OF WAR
Those who lived through World War I felt the same way. They called it the "Great War" and "the war to end all wars." Oh that it were true. The war to end all wars is coming, but it will follow a time of total war unlike any ever seen (Matthew 24:21). The ride of the second horseman of Revelation 6 unleashes the malignant forces of evil and removes the last vestiges of peace from the earth. However, Jesus Christ stops this horseman's ride with His appearance and the establishment of His just Kingdom.
Notice what John saw with the breaking of the second seal. "When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, 'Come and see.' Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword" (Revelation 6:3-4).
This vision corresponds with Christ's Olivet prophecy in Matthew. Notice, "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom" (Matthew 24:6-7).
The record of history shows a pattern of the red horse of war often following the white horse of false religion. An example is the Thirty Years War in Europe during the mid-17th century. Following the Protestant Reformation, the resultant shift in power among European states led to 30 years of carnage from 1618 to 1648. Religion, the newly emerged Protestant versus Roman Catholic theology, was the ideology that fueled the winds of war. It led to strange alliances: Catholic France aligned with Protestant Holland to offset the powerful Catholic Hapsburg dynasty. This resulted in prolonging the conflict. By the time peace (a euphemism for balance of power) was restored in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia, 8 million people had lost their lives.
What can we expect to see as this red horse of war rides across the landscape in the last days, unleashing the fury of nations and its unique ideology upon the world? A look at the history of war and its cause will give us a clue. Let's first look at what the Bible says is the cause of war.
Relations among nations are generally guided by self-interest. When individual interest is jeopardized, the natural instinct for self-preservation takes over. War is often the result.
The apostle James wrote quite pointedly on this subject. "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask" (James 4:1-2).
James identifies lust, desire and covetousness as the sources of strife among people who cannot focus on the right relationship with God. He goes on to say, "Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (verse 4). Again we see that self-interest plays a dominant role in human aggression.
Left to itself, without a spiritual relationship with God, the human heart is the seat of conflict. In the context of the sins of Judah, Jeremiah the prophet said, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9.) Jesus Christ confirms, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matthew 15:19).
But the Bible reveals that the real source of this hostile nature is Satan the devil. In a heated discussion with the Pharisees who were challenging Him, Christ labeled Satan as the source of human hostility. "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44).
Paul describes Satan as controlling the "power of the air," literally swaying man to disobedience, without people's conscious awareness. Until man's nature undergoes a fundamental change, he follows after the natural "lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind." He is a child "of wrath" caught up with the rest of humanity in a spirit of conflict (Ephesians 2:2-3).
When the world comes under the covenant in which God writes His law upon the human heart with His Spirit, we will see the end of war. Until then, we will see wars continue and escalate in ferocity. Those who understand man's nature know he is on a course toward absolute destruction.
