The Queen!

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. And now, here's your host, Steve Noble. Fox News.

It's like 24-7. Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth II.

April of 1926 to September of 2022. 96 years of age, which is amazing in and of itself. A 70-year reign as the Queen of England, longest monarch in British history. And now you have the king. You have a new king, obviously.

And so that started today. I watched his address, a pre-recorded address, probably filmed it earlier today, to Great Britain and the Commonwealth. And, you know, it's a complicated story, Great Britain and colonies, so on and so forth. Setting all that aside, setting British history aside.

Queen Elizabeth. I mean, what do you make of that as an American? Do you think it's much ado about nothing?

You don't really understand what's the big deal? Or do you have a high regard for the queen? And then, you know, Jim Dennison, who's a great Christian writer out of Texas, the life, death and Christian faith of Queen Elizabeth. Carl Truman, who's an incredible philosopher, ethicist, Christian. He's been on the show before.

I did the show with him about his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which is the philosophical history of how he got to the point where a man can just say, hey, I think I'm a woman trapped inside a man's body. And there's a whole lot of people that'll just say, OK, whatever. So Carl Truman's been on the show before and he's British, the quiet faith of Queen Elizabeth and then all kinds of other things out there about the faith of the queen, who would occasionally mention Jesus Christ and some quotes from her, which I'm going to work through that in a gospel way. I cannot say definitively whether Queen Elizabeth II was a born again Christian. Because there's a lot of people out there that can talk the talk.

Right. And we talked and for you out there, if you're struggling with a prodigal child, I would encourage you go get the podcast, The Steve Noble Show podcast from the last two Theology Thursdays with Dr. Stuart Scott. And we were talking about prodigal children and he used a phrase that's sometimes hard to hear, which is a Christian pagan. So you grow up in a Christian family. You're Christians are parents. You go to church, you go to youth group, you do the lingo, all that kind of stuff. And for all practical purposes, from the outside, looking in, you seem to be a Christian.

You have all the right answers. You basically can explain the gospel. But that conversion, that justification actually hasn't happened in that person's life yet. And so people can hold Christ in high esteem, yet not be a Christian. Isn't that interesting? But Jesus himself did say there'll be many, many that say, Lord, Lord, then we do that prophesy in your name and do all these incredible things.

And Jesus will look them square in the eye and say, department for me, I never knew you. So there's that angle on the queen. So I'm going to explore that through a couple of articles today, but was curious. I actually think there's great value in, quote unquote, the monarchy in its current form, not ruling the nation.

She did not do that. She didn't have any real political power, but did have a important role. And so I would like to explore that a little bit today. Because it would be very interesting to kind of translate that into the American context. I was having a conversation with one of our daughters earlier today, Amelia, who's in Manhattan, and just talking about what would that look like in the American context.

So I want to explore that a little bit. But if you want to call in and share, especially if perhaps you're listening today and you've actually spent time in Great Britain, maybe you were born there, or you spent some time there, you've worked there, whatever the case may be. If you have some personal experience with Great Britain and their relationship with Queen Elizabeth, I'd love to hear from you. That would be a great honor to get your perspective. And our phone number is always it's 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884, or 866-34-TRUTH, I think it's the easier way to remember, 866-34-TRUTH, or just your general reactions to everything going on. I mean, this is going to be 10 days starting yesterday of all kinds of events and fanfare and grieving and lamenting and specials and all kinds of pomp and circumstance.

The Brits obviously do that very, very well. And so this is going to be around for a week and a half. But what's your reaction to it? Are you just like, I don't get it. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's one person. Quit the idol worship.

Maybe that's you. And if you hear or read any article like I've got in front of me referring to the Queen Elizabeth as a Christian, maybe you go, that's a load. And you want to share that. We could investigate that claim a little bit, if you'd like.

866-348-7884 or 866-34-TRUTH. Or if you have experience being in Great Britain, you want to share that. That would be great. Or maybe you think the Queen's a remarkable woman and a great example. I spoke last night at an induction ceremony here in town for some homeschoolers that were being inducted into the National Honor Society. And I started with that with the Queen, Queen Elizabeth, who I think it's just a laundry list of attributes that are honorable and noble and worthy of respect and even mimicking. And so there's somebody that gives themselves entirely over to a mission, to a job, to I believe what she would probably eventually refer to as a calling and her duty. That's a big word.

