February 11, 2005
(ML #3528, GN 1122)
FD/MM/FM February 2005
ML #306:20–24, Vol.3
20. (Dad:) [People] ASK THE USUAL STOCK QUESTIONS: "WELL, IF THERE IS A GOD, THEN HOW COME HE ALLOWED HITLER AND ALL THIS PAIN AND SUFFERING and these atrocities and man's inhumanity to man? Why doesn't He put a stop to all that? Why didn't He make them stop it if He's in control?" And I told her, "God didn't do it: Man does it." Then she said, "Well, why does He allow it?" And I said‚ "Well, then He'd have to put a stop to the whole thing and man's choice, which is the idea of the whole great design.
21. "MAN WAS PUT HERE TO MAKE A CHOICE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, TO DO RIGHT OR WRONG, TO SERVE GOD OR HIMSELF AND THE DEVIL and to learn the benefits of serving God, reaping the joy and happiness and pleasures of keeping God's loving rules for his own good and worshipping and thanking God for it all in return, as grateful children of their Heavenly Father, to believe in Him and have faith in Him and trust Him and His Word and obey it for their own good and His glory.
22. "OR MAN CAN BELIEVE THE LIES OF THE DEVIL AND REBEL AGAINST GOD and disobey Him and refuse to believe His Word and go their own way and suffer the consequences of violating His health rules and His mental and spiritual laws, rebellion against which and disobedience to which bring ill health, misery, pain, suffering, man's inhumanity to man, cruelty, atrocities, wars, economic ills, unhappiness, mental anguish, insanity, and finally death and Hell hereafter, as punishment for violating God's laws and His rules which were made for our health and happiness."
23. SHE WAS STILL THINKING APPARENTLY ABOUT HITLER AND THE LAST WAR AND SHE SAID, "BUT WHERE DID WE GET THIS GOODY AND BADDY STUFF?—AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOODIES AND THEY THE BADDIES?" BUT I SAID, "NO, 'FOR ALL HAVE SINNED and come short of the glory of God: There is none righteous, no, not one!’ 'All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way'." So none of us are all good or even all bad. No side is always all right and the other all wrong. There is always some good and bad on both sides.
24. MOST OF US ARE A LITTLE GREY, SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN‚ PARTLY GOOD AND PARTLY BAD. As much as we dislike Hitler and what he did‚ he wasn't entirely to blame. The German people were partly to blame‚ and really conditions of the whole world were to blame, the world's general lack of faith in God, and so the people needed a chastisement, a spanking from the Lord, to get them straightened out.
ML #368:22-41, Vol.3
22. (Dad:) THEY'RE ALL LOSERS in a war: They lose their boys, they lose their lives, they lose their governments‚ countries and colonies and economies. They all lose everything. They all lose. Nobody won anything‚ you know?
23. THEY SAY THEY WON THEIR FREEDOM at least, but what freedom?—Freedom to fight another war?—That's what happened! Freedom to fight another war, to lose more lives, kill more boys‚ lose more countries and lose more colonies and bankrupt their economies, so there's less freedom today than there was then. They didn't gain anything at all.
24. NOBODY EVER WINS A WAR.—Everybody loses: All the dead and broken bodies, suffering and sadness and sorrow and pain and hunger and grief and the mourning! Nobody ever wins. Everybody always loses.
25. WAR IS HELL!—And the poor boys!—They go through hell!—A hell of a war that they didn't even want and had nothing to do with making, yet their dictators make them fight it like slaves, and they have to be the sufferers and losers.
26. GOD DAMN THE POLITICIANS and bureaucrats and munitions makers and the war mongers and the people who want the wars but never have to fight them, people who want the wars to save themselves and their businesses and their jobs and their political parties, but never have to fight them themselves!
27. JUST THINK!—PARENTS WILLING TO SEND THEIR OWN SONS TO BE CANNON FODDER for them, to save their own necks!—How horrible! Only the mothers seems to really grieve for them and know what flesh they are! Even the fathers urge them on to go out and fight for gory glory! What horrible bloody victory! It's no victory at all when they all die like that!
28. THOSE GUYS I SAW STILL FIGHTING WARS IN HELL, they must be the ones who wanted the wars here on Earth.—Next time they'll get to fight them and suffer and die—perpetually! God damn the war makers! (See "Green Door", No.262.)
29. GOD BLESS THE PEACE MAKERS!—"FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE CHILDREN OF GOD!" (Mt.5:9) We're peace makers who try to bring peace to men's hearts and minds and souls and bodies and countries, but we'll never have total peace till we get rid of the God–damned war makers, the evil hearts that make war!—O my Lord!—War is in their hearts!—They thirst for blood, they lust for destruction!---"Them that destroy the Earth."
30. THANK YOU JESUS, PRAISE YOU LORD! HELP US LORD! HELP US TO BRING PEACE. At least we can bring peace to their hearts while waiting for God to destroy the war makers—and He always does. They always die, and what a Hell they'll have! But one of these days He's going to get rid of them altogether, thank God, and then the whole world will have peace.—Tomorrow when the world is really free!
31. LIKE THAT OTHER OLD FAVORITE SONG of World War II you've heard me sing before:
"There'll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow when the world is free!
There'll be love and laughter and peace ever after—
Tomorrow when the world is free!"
Thank You Jesus! Hallelujah! Amen, Lord.
32. WE'LL BE FREE FROM WAR with real peace brought by the Lord and His Kingdom forever, the Kingdom of love where we all make love, not war! Thank You Jesus!—And those boys will live again! Hallelujah! Thank You Jesus! In the land of flowers and sunshine and love and peace forever! Thank You Jesus!
33. THERE'LL BE NO MORE CROSSES, NO MORE WARS. There'll be love and laughter and peace ever after, tomorrow—in God's tomorrow—when the world is free of wars. Thank You Jesus! There's no more death, pain nor suffering, crying nor sorrow, but all is light and life and love and peace forever! Thank You Jesus!
34. WAR IS THE DEVIL'S OWN WEAPON to slaughter and destroy man and maim and kill and cause agony and suffering. But God's love is just the opposite:
35. LOVE AND SALVATION ARE GOD'S WEAPONS to create life and save life and help people to live to love and have peace and no more war. Thank You Jesus! Praise You Lord! No more dead and dying and suffering, noise and confusion!
36. HE SAYS THAT "NOTHING SHALL HURT NOR DESTROY IN ALL MY HOLY MOUNTAIN!" (Is.11:9) Nothing shall hurt nor destroy in all God's Holy Kingdom. We'll only create and live and love and laugh and have peace ever after. Thank You Jesus! Tomorrow!—When the world is free of war forever—through Jesus, God's love. Thank You Jesus! Praise You Lord!
37. THOSE FLOWERS, THE POPPIES AMONGST THE CROSSES, SYMBOLIZE THE LIFE THAT IS TO COME—THE RESURRECTION! Like the old hymn:
O Love that will not let me go‚
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe‚
That in Thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be.
O Light that followest all my way‚
I yield my flick'ring torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine's glow its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow thru' the rain
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head‚
I dare not ask to hide from thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be!
