Leah Sax:
Hello and welcome to Episode five of Delight Podcast, I’m Leah Sax, and this is Adam Curtis.
Adam Curtis:
Indeed, we are back. Before we delve into today’s insightful episode, we really, really just want to say absolutely massive. Thank you to everyone who’s engaged in season one is being just quite unbelievable, really, just the amount of interaction that has happened in the amount of people who have listened to it and engaged with it. And just all the conversations which is led on to.
Leah Sax:
Yeah, and it’s made a difference with you our listeners sharing individual episodes, rating the show, reading the blog, commenting on socials, thinking through our questions. It’s changed the way that we think about Delight Podcast and has meant that more people listen and are able to find our little Delight Podcast.
Adam Curtis:
And that’s a big part about what we’re passionate about. We really want people to be listening, loving, enjoying, learning from Delight Podcast, but then passing it on, sharing it with other people. People who are new to the faith are new to Christian things who don’t naturally have these sort of resources and actually are in need of them. But back to today, this is a special sort of bonus episode to season one, and it’s going to be a little bit different. Instead of focussing on a Christian habit, we’re going to focus instead on the journey of one man and his story of forgiveness.
Leah Sax:
Our guest today is Harvey Thomas. Between 1960 and 1975, he produced Billy Graham’s rallies around the world before moving back to the United Kingdom as director of press and communications for Margaret Thatcher during the late 70s and 80s. And in 1990, he was awarded a CBE by the Queen for services to the prime minister. Since then, he’s travelled the world teaching on communications PR being a television and radio commentator, running various presidential campaigns. And he’s a trustee for various charities and chairs on various boards.
Adam Curtis:
We will start by asking Harvey about his testimony and hearing about his life before moving on to the year 1984, a year that forever defined him. In 1984, the IRA bombed the Conservative Party conference and Harvey was in the room above the bomb. We will hear of the world headline making event and see how his faith in Jesus gave him the hope of forgiveness.
Leah Sax:
So today, our guest is Harvey Thomas, thank you so much for being here today. The interview is a little bit more personal for me, especially than normal. Would you mind telling our listeners how you and I know each other?
Harvey Thomas:
Well, I’ve actually known Leah since about eight months before she was born because my wife and I were in were in Hawaii looking at the humpback whales during the season of Maui, the island of Maui, and the sea was glassy, smooth. And Marlies, my wife, was sick as anything. And we couldn’t understand why until we find out that actually it was Leah inside her and she was pregnant.
Leah Sax:
Yes, you’re my daddy. Thank you for being here, in the living room next door. I guess our first question is, how did you come to faith? How did you get to know Jesus?
Harvey Thomas:
When I was a boy, I was at what was then called a crusader’s camp. They’ve now changed their name to urban saints. I think it was a boys Bible class. And we were to camp in the Isle of Wight in a house party called Westbrook. If you sat in the top window of Westbrook, looked out, you could just see over into the Solent and the Queen Mary that we now know is in Long Beach in California. The Queen Mary was just sailing by and I was looking out at that while the preacher man called Francis Coningsby from Jersey was preaching his heart out and preaching the gospel. He saw me sitting at the back, looking out of the window rather than listening to him. And so he called out ‘Harvey’. And you know how embarrassing it is when you’re in a meeting and somebody calls you by name. So I sort of looked around a little bit and sort of smiled sheepishly. He said, Harvey, the Queen Mary is quite a marvellous sight. He said, but let me tell you, you turn your eyes upon Jesus and you look full at his face. He said in fact let’s sing a chorus now. We sang that chorus, Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face and the things on Earth, including the Queen Mary. And he said, including the Queen Mary Harvey, will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. And that was when I came to Christ when I was… I’ve never quite worked that eleven or twelve years old. So a little while ago now,
Leah Sax:
Just a little while ago, what do you think it was when he said God is greater? Was it was it that? Was it God’s greatness or the truth of the cross that do you think kind of brought you close? What was it about that statement?
Harvey Thomas:
It’s a very simple gospel. You know, men are sinners now. The trouble is with sin, the word sin, everybody knows exactly what it means. But in order to avoid it, it’s very, very clever to pretend that you don’t know what it means. But failure to meet God’s standards, we can’t meet up to God’s standards. We need to be forgiven for that. Jesus died for us. Jesus is alive for us, accept him as your saviour. And it was just the fact I knew that even as a boy, I needed to be forgiven for what I’d done. That was very clear to me, even as an eleven or twelve year old. And that was the day I made my decision.
Leah Sax:
And in the years following afterwards, when you kind of in your teens and early twenties, did you notice a change in your life? Did did the things of earth grow strangely dim?