Only four letters, but that's a big word, duty. And we don't really see that here in America because in America, we're not about the crown, right? We're not about that.

We're about ourselves. Individualism via Liberty is a big part of the American life, a big part of the American experiment. You're not under the crown. You don't have a sovereign unless your sovereign is God or maybe whatever religion you happen to be. So we don't really think like that. We're independent people, man. That's why we fought a war because we want to do things our way. That's why people came over here for religious freedom, not to be a part of a system. A lot of Americans understand that we're underneath the constitution, we're underneath the government, but we're individuals. But over there, and has there ever been anybody in American history that you can think of short of George Washington that had the kind of national love and respect and honor that Queen Elizabeth did and does? I think currently her approval rating's like 75% plus. Could that even happen in this country today? Not if you talk about politics or hot button issues, you'd have to stay away from that.

And is that even possible? But she did, which is remarkable, especially given the political environment we're in today. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show talking about Queen Elizabeth, 866, 34 Truth. We'll be right back. Welcome back.

It's Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show. Queen Elizabeth II obviously passed away yesterday, 96 years of age after a 70-year reign, longest in British history. And your opinion on that? What do you think about the queen? There's so much about her that I think is honorable and worthy of respect and emulating. In many ways, an incredible person, stiff upper lip, very British that way. And her role, which is really interesting to consider, her role there.

What's her role? I mean, the monarchy doesn't really have any political power there. They spend 150 million pounds a year on it. And it's obviously a big part of British life. Some are distraught, but most are sad.

It's been amazing to watch that. It's hard to understand that as an American citizen, because we don't really have anybody like that in this country. Can you think of anybody? Billy Graham? To a certain extent, I think. But there's a whole lot of people, non-religious people, anti-Christian people that Billy Graham, who's that? Whatever.

I don't care. And there's a lot of people under 40 that don't even know who Billy Graham is. But virtually, I think like I read a stat like close to 80 percent of the citizens of Great Britain and the Commonwealth. This is the only queen they've ever known.

This is a really fascinating subject. Curious how you feel about Queen Elizabeth and her passing and her role and her importance or not. And then most people think that Queen Elizabeth was a Christian.

She talked about Jesus occasionally in some of her broadcasts and Christmas broadcasts, things like that. I'm going to get into that as well. But if you want to call in and share your thoughts on Queen Elizabeth and her passing and her role and what you think of her, that whole situation, that whole monarchy, either way you come down, I'd love to hear from you.

866-348-7884 or 866-34. Truth, let's jump over to out in Ohio. Thanks for calling in so much. Go right ahead.

Hi there, my friend. Can you hear me OK? I got you. You're good. Go ahead. Awesome.

This is Busman from Dayton, Ohio. Steve. Hey, how are you? Doing fantastic. Good.

It's good to hear from you again. You mentioned the queen and her salvation. We must remember, Steve, that Queen Elizabeth II was a human just like us. I think what we need to all understand is salvation in John Chapter 1. It's not our choice, but it's the will of God. John Chapter 1 teaches us that. And when we move over to Matthew 7, Jesus gives a parable that's very interesting. It's the one where he separates the two groups of people, the one that says, hey, I did this in your name. I did that in your name. And he said, away from me, I never need you. And then the other group, they ask, hey, Lord, when did we do this?

When did we do that? And the Lord says, when you did this to the least of these, my brethren. And you see the two separate there. So what we must remember about the dear queen, and I love the fact that she lived 96 years, she was the longest monarch of the monarchy, 70 years, is that anyone can proclaim anything about any subject. But what differentiates, I believe, Steve, is who are we doing the ministry for? If we call ourselves Christian, like if the queen calls herself Christian, who was her ministry for?

