times each year (top photo). Furthermore, large boulders have been positioned to absorb the waves’ kinetic energy. In additional to the emergency flood defences, the old ‘time and tide’ bell has been re-fitted, so the bay’s deadly-quick tide can be warned of when coming close. It’s located not far off the promenade; anyone out on the sands who hears it ringing must already too late.

The moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse used to picture Britain’s moral decline, in the shape of video nasties and smutty television prgrammes as a ‘tide of filth’. If we once had defences against such a tsunami of ungodliness, they are well and truly battered and submerged, our society now exposed to the ill-restrained forces of human depravity. Back in the 1960s, we began to weaken and remove our moral boundaries and barriers, ignoring the tolling bells of rising wickedness. Yet the tide is a picture of coming judgement in the book of Ezekiel, rather than depravity:

Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up.

-Ezekiel 26:3; also in Nahum 1:8:

But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

God is planning to judge our fallen world, but the time and tide bell clangs and sounds to all who will pay attention. Thank God for Christ our ark, who feely invites sinners aboard that we might survive the coming storm and waves of wrath. In the previous verse, Nahum wonderfully writes:

The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.