Many Christians are confused about what to pray for in a time of war. Should we pray for our total victory? Peace? Justice? Few casualties? Humiliating defeat for the enemy?
Prayer, of course, is largely dictated by a person's theology - tempered by where he or she lives! in the Gulf War the average Iraqi Muslim prayed for Saddam Hussein, and for an Iraqi victory. If he lived in the United States he wouldn't dare - openly! In America, Christian prayers were almost universally for the coalition forces. In Iraq, Christian prayers sought victory for Saddam! And in the recent Balkans conflict, Christian Serbs call on God to allow them to triumph over the Muslim Kosovars.
But what does the Bible say about prayer in a time of war? Surely it's from there Christians ought to seek guidance! What instruction, then, does God give us in his Word concerning such prayer?
Pray For Peace?
The closest the New Testament gets to instructing Christians on "political" prayer is 1 Timothy 2:1-2. There we're told to pray "...for all men, for kings and for all in high position". Why? For victory? To rout the enemy? Note what the apostle wrote: "...that we [Christians] may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way".
We're to pray that we will be free to serve God and Jesus Christ, free to fulfill our life's purpose of loving God and our neighbor, calling others to become God's children and preparing ourselves for membership in His Kingdom - unmolested by government actions. We are urged to pray for this kind of peace!
But there's nothing here about "praying for victory". Not even for peace in our time, or justice among nations! Governments (even "Christian" ones) are largely motivated by party, personal and national interest - and this doesn't necessarily coincide with godly Christian living! War is messy. It is man's inadequate way of "solving" his problems. It stems from misdirected and undisciplined desires, from human greed. It begets inhuman behavior on all sides - and our western democracies are not immune! We need not look further than the atrocities in Kosovo to see that "Hitler" still lives!
"The wrath of man works not the righteousness of God" (James 1:20).
What can Christians pray for? A speedy end to the conflict; deliverance for the oppressed (on both sides); that the will of God be done, rather than that of fallible human leaders (however well intentioned); that God use even the evil conditions of war to bring yet more to repentance and into His family; that God grant both the victors and the losers humility and compassion (for in modern wars, everyone is in some way a loser, and the vanquished somehow transform themselves into "victors".)
The Bible fact is that "evil men will go on from bad to worse", ultimately leading mankind to the brink of destruction. And not until the resurrection, according to Scripture, will earth's warring hordes begin to savor permanent peace - a peace that follows the return of Jesus Christ as conquering King of kings and Prince of Peace. That will be the time for Christians to get directly involved! In this age, a man-made "New World Order", however well-motivated, cannot bring permanent peace!
God's Plans
In a war situation, then, what should we pray? Can it be other than what most of us already pray daily: "Your Kingdom come, your will be done"?
Who can presume to know what God plans for a particular year in history, for a particular war or nation! In general, He has a "hands off" policy in human affairs. He allows us free will, freedom of action to do as we want. For the most part Satan holds sway. Earth, in this age, is under the influence of the Adversary (Ephesians 2:2,3)! God intervenes (through angelic powers) only to keep history on course, and in accord with His grand design. But the prayers of the saints are mightily effective!
Of course, our personal intercession for personal needs and those of our family and brethren is always a feature of our daily prayers. In a time of war, we should as individuals and children of our merciful Father, seek His intervention in our, and our loved ones', personal circumstances. But we can't insult the sovereign God by urging Him to give "our side" total victory - as though "we" are all perfectly righteous and "they" are totally sinful! The Children of Israel of old had to learn this lesson, even in their wars with the idolatrous Philistines. "Final" victory is never final. The war "to end all wars" (whichever it was) didn't.
There is suffering in war. Horrendous suffering, as the lamentable deaths of many thousands of Kosovar refugees testify. And unspeakable suffering follows in the wake of war - witness the plight of the Bosnians, the Kurds and Shi'ites, or the aftermath of the Ethiopian civil war. Such suffering can't but touch us. We can't help but be deeply affected by "the abominations" that scourge our world (Ezekiel 9:4)!
Out of compassion, then, and out of the love of God which the Holy Spirit expresses through us, we ought to "sigh and cry" in prayer. It is the natural Christian reaction. Prayer for a swift end to the suffering. Prayer that evil may be rooted out - wherever it lies (and, God knows. there's plenty of that in every society, even ours!). Prayer, above all, that God's Kingdom will come - soon.
But not prayer for crushing victory!
Game Of Nations
What, then, can we pray about as a nation? What should be the focus of our prayer when the leadership (oh so rarely with any degree of sincerity) calls for a "day of prayer"? How should Christians pray when such action is clearly sincere, and not merely a device to rally the vote? (When, during recent conflicts, did you see our leaders, in Congress and the Parliament buildings of the world, on their knees in tearful abject repentance for our gross national sins?)
The war against Iraq was a case in point. That war need never have happened! Whatever the outwardly sanitized but sordid "reasons", the situation in Kuwait was the offspring of power politics. The world's politicians knew what was developing. The world powers triggered it through their manoeuvering for influence and for natural resources (oil).
Any wise politician could have foreseen that arming Iraq to the teeth, installing Saddam in power, turning a blind eye - for some two decades - to his violent climb, using him as a club against Iran: all such factors inevitably would lead to a destructive confrontation. Finally, he would "bite the hand that fed him." And now the world is sowing the seeds of future conflict by peddling billions of dollars of arms - post-war - to the Middle East! Can we be anything but ashamed of such avaricious hypocrisy?
