North New South Wales Conference

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Justin Torossian

Is the War Bigger Than You Think?

Lyle Southwell

Is Peace Really Possible?

Is Christianity the Religion of War?


♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Welcome to the N.Dot Digital. I'm Lyle Southwell and I'm here with Justin Terosian. We're going to dig into the subject of wars and rumors of wars. We've spent our last 2 presentations looking at this subject from a great controversy perspective, from a religious perspective, but we get to discuss it today. Justin, where are we going to start this discussion?

You know, I wanted to ask you, in your presentations you talked about the history of religion in war and their connectivity. I mean, most religions in the world these days preach, and back in history even, preach peace. So why is there so much war connected to religion as we look at history? Yeah, and really, you know, when I study history, I would challenge you as a listener to find me an example of a war where religion wasn't in some way central to that conflict. We find it everywhere.

Or if not religion, an ideology of say atheism that's pretty much the same as religion. Now of course when we look at religion, religion probably nothing affects the human heart and the emotions more than our faith in God. And so what I see taking place here Justin is people using that to motivate people in military conflict. Napoleon once said that morale was worth 3 times what equipment was worth when it came to warfare. And 1 of the ways that people have discovered of motivating and raising the morale of the troops is to inspire them with religion.

We see the same thing happening, you know, in our current conflicts right now, such as the Ukraine, where the different groups are seeing this as a religious war, a holy war, and they're looking at their religious differences as a way of inciting that extra level, inflaming that extra level of motivation to go and fight. It's the complete contrast to everything that the Bible teaches and so much of what religion teaches. It's amazing that it's able to be used in this way, but sadly throughout history, history repeats itself. And if you go back through history, you're going to find religion at the centerpiece of war over and over and over and over and over again. And I guess you could say false religion, right?

Because like you just mentioned, God's ways are not ways where war comes about, God is a God of peace. And of course, he's the defender of his people. He's the defender of the weak. And there are times where God is portrayed as a warrior in the Bible, right? But by and large, false religion and misconstrued and twisted versions of the truth have been used to motivate people in the wrong way, haven't they?

Absolutely, absolutely. And you look at the words of Jesus. Even in the name of God, like you mentioned in your presentation. Yes. We go to the Gospel of John in John chapter 18 and verse 36.

Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this world. Jesus told us very plainly, we're not to be fighting over religion. We're not to be fighting over Christianity.

We're not to be fighting over being a follower of Jesus. Don't ever be confused. When religion is injected into warfare, it is never true religion. Well said. Yeah, really well said.

So Justin, here's a question for you. If this is the case, and if we should not be fighting here in the name of religion, if we shouldn't be fighting in the name of Jesus Christ, if He is the Prince of Peace, war started in heaven. Doesn't that mean that God is the 1 who invented war in the first place? Some might try to suggest that. Let's look at that verse together.

Revelation chapter 12 we saw in the first presentation it says, and war broke out in heaven. Notice it doesn't say God started a war in heaven nor does he created war but it says war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought with the dragon. Michael is a code name for Jesus. And it says, and the dragon and his angels fought.

Verse 9 tells us the dragon is the devil and Satan. So war broke out in heaven. And the fascinating thing about this to me is that the word here for war is not physical warfare. And I mean, it would have turned physical because verse 9 tells us that the devil and his angels were cast out. They were cast down to the earth.

So there came a physical element at least at the end. But the word here in verse 7 for war, translated war in English, is polemia. From which we get the English word polemics, which means debate or argumentation. So this was not primarily a physical war, this was a war of ideas. A war of ideologies, a war of words.

And it was, you know, the devil convincing the angels that God was wrong, God was a tyrant, and that, you know, He was the 1 that really should deserve praise. Which takes us back to another verse, Isaiah chapter 14, gives us an insight into who really started this war and what it was about. And God pulls back the veil in this verse, so to speak. And he actually tells us what was happening in the heart and mind of Lucifer, who was Satan before he chose to become evil or essentially go his own way, rebel against God and become Satan. So Isaiah 14, verse 12, actually going on into verse 13.

For you have said in your heart, that is Lucifer, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of the congregation on the farther sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most high. So really we see here that the motivation of this war was that Satan wanted to organize a coup to take the throne of God himself. And so we see that war broke out, it was the result, and eventually, After God bore long with Lucifer, no doubt, as he bore long with the angels, trying to win them back and get them to choose him and to choose truth, they rather were eventually cast out of heaven. So Satan is actually the instigator of this war. Absolutely.

