Welcome to our liberators!

All photos courtesy of Unsplash

"Welcome to our liberators!” The signs with that message were everywhere on that day in 1994 as my wife, my daughter, my father-in-law and I drove into Arramanche in France’s beautiful Normandy region on the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasions by the Allies against the Nazis. 

Today is the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the plan for the Allied invasion of France to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, going into action and there are many good lessons to learn from it. Operation Overlord required the tremendous effort of 14 Allied nations of such ingenuity and surprise that the German forces were caught napping and outwitted. It was the largest amphibious force ever mustered in world history, which launched the greatest airborne assault across the English Channel followed by an amphibious landing on five beaches in Normandy, France. The ingenuity, boldness and daring of such a plan is acknowledged the more one studies and learns about it.

We, 80 years on are today facing as great a spiritual foe as the Allies faced in WWII. It needs nothing less than a co-ordinated effort using the masterplan of our Over-Lord to resist its advance. 

The Jews and others languishing in Nazi concentration camps in 1944 did not know that at 6:30 a.m., Normandy time, that their liberators had come. As they suffered through another day of beatings, work, and death, the Allied troops were already advancing on the grim world they inhabited. 

So it is that the the world’s Liberator has come, but many labour on under bondage because the announcement has not made its way to them, or having heard it, they deem it to be too good to be true, and so they live as if the Incarnation – invasion has not come into the landscapes of finite time.

However, we must remember the D-Day Gospel of good news: Christ has come, the invasion of love, joy, and peace through Christ is underway. The manifest victory will come incrementally and at the cost of blood and tears. But what the “Gospel of D-Day” tells us is to proclaim the Lord’s coming and advance the liberating might of the Invasion of Christ and Heaven into every place, and not stop until He comes and His Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy reigns everywhere.

The Allies had to advance mile by mile, village by village, town by town, city by city, nation by nation, taking their victory into each place the evil one had seized or been given occupancy.

So, it is now: we must take victory into every stronghold of darkness. The path from the first appearance of Christ, the cross, the empty tomb, and His invasion of the world stretches back 2,000 years. The battle will continue until the trumpet of victory sounds at His second coming

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Written by PETER FRANCIS