—George Matheson
38. WE HAVE TO GIVE OUR LIVES TO JESUS TO SAVE THEM. We have to give our lives for Jesus to save them.
—"And from the ground there blossoms red,
Life that shall endless be"!
From the blood of the martyrs and the blood of the witnesses there springs new life and new lives to live for God.
39. THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS IS THE SEED OF THE CHURCH—God's martyrs slain by the Enemy, slaughtered by the wars, staining the soil red with blood, the soil that received them when others rejected them, which will grow again and spring up to life a new like the flowers that grow on the graves of the departed. Thank You Jesus! Praise You Lord! Amen.
40. THERE'LL BE NO MORE CROSSES THEN, JUST FLOWERS—no more graves‚ just the growing—no more dead‚ only the living—no more dying‚ only the loving.—Tomorrow!—When the world is free of war, and the poppies grow and live forever!
41. (DAVID WEEPS AND THE LORD SAYS:) "WEEP NO LONGER FOR THE DEAD, but weep for the living. Weep for yourselves‚ you upon whom the ends of the Earth are come!" I can't cry anymore!—Haven't I cried long enough? Do you weep for them?
ML #601, Vol.5
1. (Dad:) COUNTRIES USED TO GO TO WAR JUST FOR PRIDE over some incident because they were offended or one king made a bad remark about another king and boom, boom, boom! But in modern years, recent years, they go to war for commercial reasons, they're trade wars.
2. NEARLY EVERY ONE OF AMERICA'S WARS WERE FOR SOME KIND OF TRADE ADVANTAGE or money or for territory.—Which of course were always fought under different excuses, even as far back as the Civil War.
3. THE CIVIL WAR WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE WAR TO FREE THE SLAVES. What it really turned out to be was the war to enslave the free, because it made the Federal Government a dictatorship.
4. WHEN THE STATES ORIGINALLY BANDED TOGETHER THEY DID SO VOLUNTARILY and they were supposed to be able to withdraw from the club if they didn't like the other members. When the South tried to withdraw the other members picked up guns and started shooting, "You can't leave the club!"
5. THE REASON WAS THAT THE NORTH HAD ALL THE INDUSTRY, THE SOUTH HAD ALL THE AGRICULTURE, and particularly cotton which the North wanted and needed for textiles. But the South had a lot more in common with England and they had more communication, intercourse and trade with England than they had with the North.
6. THE SOUTHERNERS WERE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN with great plantations. They were rich and they dressed well. They sent their kids to England for school and that's where you get that Southern drawl, it's really an English accent, believe it or not!
7. SO THE NORTH BEGAN GIVING THE SOUTH TROUBLE because the North wanted the South to buy machinery from her instead of from England. But when the South could get it cheaper from England of course she bought it from England, and she traded her cotton for it. But the North wanted the cotton too. The North wanted the South's market for her machinery and they needed the South's raw materials for their machines.
8. SO ALL THAT SELF-RIGHTEOUS BIT OVER FREEING THE SLAVES, THAT'S ALL A BIG JOKE! That's not what the war was fought for at all. That was the excuse given the people so they could get the people behind them and make the people willing to fight.
9. WHAT PEOPLE ARE YOU GOING TO SELL ON FIGHTING A WAR SO YOU CAN SELL MACHINES and grab cotton? Not many people are going to give their sons and daughters for a selfish commercial purpose that didn't do most of them any good anyway. That's the war which made New York rich!
10. SO THAT'S WHY I SAY LINCOLN, FAR FROM BEING A HERO, WAS A TYRANT! … [H]e started the Civil War! … So, from whence come wars? James said they come from your own lusts—and nations' lusts. (James 4:1.)
11. THE U.S. FOUGHT A WAR WITH THE FRENCH TO GRAB FRENCH TERRITORY, they fought a war with the British before that to grab British territory, and they fought a war with the Spanish to grab Texas, California and nearly all the Western half of the United States. The United States is a very aggressive and grabby nation! It's a joke, isn't it!
12. IF TWO MEN GRAB GUNS TO GET WHAT THEY WANT they're criminals. If a group of them organize and get together and grab guns to get what they want, they're gangsters. But if they're trying to get their political freedom or grab back territory that once belonged to them that some other bunch of gangsters has already conquered, well then they're terrorists. And if they are a pretty good-sized army of so-called terrorists, then they're guerillas.
13. FINALLY WHEN THEY GET AN ARMY BIG ENOUGH TO CONQUER the territory and grab it back or from somebody else, then it's a legal, sophisticated, self–righteous army. See, it all depends on how big you are and how powerful you are what names they call you.
14. SO THE CIVIL WAR WAS FOUGHT SO THAT THE NORTH COULD CONQUER THE SOUTH AND VIRTUALLY MAKE SLAVES OUT OF THEM for nearly a hundred years. They freed the blacks and enslaved the whites, and eventually enslaved all the people under the two main dictatorial laws—the draft and the income tax.
15. THE DRAFT GAVE THEM POWER OVER THEIR BODIES AND THE INCOME TAX HAD THEIR PURSES, and they had the power and the money needed to be a dictatorship, and that's why it is that today.
16. WORLD WAR I WAS FOUGHT WITH THE GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE STEALING THE WORLD MARKETS. The Germans were smarter, harder working, and producing more. When I was a little kid, there were still oodles of things‚ little toys and everything marked "Made in Germany." They had virtually undercut all the rest of the world's prices.
17. ENGLAND AND GERMANY WERE THE TWO MAJOR INDUSTRIAL NATIONS with the U.S. coming up fast, and England and the U.S. didn't like the way Germany was outselling them and taking all the world trade. This was the reason for the war.
18. BUT OF COURSE THEY HAD TO TRY TO THINK UP A GOOD EXCUSE to tell the people, which they finally did: "The war to set the world free!"—World War I!
19. AFTER THE WAR THERE WERE MORE DICTATORSHIPS than there were before, although a lot of democracies cropped up and a lot of kings were toppled. They got rid of most of the kings, but the dictators took over then, a new brand of monarchs.
20. SO WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HAPPENED WHEN JAPAN BEGAN TO CONQUER ALL THE WORLD MARKETS and undersell the United States? The U.S. just couldn't compete with Japanese products and trading so what do you suppose she did?
29. TRADE BALANCES MEAN NOTHING TO MOST PEOPLE‚ only the price of goods, and they just grumble about that and pay it. If they could buy the German goods cheaper and the [Japanese] goods cheaper, why‚ they'd buy those!
30. SO WHY SHOULD THE PEOPLE WANT TO GO TO WAR WITH JAPAN JUST BECAUSE THEIR PRICES ARE LOWER? They were very happy the [Japanese] prices were lower and they bought the Japanese goods! They had to give them some other excuse. So World War II was: "The war to end all wars!"
31. "THE WAR TO END ALL WARS!"—ETERNAL PEACE!—AND THEY ENDED IT WITH THE ATOMIC BOMB that wiped out indiscriminately over 100,000 civilian women, children and old people, two bombs in fact‚ Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and condemned others to a very slow death that took some of them 30 years before they died. Others were horribly maimed and burned and scarred for life!