Was it for her benefit, or was it for Christ? Yeah, and that's the interesting part about it. And you're talking about proclamation. And again, there are some people that are very quiet Christians that don't run around and say much at all about their faith, who love Jesus and are born again. John 644, mentioning another route that you went when you first started sharing, and nobody comes to the Son unless the Father draws them. God is the initiator of faith. But stay in there today if you can and listen, because I'm going to go through a bunch of these quotes from her, and then I'm going to make some points there from a gospel perspective and say, okay, here's somebody talks about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Christ, Christ, Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace. Does that mean you're a Christian? And I'm going to make sure, not for Queen Elizabeth, her destiny is sealed already, and I sure hope I get to see her in heaven one day, but for the people out there that might not be sure, and they're still alive, and that's a more important story right now than Queen Elizabeth's soul.

So I'm going to make sure I circle back around. That is so true. Yes, and we always have Galatians 5 as sort of a test, litmus test as well, which is the list of the fruit of the Spirit. Is that evident in our life? Is that the motivation of our ministry? Exactly, yeah.

That's a great point. It's great to hear from you again. Thanks for calling in. Have a great day, Steve.

You too, man. God bless you. Bye-bye. 866-348-7884 if you'd like to chime in on any aspect of this conversation about Queen Elizabeth II. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Mary's calling in from North Carolina. Hi, Mary, thanks for calling. Go ahead. Hi, how are you today? Well, thank you. How are you? I'm good.

Good. I probably have a trivial question, but I've always been a great admirer of the Queen. Like you say, her sense of duty, and she always took that very seriously. But since then, I've also been informed of, you know, some of the great deceivers that may be around that are actually, you know, how you hear about the few who run the entire world all the time, and they're behind the scenes, and they're, you know, setting things up. And I've also heard that she was part of that, similar to, you know, the Pope not being really who the Pope is.

Right, right, right. So I was wondering, you know, she has had a lot of power. She's in contact with all the powers that be in the world. And I wanted to ask you about that, which is rather separate from her potential Christianity or not Christianity. Well, one of the things I'll say first, right off the bat, when you were sharing that, Mary, is that gossip is like a dainty morsel.

And who doesn't like a dainty morsel? So we tend to, I think, in our fallen depravity as human beings and our sin nature, whenever we hear kind of a conspiracy kind of thing or some intrigue, you know, that, I mean, even for myself, I'm like, whoa, what if that's true? Isn't that interesting? There's something about that in our flesh that we're drawn to. So I always know that's a bit of a concern. I always have a yellow flag up when I ever hear things like this. But whenever I hear stories like this, and I've heard that one before, I'm always, I'm kind of like the lady from the old Wendy's commercial.

I'm like, show me the beef. You know, it's a great charge. Okay, it's salacious.

It's fascinating. Certainly, she is one of the most well-placed, well-known people in the world. I don't know how much power she actually had, because this is one of the things about the queen that absolutely amazes me in a 70-year reign, that from a political perspective, very few people know where she fell down on the political spectrum, from right to left, from an American perspective, because that was never her job. She was subservient to the system.

She was subservient to the prime minister and to parliament. She's not making any laws. She's not signing any bills. She's not changing anything in the structure of the government of Great Britain. So to me, she's more of a figurehead. She's not a governing person. So her power was in her example. I don't think she had any raw power.

And from the outside, looking in, from my perspective, that would kind of disqualify her from that situation. Not that somebody that's rotten to the core or being used by the devil can't talk about Jesus, because sure they can. That's why you got to test the spirits, right? The Bible tells us we have to test the spirits. But with stories like that, Mary, I mean, I'm a skeptic.

That's why I'm on one of the reasons I'm on the radio. I'm always like, OK, show me the beef. Somebody's going to have to make a case. And if you can't make a case and I'm not saying you generally, I'm talking about whoever might have shared that with you.

If they can't make a case, I dismiss it and I move on because I want to deal with facts, not just innuendo. Does that make sense? I felt the same way. Yeah. But I'm up against the break right now, Mary, so I got to let you go.

But that's a great question. I appreciate you calling to share it. I'll say some more about it on the other side of the break.

Thanks so much. This is Steve Noble. We'll be right back.

Welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show. The London Bridge has fallen. The London Bridge is down, right?

You kind of think of that little song we used to sing when we were little kids. But that was actually the code phrase when the queen actually died yesterday when they had to pass the news first to the prime minister. She actually died two hours before they made it public. And one interesting thing that I'd forgotten about the queen and did you see The Crown? That was a fascinating series. If you haven't seen The Crown and I know they're filming another season and they just shut down filming because of the queen's passing.

But I think it's going to come back. It was really fascinating. And there's things about the queen that were my wife and I watched it. And you're like, man, like there's one scene, I don't know what season it was, where finally she's crying. Finally she's showing some genuine deep emotion. And you're like, does the lady have a heart? Is she like the Grinch?

And she was born with a heart 10 times too small. And she just she definitely had this stiff upper lip. But there was a there was an aspect to her that I gleaned from watching The Crown, which obviously isn't going to be 100% accurate. But to just this commitment to duty, that you have a really serious job in the context of being born into the British monarchy, and at 25 years of age, and you're supposed to be, to a certain extent, the titular head of your nation.

But you don't have any real raw political power. So what's the queen's deal? So this is where it's interesting to me to consider this in the American context. If we had some American man or woman or or couple, and their only job, and how we picked them or how they got there, set that aside for a minute. But their only job was really to be first, kind of a patriot. You know, but but forget the MAGA hat or whatever, not that kind of a kind of a really zealous patriot, mixed with political position. That was the thing about the queen is most people had no idea how she voted.

Right? Because her job is not to be political. Her job is basically to represent the monarchy, which is all about seeking the welfare of Great Britain, what's best for the country, what's best for the people. And so a patriot without being political. And for us in America, that's like oil and water. How can you be a non-political patriot?

But just imagine, use your imagination for a second. And you've got a couple or a man or a woman, and maybe it was the descendants of the Washington family, whatever. And think about them, their job is to promote the principles of America that are general enough that you still have massive buy-in. We believe in fairness. We need to be fair to one another. We need to be fair and we need to be dignified.

We need to show dignity to one another. We want to take care of our children. We want to provide them with a future. We want to have good education.

She's not going to talk about how to do that. No policy here. We want we want a good education and good opportunities. We want to take care of the disenfranchised amongst us, the people that are less fortunate.

British history is still very much kind of a caste system. So the people that are less fortunate, we need to be compassionate and take care of them. Just kind of these, if you will, glittering generalities that most Americans agree with. Most Americans agree they want freedom. They want liberty. They want safety. They want opportunity. They want equality because we want equality. Whether you're poor or rich or you come from this neighborhood or that neighborhood, we want you to have access to a good education and we want you to have an opportunity to thrive, to invest in your God-given talents and abilities. And so they stay away from all policy. They don't talk about how you're going to accomplish those things. You don't even get into the definition like equality. What does that even mean in 2022?

Well, equality was a different thing in 1776 or 1630. But you stay away from that. You just kind of keep promoting by speech and then by deeds.

You're out serving. Like I think she was the, I think they call it the patron or something of, I was listening to an interview with her, I think earlier today, like some 600 charities, something like, it's ridiculous, right? You can't be involved with 600 charities. But she's out there leading by example. So she's supporting charities and showing up at things.

Kind of almost like a first lady thing, but a first lady is political by definition because her husband's the president, who's a political person. But could you imagine that in the American context? And do you think that would be helpful?

I for one think that would be helpful. Somebody that's outside the political fray that loves the country. It's not baptizing all of the country's sins. We're not ignoring this or that. But just, we love America. We appreciate America.

It's been an incredible story. And yes, there's been things we've gotten wrong, but things we've gotten right. And there's still these principles that most of us agree with. And for her, she never really hid her association with the Christian faith. I am worried to a certain extent about King Charles, King Charles III, because where she said she's the defender of the faith, and the Church of England's an Anglican church, the defender of the faith, which is Christian.

She never shied away from that. King Charles has said he's the defender of the faiths, plural, which is a pluralistic perspective, which I would expect from him. He's a World Economic Forum guy.