The instigator of a coup in heaven. Yes, and now, of course, it's on planet Earth, and the wars that we see are a reflection of that, in a sense. And as the wars that we see here on this earth are a reflection of the war in heaven, the war in heaven was a religious war. That's right. It's no wonder that Satan injects religion into warfare on earth whenever he can.

Very true. That's where he started. Very true. Lyle, another question for you. So, you know, sometimes people try to say, well, Jesus said of the signs of the times, wars and rumors of wars would be 1 of them, pointing us to the reality that His coming is near.

But people say at times, you know, over the last 2000 years since Jesus said that, there have been wars and rumors of wars. So how are we any closer in the last 150 years than we were in the 18th centuries before that. Well Justin, you know I love history and studying history and so I thought I'd bring a picture speaks a thousand words I thought I'd bring something to illustrate this point for you all today. And what I've got here is a rifle from the era of the American Civil War. So that's some history, Justin, that you would know.

This is an 1863 Enfield that I've got right here. And when you look at the technology that is involved here, it's fairly primitive. This is technology that existed for around 400 years with very, very little change. So as a weapons system, you've got a little bit of change that takes place here. You go from a match to a flint to a cap.

And that's pretty much all that changes here. And the rest of it really doesn't change over a 400 year period. So a musket with a ball that you tamp down, you know, you push down with the gunpowder. Powder and ball down the barrel, push it down, cock it back. You have an ignition system here, and it goes bang.

Now what's interesting about this is that it's actually a relatively inefficient weapon. In fact, if you go back to the time of, say, Cyrus the Persian, who's fighting against, you know, Belshazzar and Nabonidus, you know, back in the Babylonian era, the Persians were renowned for their archers, and their archers had a higher rate of fire, a vastly higher rate of fire than this right here, and an equivalent range. So as a projectile weapon, the bow was actually much more efficient than what this weapon was. So in the United States of America, the Native Americans battling, you know, the early colonists would have been fairly even, which makes sense why they went back and forth at times. Well, for a long time, until of course, you had a weapon that was using this kind of technology that could begin to match the rate of fire that you could get from a bow.

But if you consider that this is a system that's been there for 400, 500 years with very, very little change taking place to it. And the reason why this overtook the bow and did away with archery was not because it was a more efficient weapon, but because it was easier to train. So to, you know. Hardly any skill to aim and fire. Very, very little skill.

And you didn't need to build up the muscle required to draw, say for instance, a British longbow. It took a long time to build up the muscle in your right shoulder or your left shoulder if you were left-handed to be able to actually draw that bow and use it effectively. And so, you know, you could train a soldier to use this in 6 weeks. And so it became very efficient for training and that's why it overtook a weapon that is just truly ancient and been around for a very, very long time. And so if you'd have taken Cyrus the Persian or Alexander the Great and pitched them against the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, they could have won that battle.

And that's a 2, 500 year gap where there has been very, very little change. Even with this system, you've got 400 or 500 years with very little change in technology. But that's that. Then we move to this 1. So this 1 you can fire about 3 aimed shots at 100 meters at a 300 millimeter diameter target with that.

The record for this 1 is 30 aimed shots at the same size target at 300 meters. Wow. So Triple the distance. Triple the distance and a lot more firepower. And that's continuous rate of fire that we're talking about.

Triple the number of fires as well. Yes. Now, this is a little bit later model. But this system that we're looking at right here, a Charger Fed magazine rifle, the difference between this 1 and this 1 is 21 years. And by the time this 1 comes out...

Revolutionised things. Absolutely, it revolutionises things. By the time this 1 comes out, what you're now beginning to see is things like the maximum gun. And the maximum gun is pumping up 600 rounds per minute. Wow.

That's a massive escalation. And I use that to illustrate a point. That's 10 per second. That's right. That's 10 fires per second.

Wow. Absolutely. So I use this to illustrate a point, and the point is this, that when Jesus says there will be wars and rumors of wars, he goes on to say, as you pointed out, that it will be like the birth pains. Birth pains, when they start, they're kind of mild, they're far apart, but they escalate in a J-curve. And what you've got here in the space of 21 years is a massive escalation in the ability to be able to kill people, which is why you were sharing some shocking statistics with us that in the 21st century We had more people died as a result of war than all previous centuries combined Why was that because we invented the means to be able to do so.

And so you can take a rifle company from the First World War could defeat the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. You can take a bomber crew, just a single 11 man bomber crew from the Second World War could defeat all of the armies in 1 day in the First World War. Crazy. And I mean you've also got the invention of the airplane. So you went from hot air balloons in the Civil War, you were mentioning, you felt it before that basically.

