Does God Have a Hand in Man’s Wars?
WHEN nations go to war and military forces clash on the battlefield, where does God stand? Brazen assertions by political and religious leaders have raised grave doubts in the minds of many; yes, some wonder if God is even interested in the affairs of men. In point is the statement in the Muncie, Indiana, Star, of March, 1952, which said: “Bishop sees God using U. S. to win world back to freedom.” While we consider that claim, it is also interesting to note that during the second world war while prayers for a victorious peace arose from the churches in the United States, equally fervent prayers for the success of the Axis powers were offered up by the leaders of some of those same religious organizations in Germany and her allies. Surely God is not on both sides. What is God’s position in time of war?
God’s dealings with his creatures are governed by his outstanding attributes o wisdom, justice, love and power. (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 104:24; 62:11; 1 John 4:8) Such have certainly been manifest in the deliverances he has brought about for his people. In the sixteenth century before Christ God heard the anguished cry of the children of Israel under totalitarian bondage in Egypt and in defiance of Egypt’s pagan gods and its military power he manifested his power by delivering them. They had no claim on God, but he justly was their Owner, their Redeemer. As he reminded them when they gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai in the third month after their exodus from Egypt: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, that I might carry you on wings of eagles and bring you to myself. And now if you will strictly obey my voice and will indeed keep my covenant, then you will certainly become my special property out of all other peoples, because the whole earth belongs to me. And you yourselves will become to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” And he further counseled them: “You must never have any other gods against my face.”—Ex. 19:4-6; 20:3, NW.
With those principles to guide them, they became known as the nation Jehovah fought for. He thus showed his love for them by favoring them, and the wisdom of his actions was manifest in that it all worked for the furtherance of his purpose. As he had declared to Pharaoh through his spokesman Moses a short time before: “In fact, for this cause I have kept you in existence, for the sake of showing you my power and in order to have my name declared in all the earth.” And surely Jehovah’s miraculous deliverance of his people Israel through the Red Sea and his destruction of the Egyptian hosts did demonstrate his power and caused him to be talked about and his name to be known far and wide.—Ex. 9:16; Josh. 2:10, 11, NW.
But can we say that one deliverance on behalf of the nation proved that God would continue to deliver each individual in the nation? No; because three thousand men of those saved through the Red Sea were later destroyed for engaging in rebellious idolatry while Moses was away in the mountain. (Ex. 32:1-4, 27, 28) Nor can we say that Jehovah’s fighting for the nation once, or often, meant that he would always do so. He delivered the nation of Israel from Egypt, he saved them from the Philistine forces when David was a lad, he fought for them against Midian, and again against the combined forces of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir; but in 607 B.C. when the Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar wheeled into position against Jerusalem their prayers for deliverance availed them nothing. Why? Because they were not acting consistent with their prayers. They were not keeping the covenant God had made with them; they did not ‘obey his voice.’—Ex. 14:30; 1 Sam. 17:46; Judg. 7:19-23; 2 Chron. 20:22, 23; Jer. 9:12-16.
Yet God had previously delivered them when they were actually provoking him. When in the wilderness on their way out of Egypt, after having witnessed the glorious power of Jehovah in executing the ten plagues, “the sons of Israel got quite afraid and began to cry out to Jehovah. And they began to say to Moses: ‘Is it because there are no burial places at all in Egypt that you have taken us here to die in the wilderness? What is this that you have done to us in leading us out of Egypt? Is this not the word we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, “Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians”? For it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than for us to die in the wilderness.’” As the psalmist later recounted the event: “Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy loving-kindnesses, but were rebellious at the sea, even at the Red Sea. Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known.”—Ex. 14:10-12, NW; Ps. 106:7, 8, AS.
Was the rebelliousness of some unappreciative men to be permitted to change the purpose of God? Certainly not. He had promised in Eden that he would raise up a Seed or deliverer; to Abraham he had foretold that the promised One would be one of his descendants; and the family head Judah was prophetically assured that that one would come through his line. (Gen. 3:15; 22:15-18; 49:10) This arrangement of God to extend blessings to all the nations of the earth was not to be turned back. “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa. 55:11, AS) So the psalmist points to God’s wisdom when he says: “Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake.” This underscores the vindication of Jehovah’s name and purpose as being of far greater importance than the destiny of any men or nations of earth. That generation of Israelites was destroyed and did not enter the Promised Land, because of continued disobedience, but Jehovah’s purpose had not failed.
THIS WORLD IS NOT GOD’S
Keeping in mind our brief review of God’s dealings with his people in times past, we shall find that a few more statements from his Word make his position in relation to the factions of this world very plain. Christ Jesus in prayer to his Father said: “I came out as your representative.” And when he spoke, it was ‘not of his own originality,’ but he talked of the things he had seen and heard from his Father in heaven. He said of the Kingdom, which is given him by Jehovah God, “My kingdom is no part of this world. . . . my kingdom is not from this source.” However, the apostle Paul identified the one controlling this world when he pointed to Satan the Devil as the “god of this system of things.” And Jesus himself said: “The ruler of the world is coming. And yet he has no hold on me.” Surely if the god or ruler of this world has no hold on Jesus, neither do any of the divided factions of his world organization. He is not on their side, and neither is his Father, for Jesus clearly said, “I and the Father are one.”—John 17:8; 14:10; 18:36; 2 Cor. 4:4; John 14:30; 10:30, NW; Dan. 7:13, 14.
