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WELLINGTON DEFEATED...

It is a story about how the news of the victory at the battle at Waterloo arrived in England. There were no telegrams or telephones in those days, nobody could send an SMS or put it up on Facebook or Youtube, of course, but everyone knew that Wellington was facing Napoleon in that great battle on the 18th of June 1815, and that the future of England was in great uncertainty.

A sailing ship semaphored (signalled with coded flags) the news to the signalman on top of Winchester Cathedral. He signalled to another man somewhere on a hill, and this way the news of the battle was passed on by semaphore from one place to another all the way to London and across the whole land.

When the ship came in, the signalman on board semaphored the first word: “W e l l i n g t o n”. The next word was “d e f e a t e d”, and then the fog came down and the ship could not be seen. “Wellington defeated” went across England, and there was great gloom all over the countryside.

After two or three hours, the fog lifted, and the signal came again: “Wellington defeated the enemy.” Then all England rejoiced.

There was that day, when they put the body of the Lord in the tomb, that the message appeared to be Christ dead, defeated…. But three days later, the fog lifted.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:54-57

"Death is swallowed up in victory. "Death, where is your sting? Hades (hell), where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

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