Harvey Thomas:
In a way? But my faith became such a natural, normal, everyday thing that it wasn’t special, in other words, it took over the whole life and that’s the way you behaved. So, for example, when I went to school and you simply said, no, wait a minute, I’m a Christian, I’m an ambassador for Christ, I don’t do that sort of thing. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re a perfect boy. Of course you’re not, you know, just the same as any other young fellow. But it did make a difference in your attitude to things, whether it was telling the truth and not lying, whether it was behaviour on the sporting field or whatever it was, it just was a built in starting point that that’s the way normality is, that the normal thing is to have Christ as your saviour and endeavour to live a Christian life. But nevertheless, that became such a natural thing that it changed my life completely, but very directly in the same way that once you take a particular step, it automatically changes everything without you consciously saying, let’s change this, let’s change that.
Leah Sax:
That’s very interesting because that’s very different to the way I think a lot of people process information. But there is a simplicity of this is what the gospel is and this is how we live.
Adam Curtis:
Oh yeah that’s just so hopefully this is a normal thing. There’s a beautiful simplicity to this. We believe in Jesus and so we follow Jesus can just push into it a little bit more though Harvey. So you say that you’re like an ambassador for Christ. This is a normal thing, but was there ever like a cost to that?
Harvey Thomas:
Yes, but not a very serious one, to be truthful, because it’s the normality. Again, it’s the point at which you start the normal point. I had the benefit of continuing to go to the the Bible classes. That was a beginning of getting to know a little bit about the Bible meeting other Christians and growing with them. We didn’t even have Christian unions in schools in those days. I was at Westminster School. We went to Abbey every morning for the Abbey every morning service, a school that almost did not ring true in a sense, because it was a ritual that didn’t just come from the heart and was not normal. And I almost felt, oh my goodness, I’m a Christian boy attending a church service in a foreign country. As I went into Westminster Abbey every morning, it was just such a normality that I think is probably the key word throughout everything. That’s that’s the right way. The normal way.
Adam Curtis:
And this normality, this is this is the way Christ intended it to be. Actually like Christian normality can appear just incredibly radical, but that’s mainly because it’s standing in direct contrast to how everyone else around us is choosing to to live and and to act. But actually on it on its own, it’s not radical. It’s the normal way. This is the way life was intended to be. This is what it means to follow Christ.
Leah Sax:
You grew up in a London town, and then in the 60s, you started working with Billy Graham, producing his his rallies around the world, and I think you were with him for about 15 years. What do you think you learnt most spiritually during that time?
Harvey Thomas:
I think it was a reinforcement of what I’ve just been saying. The fact that when you came when you heard Billy, when he worked with the team, everything was very straightforward. If you did something special to happen or whatever, then you gave a special prayer about it, but you prayed about it all the time. If you listen to Billy’s messages, what he did was apply the Bible to people’s lives. So you would frequently hear him say, I mean, what the biggest crowds that I ever helped to coordinate was in Korea in about 1973, and we had one million one hundred thousand people. We’ve got all the pictures that Leah would know of Wembley Stadium filled with a hundred and three thousand people and a big stadium all over the world. Billy would talk to these tens of thousands of people and he said, I don’t know why you’ve come today. So I don’t know why. It’s not just to hear me, not just to hear a speaker. You’ve come because there’s a need in your life and you know what that need is. And taking the paralysed man, your sins need to be forgiven. Now take up your bed and walk. He made the order right. He made the order straight and it just reinforced all the time. And there was this simplicity of preaching the gospel. You’re a sinner. You need to be saved. You know what sin is, even if you pretend you don’t. And Jesus died to save you. And that was what I learnt. Rammed in, if you like, night after night for 15 years of Billy.
Leah Sax:
You then moved away from working in the Christian world with Billy and came back to the UK and work with Margaret Thatcher for a number of years.
Harvey Thomas:
I did something in between that actually.
Leah Sax:
What did you do?.
Well after I felt at the time was right to move on from the Billy Graham team in 1976. I then went to work for German evangelist called Anton Schulte.
Leah Sax:
Is that where you met Mummy.
Harvey Thomas:
Yes.
Leah Sax:
Oh I didn’t know that was then.
Harvey Thomas:
In 76 and 77. I was in South America. And then I came back to England in seventy eight. That’s when I became interested in the fact that we had no relevant government and I ought to do something to pay my bit because I’ve been floating around the world with Billy Graham and various other people for 15, 18 years, and I contributed nothing to the United Kingdom. So I thought it was time to come back. I went to the headquarters of the party at the time, said, can I help? And they said, what do you do? So I showed them a picture of Wembley Stadium with one hundred and three thousand people. And I said, well, basically, fundamentally that and everything connected, everything connected to it.