He's probably a great reset guy. He's a big environmentalist guy. But he said in his speech today that he's going to have to tone that down, because now his job isn't to represent his own personal interests and his own personal opinion.

His job is to represent the crown, the monarchy, and the British Commonwealth government country. So it's not about him anymore. And that's the thing about her that's so remarkable.

So it wasn't about her. But let me turn this in a gospel direction. So I'm going to pull a few quotes here. Okay, 10 quotes on faith from Queen Elizabeth.

I have been and remain very grateful to you for your prayers and to God for his steadfast love. I have indeed seen his faithfulness. Does that mean you're a Christian? That statement? It does not.

Okay, that one doesn't. It is true that the world has had to confront moments of darkness this year, but the Gospel of John contains a verse of great hope often read at Christmas carol services. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Despite being displaced and persecuted throughout his short life, Christ's unchanging message was not one of revenge or violence, but simply that we should love one another. So you utter that in public. Can I sit there and say, well, that's definitely a Christian?

I would say no, not necessarily. You're in the stadium, but that doesn't mean you're on the field. Number three. For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. Okay, now you're getting a little closer to the field there, I think. But I still don't know. A role model of reconciliation and forgiveness. Reconciliation is an important word. That is the Gospel.

He stretched out his hands in love, accepting and healing. That's true in terms of salvation. Christ's example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none.

That's definitely true. And that's biblical right there. Should you love everybody? Everybody's made in the image of God, they all have inestimable worth, and you should love and respect everyone.

Christ died for everyone, and that should transfer to how you see everyone. That was her Christmas message from 2014. Here's another one, Christmas message 2013. For Christians, as for all people of faith, reflection, meditation, and prayer, help us to renew ourselves in God's love as we strive daily to become better people. The Christmas message shows us that this love is for everyone.

There is no one beyond its reach. Beautiful, generally true. Does that mean she's a Christian?

I mean, if you want her to be a Christian, if you're leaning in that direction, you're like, boy, I think she is. Well, there you go. See, you got to be careful not to proof text things. You go, okay, that works. That fits my narrative. That fits my conclusion. So I'm going to stick it in the book.

Got to be careful with that. And especially I'm sharing this right now for those of you that would say you're a Christian, but you don't know a whole lot about the Bible or what the Christian faith is really all about. You believe in God, Jesus. Yeah, that's awesome. Jesus. Yeah. Did he die on a cross? Yeah. Came out of the grave three days later.

Yeah. If you were to die, unfortunately, tonight in bed for some reason, would you go to heaven? And if your answer is I hope so or I think so, well, now we have a challenge because the Bible actually says you can know. So first, John, these things are written so that you may know you have eternal life.

Well, how do you know that you have eternal life? Right. That's a big question.

That's the question. Here's another one. This is the time of year when we remember that God sent his only son to serve, not to be served. He restored love and service to the center of our lives and the person of Jesus Christ is my prayer this Christmas day, that his example and teaching will continue to bring people together to give the best of themselves in the service of others. The Carol in the bleak midwinter ends by asking a question of all who know the Christmas story of how God gave himself to us in humble service. What can I give him?

Poor as I am. If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. The Carol gives the answer. Yet what can I give him?

Give my heart as their Christmas message in 2012. Is that the gospel? We're in the ballpark, but is that actually it? Is that enough? Maybe it's enough to say for somebody to get interested, go, hmm, that sounds nice, but what does that mean to give him my heart? Then that person, if the Holy Spirit's working in their lives, perhaps they're going to explore that, ask somebody.

Go online, but we don't know for sure. Here's another one. Christmas message 2011. Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves, from our recklessness or our greed.

God sent into the world a unique person, neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a savior with the power to forgive. It is my prayer that on this Christmas day, we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord. Okay, that's pretty good. Is it enough? Is it enough for you? Do you think that's enough?

Are you checking the box? Hey, Elizabeth, my sister, I'll see you in heaven, whenever that is, whenever I get there, I'll see you in heaven. Or is it not? This is an important question, and I'm not questioning the queen's salvation. I think it was a pretty good case to be made for that. She is a believer, but that's also a generational thing. I want to touch on that too when we come back.