32. THERE WERE HORRORS THE U.S. WOULDN'T EVEN LET ITS OWN PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT, wouldn't allow pictures in the newspaper. What country was the first to use the horror bomb?—The United States! So "the war to end all wars" began—and there's been a war going on somewhere ever since!
33. IN FACT, THERE'S HARDLY BEEN A TIME IN THE WHOLE OF WORLD HISTORY WHEN THERE WASN'T A WAR GOING ON SOMEWHERE!—Except during the period when Jesus was born when the Romans were in full control of the world and therefore had put an end to all wars, uprisings‚ civil wars and whatnot.
34. THERE WAS ACTUALLY A TIME OF PEACE RIGHT ON THROUGH THE EARLY CHURCH ERA. Think how easy it was in those days if you were‚ like Paul, a Roman citizen, you could go anywhere without a passport or visas and you spoke the language of the world! The cultural language was Greek and the business and government language was Roman. If you spoke either one of those you could preach anywhere in the world, either Greek or Latin, which of course greatly facilitated the spreading of the Gospel. There couldn't have been a better time, and of course God prepared the time for it: "Peace on Earth!"
38. YOU NEVER SAW HOW SELF-RIGHTEOUS NATIONS CAN GET JUST BEFORE A WAR!—So righteous and so convinced that they are right and the other fellow's the criminal, the devil who needs to be conquered!
42. BEFORE EVERY WAR THERE'S A LONG PERIOD OF MENTAL CONDITIONING and psychological preparation. Before World War I the U.S. spent years of antagonistic propaganda against Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. "It was all his fault‚ it was all the Germans' fault!"
43. THEY BLAMED ALL THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS ON GERMANY, all the world's economic problems were Germany's fault—the people were geared to this. Pretty soon in all the movies and all the stories all the villains were Germans! And the people were brainwashed and conditioned to it and geared to it until finally when the war broke out they thought, "Of course we should have started a war with them long ago!—The God-damn Krauts!"
44. THEN BEFORE WORLD WAR II ALL OF A SUDDEN ALL THE EVIL VILLAINS BEGAN TO BE JAPANESE AND GERMANS! Again Germans but now Japanese too: "They are even more evil, they are not even civilized, they don't even look like us! You could tell they were evil just by looking at them!—Those evil Orientals!" So of course you had to fight a war with them—they were stealing the whole world!
45. OPPOSITION TO WORLD WAR II WAS INTENSE IN THE UNITED STATES. There was the "America First" Party which fought entering the war. There were what they called "Isolationists" who insisted that the U.S. not get into another European War. There were even the out-and-out pro-Germans, pro-Hitler people called the German Bunds, which were German or Germanic clubs, all for going into the war on the side of Hitler to stop the Communists!
46. DID YOU KNOW THAT EVEN IN WORLD WAR I THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO GO IN ON THE SIDE OF KAISER WILHELM? But England had always held their winning trump card to tip the scale in favor of the people who spoke the majority language. Before World War I there were many immigrants to the U.S., oodles and oodles of Germans and Italians and whatnot.
47. SO ACCORDING TO THE U.S., WORLD WAR II WAS ALL THE GERMANS' AND JAPANESE' FAULT, and they built up a big propaganda campaign ahead of time. But the war was opposed by a big propaganda campaign by those called the "Isolationists" or the "America Firsters," in other words, "Let's put America first and forget Europe and stay out of the war!"—U.S. Germans wanted either to stay out of the War or go in on the side of Germany.
48. SO THERE WAS A LOT OF ANTI-WAR SYMPATHY on the part of the people who didn't want to go to war again, and they couldn't give a damn!—They couldn't care less!
60. THE BIG VAST MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE JUST DIDN'T WANT TO GET INTO THE WAR AT ALL. So, they had to think up something that would just absolutely infuriate the American people and make them mad enough to go to war. So that's what they did!
61. THE [JAPANESE] WERE TAKING OVER MOST OF THE ORIENT, the East and the Pacific because they were allies of the Germans. They snatched off Manchuria first, what is now called Korea, because it had a lot of iron ore and raw materials.
62. THEY WERE SNATCHING OFF THIS AND SNATCHING OFF THAT, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE MOST OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MAD enough to go to war yet. "So what? Let them have China! Let them have whatever they want over there, as long as they don't bother us over here!"
63. THE AVERAGE PERSON DIDN'T MIND CHEAP [JAPANESE] GOODS, they liked it! I can remember when it was nice to buy Japanese goods. They were inferior quality in those days, but they were cheaper!
64. SO FINALLY JAPAN GOT THE WORD THAT AMERICA WAS INEVITABLY GOING TO GO TO WAR AGAINST THEM, … and therefore bound to go to war the worse things got for the Jews in Germany and so he was determined to go to war with Germany, which meant [America] would have to go to war with the Japanese also because they were allies.
65. THE U.S. AS GOOD AS ALLOWED THE JAPANESE SECRET INFORMATION letting them know that they were planning to go to war with them, in order to encourage the Japanese to do exactly what they did, to make a pre-emptive strike against our navy, which would then give the U.S. the excuse it needed for attacking Japan.
66. ROOSEVELT WAS INFORMED AHEAD OF TIME THAT THE JAPANESE WERE GOING TO STRIKE PEARL HARBOR, even of the hour, and this all came out years afterward, but he never did a thing and never let the information out to the Armed Services or anything. Because he knew that was the only thing that would make the American people mad enough to go to war!
67. SO SUNDAY MORNING CAME, DEC. 7‚ 1941‚ AT PEARL HARBOR, and as usual the military services all took the day off! They weren't even manning the anti–aircraft guns or anything! Nearly the whole Navy had gone ashore and there were just a whole bunch of battleships moored like sitting ducks in the harbor. The big army bases were virtually deserted because the GIs had all gone to town. In peacetime everybody would take Sunday off, and the [Japanese] knew it!
68. THE JAPANESE WEREN'T REALLY TRYING TO KILL SO MANY PEOPLE, but they were trying to destroy their bases and the boats. But it just so happened that something had gone wrong. I think the U.S.S. Arizona was picked to stay on duty, so it was virtually fully manned with over 2,000 guys, and sunk, and the men went down with it!
69. SO ROOSEVELT JUST LET THE PLANES COME! This all came out later‚ although it's still been kind of hushed up and whitewashed.
70. IN A WAY OF COURSE IT WAS JAPAN'S FAULT, but they were provoked to it because they got word that the U.S. was going to declare war. They decided to strike first at her most vulnerable spot and the place that threatened them the most, which was the Hawaiian Islands, the big American naval base nearest them. So they just decided to sink them before they got started.
71. OF COURSE THEN THIS WAS PLAYED UP INTO BIG PROPAGANDA: "A horrible atrocity, the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor" and "a terrible slaughter," "a stab in our back" and all of this stuff, and it did it!—It made the Americans mad enough‚ and the very next day Congress met and declared war!—WWII!
