“It Has Begun”

October 8, 2023

When the underbrush is dry, the humidity is low, and the fuel for the fire is plentiful, it only takes a small spark to ignite a great conflagration.  The Palestinians breaching the walls of Gaza after repeated missile volleys into Israel, while on the Sabbath Day, is just the spark needed to ignite a world at war.  We hope and pray this does not begin!  But the Palestinians cry to other Islamic brothers and sisters may be all that is needed to bring other players in this long awaited battle for the heart and soul of Israel/Palestine.

The most difficult question for the Christian is this: “For whom do we pray?”  We know, or at least should know that some of the Palestinians are Christians who worship God in Christ as we do.  We also, as Christians, are aware of the historical alliance between the United States and Israel.  We also know that many Jews around the world have begun to worship Jesus as their Messiah.  We know beyond all doubt that there are may women and children in Palestine, and when Israel puts ground troops into Gaza to “clear out the terrorists,” it is likely many civilians, including women and children (non-combatants) will be wounded or die.  It is also clear that many Israelis are being held hostage by Hamas, ostensibly to serve as a bargaining chip or human shields in this struggle for the Palestinian homeland, so they may also die.  Israel has a right to defend their sovereign territory.  The United Nations has affirmed the right of the Palestinians to live in Palestine, the land of their fathers and mothers.  It is clear Israelis are building settlements on Palestinian land, despite the admonition of at least two US Presidents (Obama and Biden) to cease and not to do this expansion into Palestine.  But this warning has been ignored.

Who then has the greater condemnation? Israel who provoked this attack by squeezing out the life of  Palestine or the Palestinians who became radicalized to the point of going to war with Israel?  Violence is never the path to peace.  But all nations on this planet have engaged in violence, oppression, and war to obtain their stated ends.  Which of us is blameless in this regard?

As a Christian, I know the prophecies in the holy Scriptures.  I know that in the “last days” Gog and Magog (Russia and Iran) will invade and seek to destroy Israel.  This is called in modern literature as “the battle of Armageddon,” to be fought on or near Megiddo, and the valley of Jezreel, a plain near a tell named in the battle of Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III and the Canaanites in the 15^th century B.C.  The Revelation 16:12-16 is the only place Armageddon is mentioned by name in the Bible, when the angel pours out the sixth bowl of judgment.  “The kings of the earth are gathered for battle on the great Day of the Lord Almighty.”

Not being a prophet nor in the school of the prophets, a mere mortal has no place predicting the end of the world.  It strikes me, however, as a student of scripture, there is an eeriness in these unfolding events.  In World War I, in a time of diplomatic tension, due to alliances of nations, on June 28, 1914, a Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.  Austria-Hungary held Serbia responsible and declared war on 28 July.  Russia came to Serbia’s defense, and by 4 August, Germany, France and Britain were drawn into the war, with the Ottoman Empire joining in November the same year.  (Wikipedia)

We are living in a troubled time!  In the short period of my lifetime, I do not remember any time about which I felt greater concern than this time, our time, my children and my grandchildren’s time.  It is hard for me to characterize what I feel.  The world as I know and see it is a tinder keg of violence.  It seems as if we are “itching for war.”  In times past, when my parents and grandparents when through two world wars, there was a weariness with having any more war.  One of Roosevelt’s last acts was to lay the foundation for the United Nations, in the hope that reasonable nations could avoid doing again what the world had just done to itself during World War II.  Why did Japan need an empire in the Far East?  Why did Hitler need to have more territory than simply Germany?  And today, why does Russia need to gain territory to obtain again an empire as Peter the Great?  Ukraine is defending itself from Putin’s aggression.  The United States and Europe have allied themselves with Ukraine to fight for the right of a sovereign democratic nation not to be taken by another nation who simply wants to swallow them to gain more land.  The Chinese in Southeast Asia are moving to obtain more territory in the South Pacific.  The also want to absorb the democratic Republic of China or Taiwan, as they have absorbed the once free city of Hong Kong when Britain left.  The Islamic Republic of Iran would like to see the elimination of the State of Israel.  Did Iran fund and orchestrate the rebellion of Hamas this weekend (October 6-8, 2023) which is 50 years after the Yom Kippur War (1973) to prevent Israel and Saudi Arabia from changing the balance of power in the Middle East?  These are all questions we will ponder for days to come.

To summarize, this weekend I am feeling more anxious and less free.  It is certain to me that the fragility of our democratic way of life is now more tenuous today than it was even two days ago.  The seducing spirits (demonic) are afoot, bringing us closer to Armageddon.  Let us all pray that they will not succeed, but that God may choose to save us one more time from our desire to destroy each other and ourselves!  I am already weary of war and I have only just begun to read about it!  God forbid that the world’s nations should engage in another great war to “end all wars.”  One day we are likely to do it, not ending all wars, but ending ourselves as the human race.  That’s what Armageddon is all about.  It is about the world coming the brink of our own destruction and Christ returning in the midst of this war to deliver us from ourselves and from the destruction of the earth and creation as we know it.

So, in the great Day of the Lord’s coming, we shall surely say, as did the early Christians, “Maranatha!  “Come quickly, Lord Jesus Christ!  Come quickly!” Amen and Amen.

Let all of God’s people say, “Amen!”

“Amen!  We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ!”

Bill Wilson, servant of God by God’s grace and mercies! 

“Amen!”  “Amen and Amen!”