Leah Sax:
Here is my CV, a photograph.
Harvey Thomas:
Yes, a Photograph at Wembley Stadium. And then I went and got into politics.
Leah Sax:
Firstly, I’m very glad you met Mummy in that time there, because I forgot there was a gap. But so you’re now with Mrs T, and as I said, you’ve gone from working with Billy Graham. You ending up in the top end of British politics.
Harvey Thomas:
Yes.
That is a very different world from hearing the truth of the cross preached every night or around the world to hundreds of thousands of people to being in this very worldly secular, non Christian environment. We know a life walking with Jesus is costly, is sacrificial. Did you experience that or during that 70s and 80s time,
Harvey Thomas:
Occasionally, but really we take that as a granted sacrificial that that you have to give a lot of things up. If your norm is that life and as it were, you live it and everyone else respects it. And by and large, very few people do not respect it, they’ll usually back off providing you don’t try to force them to accept all of your opinions. But it it isn’t always sacrificial. I wouldn’t claim that I’ve sacrificed very much at all. If I’m honest. I’ve just been staggered at the way God has directed things and introduced me to all, you know, you name it, the work with Billy Graham, the ministry have the wonderful, wonderful family. And yes, listeners to the podcast Can’t See. But when I said wonderful family, they are pointing to herself and says me. And you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. I have a wonderful, wonderful, two wonderful daughters and now wonderful grandchildren.
Leah Sax:
Looking forward in life. What does what you’ve experience of God and his truth and what you’ve learnt of him and his words encourage you to keep going day by day.
Harvey Thomas:
It encourages me because it doesn’t have a time schedule to it. God’s plan doesn’t have a time schedule in the way that we have finite time, while at my age, you know, you look forward to a lot less time. Yet that is exactly the same because you keep on doing what you know is right. So that various activities I belong to and I work with both business and professional and charity, I think they’re are good things. I think I can honour Christ in the process of working with them. I make sure that my behaviour as much as I can reflects that. It’s almost, if you like, much of more of the same because of the normality. You know, somebody said, I don’t know who the person was. The best thing about telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you said. That works out very practically because once you start getting off the track, you’ve got to remember everything and keep up the same false facade. Whereas if you are exactly what you are and what you believe in, you won’t be perfect. You’ll make mistakes. People will get upset, but you carry on exactly as you believe to be right. Amen.
Adam Curtis:
Our topic for today is forgiveness. Now, Harvey, you have quite a dramatic story relating to forgiveness, as in 1984 you were working for the Conservative Party. Out there, that conference being held in Brighton and staying in the Grand Brighton Hotel when it was bombed by the IRA. Can we go back to that day and just hear about the bombing from your perspective?
Harvey Thomas:
Yes, I could. I’ll try and do it as briefly as possible. It was quite a day. I was actually the director, the producer of the conference, so I was in charge of putting the whole thing on. And I would rehearse the speeches with the prime minister and most of the other ministers before they spoke at the conference. And the night before, on the 11th of October 1984, I had been rehearsing the speech with the prime minister in one of the big rooms downstairs in the Grand Hotel until about 11 o’clock. And then she said, oh, I’ve got to go to the parties because everybody has their party, the young conservatives. And there were various others. So she had to go and make the rounds, as it were, and make an appearance. So she said, I may call you again when I come back, which is going to be around two o’clock or two Thirty a.m. I said, that’s fine. Some people have said to me, why did you say that’s fine? I say, because you didn’t say much else to Mrs Thatcher. Except that’s final statement, a statement like that. So I said, OK, that’s fine. And I went up to my room, flopped down on my bed and tried to get some sleep about eleven thirty. She came back and decided not to continue rehearsing the speech because it was quite late about just after two thirty.
Harvey Thomas:
At five to three, I found myself flying through the air in the top of the Grand Hotel. I was on the seventh floor. One of in fact, the only privilege of being the organiser and director of the conference was that I could choose my room and I chose a room high up looking out on the sea, room 729, and I found myself flying through the air. What had happened was that a powerful bomb had gone off in the high part of the room immediately underneath me, and 629 had blown apart the front of the Grand Hotel. I went up through the roof of the Grand Hotel because that was the top floor, fell down three floors, just over three floors. My body caught on the girder that was sticking out just below the fifth floor. And the firemen told me that ten tons of rubble fell on top of me. So I was there hanging out over the five storey drop with ten tons of rubble hanging on top of me. Then it was two and a half hours later before they came to dig me out. What went through my mind as this was happening was, first of all, I thought the roof had given in because of rain, because it was pouring with rain. And then I realised that wasn’t the case.