72. RESULT: THE UNITED STATES TOOK OVER THE JAPANESE ISLANDS AND ALL THEIR BIG INDUSTRIES and financed them with American money to begin producing Japanese goods under American brand names, so that now the Americans could make the money instead of the Japanese!
74. PEOPLE ARE NOW ALREADY BEING CONDITIONED FOR THE NEXT WAR! Have you noticed the nature of the cartoons now?—The Arabs are the villains! Also in motion pictures and TV—the Arabs are now the villains!
ML #1326, DB1
(After watching an old silent film on WW1:)
1. MY GOD, WHAT A TRAVESTY‚ WHAT A HORROR!—Why should the children go & die for their parents? It'd be better for the parents to die for the children! It shows the parents don't love those boys, don't love the children, or they'd never send them to war. War is Hell!
2. (MARIA: WHAT ARE THEY DOING IT FOR?—JUST OUT OF PRIDE?) YES, PRIDE & GREED! (Ja.4:1) Their parents tell them it's for freedom: "So we won't be oppressed & enslaved by the enemy! Blah blah!" Isn't that a joke? How more oppressed & enslaved could you be than to have them send you into the Hell of war? It's the worst oppression & enslavement possible—almost sure death!
3. BETTER TO BE A SLAVE!—THAT WAS THE BIBLE PHILOSOPHY! When God sent their enemies to punish them for their sins, He told them it was better to yield to the hand of the enemy, to take their yoke upon them & become slaves‚ than to die. Jeremiah said, "Why will ye die, O Jerusalem? Submit yourselves under the yoke of the King of Babylon & live!" (Jer.27:8-13)
4. IT'S ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE THAT MEN COULD CONCEIVE OF ANYTHING AS HORRIBLE AS WAR AT ALL, much less a nuclear war, literally knowing that they're contriving the deaths of millions—not just soldiers—but everybody!—Men, women‚ children, old folks!—Horrors! They "cause their children to pass through the fire", the Lord says. (Lev.18:21; Deut.18:10; 2Kg.17:17)
5. HOW MANY OF THE SOLDIERS WHO ARE SENT INTO BATTLE ARE TO BLAME FOR THE WAR?—It's their parents who are to blame, the politicians, militarists & greedy rich. How horrible! … I think they're just going to flatly refuse to fight, flatly refuse to go to war!
6. WHY SHOULD THEY SUFFER? WHY SHOULD THEY DIE? I mean, they'd be better off being the children of slaves. After all, if God sent a power that's stronger than your power, He must have done it for a purpose, probably to punish your nation for its sins, like He did in the Bible.
7. HE SAYS, SUBMIT TO THE POWER". (Ro.13:1-8) And who's the power?—The most powerful, right? Besides, the plight of the poor isn't much different from one oppressor to the other, their own government or the so-called enemy!
8. MY GOD, HOW MANY WARS HAVE BEEN FOUGHT IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM?—Freedom from one enslavement to another! Americans are slaves too, total slaves of their government. Taxes & burdens are so heavy that they're working totally for the government half the time just to pay their taxes! So what's the difference between American slaves or Russian slaves or any of them? We're all slaves!—Whose slave are you?
9. IT'S SO RIDICULOUS TO SAY IT'S BETTER TO HAVE WAR, suffer the Hell & to bring Hell & torment & torture & misery & agony & suffering on people who weren't even responsible for it!—And to say that there's an excuse for that—to save the World for democracy, freedom! What kind of freedom did they get out of it last time? The World now lives in terror of being destroyed any minute.—That's freedom?
10. IT'S A TYPE OF INSANITY, THIS WAR-CRAZE! I really think it's insanity inspired by the Devil, that they'd actually rather throw their countries into war & self-destruction in their pride & their greed, than submit. And of course it's God's way of punishing the people for their sins, punishing nations for their wickedness & sinfulness & rebellion & rejection of Him‚ & unmercifulness & atrocities & crimes against the poor.
11. THANK GOD‚ MOST OF THE POOR USUALLY ESCAPE!—They live too far back in the hills & they don't have anything anybody wants. But under the latest system they draft the sons of the poor to fight their wars. What's that but forced labor?—Of the worst kind! Boy, I tell you, when I was in the Army it was almost unbelievable! I thought‚ "My God‚ what slavery!" You live in a slave camp & you can't do a thing on your own, you're under total orders to be a total slave day & night!
12. SLAVERY?—YOU TALK ABOUT SLAVERY?—THERE'S NO WORSE SLAVERY HARDLY THAN THE ARMY! It's so ridiculous to say, "You're fighting for freedom, Boys, so now be good slaves & fight for our freedom!" It's the same in every country‚ in every government. They're all cruel systems & horrors, but they're still better than war!
14. WHEN I WAS IN THE ARMY‚ IF YOU WERE A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR WHO FLATLY REFUSED TO FIGHT or bear arms or anything, they sent you to what amounted to a slave camp or made you a hospital slave or reforestation slave! But it's better than war!—It's better than the Hell of the battlefront & the killing & the torture & the destruction & the mutilation.—And being guilty of these things yourself!
15. I TOLD THOSE OFFICERS‚ "I'M NOT GOING TO FIGHT & KILL PEOPLE!—I've got nothing against the Japanese, why should I fight them? Why should I want to kill them? I want to go preach'm the Gospel, get'm saved! I love'm! I'm supposed to love my enemies, why should I want to kill them?"—They got so furious at me!
16. OH, IT'S SUCH HIGH-POWERED POLITICS & PRIDE OF THE LOFTY ONES! WARS ARE NOT MADE BY THE POOR‚ JUST THE RICH!—"From whence come wars & fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members!—Put away thy sword: For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword! But blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven!—And blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God!" (Ja.4:1; Mt.26:52; Mt.5:3,9)
ML #3447:41-47, GN 1031
41. (Jesus:) I hate war and all of its destruction, pain, and misery. War doesn't stop when the guns are silenced. The horrible effects of the war continue, sometimes for many years. The clashing of armies on the battlefield is only a small part of the actual war; the real war goes on with the suffering and destruction that war has created, resulting in broken lives and broken countries. Many things will never be the same afterward no matter who wins or loses the war, no matter which country was defeated.
42. But despite all of this, man's heart refuses to yield, and nearly every generation down through history has engaged in war and its toll of destruction. War is one of the great weapons of the Devil to annihilate man and control him through hate, violence, dissension, and envy—all to the purpose of enslaving and destroying man.
43. I am against all wars‚ against anything that brings suffering and pain to humanity. But I can only plead with man. I made a beautiful world for him to live in. I give him his needs and wants. I send the rain and the sun to all men, both the good and the evil. I offer him salvation and eternal life. But I can't take away his free choice, his own will to choose one way or the other. Though it breaks My heart‚ I cannot stop him.
44. Many people are quick to blame Me for the war and all the suffering, asking how a righteous God could allow such things. But the lusts which lead to war do not come from Me but from hearts which do not know Me, do not yield to Me, or which yield to the Evil One in their desires for power, possessions, dominance or destruction. It is through the desires of men and by their own choosing that wars happen. I can use even the evil of men's wars to draw them to Me, although I hate the suffering and pain.
