Lt-General Sir William Dobbie, a devout Christian, played a significant role in turning the tide for Britain in World War II. And if more believers followed his example today, it would help to turn the tide in the war with wokery.
Indeed, wartime leader Winston Churchill described him as “fighting with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the other” (echoing Nehemiah 4:17) as he successfully defended Malta – dubbed “the most bombed place on the earth”!
He was also known as the general who stopped the war on November 11, 1918! A lieutenant-colonel at the time, it was he who signed the telegram calling for hostilities to cease at 1100 hours that day.
Called to “defend Malta at all costs” at the age of 60, Dobbie commanded 5,000 troops along with the huge respect of the island’s 270,000 people. Yet all that was initially available were 16 old anti-aircraft guns along with three Gladiator biplane fighters named Faith, Hope and Charity. But with God’s help, he succeeded.
He had earlier made a considerable contribution to peace in the Middle East when serious riots broke out between Jews and Arabs in 1929. Dobbie was a Bible-believing Christian who resorted to prayer as he sought the wisdom needed to stop the attacks. The violence flared as Arabs became anxious about growing Jewish immigration, and Dobbie, then a Brigadier and distant cousin of T E Lawrence (of Arabia fame), successfully brought calm to the situation as he sought God’s guidance!
With very few troops and widespread disorder throughout the country, he was faced with a dilemma. Rejecting outright suggestions such as placing the country under martial law or requesting RAF bombing raids on Arab villages, Dobbie turned to prayer.
It was hardly a textbook tactic but, when reinforcements arrived, he spread his men very thinly to cover as wide an area as possible, and the violence ceased in the early stages before things got out of hand. Out of gratitude, the Jewish community of Hebron (a particular focus of the riots) presented Dobbie with a silver Hebrew Bible.
It was while commanding troops in the Holy Land that year that Dobbie gave New Testaments to his soldiers, explaining (in a personal inscription) how they were “stationed at the place where the central event in human history occurred”.
More recently, Dobbie was the subject of a year-long exhibition at Jerusalem’s Christ Church, which has strong links to his family. A beautiful compound tucked away in the Old City, Christ Church has been the Israel headquarters for over 200 years of the Church’s Ministry among the Jewish people (CMJ), founded in London in 1809 to share the gospel with those who first brought it to us Gentiles.
The general’s son, Colonel Orde Dobbie, was a member of Christ Church with his wife Flo while living in Jerusalem during the 1970s and 80s, during which time he was instrumental in leading a future British General, Tim Cross, to faith in Christ. Major-General Cross (now retired) was struck by the reality of Christ’s resurrection on a visit to the Garden Tomb, where Jesus’ body is widely reputed to have been laid.
Appropriately enough, in view of Gen Dobbie’s achievement in restoring calm to Arab-Jewish conflict, Christ Church continues to reach out to both Jew and Arab with the message of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and Prince of Peace.
And as was shared at the 2026 Keswick Convention in England’s Lake District, Dobbie summed up the testimony of his life with these words: “Vital and uninterrupted contact with our Heavenly Father is the most wonderful thing in the world.”
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
