| Highlights of DAWN | March 1981 |
No More War
“He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” —Micah 4:3
WAR has been defined as “the use of organized military force by a state to achieve its ends against the physical opposition of a hostile state or states.” The history of man is a history of war, and as one historian wrote, “The dim past of war leaders and warriors recedes far behind history.” An excerpt from another reads, “From the earliest times the conquest of one people by another has been the more or less regular preoccupation of the human race.” The early beginnings of militarism were generally predatory in nature. Small armies were developed principally for the purpose of plundering prosperous neighboring communities, stealing their goods and enslaving their people. As a defense against such encroachments, other armies were developed for protection.
The first recorded battle of the Old Testament (Gen. 14), fought in Abraham’s time, was typical of this kind of warfare. Later as tribes and nations grew, so did their ability to arm, and wars became more and more destructive to human life and property. By the time of the Persian invasion of Greece in the fifth century, it is estimated that the Persian army was 2,600,000 strong. The subsequent world powers of Greece and Rome boasted even greater armies, and for nearly six centuries proceeded to divide and conquer by dint of overpowering military force.
The subsequent wars of the Middle Ages are summed up by another historian as follows: “The collapse of the Roman Empire ushered in a period of open aggression and invasion by barbarian peoples that laid open the western world to centuries of conquest, rapine, destruction, and death. An estimate of the resulting devastation would be impossible. Procopius, the Byzantine historian, reports on Vandals occupying Carthage and the adjoining areas of North Africa. He estimates that the total population of this fertile region was about five million. Yet, at the end of the wars, he reports that there were few living human beings anywhere in these areas. The population of Italy at the beginning of the period of the great migration [wars] is variously placed at between 5,000,000 and 15,000,000. Yet, at the end of the fighting, depopulation had resulted in the survival of a little more than one-third. It is estimated that during this period the population of Rome itself dropped from 500,000 to 3,000. For the Middle Ages generally, it is impossible to assemble statistics of war costs and casualties. The combination of barbarian invasions, Islamic conquests, the Crusades, and Turkish and Mongol onslaughts accounted for almost unbelievable devastation in Europe and in Asia.”
During the Thirty Years’ War which followed (1618-1648), the population of Germany was estimated to be 15,000,000 when the war began, and less than 5,000,000 when it ended. The succeeding Napoleonic Wars from 1796 to 1815, according to the Carnegie Endowment Study, were responsible for the overall deaths of some 17,000,000 people. Some of the frequent wars following that era until the advent of the more recent world wars, likewise were terrible in their severity and loss of life. The first three American wars—the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War—were light in their casualties as compared with some of the foreign conflicts during this period, such as the Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Turkish War, Boer War, and Russo-Japanese War. The Lopez War (1865-1870) between Paraguay and the alliance of Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil reduced the population of Paraguay to a point where only 3 percent of the men were left at the war’s end and less than 14 percent of the women. Fourteen years of the Taiping Rebellion in China has been cited as perhaps the most destructive civil war of the nineteenth century, with a total loss of life estimated between 20,000,000 and 40,000,000. How aptly Jesus’ prophetic description fits this period of earth’s history, “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars.” (Matt. 24:6) History, in recalling the years from 1496 B.C. to 1861 A.D., “shows 227 years of peace to 3,130 of war. The story of western civilization from Greece to the League of Nations shows an average interval between wars of only two years.”
Overshadowing by far all previous wars for loss of life and inestimable destruction upon the earth have been the wars post-dating 1914. Of these the historian writes, “The two world wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, with their various satellite conflicts have introduced a note of savagery that men had thought belonged only to the primitive times of the past. The fascination of ideological disputes, the fabulous destructiveness of modern weapons, and the greater number of individuals involved, produced numbers of casualties that are reminiscent of the days of the barbarian invasions of Europe.” The aggregate number of casualties estimated for these world engulfing conflicts is somewhere between 90,000,000 and 100,000,000. Their monetary costs are staggering. The overall direct cost of World War II alone was estimated at more than one trillion dollars.