Harvey Thomas:
And as I was going up, if you like, I realised I was going to die. I mean I had no doubt at all that by what I was going to die, because things that have you know, when you have a dream, you’re flying through space, you sort of palm away satellites and various other things out of your way and rocks and asteroids and everything in your dreams. But in my case, I realised they were actually palming me out of their way. I was being bounced all over the place. So I duly came down on the way up my first thought. And this, again, my faith in Christ was it was normal. It was a natural thing. My first thought was a verse we learnt from the Bible in the Billy Graham mission teaching counselling classes, which is 1 John 1:9. If we confess our sins, he God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, I had been forgiven of my sin as a Christian, but on the way up I remember saying to the Lord Why I don’t know, Lord, if I’ve got any sins left on confessed. Do you mind taking the words read right now? Because I haven’t got a lot of time and I’m being thrown around in all this rubble. And you actually think that thought it goes through your mind and then a crash down all the rubble came down on top of me and it still had no doubt I was going to die.
Harvey Thomas:
After about five minutes, I heard the fire bells go off. So I thought, well, I’m still here. I don’t know exactly what’s happened. But whatever it is, I’ve got to hang on here. There’s nothing I can do about it. I couldn’t move an inch. I couldn’t move my elbows. I could move anything. I had a nail in my foot. I couldn’t budge at all. And that the rubble completely enclosed me. So you couldn’t panic. You just stuck there, absolutely frozen. And the other thing is, I’m very claustrophobic because I’m big. And here I was totally encased in rubble all around my head. And I wasn’t claustrophobic and I realised I had to lie there. I did manage to get my hand just over my mouth, which stopped rubble and dust and dirt and everything going into it. So I thought, well, I’ve got to just lie here there’s nothing else I can do. But the fact the bells are going off means that sooner or later someone’s going to come and find this. And so I lay there and it was about forty five minutes later when I first heard voices as the fire people came up on ladders up to the fifth floor and I heard them.
Harvey Thomas:
I thought I should call out help or something. And then I thought, well no it be an Englishman, isn’t there some better, more creative thing I can call out than help? So I thought, well, there isn’t really very much. So finally I thought, OK, I better just try help. So I try to help. And then I thought, that sounds just like a little dog. And then I thought, actually, in England, that’s the best possible thing you could sound like because the firemen will break their necks to get in front of a dog and rescue it in a case like this. So I tried it again and nobody heard. And then the third time I heard a voice say, quiet, quiet, somebody alive down there. And from that point on, it took the at about two hours to dig me out. Finally, they said, which way up are you? Because I was under this huge pile of rubble hanging out over a five story drop in the middle of what had been the hotel. And what had happened was that the bomb had blown up and hit the supports for the big chimney, the big Victorian chimney and that chimney weighed, I don’t know how many tons, but for about three minutes after the bomb went off, the chimney, stayed there, and then suddenly everything gave way and the chimney came down.
Harvey Thomas:
It went through all five floors of the Grand Hotel and took everything with it. And that included the Tebbits and many other people, the Wakehams. it missed me by about two feet. I mean, it was that sheer it was like butter knife going through butter missed me by two feet Crashed down and I could hear one voice before it crashed. I called Eric from the north of England saying, My name is Eric. And then unfortunately he went down with that and he died. Five people have been killed. Those five people were old friends of mine as they finally dug their firemen into me. They were marvellous people. They wouldn’t be allowed to do it today because of all the health and safety restrictions. But they were standing out on planks, hanging out over a five storey drop, electric cables everywhere, water everywhere, arking I could hear the sparking of electricity. I learnt some interesting new language from the firemen while they were climbing around all of this. Finally, they said, OK, which way up are you? So I don’t know. I can’t see a thing in here. And so they said, well, which way were you facing when you went to sleep? And I had my feet towards the window. So I said, actually, I was head to the north and feet to the south when when when this board they told me it was a bomb bomb went off.
Harvey Thomas:
So they finally came in. Then they said, we saw you. They dug and got down to me and all the BBC and television, all these pictures, cetera, show me popping out like a cork. They managed to grab my arms and just dragged me out from under all the rubble. Then they took me to eventually took me to hospital and I had to direct the ambulance guys because there were so many people injured that the ambulance had come in from Worthing and they didn’t know the way to the hospital. We got to the hospital. Doctor came to look at me and he said, how are we? I said, what about you? But I’m aching a bit. He examined me and he said, well, we have no bones broken. So I said, oh, good. Then clean me up and I get back to my conference because I knew she’d go on with it. And he said, Oh, no, no, you’re going to have a very big shock. I said, Listen, mate, I’ve just been blown up with a bomb and dug out a second, I can’t have a much bigger shock Can I. And I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for that shock. But I managed to anyway get get myself cleaned up. They called Marlies, who was at home with my mother, and Marlies was, of course, nine and a bit months pregnant with Leah at that time.
