REVELATION 6:3-4
Read Revelation 6:3-4.
Wars and rumors of war, nation will rise against nation. These are the warnings of Christ in Matthew 24:7, but Jesus tells us not to be alarmed because these things must happen before the end will come. Certainly we live in times where war and rumors of war are common throughout the world. I doubt there has ever been a time when some nation wasn’t rising up against another. It is the inevitability of the Fall of man, and Jesus says it is an inevitable part of the end. Not to be a fatalistic pessimist, but the world today will never achieve a utopian state of peace. It’s just not in our nature. That is not to say we are to ever give up on peace, but it does mean that it is not realistic to have the expectation that evil, selfishness, greed, etc. will simply give up and go away. From what we see in this passage, things will have to get much, much worse before they will become permanently better. It will take a cosmic act to rid this world of its cosmic problem. When peace is removed from this world with the coming of the second horseman, then we will see mankind at its worst and it will virtually self-destruct.
When we think of the many wars throughout the world today, it should not alarm us, but rather inform us. These are merely evidences of the great need for Christ to redeem this world from itself. It is far too easy to blame God for such terrible conflict in this world when it is our own self-interests and evil desires that are really to blame. So avoid the temptation to blame God for injustice and evil and instead let it remind us that this is exactly why Christ is desperately needed for peace to ever become a reality.