How do you express your faith? Oh, a little head nod to Great Britain there with the Bee Gees. Welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show, talking about Queen Elizabeth today.

1926 to 2022, April of 26 to September of 2022, 96 years of age, 70 year reign, the longest reigning monarch in British history. And by the way, she was homeschooled. Yes. Homeschoolers, go homeschoolers, rule the world. She was homeschooled, which would make sense if you're part of the British monarchy, but just thought I'd throw that in there. And talking about her faith a little bit, and then I've got a long clip, Boris Johnson, who's just left as prime minister, is the new prime minister now, and she's been speaking out a lot. You'll see her a lot in the next 10 days, but he gave about an eight minute tribute that I want to play.

And the reason I'm going to explain to you why I'm going to play it, that's a long clip and we'll finish with that, but I wanted to finish one more quote here. Talking about is Queen Elizabeth in heaven right now? Will I see her in heaven when I die? OK, will you if you're in Christ?

Let me use this one, one of her other quotes. To many of us, our beliefs are of fundamental importance. For me, Queen speaking of herself, obviously, for me, the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life. I, like so many of you, have drawn great comfort in difficult times from Christ's words and example. And then this, I know just how much I rely on my own faith to guide me through the good times and the bad. Each day is a new beginning. I know that the only way to live my life is to try to do what is right, to take the long view, to give of my best and all that the day brings and to put my trust in God.

Like others of you who draw inspiration from your own faith, I draw strength from the message of hope in the Christian gospel. OK, so there's some beautiful things there. And if you watch some of her Christmas messages over the years, I mean, beautiful.

I mean, and definitely in the ballpark. OK, she's not out in the parking lot. She's come in the gate. She's in the football stadium. She's down pretty close to the field, the field being people that are born again.

So it's sounding pretty good. But does that mean she's a believer? I don't know. Billy Graham seemed to think so. He had, I think, 12 meetings with her personally. I'm fairly confident that Billy Graham would have had enough conversations with her to really kind of get to the crux of the matter.

But those are all private. So he's not exactly going to come out and say, yeah, I had a meeting with them. And I said, if you died today, Elizabeth, would you go to heaven?

I mean, I hope he did, but I don't know. My point is not to talk about whether Queen Elizabeth is in heaven or not. The question is, are you going to be in heaven? You can talk about God. You can talk about Jesus. You can talk about the Bible.

You can talk about him being an inspiration and that you try to pattern your life after him. In many ways, Thomas Jefferson did that. But Thomas Jefferson denied Jesus was God's son, that he was born of a virgin and that he came out of the grave three days after he was crucified. Thomas Jefferson denies that. You cannot deny those things and be a Christian. And Thomas Jefferson called himself a Christian. It doesn't matter what you call yourself. What matters is what do you actually believe?

And have you put 100 percent of your faith in Jesus Christ? He's the only way. All roads lead to God.

That's true because everybody's going to face judgment. But only one road leads to heaven, and that's through Jesus Christ. And you can't buy God off.

You can't you can't impress him with your resume of good works. You can't deal with the mess that is your sin record before a perfectly holy and just God. You can't. Not by the law, not by works.

The Bible makes that abundantly clear. The only chance you have is to put all of your eggs in Jesus's basket. I can do nothing.

He can do everything. I put all my faith in all my trust, acknowledging my sin, acknowledging that I need forgiveness and I can't buy my way or work my way in. I want to be saved. I want to be forgiven. Lord, please, I confess all my garbage to help me turn from it. And I put all my faith in you. And if you do that and that's genuine, then you're born again.

There you go. OK. Is that your deal? Is that what you believe? Or is your life as a as a Christian, air quotes, made up of wonderful statements and God is awesome and Jesus is awesome. Jesus is God's son. Does that get you into heaven?

No. Peter tells us that even the demons believe in shutter because the demons haven't put their faith in. They're not confessing. Are you kidding me?

Tooley. They spit on Jesus, but they know he's the son of God. They know he walked out of that grave. They know where he is right now. They know he's the king.

