Arguably, Winston Churchill was the Twentieth Century's greatest orator. Historians like to say he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. When asked Churchill's contribution to the successful outcome of the Second World War, one critic remarked, "He talked." Indeed he did, but how he talked. His speeches are still read and marveled at today, particularly the ones from 1940 when Britain stood virtually along against Hitler and Churchill had to rally his nation to faithfulness. What strikes us about those messages today is that the most memorable parts, the segments which still soar and which in that day brought audiences to their feet and drove Brits to make just one more sacrifice, those portions are all found in the concluding words, in the final paragraph.

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On June 4, 1940, Churchill had the unenviable task of explaining his country's defeat at Dunkirk, when hundreds of thousands of English troops were evacuated from the French coast and brought home across the Channel. Most of the lengthy speech gave detailed explanations and no-nonsense analyses of what had happened, and what Churchill expected to occur. He will not guarantee the Nazis will not invade and so far, he had not been able to bring any other nation to their defense. They are alone. With that, he concludes:

. . . we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . .

People today with no idea of the context of those remarks can practically recite them by heart. Citizens who kept diaries in those dark days would write: "Winston spoke by wireless tonight and rallied the nation." A Scottish soldier, evacuated from Dunkirk and dumped on a road outside Dover, scared and in shock, heard Churchill on the radio that night. Later, he said, "I cried when I heard him say 'we shall never surrender' and I thought, 'We're going to win!'"

Two weeks later, Churchill began to prepare his people for what history would call the Battle of Britain. In a short speech, he said, "Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization . . . . The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us." Stand up to Hitler and Europe would be free, he promised. Fail to do so and the Dark Ages would return. Then, he concluded:

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour.'

Some would object, with good reason, that Churchill had weeks to prepare a single message, a staff to handle his research, and days to seek the ideal closing. Pastors deliver two or more messages a week, and do not have the time, energy, or resources to hammer out works of oratorical splendor which will be studied in seminary classrooms of the future.