45. The heart of man is the same all over the world, no matter what the person's nationality‚ background, or color. Often you hear of the great wars, but there are so many smaller wars happening in many parts of the world, between countries‚ classes of people‚ and families. So much suffering, so much pain and agony! But it is not My doing.
46. I gave man life, a wonderful world to live in‚ salvation and life eternal if they will accept it and receive it. But each one must make his own decisions; each one will have to face God in the end and answer for his own acts. This is the free choice of every person on Earth. (End of message from Jesus)
47. (Jesus:) War is the lust and pride of men who seek to prove their superiority over other men. War is hate. War is hell on earth. War is the manifestation of evil. It is a physical manifestation of the spiritual sin of pride.
END 23
Awake!
At the Imperial War Museum in London, England, visitors are intrigued by a unique clock and digital counter. This clock does not keep time. Its purpose is to help people grasp the magnitude of a central feature of this century—war. As the hand of the clock rotates, the counter adds another number to its tally every 3.31 seconds. Each number represents a man‚ woman or child who has died as a result of war during the 20th century.
At midnight on December 31, 1999, the counting will end and it will register 100 million, a conservative estimate of the number of those who have died in war during the past 100 years.
Imagine, 100 million people! Yet that statistic reveals nothing about the terrors and pain experienced by the victims. Neither does it describe the suffering of the loved ones of those who died—the countless millions of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, widows and orphans. What the statistic does tell us is this: Ours has been by far the most destructive century in all human history; its savagery is unparalleled.
The history of the 20th century also shows to what extent humans have become expert in the craft of killing. Throughout history the development of new weapons went slowly until the 20th century, which has produced an avalanche of weapons. When the first world war began in 1914, the armies of Europe included men on horseback, armed with lances. Today, with the help of satellite sensors and computerized guidance systems, missiles can deliver death to any part of the Earth, with astonishing accuracy. The intervening years have seen the development and perfecting of guns, tanks‚ submarines‚ warplanes‚ biological and chemical weapons, and, of course, "the bomb."
When the Cold War ended in 1989, many expressed confidence in a peaceful world order. Still, war continued. During the next seven years‚ an estimated 101 conflicts raged in various places. Most were wars not between states but within states. They were fought by opposing groups with unsophisticated weapons. In Rwanda‚ for example, much of the killing was done with machetes.
Often the modern battlefields are towns and villages, and there is little or no distinction between combatants and civilians. Michael Harbottle‚ director of the Center for International Peacebuilding‚ wrote: "Whereas in the past the causes of conflict may have been fairly predictable, today they are much more complex and much more difficult to control. The degree of violence which accompanies them is unbelievable and totally irrational. Civilian inhabitants are as much in the firing line as the fighters." Such low-tech conflict shows little sign of fading away.
Meanwhile, in the rich nations of the world, high-tech weapon development continues apace. Sensors—whether deployed in the air, in space, in the ocean, or on the ground—enable a modern army to see more quickly and clearly than ever before, even in difficult terrain such as jungles. As the new technologies are perfected and integrated, "distance warfare" moves toward reality, enabling an army to see everything, hit everything, and destroy much that an enemy has.
In considering the prospect of future war‚ we should not forget the menacing presence of nuclear weapons. The Futurist magazine predicts: "The continuing proliferation of atomic weapons makes it increasingly likely that we shall have one or more atomic wars within the next 30 years. In addition, atomic weapons may be used by terrorists."
What has frustrated efforts to achieve global peace? An obvious factor is that the human family is fragmented into nations and cultures that distrust, hate or fear one another. There are conflicting values, perceptions and goals. Furthermore, use of military power has for millenniums been seen as a legitimate way to pursue national interests. After acknowledging this situation, a report from the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College stated: "To many, this implied that peace would only come with world government."
(Jesus:) Peace will only come with My government, with My rule on Earth, when I will cause all wars and oppression to cease and when men shall beat their swords into plowshares. Then men shall learn war no more, and there shall be no more death, sorrow, crying or pain, for all these things will have passed away. I will make all things new.
Before this time there will arise a counterfeit of My reign, the Antichrist and his world government. But in trying to impose peace, they will unleash great wars and destruction such as the world has never seen, and a time of trouble that has not been from the beginning of the world till now.
But trust Me and look to Me, My children. For these days of trouble will soon be over and then the world will dwell in true peace forevermore!
END 24
Charley Reese, The Orlando Sentinel
To purport to go to war for humanitarian purposes is a contradiction in terms. Nothing is more inhumane than war. To state that you are going to kill people and destroy their homes and jobs for humanitarian reasons is insanely hypocritical.
It's about as nutty as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team warning some guy who is threatening to kill himself that, if he doesn't surrender, they will kill him. That actually happens. Making war for humanitarian reasons is like ending a hunger strike by withholding food. It plain makes no sense to create human misery in the name of stopping human misery.
These days language is being mutilated more than even George Orwell could imagine. Humanitarian, once a legitimate word that meant promoting human welfare, is now the fashionable excuse to send in military forces for the express purpose of injuring the human welfare of whatever faction our government or the United Nations decides to call the enemy.
I would call the unnecessary deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children (that's a United Nations figure, not mine) a humanitarian crisis. We are the cause of that, and we could end it with nothing more than four words: The embargo is lifted. But‚ of course‚ the U.S. government will not speak those words. It will not even admit responsibility for the deaths.
After being called on its obvious inconsistency (all humanitarian crises are equal, but some apparently are more equal than others)‚ the government now boldly proclaims that of course it's inconsistent. That's really weird.
Imagine asking someone why he or she was acting in an inconsistent manner and have that person reply, "Well, of course‚ I have to be inconsistent." Where's the guy with the net—or maybe a straitjacket would be better—when you need him?
The current administration apparently sees the U.S. military as a sort of globalist foreign legion that can be asked to dig sewers in Haiti, shoot people in Somalia‚ and bomb them in Serbia‚ Sudan‚ Afghanistan, Iraq and anywhere else when the president needs a diversion.
As for humanitarian crises, that's what the Red Cross is for. If you want to promote human welfare, send food and medicine, not soldiers and bombs.
(Dad: ) Force is the typical U.S. response to problems. It reminds me of the U.S. military man during the Vietnam War who claimed his soldiers had to destroy a local village in order to "save" it! Well, the U.S. was built on violence, as I've often said, and violence will also be its downfall one of these days. (See Rev.18:21.) When the Lord pours out His judgments, those who love violence and death will get more than their fill of it!
END 30
By Michael Medved, Jewish World Review
Jesse Ventura's Playboy interview has provoked impassioned debate on the role of organized faith in American life.
In describing religion as a "sham and a crutch for weak-minded people," the governor of Minnesota has drawn criticism. But he has also attracted enthusiastic defenders who turn the attention to faith's checkered history.
Callers to my national radio show solemnly intoned the same hackneyed charge. "Religion has started most of the wars in history!" they declared.
The only trouble is that the idea that organized faith provokes most of humanity's wars is utterly untrue.
