Peace, Peace
By Tom Gilbreath
As I write this, the people of Israel, Gaza, and the world hope that the Gaza war is finally coming to an end. Will there be more delays? Probably. Has Hamas been removed? Over time, will Hamas be reborn or will a Hamas-like entity rise to take its place? The heart of terror is hatred, and this war has not snuffed that out.
Still, the present peace deal appears to be an enormous achievement for President Trump and his administration. It has been praised from such divergent points of view as former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. Clinton told CBS’s Norah O'Donnell, “I really commend President Trump and his administration, as well as Arab leaders in the region for making the commitment to the 20-point plan and seeing a path forward for what's often called the day after.”
“Peace plans” in that part of the world tend to be fleeting, but President Donald Trump hopes this one will lead to “an everlasting peace in the Middle East.” The man thinks big.
Richard Nixon just wanted to get out of Vietnam with what he called “peace with honor.” Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought he had achieved “peace for our time.” Woodrow Wilson made an even more stunning statement in 1917 when he called the first World War “a war to end all wars.”
But even a “war to end all wars” cannot top Franklin D. Roosevelt. He believed that at the end of World War II, he could help bring about “freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear… everywhere in the world.” He said this “is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”
A world without want or fear is truly thinking big. But the leaders of FDR’s generation are gone now. And his millennial dream is not even close to fruition. In fact, lately, things have been going in the other direction. The world wars Wilson and Roosevelt were forced to lead brought suffering and death on a scale beyond our ability to truly comprehend. No wonder they dreamed that those conflagrations could somehow be made to usher in an era of global peace.
Bible prophecy makes clear that humanity will remain stuck with the scourge of war until the Prince of Peace Himself returns and begins His millennial rule. Roosevelt called that “a distant millennium,” but it may not be all that distant. Bible prophecy centers on Middle Eastern wars in the last days. So, no, don’t expect the present peace plan to lead to “an everlasting peace in the Middle East.”
Still, Jesus said in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” We should join Jesus in blessing peacemakers. Even minor success in ending and preventing wars means the avoidance of horrible suffering. We should bless peacemakers, and we should be peacemakers.
Just remember that in our fallen world, “peace officers” carry guns.
Israel has been fighting wars since the day of its rebirth in 1948. One day their desperation for peace will lead them to join in a treaty with the most sinister figure in all human history — the antichrist. That will kick off the brief, but terrible period known as the tribulation. The world is not there yet. But it remains focused on Jerusalem, as the Bible said it would. And men still cry, “‘Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14 & 8:11).