Beyond measurement are the social and moral consequences of war. Again we turn to the historian: “The special tragedy of war for children is highlighted in the UNESCO study entitled ‘War-Handicapped Children.’ It was estimated that there were 30,000,000 displaced persons in Europe alone (with 18,000,000 cast out of their countries). According to the Red Cross, 13,000,000 children in Europe had lost their natural protectors. (One-third of the children in Germany had lost their fathers.) France had 250,000 orphans; Greece had 380,000 orphans out of fewer than 3,000,000 children. In Poland there were 500,000 children without fathers or mothers.”
We have just briefly touched on the unimaginable, incalculable toll of human suffering, loss of life, and destruction already experienced through the wars of the past centuries and of modern times. And yet today we have not learned to renounce war. In the few brief years since the last global conflict we have rapidly achieved such sophistication in our weaponry power to destroy, that the world now possesses an overkill of many times the entire population of this planet. No longer is war a sport; no longer can war be accepted as a social institution; no longer can governments chance the alternative of war to achieve their objectives. And yet the buildup for war continues at a rapid pace.
While the age-old motive of imperialism still exists, today the overriding influence giving impetus to this mad rush toward total destruction is international distrust and fear. True, the implementation of war has changed drastically over the centuries, yet its causes have remained essentially the same as those of the first men who raised their hands against each other—greed, selfishness, fear, distrust, jealousy, poverty, and ethnic hatreds.
As to the future of war the historian writes, “Man’s great energy and skill in producing weapons of destruction seems to assure war a future; we have gone half a decade from the ‘A’-bomb to the ‘H’-bomb, and microbes are enlisted for a potential holocaust.” This outlook concurs with the statement of the ancient Prophet Joel, who, pointing to this military phenomenon of our time wrote: “Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears.”—Joel 3:9,10
Looking back over this savage scene of several thousand years of man’s inhumanity to man, we find little outcry against this insane course of human affairs until very recent times. And even within our generation, the various efforts made to outlaw war, to limit armaments, to settle international differences at the conference table, and harken to a worldwide cry for peace, have proven ineffective against man’s great propensity for making war. In prophetic words the Apostle Paul referred to this baffling dilemma, “For when they shall say, Peace and safety: then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” True to this prophecy, our day has heard an unprecedented cry for peace and safety. After the first spasm of war ended in 1918, a League of Nations was formed to assure peace. War was “outlawed” under the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact in the 1930’s, but before the end of that very decade another spasm of war with even greater destruction swept over the world. Eight long years later, out of colossal devastation of human life and property and war-inflicted rubble, the United Nations emerged to strive once again to assure a future of peace for the world. But the outcome of this was foretold, “Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries. … Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; speak the word, and it shall not stand. … Say ye not, A confederacy to all them to whom the people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.” (Isa. 8:9-12) Of the many thousands of hours of rhetoric spoken and listened to in the peace-making efforts of the Security Council of United Nations, most have come to naught. Of the agreements secured, few have stood. The intervening brush wars of Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Revolutionary Africa, Cuba, and Central America, all attest to the ineffectiveness of the council table. At best this suggests that men today are skirting a narrow path between “cold” and “hot” wars.
Surely, as long as the great powers continue to assert their primacy, and remain in the business of competing in an arms race, the present confederacies of men dedicated to peace are powerless to stem the tide of future conflict, as devastating to the earth as such spasms of war would necessarily be. “Behold their valiant ones shall cry without: the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly.” (Isa. 33:7) As we shrink from this vision of the future, the words of Jesus ring in our ears: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake [or by the elect] those days shall be shortened.”—Matt. 24:21,22
As dark and foreboding as the words of this prophecy are in describing our day and foretelling our future, they are, nevertheless, fraught with hope. While we see the world become increasingly helpless in stemming the multitude of adverse man-made currents in the tide of world affairs, drawing us inexorably toward the brink of a final maelstrom of destruction, we have this assurance from Jesus, “Those days shall be shortened.” Mankind will be saved, but only by the intervention of God through the agency of the Christ (the elect).
These impending events are featured in another Bible prophecy, Psalm 46. Our day is there envisioned in symbol as a time when mountains (kingdoms) are carried into the midst of the sea (undermined and destroyed by social revolution). The waters of this sea roar and are troubled, and mountains shake. “The heathen [Gentile nations], raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. … Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.” Thus is described the extremity to which God allows man to go to prove his inability to avert self-inflicted desolation of the earth. The Heavenly Father’s divine intervention is foretold in verses 10, 11, and 9. “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen [Gentile nations], I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” “He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.”