Leah Sax:
Hello.
Harvey Thomas:
So she immediately got with my mother, took a taxi to Victoria, got a train with some clothes in it because my my room, it completely disintegrated. The only thing that survived was a hard copy Bible I’d been given for my 21st birthday that I still have. It’s impregnated through all the pages. The dust has got all the way through those pages, the whole Bible, the power of that explosion. The rest, as they say. I went back to the hall that morning when I got myself out of hospital and I met a very intelligent policeman stopping what was now a barricade and said I said, look, my name is Harvey Thomas and I’m the director of this conference. Can I get back in with my wife and my mother? This policeman said, Mr Thomas, I’ve been looking at you on the television this morning because I did some television interviews. He said, Of course I know who you are. Please take your wife and mother in. Please give yourself new badges right away. So we went in, carried on with the coverage. We did some rewriting of Mrs Thatcher’s speeches, but then we carried on that as short as I could make It was the story of the night of the Brighton Bomb.
Adam Curtis:
So on the day that you were released from hospital, you went straight back into the conference and then just started working. So you weren’t given any time off?
Harvey Thomas:
Oh No, we had we had the big meeting at lunchtime
Adam Curtis:
So after the bombing. How did you feel about the bomber, Patrick McGee?
Harvey Thomas:
As I look back at all the things that happened there and my attitude towards the bomber, of course, we didn’t know who he was, but it was what the IRA did. I didn’t feel huge animosity at him because there are certain things people do. The IRA believed they were fighting for the right of independence for the whole of Ireland. They believed that the only way of getting it was through violence. So it didn’t actually surprise us. I mean, there were many other bombs. I wasn’t particularly angry. I was angry in the sense that I hope he got caught very quickly.
Adam Curtis:
I hear, Harvey, that after many years you did what most people would consider to be unthinkable and you decided that you actually wanted to forgive the IRA bomber Patrick McGee, could you maybe talk us through that process?
Harvey Thomas:
The Way you phrase that Adam, which makes very good sense. Forgiveness seems unforgivable, but the reality is it took me 14 years. So in other words, I didn’t leap in and say I forgive in 1998, which is 14 years after the bomb. Patrick McGee was caught and imprisoned in 1985. So this was he’d been in prison 13 years now. I was preaching in St. Matthew’s Church in Louisville and Kentucky in America, and I was preaching on the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew Chapter six, preaching on forgiveness. And in the middle of my message it dawned on me as I was reading the verses 14 15 following the Lord’s Prayer Matthew writes that if you forgive, God will forgive. If you don’t, he won’t. That’s quite different to our normal concept of things, because normally God will forgive anything, etc., just like that. So I thought to myself, well, I’ve never forgiven Patrick McGee. I’ve never given much thought to it. Really. He’s in prison. That’s where I should stay. And then I realised that actually I had to forgive. And so when I got back, I talked to Marlies and we prayed about it. I felt I should write to Pat, who was then in the Maze prison and say, writing, as a Christian, I forgive you for what you did. And I said also, but I can only speak on my own behalf.
Harvey Thomas:
I have no right to speak on behalf of anybody else because you can’t forgive on somebody else’s behalf. I had no right to speak on anyone else’s behalf, but I wrote to Pat and actually he’s published this letter in his book. He’s recently published a book called Where Grieving Begins. But I wrote to him and I said, look, I’m writing as a Christian, but I can only write my own behalf. Got a very thoughtful letter back from him saying thank you for your forgiveness. We have a different viewpoint, et cetera, et cetera, that was sort of very clear cut. Well, then two years later, about 2000, that was about the turn of the century. He was released from prison under the Northern Irish agreement. And so I wrote and said, look, I’d like to meet you. He reluctantly said, OK, I went over to Dublin, flew into Dublin, and we had a friend that had made the link for me Anne Gallagher. So she’d arranged for us to come to his house, to come to her house. I went there. He arrived, we talked for four or five hours in a back room, he said later when he was here in our house, he said, I walked four times around that block looking for your security people, the security people. I paid my pay my own way and a ticket to Dublin and took a taxi to the house.
