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THE NEVER-ENDING WAR

When is it finally and completely over?

Historians will tell us about the day Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas and Major Alexander Ross, representing Lord Charles Cornwallis, sat in a Mr. Augustine Moore’s two-story clapboard house and signed papers bringing America’s Revolutionary War to a conclusion. Two days later, so the story goes, while a British military band played a song fittingly titled “The World Turned Upside Down,” 3,500 defeated redcoats slowly trudged through the streets of Yorktown and a mile-and-a-half out of town to a designated surrender field where they stacked their weapons. It was October 19, 1781, the war was over, and a new nation had its birth.

There’s some Internet debate about whether or not the band played that often-rumored song. A year-and-a-half earlier, British general Sir Henry Clinton had whipped the Americans at Charleston, demanding unconditional surrender of General Benjamin Lee’s Continental forces. And for some reason, the British commander refused to permit the usual courtesy of allowing the defeated army to furl its colors and have its band play during the surrender ceremony. So now it was tit-for-tat . . . and no surprise, seeing as how this same General Benjamin Lee was now Washington’s second-in-command. In any case, there might or might not have been a band, and it might or might not have played one of several versions of “The World Turned Upside Down.” We’ll never know, but one web site even gives suggested lyrics:

“If buttercups buzz’d after the bee; If boats were on land, churches on sea; If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows; And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse; If the mamas sold their babies To the Gypsies for half a crown; If summer were spring And the other way ‘round; Then all the world would be upside down!”

And the Internet author muses:

“The world’s most potent military power is trounced by a bunch of farmers, shopkeepers and overdressed Frenchmen in a battle that all but ends the Revolutionary War. A few bars of ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ are perfect for the occasion.”

In any case, the signatures went on the paper, the muskets were stacked up, the cannons were stored away, the Redcoats got on ships and went home to England, and the war was over. Brand new Americans, who had smelled gunpowder and heard the erratic whine of bullets for so many years, now heard just the quiet drums of surrender and could say definitively: “It’s over.”

It’s an appropriate sermon illustration as we continue to study the Bible doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus. Because many good Christians wonder if there will ever be a time when this war is really and truly finished. You and I are born into a world of sin. Sometimes we obey, sometimes we don’t. Some citizens of Planet Earth choose Jesus Christ as their Savior; others don’t. There are days where Lucifer has his way with us; other times we do rely on God for power and victory and forgiveness. The skirmishes go on, and as old soldiers pass from the scene, new ones are born. But will there ever be a time when Jesus completely and unabashedly and unconditionally wins, and Lucifer has to surrender? If you read in the book of Revelation, the closing scenes, it appears that the war does end in chapter 20. The devil is thrown into the lake of fire; in fact, death itself is metaphorically described in verse 14 as being cast into that unquenchable sea of destruction.

And then . . . is that it? Is it finally over?

As you’re hearing these words on November 18, 2004, there is still unfinished business in Iraq. Terrorists in the Al Qaeda network are still roaming loose with their satellite phones and their sleeper cells. We were thinking back to the terrifying days right after September 11, when our government leaders were trying to describe to us what this new, undefined war on terror was going to be like. One leader warned:

“Any war is going to be long, hard, difficult to define, full of casualties, open-ended. We’ll never be able to say: ‘We have won.’”

And Donald Rumsfeld, America’s Secretary of Defense, was equally blunt. Here was his metaphor just after 9/11:

“You’re not going to see a surrender signing on the decks of the U.S.S. Missouri.”

Referring to the end of World War II, of course.
I’d like to tell you today why I personally believe in the literal Second Coming of Jesus to this world, and one of the best verses to do my explaining for me is found back in the Old Testament, in the prophetic book of Daniel. Here’s a passage from chapter 7:

“In my vision at night,” Daniel writes, “I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven.” That would be Jesus, of course. “He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

Doesn’t that sound like complete and final victory? Clearly there comes a time in this universe’s time line when Jesus Christ will be completely in charge of things. There won’t be an opposition party; there won’t be rebels still in the ranks. And there won’t be the slightest chance that Jesus could Himself be overthrown at some future date. In the Daniel 7 vision where this is all found, all previous world kingdoms rise and then fall; they all “bite the dust,” as we say. Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, the medieval coalitions of Europe, the so-called “Thousand-Year Reich” of Adolph Hitler. But they all end . . . all but the kingdom of Jesus.

Now, let me pose this discussion issue. If a saved person dies, and their soul goes to heaven, and a lost person dies and goes directly to hell, that becomes – for such a person – their final destination. That’s the end of your “war,” so to speak. And if so, why would there need to be a Second Coming? You’re born and you live and you go to heaven, or you’re born and you live and you go to hell. Could that not be the scenario for the next fifty million years? Perhaps so. And yet I don’t think that such a picture of repetitive stagnation, essentially, really portrays the powerful and complete victory Jesus intends to achieve.

I know full well that denominations discuss and disagree regarding some of the issues of last-day events, and my own church has probably scratched out as many controversial “position papers” as anybody. But let me simply take us again to Revelation and let’s put down quickly the things we do agree on.

First of all, when all is said and done, Lucifer is out of commission. He’s cast into the lake of fire – Revelation 20:10 – and he never escapes from there. The “beast” of Revelation, an end-time fallen spiritual power introduced in chapter 13, which persecutes God’s people and opposes heaven and tries to mandate false worship under penalty of death . . . the beast is relegated to the flames as well. Tragically, so are many descendants of Adam and Eve, those who refuse to worship God as Creator and have Jesus Christ as their Savior.

And then from chapter 21 to the finish line, Revelation paints a picture of final victory. Sin is gone. Sinners are gone. Death is gone. Tears and sickness are gone. And the world isn’t turned upside-down; instead, it’s created to be brand new, pristine, restored, Eden-like in its incomparable beauty.

I shared last week – and let me briefly reiterate, in all humility – how my Adventist denomination believes the final events will take place. At the Second Coming of Jesus, we believe – based on John 14:1-3 – that God’s redeemed saints will be taken to heaven and spend the millennium there, not here on earth. Those who have rejected Christ, the lost, will perish, destroyed by the glory of His coming. Lucifer and his angels, then, are on this abandoned planet by themselves; no living humans will be present amid the ruins of Revelation’s plagues. This abandonment, then, this depopulated planet, is what the Revelation 20 metaphor of the “abyss” or the “bottomless pit” really describes.

So is the war over? Well, yes . . . and no. Satan is certainly defanged. Jesus Christ has been victorious. God’s people are safe in the kingdom of Paradise. But Lucifer still lives, and Revelation 20 tells how he is “loosed for a little while,” “released from his prison,” says the NIV. The wicked dead also come to life “again,” and the Bible describes this as a “second resurrection” as opposed to the first one, which happens when Jesus comes the second time. So it appears that there is a “Third Coming” where Lucifer and the resurrected rebels from all ages plan to attack the descending city of God.

So is it over . . . or not over? Will hostilities continue throughout the ceaseless ages? Stay tuned.