As wise King Solomon remarked: "The prudent man foresees the evil - and hides himself -, the foolish pass on - and are punished" (Prov. 22:3)! And that applies, too, to our national leadership! Every sin has secreted within itself the poisoned seed of an evil outcome. That evil outcome is the inevitable penalty of sin. Said God: "I create evil"! That is, He ordained that every transgression of His holy, just and good Law would yield its evil consequences. Physically, if we drive too fast along a windy road, we will crash. Morally, if we allow our greed, vanity and selfishness to run amuck, we will destroy ourselves. War is only one of the many ways in which this destruction occurs.
The inevitable fruit and penalty of our governments' perverse actions in the Middle East (after we had voted them into office), then, was the recent destructive conflict with its disgraceful - and continuing - aftermath. In our prayer, the best we can do is to cry out for God's continuing mercy - for we have not yet fully harvested the crop of bitter fruit which our own foolishness planted.
National Repentance
Shouldn't our approach harmonize with God's reply to King Solomon's prayer? He said, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).
The key to victory is - national repentance!
The whole nation must turn to God and commit to seek His will and obey his Law. Then out of His loving mercy, He promises to hear our prayer, forgive our sin, and "heal" our land. Anyone who reads the daily news must see the need for such repentance. And perhaps wonder if we have indeed gone beyond the possibility of it! How clear that "victory" in the Gulf War was an expression of sheer naked military power within the will of a sovereign - and merciful - God. As "Gulf War syndrome" testifies, that war could have been a disaster for US forces, but God had mercy on us, though we little deserved it. Let us not fool ourselves - our "victory" was not a positive response from God to a repentant nation at prayer!
Let's not be lulled into a self-satisfied sense of security because we "won" the war - though that is questionable: the ticker-tape extravaganza is now seen to have been premature! Saddam rules - OK, nearly a decade on.
Learn From History
The New Testament writings urge us to learn from history. One lesson is that there comes a time when God washes his hands even of His chosen nation. Always He pleads that we "amend our life and our doings" (Jer. 7:3). Always God is ready to extend mercy: "...if you really see justice done between man and man, if you give up oppressing aliens, orphans and widows, give up shedding innocent blood and following other gods - then I will allow you to remain in this place" (Jer. 7:5-7).
But, powerfully, God condemns our religious hypocrisy. We steal, murder, commit adultery, extort. oppress, pervert justice, perjure, sacrifice to Baal [that is, we observe all Baal's values and priorities (Jer. 7:9-15)] - and then we troop to church every week, self-righteously assuming God will hear our prayer for victory over our enemies!
But when a nation reaches this stage, history also warns God's prophets and God's people: "Pray not for this people, lift no cry for them, and lay no plea of intercession before me, for I will not listen to you" (Jer. 7:16-17).
Such prayer, in other words, falls on deaf ears!
Have our modern "Christian" nations now sunk to this level of depravity? Can we repent?
Increasingly, it seems unlikely!
A Way Of Escape?
Sin is deeply rooted in the hearts of our peoples. Our hedonistic demands for more - more resources, more entertainment, more blood-lust on our screens and more blood, more pornographic filth, more slaughter of the innocents in the womb, more money and more fraud, more "pleasure" through chemical trips - such sin tips the balance towards national correction at the hands of a God who has a covenant relationship with our people. Perhaps God takes our slogan "In God we trust" more seriously than we do! We will soon find out that we can trust God to correct us when we go wrong, just as our forefather felt that they could trust God to support them when they did right!
It seems clear that the prophesied "Four horsemen of the Apocalypse" are stirring. Already these four - false religion, war, famine, natural disasters - daily darken the headlines. And, said Jesus, this will mark only "the beginning of sorrows" (Matt 24:8) - a time of "great tribulation" for our nations at the hands of the revitalized federation of nations, called in the book of Revelation the "Beast". It will be a time when those nations who have rejected God's outstretched hand and loving direction will be literally uprooted and enslaved abroad.
However - all is not lost. You personally can go on your knees before God, start to obey Him and fervently pray for His forgiveness through Jesus Christ. You can, by the mercy of God, largely escape the worst mental and spiritual effects of the coming Tribulation. Again, history shows that God's mercy extends to those who willingly obey Him. What Almighty God said to ancient Israel when that nation was enslaved in Egypt, He says also to our nations - and to each of us: "When I see the blood [of the Lamb] I will pass over [i.e., protect] you".
Anciently, when petitioned by Abraham, God agreed not to destroy Sodom if there were a mere ten righteous to be found. But for our time, He warns that we stand alone. His protective shield in the coming tribulation is for individuals. Have You yet repented, turned to God, begun to obey him? Have you come "under the blood" of Jesus Christ your Saviour, shed for you?
If not - it's time to wake up. There is no other way.
Time, for mankind, may be about to run out!
To comment on this article or request more information, please contact James McBride by e-mail at the comment form below.
For PDF or mailed copy, see CGOM. Excerpt from New Horizons Issue 16, July/August 1999. Edited by James McBride of the Churches of God, United Kingdom.
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