Harvey Thomas:
But we talked and it was fascinating because he couldn’t understand why I would suddenly say I forgive. He said there are protocols to be involved. You have meetings and you discuss this and discuss that. So Pat said, you do have these protocols, but you’re just forgiving me because of your faith, I said yes. He said, well, for me, he said, I obviously look at it differently. Blowing up the Grand Hotel was like being a captain for submarine in wartime. You put your periscope up and you say, my job is to seek that aircraft carrier. He said, what you don’t say is, oh, whoopee, I can kill some more people. In fact, one of his roles with the IRA was to keep what they called ancillary damage as little as possible. So anyway, we met and we talked. We got on very well, actually he’s actually Leah knows him well, but he’s a quite a gentle sort of fellow, actually. He’s not an automatic thug. He said we tried everything before We felt we should go into violent action. And in 2001, he came over to the U.K. Leah and I went out to Stansted Airport to pick him up.
Leah Sax:
We did.
Harvey Thomas:
And we came back to our house early in the morning. He came in with us and Lani, Leah’s younger sister, my younger daughter, who’s two years younger. Therefore, she was born a year and a half after the bomb. She was sitting at the table and she looked across at Pat and said, You do realise, Pat, if you succeed in killing Daddy, I wouldn’t be here. And he was in tears and he writes about that in his book, he couldn’t understand why we would just say forgive. So we explain that actually I don’t take any credit for it because it took me 14 years before I actually registered that I needed to forgive and finally did it. And now we’ve done a number of things since we’ve been in touch with him very recently, he’s sent us a copy of his book, which has been a revelation, because when you meet somebody and they take on a personal relationship and he made this point very strongly, he said, you know, when you’re blowing up something political, political people, they’re legitimate targets in war. When you meet somebody, you realise the hurt you’ve caused, the damage you’ve done, then your attitude towards it changes. And he’s taken a very different view now. And he’s not involved in violence anymore. He’s working in peace and reconciliation fields. And I keep praying for it regularly. We’ve become very good friends, actually, and we pray that Christ will come into his life.
Adam Curtis:
And that moment when you. Say that I needed to forgive this man and you actually did forgive him. Was there a spiritual impact of that upon your life or did that what did it feel like to see go through that?
Harvey Thomas:
It was a spiritual impact, but not the kind of one you’d expect. It wasn’t a question of feeling good that I’d done it, that it wasn’t that at all. What it was, was that I realised how much there is that we neglect even to consider in our lives in terms of relationships with others. And I wondered whether that affects our effectiveness as ambassadors for Christ many times. Since then, I’ve spoken on forgiveness in churches and other places. People come up to me afterwards in church, congregations committed Christian people said, you know, I just can’t forgive so-and-so for something they did. I understand that because I didn’t do a thing for 14 years. So I don’t preach in the sense of this is the way to do it. But it did make me realise that there are many things that we could do in our Christian lives that the Bible shows us the way many times. I mean, for example, Peter’s comments about respect, all men, we don’t normally take that terribly seriously because it’s tucked away in the letter of Peter, but it’s love God, respect all men and honour the king. There’s a very powerful messages that are real principles of operation, such as forgiveness. That is a principle. It’s not a detail of whether you like somebody or whether somebody actually says, I’m sorry. Pat has, in fact, said he’s sorry many times to Marlies and I. And I think probably to Leah and Lani to he’s sorry the damage he caused.
Adam Curtis:
Can wee just push into what forgiveness actually is because many people might think, OK, to forgive some, someone is just to forget what they’ve done. Is forgiveness just forgetting?
Harvey Thomas:
No, it isn’t. There’s never any suggestion in the Bible that we must forget. It’s a question of taking the situation as it is and saying, I forgive. And that’s why, again, it took Pat years before he realised that I was going to be exactly the same in every meeting and every chat and everything that we had because there was the condition to it. Forgiveness has to be unconditional and it has to be personal. As I said earlier, you can’t forgive on behalf of somebody else. You’ve got to take life as it is and realise that God is sovereign, although we don’t always understand exactly how and why he’s exercising that sovereignty.
Adam Curtis:
Oh, Harvey, I’m finding this chat so helpful or very convicting, maybe just paint me a vision, like why? Why would I why would a listener want to forgive? Why should we be forgiving people? Because on one level, I like to hold onto my bitterness and my resentment. So why should I be someone who forgive someone rather than just someone who seeks vengeance.
