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Sleeper cells and Australian election victory

By Spencer Gear - posted Tuesday, 21 May 2019


The Prime Minister gave credit to 'quiet Australians' for his shock election victory on 18 May 2019. Pollsters predicted a Labor win. They got it wrong – very wrong.

Who could the 'quiet Australians' be? I'm not thinking of the ones mentioned by Morrison: Those with hopes of getting jobs, apprenticeships, and starting businesses. There are those with personal aspirations to form a family, buy a house, labour to provide for kids, and to save for retirement.

They sure were ones who spoke at the ballot box, after viewing the policies of the two major parties.

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The forgotten quiet ones

Remember Morrison's statements about dealing with the drought? He was in Albury, the birth place of the Liberal Party in September 2018, addressing the Liberal Party: 'I do pray for that rain. And I'd encourage others who believe in the power of prayer to pray for that rain and to pray for our farmers. Please do that'. Were these among the quiet ones?

Was it a 'miracle'?

Morrison said he 'always believed in miracles' as he gave his victory speech at Liberal HQ on the evening of 18 May 2019. He added: 'I would like to wish [Bill Shorten] and Chloe, and his family all the best, and God's blessing', concluding with, 'We are an amazing country of amazing people. God bless Australia'.

Was it a 'miracle' win, as ScoMo labelled it?

Yes it was in this sense: 'A remarkable event or development that brings very welcome consequences' for the Coalition government (Oxford English Dictionary). However, I don't see it as 'an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency' (OED) like Jesus' resurrection.

The God factor was included in ScoMo's blessing on the Shorten couple and exhorting God to bless Australia? Do we deserve blessing or his chastisement?

The sleeper cells I'm thinking of were not highlighted in the mass media coverage. They weren't mentioned in what I heard and read after the voting.

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God's people, some of them elderly, distributed leaflets house-to-house about Labor's extreme abortion agenda in public hospitals. I know of a couple in their 70s who did this and thought it might be a waste of time. It wasn't.

The call to prayer

One not-so-quiet Australian was tennis great and pastor of Victory Life Centre, Perth, Margaret Court. In addition to praying through the election campaign period, Margaret and other Christian leaders called Australians to:

...gather in praise and worship on the evening of Friday 17 May, on the eve of our election day. Encourage the people in your networks to get together and hold a combined church praise and worship night to declare that God is on the throne in our nation. 'Your Kingdom Come! Your will be done by us in Australia, as in heaven'.

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About the Author

Spencer Gear PhD (University of Pretoria, South Africa) is a retired counselling manager, independent researcher, retired minister of the The Christian & Missionary Alliance of Australia, and freelance writer living in Brisbane Qld, Australia.

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