REFORMED WITNESS

Volume IX, October 2001, Number 10

Wars - Sign of the End

Things Which Must Shortly Come to Pass

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War! Bombs and bullets; rape and torture; death and maiming!

Even we Americans, who have not had the dogs of war unleashed on our land, on our cities, and on our homes, tremble at the horror of war. Scarcely less horrible than war is the aftermath of war: famine, pestilence, and social chaos.

War is no stranger to us. Those of us who are eighty have lived through two world wars, the Korean conflict, and the war in Vietnam. We have witnessed countless other smaller, yet violent, conflicts besides. Who knows when and where war will next erupt? If we include the strife between the races within the same country, it becomes clear how prevalent, and how near to us all, is war.

Our natural reaction to war and the rumors of it is fear, even terror. Then we quickly suppose that war is really unnecessary. How often did we not hear that, perhaps even say that, concerning the war in Vietnam? From this, we move on to the hope that war will be removed from the world and that peace will prevail.

The words of Jesus Christ on war in Matthew 24:6-8, as He continues His instruction about the end of the world, contradict our natural reaction to war:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

First, the disciples of Christ have no reason to fear: "See that ye be not troubled." In Luke 21:9, we are told: "Be not terrified." Second, war is necessary: "All these things must come to pass." Third, the hope that our world will be blessed with peace is a vain hope: "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars... nation shall rise against nation."

Christ now begins to answer the disciples' question: "What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" The disciples thought that the end would be preceded by one, great sign. Jesus does not deny this, as verse 30 shows, for He speaks of "the sign of the Son of man in heaven." But He teaches that there are also other signs of the end, and one of these is war.

Signs of the end of the world are events in creation, in history and in the church that show that Jesus is coming, that the end of the world approaches, and that the end is near. Such an event in creation would be an earthquake; such an event in the church would be apostasy; such an event in history would be war. These signs are specified in the Scriptures, and they are events that take place out in the open, where they are obvious to everybody. They are not private, secret signs that are given to a few special individuals by special revelation. This, of course, has always been a characteristic of the cults. Their leaders have claimed special revelations given to them privately about the nearness of the end of the world, and many people have been duped by these claims. The secrecy of these revelations contradicts the very idea of the biblical signs of the end, for biblical signs are open and obvious. The claim to special revelation about the end is a mark of the false prophets who try to deceive the elect in the last days, according to verses 23-26 of Matthew 24. It is the false prophets who say, "Behold, he is in the desert... behold, he is in the secret chambers," i.e., "I have some private, secret information about Christ's coming. Listen to me and follow me."

Even though the signs of the end are obvious to all, they serve as signs only to the believer. The unbeliever, as always, sees, but does not perceive and heed. The reason is not ignorance but unbelief. Only faith reads the signs aright and takes the warning to heart: The end is near! Jesus is coming!

The signs of the end do more than merely indicate that the end is coming. We cannot compare them, say, to a road-sign that says, "Chicago - 99 miles." Such a road-sign does indicate that Chicago is coming up, but it does not bring Chicago any nearer. A sign of the end does bring the end nearer. It is itself a means by which the end approaches or, to view it differently, a way in which everything is made ready for the end of the world. Rather than compare the sign of war to a sign-post that declares that a large city is so many miles away, we could compare it to the first, far-off rumblings of thunder that indicate the approach of the storm. This is why Jesus says that the signs generally and war in particular are necessary. This is also the idea of Jesus' calling war the beginning of sorrows in verse 8.

War is one of those signs of the end. Someone will certainly observe that there have always been wars in the world. They are not limited to the period shortly before the return of Christ. This is true. One of the main lessons of history is that man's desire for peace has never been achieved. Man has constantly been warring, or preparing to wage war. But this fact only shows that Christ has always been coming. From the moment of His ascension, He has been coming again to earth. According to Scripture, the entire period from the ascension to the moment of His appearance is the last hour, and already soon after His ascension it was said, "The end is near." Wars, therefore, have always been present in the world. But as time goes on there is an intensifying of war both with regard to the extent of war and with regard to its severity.

War is the product of the sinful heart of man. Wicked man is the cause of all war. The blame for it rests on him. Man's greed, man's lust for power, and man's pride spawn wars. The injustice, the ferocity, the cruelty of mankind in war are appalling. Fallen man is at war with God, and he manifests that in his enmity with other men - nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and race against race. Not one of us can excuse himself, therefore. It is common today for people to blame others for war. The young blame the older generation; the citizens blame their rulers. But the responsibility for war belongs to us all. Through Adam's disobedience, the guilt for which we all share, we all brought war into the good world of God. From the viewpoint that war springs from wicked man, it is understandable that the tempo of war picks up as we come nearer to the end. Man develops in sin and becomes a more and more terrible warmonger.

But war is also the judgment of God upon sinful mankind. Wars are controlled by God and sent by God. This is taught in Revelation 6:3 and 4, the well-known vision of the red horse of the apocalypse. The Lamb, the risen Christ, is sending forth God's judgments on a wicked world at the end of the ages. The bloody horse and its rider are given power "to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another; and there was given unto him a great sword." The nations are seeking peace. This is in their interests. But Christ causes the red horse to run through the earth.