Oblivious to these Scriptural facts, Dr. Billington of the Akron, Ohio, Baptist Temple, when speaking of the war in Korea, said: “Drop the A-bomb and stop it. God gave it to us. Let’s use it to protect our Bibles, churches, schools and America’s way of life.” But if God gave it to the United States, who gave it to Russia? Would it not be more reasonable, and Scriptural, to say that the “ruler of the world” made it accessible to both sides, because both, as part of his world, are part of his divided and confused organization? Adding further to the religious confusion on the subject, Monsignor W. T. Green, speaking in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York city, said: ‘War is part of God’s plan to populate the kingdom of heaven.’ If that is so, then why pray for the return of loved ones from the front? Indeed, why pray for peace at all? Obviously, the whole effort to drag God into the conflict is based on specious reasoning.
After all, are any of the nations really Christian, so they can claim that God is with them? Since nearly all claim theirs as the way to security and prosperity, do they conform to the requirements set out at 2 Chronicles 20:20 (AS): “Believe in Jehovah your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper”? The pagan world admittedly and openly does not believe Jehovah God or his prophets, but what of Christendom? Not only do they fail to believe in Jehovah, but they try to keep others from learning of him. Why, in the new Revised Standard Version of the Bible the translators have tried to make him a nameless “God” or “Lord” by taking his name out of his own Book, and then the religious world persecutes those who bear that name. They have fallen into the class “having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power,” as they espouse the evolution theory and teach that “man was not a special creation but has been developed from the ape.” (2 Tim. 3:5, NW) Jesus said: “Broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.” (Matt. 7:13, 14, NW) But modern-day Christendom, together with its political leaders, has embraced the line of interfaith and thereby accepts in religious brotherhood all who practice religion, no matter how degrading its form, in all the world.
“But to the wicked God says: ‘What right have you to recount my statutes, and to take my covenant upon your lips? For you hate instruction, and you cast my words behind you! If you see a thief, you are friendly with him; and you make common cause with adulterers. You charge your mouth with evil, and your tongue frames up deceit. You sit down and speak against your brother, against the son of your mother you utter slander. These things you have done and am I to be silent? You thought that I was just like yourself! I will correct you and set it forth in your sight.’” (Ps. 50:16-21, AT) In his own Word God plainly tells them that he is not in league with them and that he has no part in their wicked practices.
POSITION OF WORLD’S RELIGION
However, the clergy and other leaders of thought of the world continue to try to implicate God in the world’s divisive affairs through the statements they make for public consumption. With such effect, John Gerhard, in his Loci Theologici, quotes Luther as saying: “What else is war than to punish wrong and evil? . . . Although it does not seem that killing and robbing is a Christian work, yet it is in truth a work of love. . . . Therefore God honors the sword so highly that He calls it His own ordinance and does not want that one may say or imagine that man has invented or instituted it. For the hand that wields such sword and kills is no longer man’s hand but God’s hand, and not man but God hangs, quarters, decapitates, kills, and wages war. They are all God’s works and His judgments.” Then, too, members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church were urged by Bishop Nichols, as reported in The Philadelphia Independent, of August 12, 1950, “As followers of Christ we cannot afford to stand idly by. The cause of democracy is the cause of the church and now that the issue is joined openly, we must do what we can to make ourselves felt . . . I call upon the entire membership of the First Episcopal District to give their utmost backing to the cause of Democracy and the United Nations.”
No matter what the faction, someone seems to be ready to proclaim that God is with it. But do these public proclamations and prayers gain the friendship and favor of God? Do they assure that he is on their side? Rather, his Word tells us at James 4:4 (NW): “Do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God.” So instead of making friends with God, they are making friends with the world by lauding and supporting its schemes, and that makes them enemies of God.
Instead of being eager to proclaim that they have God on their side or desiring to get him on their side, it would be far better for men to work to get themselves on God’s side by studying his Word and conforming to its righteous precepts. Instead of praying for God to bless their political, military or religious systems, they should learn to pray with sincerity as Jesus instructed: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will come to pass, as in heaven, also upon earth.” (Matt. 6:9, 10, NW) They would do well to fix their attention, not on a new world-order supported by military might, but on the “new heavens and new earth” that God creates and that will last forever.
CAUSE OF DISTRESS
In addition to showing us the way of God’s approval, the Bible does not leave us without an adequate explanation of the present world conditions. The twelfth chapter of Revelation clearly shows that since the establishment of the long-prayed-for kingdom A.D. 1914 Satan has been hurled out of heaven and down to the earth. “On this account be glad, you heavens and you who reside in them! Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.” (Rev. 12:12, NW) And he has brought great woe, both in increased war and distress to afflicted mankind and in confusion in the minds of those who do not know the truth as to the purpose of God.
We cannot say that the outcome of the world’s modern-day wars is governed by God, when they are powered by greedy commercial and political elements. Love and justice are not factors in their execution, when God-fearing persons as well as wicked ones are destroyed. Surely it is not a demonstration of God’s power or wisdom when high-powered explosives rip open and make uninhabitable large sections of the earth, which God ‘created not a waste, but formed to be inhabited.’ (Isa. 45:18) Nor do these wars serve to ‘make his name known’ because he has delivered his people or vindicated his purpose by fighting for the side of righteousness in them. No, because none of the factions in these wars are his people. He makes clear his rejection of their professions of devotion, saying: “When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”—Isa. 1:15.
Instead of their demonstrating his divine attributes and purpose, man’s selfish wars are a negation of them all. But the time is now near, at Armageddon, when God will fight for righteousness and “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” (Rev. 11:18, NW) Then will come a peaceful new world in which “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.”—Isa. 11:9, AS.