Concerning War

I wonder if any others feel a bit conflicted about the news of the killing of the chief enemy of our country (maybe world). World enemy may well be a better description because this man’s world view results in violence that reaches across the globe.

The report sounded more like an episode of NCIS or a movie than a reality to me. I have been fortunate to be somewhat insulated from this man and his chaos. I haven’t gone through an airport screening since the new “pat downs” have been put in place. None of my family or friends were killed in the fall of the twin towers or pentagon. I don’t live in a city at the top of his list to attack (but rather a small town in an isolated remote rural area). I rarely travel to cities and never to countries that are now on high alert or use mass transit systems that are under close watch for assaults. That's me, but there are millions who are affected daily.

For one or two seasons, my husband and I watched the TV show “24” and found it to be most scary! Those episodes showed more destructive potential than we needed to know (TMI). I am aware that there are bombs out there like the one in Oklahoma City some years ago, nuclear weapons in God only knows whose hands, biological and chemical weapons, as well as others I can’t even imagine. There are millions of people who live under the constant cloud of terrorism fostered by that man.

Can you believe there are people like him across the world who sit around and plan ways to commit mass murder, destruction, and chaos? Why would they do that? I’m thinking it might be what we have been studying in Revelation 6. It might be the white horse and rider that goes forth to conquer and the red one to take peace from the earth. Conquest and war have been man’s proclivity from Cain and Abel down to today.

There have always been individuals or groups who want to take God’s place in ruling the world. Man without God is greedy, ugly, vicious, and barbaric. Jeremiah 10:23 says “I know, O LORD, that a man's way is not in himself, Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps.”

Killing a captured enemy leader has been practiced as long as history is recorded; and in studying the Old Testament and particularly David, death of a captured king was the acceptable way of war and of life. For that matter, isn’t that why Jesus was executed? Wasn’t it to get rid of the leader so the followers would no longer be troublesome?

Still, I’m glad I did not have to pull the trigger or make the call.

On the other hand, I strongly believe in whole-heartedness. If one is going to the time, trouble, and expense of competing in an athletic event, for goodness sake, play to win. If a nation deems it necessary to go to war, it should go with all its might and go to win! The “Go Big or Go Home” principle seems to me the only sensible one. I don’t understand asking men and women to die for a half-way cause.

I guess what I’m saying inside my head, is “This is war, let’s be in it to win it.”

I’m confident that when Jesus returns leading the armies of heaven, He won’t come half-heartedly, but rather brandishing a mighty sword. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

♫ “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.” ♫
Harriet B. Stowe 1861

Glory!