The people who know God are mentioned in the fourth verse of this psalm. As they view this trouble it is stated they will not fear, because even in the very darkest hour they are able to see the great salvation of God. This they perceive through the prophecies and the promises of his Word, depicted here as “a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.” Through the comfort and hope and insight of the Scriptures, our mental vision pierces earth’s dark night of terror and glimpses the glorious kingdom of peace beyond.
One important glimpse is afforded us in a beautiful prophecy couched in the ninth chapter of Isaiah. There we are assured that the kingdom established by God will succeed where present and past governments have failed. Its success will be due to the great ability of the king who has been appointed to rule. This divine king, though invisible, will be recognized by all as the one formerly born in Bethlehem, who throughout the thirty-three-and-one-half years of his short life was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; who healed the sick, caused the lame to leap, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear; who wept over the impoverishment of men and their rejection of him; who poured out his life unto death; who voluntarily offered his perfect human life on the cross to ransom us from the power of the grave; who said, while he yet lived, that like as the Father had power to give life, so also he had given the son power to give life; and because of this the hour would come “in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth.” (John 5:28,29) Surely a ruler with such power and proven love for man can restore peace to the earth: and so says this prophecy: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God [ruler], the Everlasting Father [lifegiver], the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”—Isa. 9:6,7
From time to time in the course of human events, benevolent men have emerged to receive positions of power and rulership, but in spite of noble humanitarian efforts, striving for peace, they have effected little change in the savage complexion of history. The deep animosities that have traditionally existed in the various fragmentations of the peoples of this earth have been too great to overcome. Universal rule or one-world government has been impossible to achieve and efforts at worldwide unity have always been stymied. A recent observer of present world affairs noted that the only foreseeable solution for avoiding future chaos is a one-world government, but he hastened to concede that the myriad of fragmented ideologies and selfish interests throughout the world make the hope of its accomplishment all but nil.
Various prophetic statements concerning Christ’s kingdom inform us that he will succeed where others have failed. His kingdom will be worldwide in scope and universal. In Daniel the second chapter, this kingdom, set up by God, is pictured as a “great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (vss. 35,44) In Zechariah 9:10, the prophecy reads: “And he shall speak peace unto the heathen [Gentiles] and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.” A program will be enacted causing all men to communicate in harmony and work together in oneness of purpose. “For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.”—Zeph. 3:9
Another thing apparent as we view the failure of the past and present governments to achieve peace and happiness for their people is the general selfish response of people toward even good reforms. Until this hurtful human propensity is altered it is unrealistic to believe that any government, regardless of how well motivated, or powerful, can bring absolute peace to the earth. It is often mentioned that if all men would just observe the Golden Rule, many of earth’s problems would disappear. Jesus summed up the simple law of God for man as follows: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. … Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”—Matt. 22:37-39
In Jeremiah’s prophecy we are told that this summation of God’s law will be the covenant basis of Christ’s kingdom. His kingdom will provide an effective practical educational program for the writing of his law in their inward parts and writing it in their hearts. I “will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.” (Jer. 31:33,34) Putting God’s law in the inward parts of man is in essence describing how their natural inclination for selfishness will undergo gradual change to motivations of charity, generosity, and love for righteousness, through which their words and actions toward God and toward their fellowman will be all for good and not for hurt.
Micah, the fourth chapter, from which our theme text is taken, describes this government of Christ and his elect church as the “mountain [kingdom] of the house of the Lord.” It is the setting up of this kingdom in power that becomes the agency through which God shortens the awful experience of threatening doom with which this age ends. As this prophecy indicates, those days will be shortened before man is destroyed from the face of the earth. Then Christ’s kingdom shall be established in the top of (or above) the mountains (existing governments of earth) and it shall be exalted above the hills (governments of lesser degree). This new government will not have to develop a huge military striking force to subdue the world. It will be recognized as that for which creation has long groaned and travailed and unknowingly waited. And when they see it, as this prophecy asserts, “people shall flow into it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion [Christ’s kingdom], and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem [the earthly representatives of Christ’s kingdom, the Ancient Worthies], and he shall judge among many people and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it. For all people will walk everyone in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.”—Mic. 4:1-5