Light and Darkness

A short distance away from the Tyndale New Testament in the exhibition hall of the British Library was a display of documents related to the Beatles. I was struck by the stark contrast between the legacies of light and darkness that these two exhibits represented, and yet here they were, almost side by side, as if the British Library were trying to somehow equate the contribution of each to this nation. The sad reality is that most people today probably don’t even know who William Tyndale was, or what he did. And they would most likely choose the Beatles over Tyndale anyway if they were told.

“[T]his is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:19-21 ESV).

After Darkness, Light

William Tyndale left a legacy of light and truth that has for centuries brought incalculable blessing upon this nation, both in terms of common and special grace. Here was a man who’s heart, like Luther’s, was “captive to the Word of God”. Tyndale was a man saved from sin and darkness by grace alone. He had to be, because none of us by nature would ever come to the light. God is the One who by sovereign grace saves His people from their sins: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14 ESV).

Tyndale knew that the power of God unto salvation is made manifest through the Word of God: “[T]he gospel… is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16 ESV). Therefore, seeing the nation languishing in darkness – the Scriptures shrouded in Latin from an ignorant people, the visible church nothing but man’s traditions and superstitions – Tyndale’s mission was to give the people the Word of God in their own language, translated from the original Greek and Hebrew. His mission was to see the Word of God unleashed, and by the power of the Spirit shine forth across the nation for the salvation of sinners, and the building up of saints. One famous incident is recorded:

“Master Tyndale happened to be in the company of a learned man, and in communing and disputing with him drove him to that issue that the learned man said, we were better without God’s law than the pope’s: Master Tyndale, hearing that, answered him, “I defy the pope and all his laws,” and said, “If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.””¹

By God’s grace, Tyndale accomplished his life’s mission, and transformed Britain into a beacon of truth and light to all the world. Countless men and women have since 1526 been brought to saving faith in Christ through the preaching and reading of God’s Word in English. Even unbelievers have benefited greatly from the abundant blessings of common grace that the English Bible has brought to this nation over the past 500 years. With the exception of the covenant nation of Israel itself, no other nation in history has received such great light as Britain has.

But Now...

This truth only makes the present state of this nation all the more tragic, and all the more frightening. Our Lord told the Apostles, as He sent them out to preach, that if any town refused to listen to the words they proclaimed, that “it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Matthew 10:15 ESV). So what must we conclude about our nation, which has known so much light for so many long years?

God has been incredibly longsuffering with us. We have been warned. Writing in the early 1870s, at the height of the British Empire’s power, the future Bishop of Liverpool, J. C. Ryle, wrote the following words:

“In what manner God would punish England, if English Governments cast off all connection with religion, I cannot tell. Whether He would punish us by some sudden blow, such as defeat in war, or the occupation of our territory by a foreign power; whether He would waste us away gradually and slowly by placing a worm at the roots of our commercial prosperity; whether He would break us to pieces by letting fools rule over us and allowing Parliaments to obey them, and permitting us like the Midianites to destroy one another; whether He would ruin us by sending a dearth of wise Statesmen in the upper ranks, and giving the reins of power to communists, socialists, and mob-leaders. All these are points which I have no prophetical eye to see, and I do not pretend to determine… But of one thing I am very sure: The State that begins by sowing the seed of national neglect of God, will sooner or later reap a harvest of national disaster and national ruin.”²

Looking back over the 150 years since Ryle wrote these words, the accuracy of his prediction is startling.

In spite of all the light and blessings this nation had received and enjoyed, they did not glorify God. Instead, they became more and more secular, embracing the false doctrines of men like Darwin, and worshipping man and his “progress” as gods. Refusing to give thanks for all God had given them, they became proud and arrogant in their exalted position on the world stage, saying “we have done this”. Worst of all, most of the visible church – called to be salt and light to the nation – abandoned the truth, and embraced a liberal theology which is nothing but the very same darkness and idolatry of the age cloaked in “religious” language.

Even after two terrible temporal judgments – the First and Second World Wars – still they refused to repent, but continued to grow worse in idolatry and sin and rebellion. In time, all that Ryle warned about has come to pass, and more besides, because all he was doing was applying the teaching of Scripture to the nation. As it is written:

“[T]he wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonoured among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 1:18-25).

God gave them over in judgment to their sins. None of us by nature would ever come to the light, because by nature we love the darkness. We are dependent upon divine grace, if ever we are to be saved from sin and brought into light and life. What a horrifying thing it is, then, when God’s longsuffering with an individual – or a nation – comes to an end. “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever” (Genesis 6:3). After a slow and steady decline over the decades before, suddenly in the 1960s came a sudden and cataclysmic collapse into darkness, as all restraint was removed.

While Tyndale’s was a legacy of giving light to the nation, the legacy of the Beatles is one of wilful rebellion against that light, and a fanatical headlong rush into darkness. The legacy of the Beatles is a monument to the judicial abandonment of the nation, for they were in many ways at the forefront of the cataclysmic cultural change that took place at that time. As one biography notes: “The Beatles… accomplished nothing less than changing the course of rock and roll and transforming youth culture”.³ They were from Liverpool too, born just a few decades after Ryle had left this world.

