Chinook Dream – Part 7

Lastly, in my research on the chinook, I read the information on Wikipedia and discovered these helicopters were originally designed in America in the late 1950s and were adopted by the US Army to replace the Sikorsky CH-37 Mojave single rotor heavy lift helicopter in the early 1960s before being exported to other nations including the UK in 1980, where the RAF holds the largest chinook fleet outside the US.

The Chinooks used by the RAF are UK variants and have undergone various iterations over the years. The first order by the RAF for a fleet of 15 helicopters was placed in March 1967 but was cancelled later that year. The same order was resurrected and buried again in 1971. Finally in 1978 an order for 33 HC1s was successful and became the RAFs first frontline Chinook squadron, No. 18, on August 4, 1981. The current operational fleet comprises 60 Chinooks made up of a mix of 3 variants (4 according to the RAF website) all powered by two Honeywell T55-L-714A turboshaft engines. The manufacturer of these engines, Honeywell, I found interesting in light of James Aladiran’s message I posted in yesterday’s blogpost, Sweet Thing In A Dead Thing. Obviously our honey well is the Word of God, our source of life, and there is no life outside His word, whereas Samson got his honey from the dead carcass of a lion in spite of his lifelong Nazarite consecration requiring him not to go near dead things.

I have had many thoughts over the past few months on honey, in particular in relation to the life of John the Baptist, and will no doubt write more on the subject in future, but for now here’s a couple of things I want to draw out from Samson’s story versus our own.

Samson’s Honey

• Disobedience to the Word of God
• From the carcass of a dead lion
• Used as a riddle to trick his enemies
• The fruit of his own foolishness and carnality
• The fruit of death
• The fruit of the flesh

Our Honey

• Obedience to the Word of God
• From the mouth of the resurrected and ascended Lion of the tribe of Judah
• So simple a child can understand
• Foolish to the carnal
• The fruit of the tree of life
• The fruit of the Spirit

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”‬‬

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭1‬:‭18‬-‭21‬ ‭ESV

The Gospel, the message of the Cross, the Word of God hasn’t lost its power but it has been emptied of its power, just as Jesus told the Pharisees, by our man made traditions, our man made religion and our eloquent man made wisdom (1 Cor 1:17). Rather than carrying on regardless, there must be a recognition and corresponding repentance for our wicked ways before there can ever be a healing of our land.

Back to the dream, the evening before this dream Nairn had discovered his uncle Sandy, a chaplain in the RAF in Darlington, and his aunty Brenda were pictured on the Assemblies of God GB Facebook page alongside other military chaplains being honoured on stage at the national conference in Manchester last May. He also sent me the sermon his uncle had preached in early December at their AoG church, Cornerstone Christian Church Evenwood. I sent the links to a friend from our old church as her husband had been in the RAF and I thought they might find it interesting.

And connecting to the word I had on New Year’s Day about the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, although Prince Philip never served in the RAF, the Duke of Edinburgh held the honorary title of Marshal of the Royal Air Force from 1953 until his death in April 2021. His son, the newly ascended King Charles III, has also held the honorary title since 2012 as recognition for his support of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, as Commander-in-Chief. When Prince Philip died, the then Prince Charles inherited all his titles including the Duke of Edinburgh title. Both Prince William and Prince Harry hold, or have held, RAF titles and in 2008 they arrived to their cousins pre-wedding celebrations in a Chinook piloted by Prince William.

As a little aside, April 9th is National Unicorn Day. A seemingly random fact except for the fact the mythological unicorn is the national animal of Scotland (see here and here) and has featured on the Royal Coat of Arms since the mid-1500s, the history of which is fascinating. Since the Acts of Union in 1707, the Royal Coat of Arms of Scotland featuring two unicorns was officially and legally exchanged for the Scottish version of the Royal Coat of Arms of Great Britain featuring a unicorn and a lion, which originates from the Union of the Crowns in 1603, and subsequently replaced by the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom. The unicorn has been shrouded in mystery and symbolism for millennia and has in recent years exploded in popularity. A recreation of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries was commissioned by Historic Scotland in 2002 and the seven completed pieces now hang in the Queen’s Inner Hall in the Royal Palace at Stirling Castle. The originals are in The Cloisters, a museum in New York owned by the Rockefeller family. I need to do some further research into this but for now I will simply link to a few posts of interest for future reading (see here, here, here, here and here). There appears to be a great deal of connection between the tapestries and freemasonry.

Interestingly, this year Easter falls on April 9th, exactly 2 years after Prince Philip’s death, who was himself a Freemason as are several members of the Royal Family. As for the Queen, her father King George VI was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland for a brief period prior to his coronation. He formally withdrew from Freemasonry when he became king but personally installed three Grand Masters of the United Grand Lodge of England, the first of which was his younger brother George, Duke of Kent, who died in a RAF plane crash 3 years later on Eagle’s Rock, a hillside near Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland. The Queen‘s death on Scottish soil last year triggered Operation Unicorn which meant sites in Edinburgh became the focal point for public condolences. Also in Edinburgh, hanging in the stairwell of the Freemasons’ Hall of the Grand Lodge of Scotland is a portrait of King George VI in his Masonic regalia.

Back to my research on the chinook, another little piece of interest I found was that a man by the name of Alan Ross took over as Squadron Leader of 84 Squadron, the last remaining search and rescue unit in the RAF. Squadron Leader Ross took over as Commanding Officer from Squadron Leader Richard Simpson who had held the role for 2.5 years. Squadron Leader Simpson spent 18 years with the RAF, most of which was spent flying the Chinook. In 2019, 84 Squadron led by Alan Ross tackled wildfires in the Limassol district of Cyprus.

Chinook helicopters are named after the Native American people of Oregon and Washington state, according to Wikipedia. Interestingly in Early November I dreamt of being on a journey north with my mum which involved a bus and/or train. The bus was being driven to Aberdeen by Rishi Sunak and once we arrived, he said he needed to catch a plane to London to visit someone living in a teepee. That person turned out to be his wife.

Not long after this dream I read a book by John Benefiel called Binding The Strongman Over America And The Nations. I was led me to this book through the things God had been speaking to me about Ahab and Jezebel and He had led me to the root, Baal… which had led me to this book. The book turned out to address, as well as Baal, the sins of the fathers, in particular, native Indians and First Nation people. It describes how, through divorcing Baal and repentance and confession of our sins against the people of the land, God has brought healing to the land. I know there are Christians who disagree strongly with this sort of teaching but one thing I am convinced of is that God wants to redeem and restore our land and has laid out the principle for this in His word.

“Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.”‬

2 Chronicles‬ ‭7‬:‭12‬-‭16‬ ‭ESV