Harvey Thomas:
There is no logical reason except the Bible teaching. Course We feel angry and of course, we feel we’d like revenge. People have said to me, would you have forgiven Pat if Marlies had been with me in the Grand Hotel, which she wasn’t, and been killed? Now the answer is I don’t know. I wish I could say very righteously. Oh, yes, absolutely. I don’t know. It’s the reality of life and what you do. But once you make that decision to forgive, then you have put aside you haven’t forgotten, but you’ve put aside everything else. Actually, it does help you to understand an awful lot. As I’ve got to know, Pat, over the years, I understand their situation, his situation. I don’t agree with it. And he knows that I’ve never for a moment suggest that I agreed with the violence. But I do understand it. Human beings, we are weak. We can forgive individuals, we can forgive situations, but we can’t force other people to do it. And that’s that’s the difficult thing we love if we could get other people to do what we want. Billy Graham the evangelist once said to me, I was talking about committees and he said, Harvey, the best committee is you and me when you’re sick. And actually a Christian dictator would be a lovely situation to be in. But you can’t do that because God has given us this free will “choose you this day who you will serve”. It’s a matter of choice.
Adam Curtis:
Harvey, this this podcast is for for new believers, so for a lot of people listening, they may not have heard what the biblical sort of mandate is to forgive other people. So maybe could be pushed into this, like what does what is the Bible teaching on forgiveness?
Harvey Thomas:
Well, the Bible teaching on forgiveness, particularly in Matthew. Matthew, when he quotes the words of Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer, is the first time you actually get this. Your Heavenly Father will not forgive you unless you forgive. But there’s also in oh, here we are, Matthew, Chapter 18. Jesus was was was talking says if your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, et cetera, et cetera. And then Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? And then verse 22, Jesus answered, I tell you not seven times, but 77 times. Therefore, the kingdom is like a king who wants to settle accounts, and he goes on to talk about the greatness of forgiveness In there. The Bible is quite clear. Vertical forgiveness with God, repentance first, horizontal forgiveness with man: you are to forgive. And the fact is many of us can’t do it. I’m not sure I could in every situation in this particular situation, I was able to. And I hope that’s been an encouragement.
Adam Curtis:
Oh, it has and actually. That’s so helpful to give out that order just right now. And hence that’s about the forgiveness you receive from the Lord first and then having this forgiveness attitude towards other people. Yeah once I focus on the fact how much I have been forgiven, how much I’ve wronged the Lord and sinned against him, and yet He would still send his son to die, to redeem me and to free me. Once I know that it’s because I’m forgiven by the Lord and it’s it’s from that sort of place of experience in the Lord’s love that we then have the motivation, the inspiration, someone worth imitating, the ability to think and forgive these people around us.
Harvey Thomas:
Absolutely. It inspires you and shows you forgiveness of God first through Jesus. And then when you have that light, then you should forgive others. That’s what the Bible teaches very simply and very clearly. The question is, because we are weak sinners, we can’t always do it immediately.
Leah Sax:
When you say forgiveness, would you describe it as I let go of it? You saying I forgive it. It’s a verb. It’s an action.
Harvey Thomas:
No, I would not say I let go of it. I would say I let go of the reactions and emotion connected to it so that it’s not still hovering there. It’s over and done with. It is still there. And I don’t think we necessarily have to let go of it because there may be people have been killed in different things. You don’t want to let go of things, but you have said I forgive the person who did it. And in many cases, forgiveness is much smaller things, too. I find in visiting various churches that forgiveness is often very small. Somebody, you know, Mrs Jones, will never wash the teacups up in the Women’s Institute kind of thing, and I can’t forgive her. It’s often quite small, but it’s there it’s a little pricking form kind of thing that if it can be done, it changes the relationship. Forgiveness changes the relationship totally. With God It brings us in as children of God, with other People it Brings Brothers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I
Adam Curtis:
Are there practical steps for that Mrs Jones scenario. If someone came up to you and said, yes, I just can’t forgive Mrs Jones, are there practical steps to get going about doing that?
Harvey Thomas:
Well, I’m very outspoken. I know you’d never guess that.
Adam Curtis:
Haaa never!
Harvey Thomas:
I believe that the straight, simple way of saying things is the best way. And if people come to me and say, I can’t forgive Mrs Jones and I say, why not? There’s actually it’s only because you choose not to. But many people come and say, oh, I haven’t been able to forgive this, how do I do it? And I say, well, the Bible says that either you can’t do it or you can’t or you can’t do it now, but you’re looking towards it. You’ll do it in the weeks time. We are human and we don’t do things the same way. We do think things differently and we we are affected differently. Our emotions are different. That is the whole point is every single sinner that repents, that every single individual that the Bible talks about in the whole faith is always individual people. It’s never this herd instinct.
