War

Prophetic

Valerie Cullers 12 Comments

On Sunday morning, October 8th, I woke up and looked at the news feed on my phone. I read about the Hamas attack on Jewish settlements on the border of Gaza. This attack looked much different from the attacks Israel has faced from Hamas in the last 15 years. I then thought about Bill Salus and how he had written a book about Psalm 83 and a future war Israel would be fighting with the diverse ethnic groups around its borders. Bill just happened to be at a prophecy conference that morning and was giving an impromptu talk that I listened to. He said we must wait and see how it will develop to see if this war fits Psalm 83 in the Scriptures. Since then, I have listened to Amir Tsarfati, a Messianic Jew who is also an Israeli. He is convinced that the Psalm 83 war happened in 1948 when Israel fought its War of Independence. He feels the current events might possibly be a prelude to the war of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

So who is right? Well, we must all wait and see if this particular war has any prophetic implications or not. You see, when thinking about prophecy, we don’t make Biblical prophecy fit the events that are happening. The events must fit the prophecy exactly in order to be true. Also, many times, prophecies have more than one fulfillment, one closer to the time it was written and one further down the timeline.

Recently, Jack Hibbs said, “The world is catching up to the Bible.” Thousands of years ago, a couple of hundred prophecies were written about the return of Christ. Others were written about Israel and what would happen to it in the last days. I believe that just as over three hundred prophecies were fulfilled about Jesus’ first coming, so the remaining prophecies will be fulfilled about what will happen to Israel in the last days. But they will all be fulfilled in God’s good time and not our own.

In the gospels, Jesus talked about what the world would look like immediately before his return. We see that the world does look very close to what He said it would be like. We were also instructed to watch and pray. What we can know is that time is getting short. As we watch nations aligning against Israel, we know it will have to defend itself against a larger host of armies at some point in the future.

So does this particular war fulfill any prophecies in the Bible? At the moment, we must wait and see and not jump to any conclusions.

Contagion

Valerie Cullers 14 Comments

When I first saw the images of the attack on Israel, the first thing I thought was, “Hatred.” Yes, hatred is the contagion that drives these acts of violence. I have since watched the protests against Israel, many were carrying signs and slogans with horrible sayings on them against the Jewish people. Again, I thought, “Hatred.”

You see, every murder, every act of violence, every war springs from evil within the human heart. The motivation could be hatred, jealousy or greed but all of these acts spring from emotions hiding in the heart. In the case of the Israeli – Hamas War being conducted now, hatred is at the center of it all. People are taught to hate from the time they are little, and hatred pervades some people like a sick evil.

Like every other contagion, hatred is easy to assimilate into our bodies and souls. It is natural to pick up an offense and let it fester in our souls until it spews out of our mouths in some form of a derogatory comment. As a believer in Jesus Christ, I must fight the temptation to pick up this hatred in any form it comes to me. It could be in the aerosol of a newscast or in the germ of an article I read in the news.

I’ve thought a lot about what Jesus would have me do in relation to this conflict. Yes, I can choose sides, but I must choose not to hate. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5: 43-45.

How do I do this? I can pray for mercy on the non-military population. I can pray that innocent civilians will not get hurt. I can pray for aid to reach those who need it. There are lots of things I can pray for those I believe are in the wrong. I can pray for a lasting peace and an end to hostilities. I can pray for good leadership. The list goes on. And most importantly, I can pray that the contagion of hate will not permeate my own heart and soul.

Image by Astral Ember. Courtesy of PIxabay.

Give Peace A Chance

Valerie Cullers 24 Comments

Last Saturday evening, I was reading the news before I went to bed. I read where the US had deployed the 101st Airborne Division to the northern border of Romania, about three miles from the border of Ukraine. Brigadier General John Lubas stated that the 101st, “The Screaming Eagles,” were not deployed in a training mission but in a combat-ready mission. He stated they were ready to go into Ukraine should the conflict escalate or if a NATO country was attacked. The 101st Airborne has not been deployed to Europe since our entry into World War II eighty years ago.

As I thought about this fact, I thought to myself, “We’re getting ready for a ground war.” I then checked the stats. Before the war started in Ukraine, the US had 60,000 troops stationed in Europe; now there are 100,000 soldiers there at the ready. What bothers me most about these statistics is that at the moment there is not a serious effort to get the parties involved in peace negotiations.

The US could press the Ukrainians to the peace table but it is not being done. The fact that it would take so little for the US to get involved in a ground war in Ukraine should give us all pause. Just think what would happen if one errant missile landed in a Romanian or a Polish village. Would that be the pretext for NATO getting involved in the current war? Wars have been started in the past with less than that as a provocation.

There was a line in a chorus that protesters sang during the 1970s while the Vietnam War was going on. It went like this, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” Over and over we sang this line. Just give peace a chance. And now, is anyone seriously pursuing peace in the Ukrainian conflict? Not that I can see. Anyone who mentions pursuing peace is shouted down and pressured to stop talking. I want to know, when did peace become a dirty word?

If you feel like I do, let’s do something. I know we can make a difference. We can write our representatives in Washington and let them know we want them to slow down this rush to war. They are holding the purse strings that are allowing this war to continue. And of course, we can pray. We must pray that people will wake up and quit blindly marching to war. We can pray that the Russians will not make a mistake that will draw all of Europe and the US into a ground war. And finally we can pray that men on all sides of the conflict will be open to negotiations and give peace a chance.

Image by Engin Akyurt. Courtesy of Pixabay

Gravitas

Valerie Cullers 16 Comments

Gravitas is a word we don’t hear much of these days. It is a Latin word that has made its way into our vocabulary. It means, “dignity, seriousness or solemnity of manner,” according to Oxford Languages.

There is a lot to be serious about these past few weeks since Russia invaded the Ukraine. Unfortunately, thanks to the twenty-four-hour news cycle, some have made comments that show a lack of gravitas or at least good sense. I have heard remarks calling for the assassination of Vladimir Putin. Do not these people remember what started World War I? In 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo. A chain of events followed and Europe was plunged into the First World War. This ended with the loss of 40 million lives and the devastation of Europe.

Many are calling for NATO to establish a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine. If just one NATO plane is shot down by the Russians, it will invoke Article 5, the commitment clause of the Alliance, forcing all countries in the Alliance to engage in the war. War is hell; there is no doubt about that. We are no longer talking about conventional war, though. Many of the nations involved have a nuclear capability, and heaven forbid, we could be talking about nuclear war.

Those of us who have lived in the nuclear age know that the possibility of nuclear war is very real and we should be ever so careful to not enter into a conflict that could trigger such a war. Words matter and we need to have a certain gravitas when discussing the possibility of actions that could indeed escalate into a nuclear conflict.

Image by Boa Photo Studio, courtesy of Pixabay.