Consider, for instance, the history of the United States. Since 1776, we have fought ten major conflicts. None of these struggles focused on religious priorities or doctrinal disputes. In fact, prior to our Cold War battles against officially atheist Communist powers (North Korea, North Vietnam) we fought all our wars primarily against powers (England, Mexico, Spain, Germany) that shared with us a commitment to some form of Christianity. The War Between the States, by far the deadliest conflict in our past, centered on political and moral differences rather than religious or doctrinal ones. The boys in blue and the boys in gray who killed more than 600,000 of one another not only worshipped the same God, but often did so from the same hymnals.
Beyond the borders of North America‚ the bloodiest‚ most ambitious conquerors in human history accomplished their deadly work with little reference to religious priorities. Pure lust for power drove Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar (and his Roman successors), Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. None of these tyrants made serious attempts to impose their faith on victim nations.
The twentieth century provides little or no evidence to support the contention that religion causes most human conflict. The greatest and costliest struggles of the uniquely blood-soaked hundred year epic which just concluded—World War I, World War II, the many "hot" conflicts of the Cold War—could scarcely be defined as religious disputes. Even Hitler's targeting of the Jews for annihilation bore little connection to faith-based concerns or hatreds. The Nazis killed according to ethnicity; they spared neither Jewish atheists nor Jewish converts to Christianity.
Relatively minor wars of the last hundred years (the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the struggle in Northern Ireland, the fighting in the Balkans) may contain unmistakable religious elements. But these struggles claimed only a fraction of the victims of horrific battles between co–religionists (the unspeakably bloody Iran-Iraq war), or genocidal tribal conflicts (in Rwanda and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa).
Is there any evidence that before the advent of the world's great and enduring religions‚ human beings behaved in a less warlike or murderous manner? Looking at the warring empires of the ancient world, where did religious imperatives play a key role in their struggles? Egyptians and Babylonians‚ Assyrians and Persians‚ Athenians and Spartans, made little effort to force their rival powers to accept their distinctive gods—but this didn't keep them from slaughtering one another over the course of thousands of years.
Of course, it's easy to find disgusting examples of brutal butchery committed in the name of a loving God. The Crusaders‚ for instance, massacred Moslems and Jews (and, in fact, other Christians when they sacked Constantinople) all in the name of some holy purpose. Following the Protestant Reformation, The Thirty Years War brought about a bloodbath in the heart of Europe—with an estimated one-third of the German population slaughtered by the contending armies. But even such struggles conducted in the name of faith contained elements of power politics and greed—with Catholic France, for instance, incongruously allied with the Protestant side in the Thirty Years War.
Describing wars in simplistic terms as "religious conflicts" inevitably leads to confusion and misstatements. If some clergyman tried to convince the public that religion through the ages has been a force solely for good, with no history of cruelty or hypocrisy‚ thoughtful people would rightly dismiss his arguments. The statement that "religion causes most wars in history" is similarly one-sided, ludicrous, extreme and ignorant.
(Jesus:) True religion loves peace and is peaceable. I bless the peacemakers and call them My children, for I am a God of peace.
Those who seek war and conquest either love other things more than Me—pride, power, position, materialism, greed—or they do not truly know Me. In saying this I speak not so much of the common soldier but of those who control armies and governments. Now, as in the past, wars and fighting often arise from their lusts—from their pride, their desire for more money, possessions, resources, land or power.
Man cannot lay the blame for war at My door, for most often the problem arises from his own evil and ungodly heart. When I control the Earth, there will be an abundance of peace, and men will at last beat their swords into plow-shares.
END 52
By Tom Turnipseed, CounterPunch
I knew war was terribly wrong when I saw pictures of children like myself desperately attempting to flee the flames of bombed German cities on the newsreels during World War II. As an 8-year-old, I identified with the children of war-torn Europe and wondered why they were being killed when everyone on the home front was waving flags and hyping the wonderful war effort against the evil axis powers. I was sure that Hitler and the Nazis were evil, but I wondered what the dying children had to do with it. Now, as a 65-year-old who looks into the beautiful eyes of my toddling granddaughters and reads and sees accounts of children their age being killed in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Iraq, by weapons I pay for with my tax dollars, I am absolutely certain that war itself is mankind's ultimate evil.
I am a financial accomplice in the deaths of Afghan children considered "collateral damage" by U.S. bombing, in lethal attacks by U.S.-armed Israeli forces on Palestinian babies in refugee camps, and in killing thousands of Iraqi children with cancer caused by depleted uranium bombs dropped during the Persian Gulf War. Do the citizen–taxpayers of the United States understand their complicity and responsibility for the deaths of innocent children as they wave their flags in the war against "evil"?
Anthropologists who look for common threads among the cultures of the world agree that the greatest taboo in all human cultures is killing another human being. All cultures agree that murder is wrong, but in the collective passion of paranoiac patriotism, the mass murder of war is an honored tradition. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001‚ gave militarists an exceptional opportunity to rally frightened Americans into a flag-waving frenzy to fight a global war against terrorism and evil everywhere. The romanticization and glorification of war by a violence-peddling media and entertainment industry, corporate war profiteers and their political pawns has numbed and dumbed down our humanity to the level of an us-against–them, kill-or-be–killed madness.
Violence sells. It makes money and draws viewers and readers to war movies and television shows‚ murder mysteries, video games, and to the front pages and the continuous television news. Violence is a formidable force in America. With increasingly fat profits and political pork abounding in the defense industry, it becomes un-American to oppose a war against those ubiquitous evil–doing terrorists around the world whether or not they had anything to do with the September 11 attack. If you do not join in supporting a global war-without-end, you just may not be a good American.
The world's sole superpower is viewed by many as the role model for mindless‚ endless, retaliatory killing and the spiraling cycle of violence throughout the world.
Our European allies have criticized our spending great amounts on military might and actions while investing little in economic aid for poor nations that might alleviate the causes of the hatred behind the September 11 attacks.
The most frightening aspect of the global scene these days is the out-of–control surge in the savagery of war and violence—Afghanistan, the Middle East, Colombia, India, and more. As the killing out of control, how many innocent people will die before we realize that war is wrong? (Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist.)
(Dad:) Well, sad to say, many more innocents will die before the Lord returns to set up His Kingdom and force men to beat their swords into plowshares. In fact, He returns at the most horrific war of all time, the Battle of Armageddon, and demonstrates the horrible fruit of war by causing those who are left of "the house of Israel" to bury all the dead and burn or destroy all the leftover weapons. After seven months of burial duty and seven years of weapons destruction, people will have gotten quite an object lesson and will be pretty fed up with war! God is fed up with it now!
END 61
From The Christian Review‚ June 1838, pp. 230-237‚ unsigned
The war spirit is so wrought into the texture of governments and the habits of national thinking, and even into our very festivals and pomps, that its occasional recurrence is deemed a matter of unavoidable necessity. Setting aside the matter of a defensive war for now, it is our intention to offer a few thoughts to show how utterly at variance the spirit of war is with truth and righteousness.