For wars are necessary! This is what Jesus said in Matthew 24:6: "All these things (namely, wars and rumors of wars) must come to pass." The world is always insisting that war can be banished. Peace is always just around the corner. A few more good diplomats, some more conferences, a little more good will among men... Many religious people are in the forefront of the movement for an end to wars. They would run Jesus off their pulpits, if He were to preach today what He proclaimed in Matthew 24, namely the necessity of wars. Once and for all, Jesus exposed man's dream of peace as a delusion. Once and for all, He refused to have the banner of His Name flown over the attempts of men, including religious men, to put an end to war. Christ did not pray and desire that there be no wars, but He willed that His people not be troubled because of the wars that would and must come.

We who are the disciples of Christ must take this seriously. We do not join in the efforts for an earthly peace; we do not pray for an earthly peace; we do not expect such a peace. We certainly do desire the abolition of war - the beating of the swords of the nations into ploughshares, when the nations will not learn war anymore. We long for the day when Jehovah our God will make wars to cease unto the ends of the earth (Ps. 46:9). But we desire this only in the way of the removal of sin from the earth. The desire for peace, while the nations go on in their sins and even increase in wickedness, is an attack on God's justice. It is nothing less than man's age-old longing to have sin without paying the wages of sin.

Also, the church looks for peace to be accomplished by Christ at His second coming, not before. Matthew 24 in general and verse 6 in particular contradict the notion that there will be a period of peace prior to Christ's coming, brought about by the conversion of the world. The history of the world is one of war. It must be.

The necessity of war is to be found, first of all, in the fact that it is necessary for a wicked world to be punished. It is the church's calling to make this known to the world in her preaching. The church does not underwrite the world's folly - that peace is possible for an unrighteous world. She does not cry, "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. But as Noah did to the ungodly world of his day and as Enoch did to the ungodly of his day, the church warns the world of the judgments of God's wrath. These judgments are already falling on the world in the horrors of war. The present judgments are the harbingers of worse judgments to come.

It is especially the necessity of wars for the coming of Jesus Christ that concerns us. When Jesus said that wars were necessary, He meant that they were necessary for His coming and for the end of the world. He linked wars and the end of the world, when He added, "but the end is not yet." There is a relationship between wars and the end. Wars serve the coming of the end. Wars prepare for the coming again of Jesus Christ. Jesus comes speedily through wars.

How is this the case? First, wars make impossible for a time the establishment of the kingdom of Antichrist, so that the church has the opportunity to preach the gospel. By this preaching, the truth of God is witnessed in all nations, so that the Name of God is praised and all of God's elect are saved. When the nations finally achieve peace, they will turn against the church, to destroy her. Second, wars show the utter hopelessness of man apart from God in Jesus Christ. In the bloody history of the human race, it becomes unquestionably plain that man cannot make peace in creation or build a kingdom characterized by peace. Third, war serves the end in this way that through the worldwide turmoil of wars and commotions there will arise a mighty leader and mighty nation which will dominate all nations and to which all the nations will yield themselves. Out of the turbulent sea of the nations comes the beast of Revelation 13. This will be the Antichrist.

Exactly because wars are necessary for the coming of Jesus, we should not be troubled by wars. This is Jesus' word to His disciples: "See that ye be not troubled." According to Luke 21:9, He tells us: "Be not terrified." Such is our natural reaction to wars and the rumors of wars. In itself, war is a dreadful evil - for the people of God too. They are exposed to all of the miseries of war. Their sons fight and die; their homes are destroyed; their lives are threatened. But they are not shaken with doubts and fears, nor may they be, for they know that war serves the coming of Christ and the end of the world.

War is a sign of the end! It has a twofold message to us who follow Christ. On the one hand, it indicates that the end is not yet. So we read in verse 6: "but the end is not yet." The meaning is that when wars rage and the world is filled with the rumors of wars, the end of the world will not come at once. There is still much that has to happen before the Lord can return: The Antichristian world power must arise and establish itself; wars must cease for a short while; the great tribulation must break upon God's people. Jesus stated that the time of wars and commotions would not immediately be followed by the end, in order to prevent a false and dangerous expectation of the end among His disciples. This has troubled the church now and then. Even today, there are those who respond to war or some other calamity by looking for the end at any moment. Implied in Jesus' warning that the end is not yet is the instruction that endurance is the important virtue of the Christian in the last days. War is only the first, faint rumbling of the impending storm. The storm is still in the distance.

But war is the rumbling of that coming storm. The storm is approaching. Therefore, war tells us that the end is certain, and it tells us that the end is near, so near that we may not and cannot forget about the end.

The certainty and nearness of the end, as indicated by wars, is strikingly taught by the Lord in verse 8, where He calls wars "the beginning of sorrows." The word, "sorrows," literally means "labor pains" or "birth pangs." It refers to the pains of a woman who is in labor to bring forth a child. History is now in travail to bring forth the end of the world, the coming of Jesus Christ. It is pregnant with the end. God has made it so from the moment of Christ's ascension into heaven.

The beginning of these labor pains is wars. They are terrible pains. The birth is yet in the future. The birth does not come with the beginning of the labor pains. The mother in labor knows well that worse pains must follow before she gives birth. Yet, with the onset of the pains the birth is near, and all the attention is directed to the approaching birth.

So we regard wars, riots, and all kinds of social strife. Creation and history are convulsed, convulsed to produce the day of Jesus Christ. Terrible in themselves, the pains are endured and even joyfully endured by those who expect the Son.

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