Leah Sax:
And I guess also when you when when the Bible talks about how many times should we forgive, 70 times seven, it shows the frequency with which we will need to forgive. It’ll be in those Mrs Jones moments every single day, and it’ll be in the bigger things that we’re talking about right now. But it’s just knowing that we first were forgiven, completely undeservingly forgiven. And that’s where that love comes out from with the Mrs Jones effect.
Harvey Thomas:
no, you’re absolutely right.
Adam Curtis:
Harvey. I told a few members of my church that we were having this interview and I asked them what sort of questions they would like me to ask. And one of them was, what does forgiveness look like if the person is unrepentant?
Harvey Thomas:
Surprise!
Adam Curtis:
Ooo good answer.
Harvey Thomas:
It usually is. It’s the same way if you make a mistake in business or anywhere else. What nobody ever seems to do today is to go around, say, hey, I’m awfully sorry, I really messed that up. I’m so sorry. I’ve come around to say so face to face. And they’re surprised. They don’t know what to say going the other way. It’s exactly the same. Pat was totally surprised that I would say I forgive. They don’t expect it. If it’s genuine. If it’s real, it will change relationships completely, even if they don’t want to accept it at that time. And sometimes people don’t even accept that they’ve done something that needs forgiving. But if your attitude is real and you’re not being just pious for the sake of being pious, if it’s genuine, then it will change the relationship. It’s not saying the right things. It’s the fact that you mean them.
Adam Curtis:
Wow, what an episode that was just electrifying. And Leah it’s just such an honour to meet to meet your dad. You know what I found so helpful just from hearing from Harvey and his incredible dramatic story of just forgiveness is the normality of it. The simplicity of it is that this is what Christians do. This is normal. This is God’s way. And it’s for our best. And I was reading Colossians Chapter three, like forgive as the Lord has forgiven us. And I say this is our grounding. This is our basis. We have received unbelievable, overwhelming forgiveness and if we receive that level of forgiveness. Then the small little thing Mrs. Jones might do. Yeah, the small little thing my friend or family member might do well actually no I have the power to forgive them because of what Christ has done for me. And I should stop feeling bitter. I stopped feeling annoyed. I should stop trying to seek revenge, but instead actually start living out that forgiveness.
Leah Sax:
I struck me that hearing that deep ingrained-ness, new word, of 1 John 1:9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, that clearly was so deeply ingrained that it just naturally flowed out through a life long walk. And that normality, this is the way God wants us to live, just overflowed in a simplicity, actually. I mean, admittedly, I’ve heard this story a few times now and lived through it. But that simplicity and normalcy, I find it quite refreshing still to hear because in our own minds, we so complicated, don’t we Sometimes.
Adam Curtis:
Oh, yeah. We make it way more complicated and we overthink it. And we play out a thousand different scenarios and we always want to try and big ourselves up and come out on top rather than taking that humble like stance as I’ve been forgiven. So now I’m going to go and forgive and just say, this is it. And this is this is for my good is if we do this, then we individually are going to flourish. If we do this, we collectively as a church body are going to flourish. If we do this, that our society will flourish if we actually are following God’s way. And this is this is going to have overwhelmingly consequences for society
Leah Sax:
As a whole is such an act of love to forgive because we’ve been so lovingly forgiven ourselves.
Adam Curtis:
Oh, Amen.
Leah Sax:
We always like to ask our guests one extra bonus question, which is what is the one piece of advice you’d give to your younger believing self with the wisdom you now have?
Harvey Thomas:
I think it would be. We’re the normal ones.
Adam Curtis:
Tell me more!
Harvey Thomas:
Faith in Christ is the way it’s supposed to be. Forgiveness of sins is the norm, it’s the non-Forgiveness that is upside down.
Leah Sax:
Yes Daddy!
Harvey Thomas:
And that’s what’s carried me through all of these years. I’m not the exception. They’re the exception. This is what God intended. This is the normal way.
Adam Curtis:
Amen!
Leah Sax:
We’ll be back in late autumn with drumroll, please. Season two of Delight Podcast, do keep an eye. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. I do keep an eye on the Socials @DelightPodcast or Delight Podcast dot com for the latest news and to keep in touch or send us a Message.
Adam Curtis:
Thank you so much. Harvey Thomas for being our guest on Episode 5 of Delight Podcast. If you want to know more about Harvey, there’s a link to his bio information in the show notes. Also, if you want to delve have a little bit deeper into the topic of forgiveness then I’ve written a blog post which you can find on Delight Podcast website.
Leah Sax:
Indeed you can. And if you think what you’ve heard today might be of interest to others, please do like share and subscribe. Thank you so much for listening. Bye bye. Bye.
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