1. It contradicts the genius and intention of Christianity. Christianity requires us to seek to amend the condition of man. But war cannot do this. The world is no better for all the wars of five thousand years. Christianity‚ if it prevailed, would make the earth a paradise. War, where it prevails, makes it a slaughterhouse, a den of thieves, a brothel‚ a hell. Christianity cancels the laws of retaliation. War is based upon that very principle. Christianity is the remedy for all human woes. War produces every woe known to man.
The causes of war, as well as war itself, are contrary to the gospel. It originates in the worst passions and the worst aims. We may always trace it to the thirst of revenge, the acquisition of territory‚ the monopoly of commerce, the quarrels of kings, the intrigues of ministers, or some other source, equally culpable; but never has any war devised by man been founded on holy tempers and Christian principles.
2. War sets at nought the example of Jesus. One of Christ's primary laws is, "Learn of Me‚ for I am meek." His constant declaration was that He "came not to destroy men's lives, but to save."
He drove men from the temple‚ but it was with "a scourge of small cords," and a gentle doom it was, compared to their just deserts. He expressly said His servants would not fight, because His kingdom was not of this world. He was the Prince of Peace.
Do we forget that Christ is our example? Imagine the Redeemer laying a country waste‚ setting fire to cities, storming fortresses, and consigning tens of thousands to wounds and anguish, death and damnation, just to define some point of policy, to decide some kingly quarrel, or to enlarge some boundary. Could "meekness and lowliness" be learned from Him thus engaged? It is most certain that we gather no army lessons from Him who "came to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to comfort all that mourn." It is most certain that no man who makes fighting his profession can find authority in the example of our Lord.
3. War is inconsistent not only with the general structure and nature of Christianity and the example of Jesus, but it violates all the express precepts of the New Testament. Even the Old Testament does not sanction war, as a custom. In each case of lawful war, it was entered on by express command. It should be remembered that in no case, even under the Old Testament, was war appointed to decide doubtful questions or to settle quarrels. Wars were intended to chastise nations guilty of provoking God. Such is never the pretext of modern war.
As to the New Testament, a multitude of precepts might be quoted: "Ye have heard, an eye for an eye, but I say unto you, resist not evil." "Follow peace with all men." "Love one another." "Do justice, love mercy." "Love your enemies." "Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace." "Return good for evil." "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger‚ and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you‚ with all malice; and be ye kind one toward another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
All know how much these passages abound in the New Testament. There they stand. In any sense the words will bear, they forbid war. If language has any force at all, these words equally forbid retaliation. Yet retaliation is always advanced as the very best pretext for war and is more frequently the avowed reason than any other!
Rehearse all the catalogue of graces, and mark how we are enjoined to be meek, lowly, peaceable, easy to be entreated, gentle‚ thinking no evil, merciful, slow to anger, given to quietness, knowledge‚ patience, temperance, prayer. War sets them all at nought.
Of the sermon on the mount, five benedictions are upon the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek‚ the merciful, and the peacemakers. Two others are upon the persecuted and reviled. The professed warrior, therefore, shuts himself out from all these benedictions! The discourse expressly revokes the law of retaliation, and, exploding the [practice] of loving our neighbor and hating our enemy, requires us to love our enemies and do good to them which despitefully use us. Afterward‚ in presenting a form of prayer, it not only teaches us to say, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us," but adds, "If ye forgive not men their trespasses‚ neither will your heavenly Father forgive you." What a peace sermon is here!
Text box:
"War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity. It destroys religion, it destroys states and it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it."—Martin Luther
End of text box.
The regular soldier … makes war a trade, and is ready to fight any nation, or any part of his own nation, as he is sent. He is to wheel, march, load, fire, advance or flee, just as he is bidden, and because he is bidden. The nearer a soldier comes to a mere machine, the better soldier he makes. Is this right for a Christian? Is it compatible with his duty to "examine all things‚ and hold fast that which is good?"
What gospel precept is there, which he who makes war a profession is not at times compelled to violate? He must cast away meekness, and fight. He must cast away forgiveness, and revenge his country. He must not return good for evil, but blow for blow, wound for wound.
Look at an army in the hour of battle. See attacks and retreats, battalions annihilated, limbs flying in the air; suffocating smoke, thundering artillery, thousands smarting in the agony of death, and none to administer a cup of water. Do the precepts of Christianity authorize such a scene? Look at the field when all is over. The harvest trampled and destroyed, houses smoking in ruin, the mangled and slain strewed among dead horses and broken gun-carriages! Prowlers stripping booty even from the warm bodies of the dying! Jackals lurking around, and birds of prey wheeling above. Here and there a wretched widow, or an anxious wife, seeking her loved one among the dead and dying. Does all this look as if Christians had there been serving their Master, the God of mercy?
But nowhere does war wear such horrors as in a siege. The inhabitants are straitly shut up. Business, pleasure, education and intercourse are checked; and sorrow, poverty, terror, and distress are spread abroad. The bombardment begins. Shells explode in the streets, or penetrate the roofs. Citizens are killed in the streets, and soldiers on the ramparts. Women and children retreat to cellars and live in all discomfort. Day by day the gloom thickens. All news is of houses burnt, persons killed‚ and scarcity increased, At length‚ famine is threatened. Everything is sold to buy a little food.
Anon, breaches are made in the walls. All must work‚ amid galling fire, to repair them. Mines are sprung, blowing houses and the occupants into the air. No relief comes. Hundreds perish in desperate sorties. All are miserable. The widow, the bereft mother, the disappointed bride‚ and the tender orphan, mourn continually.
Pestilence succeeds to famine. Thousands, who have escaped violence, die of disease. At length, the city is taken by storm; pillage, and perhaps an awful conflagration‚ succeed; a brutal soldiery raven among the virtuous; and the indescribable scene ends in permanent poverty, lamentation, and dishonor. Is this Christianity?
(Jesus:) The spirit of war, of killing‚ of bloodshed and violence is not of Me‚ nor is it part of Christianity. It is not from Heaven but from Hell, for the spirit of war comes from the Enemy himself. He was a murderer from the beginning, a deceiver and a liar, and he uses his lies to stir men up to murder, bloodshed, and war. He hates life‚ so he seeks to destroy it, or to pervert it and turn it against Me.
I am the Prince of Peace, and I came for love, lived for love, and died for love. I gave My life a sacrifice for many, and in dying, I brought grace to man, abolishing the old ways and the old laws and setting men free. I did away with "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," which was for a different time and a different people, a different world. Instead, I told men to love their enemies, for justice and vengeance are Mine. I will repay, for I am not only a loving God, but a righteous one.
I am also a patient God, long-suffering with man, for I know his frame. So I have borne long with the injustices, oppression and wars of men, though I have wept at their brutality, cruelty and suffering. But these days are drawing to an end, and unless I shorten them man will not only destroy himself but the planet on which he dwells.
So when man's cup of iniquity is full, in but a little season, when he goes so far as to make war on Me, I will return. This time I will not come as a babe, nor as one who is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. This time I will come as King of kings and Lord of lords, with the armies of Heaven behind Me, and will slay all who would war against Me.