That doesn't make him a Christian. Remember that. OK, let's play the Boris Johnson thing. I'm not going to be able to get through all of it, but just listen to this. I want you to listen to.

We'll play several minutes of this. Listen to it kind of through a Christian lens and looking in a mirror at your own life. And would anybody ever stand up at your funeral and talk about you like this? I mean, this is deeply convicting to me. When anybody can stand up at my funeral and talk about me like this and my impact and my drive to serve and give of myself, it's inspirational.

And I think we should all be challenged by it. Go ahead. Boris Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope the House will not mind if I begin with a personal confession. A few months ago, the BBC came to see me to talk about Her Majesty the Queen. And we sat down and the cameras started rolling and they requested that I should talk about her in the past tense. And I'm afraid I simply choked up and I couldn't go on. I'm really not easily moved to tears.

But I was so overcome with sadness that I had to ask them to go away. And I know that today there are countless people in this country and around the world who have experienced the same sudden access of unexpected emotion. And I think millions of us are trying to understand why we are feeling this deep and personal and almost familial sense of loss. Perhaps it's partly that she's always been a changeless human reference point in British life.

The person who all the surveys say appears most often in our dreams. So unvarying in her Polestar radiance that we have perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal. But I think our shock is keener today because we are coming to understand in her death the full magnitude of what she did for us all.

And think of what we asked that 25-year-old woman all those years ago. To be the person so globally trusted that her image should be on every unit of our currency. Every postage stamp. The person in whose name all justice is dispensed in this country. Every law passed to whom every Minister of the Crown swears allegiance. And for whom every member of our armed services is pledged if necessary to lay down their lives. Think what we asked of her in that moment. Not just to be the living embodiment in her DNA of the history and continuity and unity of this country. But to be the figurehead of our entire system.

The keystone in the vast arch of the British state. A role that only she could fulfil because in the brilliant and durable bargain of the constitutional monarchy. Only she could be trusted to be above any party political or commercial interest.

And to incarnate impartially the very concept and essence of the nation. Think what we asked of her and think what she gave. She showed the world not just how to reign over a people, she showed the world how to give, how to love and how to serve.

And as we look back at that vast arc of service its sheer duration is almost impossible to take in. She was the last living person in British public life to have served in uniform in the Second World War. She was the first female member of the Royal Family in a thousand years to serve full time in the armed forces. And that impulse to do her duty carried her right through into her tenth decade to the very moment in Balmoral, as my Right Honourable Fenter said, only three days ago when she saw off her fourteenth Prime Minister and welcomed her fifth seat. And I can tell you in that audience she was as radiant and as knowledgeable and as fascinated by politics as ever I can remember and as wise in her advice as anyone I know, if not wiser. And over that extraordinary span of public service with her naturally retentive and inquiring mind I think, and doubtless many of the fifteen would agree, that she became the greatest statesman and diplomat of all. And she knew instinctively how to cheer up the nation, how to lead a celebration. I remember her innocent joy more than ten years ago after the opening ceremony of the London Olympics when I told her that the leader of a friendly Middle Eastern country seemed actually to believe that she had jumped out of a helicopter in a pink dress and parachuted into the stadium. And I remember her equal pleasure on being told just a few weeks ago that she had been a smash hit in her performance with Paddington Bear. And perhaps more importantly, she knew how to keep us going when times were toughest. Okay, that's enough.

We'll stop right there because they're coming up on the end. But you can watch the whole thing. I put it on my Facebook pages, okay, so you can go check it out there. It really is amazing, but you know, you talked about that example of her to give, to love, to serve, to do her duty, how to cheer up a nation. She was an impact player and she wasn't political.

And don't we need more of that in America? A great example, Christian or not, I'm hopeful that she's a believer that I'll see her in heaven. But besides that, just the example of her life, 70 year reign, longest reigning monarch in British history, and to make it pretty much never about her. It was always about the country and her countrymen to give, to love, to serve, to do her duty. That's a pretty good example of the life of Jesus Christ and the life we're all called to. So let's make sure we're looking in a mirror between now and eight or nine days from now and they finally lay her to rest.