John Lennon, the chief architect and leader of the Beatles, said this of his school days:

“I was the one that all the other boys’ parents… would say, “Keep away from him”. Because they knew what I was. The parents instinctively recognized I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friend’s home there was… I would infiltrate the other boys’ minds. I could say, “Parents are not gods because I don’t live with mine and, therefore, I know”… Most people never got out of it. Some people cannot see that their parents are still torturing them, even when they are in their forties and fifties – they still have that stranglehold over them and their thoughts and their minds.”⁴

The devil well understands the power of music as a means of teaching and influencing people. And music was Lennon’s tool to keep on “disrupting” the homes and “infiltrating” the minds of young people. Remember the commandment: “Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12 ESV). Lennon, in open rebellion against this commandment, preached a “gospel” of lawlessness designed to overthrow God-ordained parental authority, and give young people over to their own desires without restraint. In so doing, Lennon willingly served the devil’s purposes, and became an agent of destruction not just of individuals, but of the nation as a whole.

The religious fanaticism of the young worshippers of the Beatles in the 1960s, so-called “Beatlemania”, shows that what was happening wasn’t “just entertainment”. This was the spiritual and moral collapse of a nation into utter darkness. And as the Empire collapsed around the world, the Beatles were in 1965 made members of the Order of the British Empire. This award, celebrating their influence upon the nation, was given on the initiative of Prime Minister Harold Wilson himself. The Beatles told a generation of young people exactly what they wanted to hear, and found an eager audience ready to worship them as gods. God in wrath removed all restraint, and even to the upper levels of government, He gave them over.

By nature, and apart from sovereign grace, we all hate the True and Living God. We exchange the truth of God for a lie, and imagine in His place our own little gods, made in our own image.  We set up these little gods in our hearts, and we bow down and worship them. Lennon tells us: “I don’t believe in [the] Bible…[, or] Jesus… I just believe in me: Yoko and me, and that’s reality.”⁵  In 1971, after the Beatles had fallen apart due to internal conflict between the members, Lennon taught his followers these words: “Imagine there’s no heaven; It’s easy if you try; No hell below us; Above us only sky… Imagine there’s… no religion, too.”⁶

Be who you want to be, and do what you want to do:  Don’t let your parents, or God’s Word, get in the way of your imagination:  That’s the way to build paradise on earth.  Such is the “gospel” of darkness Lennon has left as his legacy.  And such is the willful ignorance and blindness of so many that they think that in following Lennon’s “gospel”, they have found life and light and freedom.  The tragic reality is the opposite, as is plain to see from Lennon’s own life, and from just looking around us today:  Nothing but the destruction of individuals, families, and society; nothing but death, darkness, and terrible bondage.

To attempt to live in a fantasy world of our own imaginations, posing as little gods over our own lives, thinking that we can change the very fabric of reality based on what we “imagine”, calling good evil and evil good, is a wicked and insane delusion that will crush us under its weight, and drive us to despair in the end.  We cannot escape the knowledge of God that is within each and every one of us; this inescapable knowledge condemns us in our sin and idolatry.  No man, nor all men together, can “imagine” God away, because God IS.  He is our Creator, and the One who sustains all the universe by His power.  He is the very source of all light, and all life.  Apart from Him, there is only darkness and death and misery.

The Darkness Shall Not Overcome the Light

Is there any hope for this nation? Yes, there is. And it is found in the real treasures of the British Library. It is found in the Word of life and light, which God has preserved by His grace in manuscripts like Codex Sinaiticus, and which God has given us in our own language, through men like William Tyndale:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5 ESV).

To any reading this who are still walking in darkness, chasing after the vain imaginings and idols of false teachers like John Lennon, the call is for you to turn from darkness to light. There is a very real place called hell, and that is where each and every one of us, left to ourselves, will end up, justly condemned for our sin against God, who is perfectly righteous and holy. But God has provided a way of salvation to all who will repent and believe. The Lord Jesus Christ – fully God, and fully man – has lived the perfect life we could never live. He has died the death we deserve in our place. He has done this that in Him we might be forgiven, justified, and reconciled to God. Repent of your sin, and believe and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation. There is no need to “imagine” anything, because this is real: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

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1 Quoted in, Nick Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: Volume 3 - Renaissance and Reformation (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2016), p.376-377.

2 J. C. Ryle, What Good Will It Do? A Question About the Disestablishment of the Church of England, Examined and Answered (London: William Hunt and Company, 1872), pp.26-27.

3 James E. Miller, “The Beatles”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2026). Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Beatles, accessed 3^rd June 2026.

4 John Lennon, quoted in David Sheff, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (New York: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2000), pp.160-161.

5 John Lennon, “God” (1970).

6 John Lennon, “Imagine” (1971).

Image: Andrew Barden, "Late Afternoon Sky in Lincolnshire" (December 2015).