Then will the world be at peace, and men will beat their swords into plowshares and learn war no more.
END 70
By Charley Reese, King Features Syndicate
If you step back a moment and think about it, you will realize that you are constantly being propagandized to approve of war—not just the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but war generically.
We should resist. War is killing, maiming and disfiguring human beings. It is so disgusting and horrible in reality that even the most "realistic" Hollywood movie sanitizes it. The news media sanitize it. The government sanitizes war because it doesn't want you to see the coffins. Most of all, it doesn't want you to see the bodies before they are put in the coffins. The Bush administration's real beef with the Arab television station Al-Jazeera is really nothing more than the fact that Al-Jazeera shows the bodies.
No‚ the Bush administration doesn't want you to see the bodies—not the bodies of our men and women, and not the bodies of Iraqi men‚ women and children. The administration wants you to see the war as an electronic game with bright lights in the distance and good sound effects, or close-ups of our brave warriors firing their guns at an invisible enemy. It doesn't want you to see the torn flesh and blood. If you did, you might not support the war, and billions of dollars depend on your support.
This entire glorification of war—as if the whole and only purpose of the government and the country were to fight wars—smells of fascism. The news media glorify the war and militarism; we get the same dose on television, in the movies and in video games. If the American people aren't careful‚ they will wake up one day to find out they've become a nation of mindless heel-clickers.
Not one single poor soul of the more than 100,000 Americans who have died in the Cold War and the hot wars since 1945 has died in defense of America.
The sad thing is that when the last soldier leaves Afghanistan and Iraq—if that day ever comes—we won't be any better off. Afghanistan will still be Afghanistan. Iraq will still be Iraq.
There will be more graves‚ there will be more Americans without arms and legs‚ but nothing will have changed. Politicians will be searching diligently for more "bad guys" for the next generation to fight. First it was the fascists, then the communists, now the terrorists. Who's next? God only knows.
And no corporation should be allowed to make a profit off the blood of American soldiers, as is now happening in Iraq and has happened in every war.
Marine General Smedley Butler had it right when he said‚ "War is a racket."
Let us all learn to hate it as it deserves to be hated.
*
"Smedley Butler advised that when talk of war raged, all of the industrialists and politicians be conscripted first‚ then their children, and lastly, the rest of us. Butler conceived a simple democratic plan that would require a decision for war be approved by a majority of all those who would be sent to fight. Draftable young men would vote yea or nay for the next war. No votes by older folks or politicians and industrialists would be considered. Such a system would ensure that truly defensive wars would be fought, and all other wars rejected."—Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski
(Dad:) That's a good plan, but not one that would go over well in the U.S. Congress, ha! Nor would it go over very well with the industrialists, as Smedley tactfully called them. Those who advise or promote war to profit from war, from death and destruction and suffering, are warmongers, whatever else they may call themselves. And they have many accomplices in the media‚ who glorify war and the culture of war, portraying it as something noble and virtuous rather than showing all the carnage and hell that causes soldiers nightmares for decades to follow.
War and glorifying war is a part of American culture, what the country was built on and thrives on! War is how the country was won and how it grew from coast to coast, fighting the British, the Indians, the Spanish and French and others, slaughtering multitudes.
War supports its economy. War gives it its superiority complex over other nations, which it can bully or invade at will. War fills its TV, video and movie screens with glorious battles of the past to prepare its people for glorious battles of the future.
War is the national creed of America. Like the neighborhood bully, they're proud of the fact that they can beat up anyone else, and they flaunt it in the media. As one philosopher said, "The only version of national pride encouraged by American popular culture is simple-minded military chauvinism." How true!
Well, there's coming a day when there'll be war no more, thank God! Until that time, don't let yourself be propagandized by war in the media. Man's wars aren't noble crusades but unholy terrors!
GP tract
The skies are black with clouds—the clouds of the smoke of war. The ground is red with blood—the blood of innocent lives caught in the flames and torments of war. Villages, towns and cities are being destroyed. Poor and innocent civilians, including small children, are being deprived of basic necessities. Families are being torn apart, watching their loved ones die in pain and agony. Is any cause worth so great a cost in human life? Are injustices on the part of one government corrected by the injustices of another? What government is righteous and just and worthy of judging another?
No army can claim to be waging war on the side of "right." War, killing, death and destruction are not right. Mankind was placed on this earth to love and care for one another, but because of selfishness and greed, the world has become increasingly corrupt, and fighting and killing has become a way of life. This was never meant to be.
Those who wage war in the name of God‚ claiming My blessing upon their cause, are mistaken. Many are misled by their own sense of rightness and righteousness‚ while others act out of hypocrisy. Those who truly know and love Me follow My words and My example, and seek and strive for peace. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Matthew 5:9). I went so far as to say that you should "love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you" (Matthew 5:44). Do those who are so intent on waging war heed My words in this? Or do they merely call on Me with their lips‚ but their hearts are far from Me?
Let those who think they stand take heed‚ for their time is coming‚ and they will fall. It is a law of nature that you will reap what you sow. Those who wage war, who pursue the domination, destruction and devastation of other lands, will reap sorrow and bloodshed themselves.
I know the hearts of men. I will reward the peacemakers. I will judge the warmongers. Every man will give account before Me in the day of judgment. Search your own heart. Determine where you stand—whether on the side of peace or the side of war, on the side of freedom or the side of tyranny.
I am the Almighty and Omnipotent God. I could use My power to force humanity to do what is right‚ but I have chosen to give man the majesty of choice. I allow each person and each nation to determine their own destiny through the choices they make. I do not impose My will or My plan upon mankind. How much less should mere mortals impose their will and plan upon others? One person should never force another to conform to their beliefs or way of life. One government should never force another to operate according to its ideals and desires. This is not My way. This is not My plan.
If you stand by when the freedoms of a nation across the globe are being violated, do not be surprised if someday you find your own freedoms lost. If you have freedom of speech now but you do not use that freedom and speak out against oppression and tyranny for all you're worth, one day you will lose it. Do not take your privileges lightly.
Are you a peacemaker and worthy to be called a child of God? Are you personally acquainted with the God who is love? Have you personally received Me into your life? If you know Me‚ if you know the truth, then I call you now to follow it. Take action. Testify of My truth to others. If you know Me in name only, you can change that here and now, and get to know Me personally and intimately. You can receive My spirit of love, peace, and light into your life and heart. Talk to Me. Call on Me. If you don't know what to say, pray this short prayer:
Jesus, I want to know You personally. I want to understand the truth. I want to see the world the way You see it. I want to understand Your will, and I want to do my part to fulfill Your will. I want to stand up for truth and justice. Give me strength to do so. Show me what I can do to change the world around me for the better. Show me how to love my fellow man, how to help and care for others as You would help and care for them if You walked on earth today. Show me what I can do to promote peace. Amen.
Take a stand for Me, a stand for peace, a stand against war. Take a stand for freedom, and against the hypocrisy, greed and selfishness of those who are eager to wage war. Pray for peace. Pray for the innocent. Remember, you are accountable to Me and will stand before Me one day. Live accordingly.
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