Yes, hot air balloons was the first time anything aerial was used. Fixed wing airplane in World War I. That's that era. This era here, we now have fighter planes and bombers. And you go from, you know, when you look at the beginning of the First World War, the fastest thing on the battlefield at the beginning of the First World War was a horse.

At the end of the First World War you've got aircraft that are flying at over 200 kilometers an hour. 25 years later you've got the beginning of the second world war and at the end of the second world war you have jet aircraft you know that is a massive escalation and look where we've gone from there look at how we fight wars now we fight wars sitting in an office desk with joysticks, flying drones that are literally on the other side of the planet. Wow. You know, when Jesus said it would be like the birth pains, that it would escalate like a J curve, we can see it right here in a simple illustration that that is exactly what has taken place in the last 150 years. Amazing.

Amazing. You know, just as we were reflecting on war down through history, just the gravity and the, the, how shall I say, the, I guess you could say the, the, the sadness of the destruction and the pain that it causes just came to me. And I don't know about you, but, oh, I do know about you. You feel the same, but man, I just long for the day where God will end all wars. Oh, absolutely.

Where it'll be a thing of the past. The brokenness, the death, the injury, the pain that it causes will be a thing of the past. You look at those pictures coming out of the Ukraine of families being broken up and torn apart. And those are some of the most heart-rending pictures. And of course, you're getting the same pictures on the other side of the border with Russian families being pulled apart as well.

You know, they're sending their husbands and fathers and sons off to die. Why? War is so senseless and Jesus, you know, He is the Prince of Peace. All of this technology that we have right here, amazing technology, it blows our minds. Imagine if we had used our brain power to create things for good rather than things for destruction.

Absolutely. Imagine where our world would be at right now. So true. Hadn't been so sidetracked by war. Very true.

Well, I wonder if just, you know, before we close together, if we might be able to say a prayer for all those, not only who are affected by war right now, here on planet Earth, in some corner of the planet, but also those who are traumatized, they have PTSD from being on the front lines or maybe being attacked in war. What if we just said a special prayer for those who are affected by war in a special way right now? What's happening in Eastern Europe as well? We can pray for that. And also just pray...

Wars in Eastern Europe that we care about and the wars in other parts of the world... That we're not hearing about. That we don't really care about. Yeah. And are just as damaging to people.

Absolutely. And let's pray as well that Jesus would return to put an end to all war. Absolutely, Dr. You want to pray for us? Sure, let's go ahead.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we long for that day when you will return and establish a kingdom of peace that will last forever. A kingdom of love. Father, we pray that you'll come back to this earth and put an end to the war and the conflict and the bloodshed and the families being torn apart and the heartache that we see. Father, we see it on our TV screens, on our computer screens, on YouTube and so many other places right now coming to us from the Ukraine.

And, you know, we know that it's taking place in so many other parts of the world as well. Father, we pray for the situation in Ukraine. We pray for the situation elsewhere. We pray that You will bring peace to these nations. We pray that You will touch the hearts of the leaders, that they will find a solution and a way through.

Father, we commit them to you at this time and we pray that you'll be with the families that have lost loved ones. We pray that you'll give them comfort at this time. We pray that you'll give them healing. We pray for the servicemen and the servicewomen who are being impacted and will carry the emotional scars with them, even when they survive this conflict. We pray that you'll bring them healing.

We pray for those that have been wounded, that you'll bring them healing and bring them back to full health and strength. Father, this is a terrible, There are terrible conflicts that are taking place in our world right now. And we pray that you will do whatever you can at this time in a world that is broken and destroyed by sin and evil. We pray that you'll intervene. And above all, we pray that you'll come back soon.

We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Well friends, thanks for joining us. We hope that you enjoyed our discussion half as much as we did. It was educational, informational, and most of all, inspirational. So Lyle, we have something we want to share with you guys as an offer and Lyle, take it away, tell them about it.

Sure, Justin, thank you so much. If you have enjoyed Justin's discussion of the great controversy, the war in heaven, and the war for the souls and hearts of men and women, Then we have this book here, The Great Controversy, that details that war from the standpoint of Bible prophecy while talking about the history of Christianity and the wars that have been fought in the name of Christianity down through the centuries. We would love to give you a copy entirely for free. And so for you to receive your free copy, simply text the word PEACE to the number that you see on your screen right now. Again, simply text the word peace to the number on your screen right now and may the peace of Jesus Christ be with you all.

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Wars and Rumors of Wars

Is Peace Really Possible?

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Other Teachings in Series

Is the War Bigger Than You Think?

15m

Is Peace Really Possible?

19m

Is Christianity the Religion of War?

24m

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