Every generation may hope to see the fulfillment of Revelations in their life time. But this would involve generational blind eyes on existing history. History must be kept in mind as we read and are cautioned in the word. Read Galatians 1. Read Matthew 24.

Why a war?


After living unrecorded ages in the beauty and overflowing abundance of Eden, what must it have been like for Adam and Eve to have been driven out by the Lord?

Suddenly they found themselves alone in a wilderness, where thorns choked the desolate earth.  Hunger, thirst, cold and searing heat  must have been a shock to them as they looked back at the abundance they had given up through rebellion.  But rather than turn back to God, their Maker, they continued in their rebellion. They complicated an already bad situation further by their actions. The first human death ever recorded was an act of murder. Out of jealousy, Adam and Eve's first son, Cain, murdered his younger brother, Abel(Genesis 4:1-14). What an unbearable grief it must have been to the first parents when they realized that their first born son had acted out the terrible consequence of their own yielding sin: "for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:17).

Brothers have been fighting one another for position and approval and authority ever since. And the results have been horrific.

The War To end All Wars

I was only seven in august, 1957, when my grandmother gave me the little pocket edition New Testament my grandfather carried when he fought in the trenches of France in World War 1.  I did not realize it at the time, but the date she inscribed it to me marked the twelfth anniversary of Pop's death.

We sat on the back porch that night as she told me how, at hearing the news the fighting was over, she climbed onto a fire wagon to ride with a hundered other people up and down the streets of Akron, celebrating all night.  She banged two pots together and whooped for joy until she lost her voice.  There had never been a war like that one.  So many young men did not come home. But lots of prayers and the bible in Pop's rucksack kept him safe, she said.  I was grown before I realised just how terrible Pop's war had been. It was called " The War to end All Wars."  Never before in all of history had so many men died in battle.  Combine a thousand years of war, and the death toll does not add up to the casualties of that one conflagration.

Bodie and Brock Thoene, 2007.