War, weapons, evil hearts and courage

Around 1980 Pat and I spent a memorable day with Pat’s parents touring the Palisades lining the Hudson River, a New York State Park, and the United States Military Academy, commonly known as West Point. One of the highlights of the weather-perfect summer day was a tour of the military museum on the West Point Campus. The museum is considered the most complete exhibit of its kind anywhere in the world.

One of the realities uncovered as one walks through the various stages of man’s hostility toward one another is that the order of magnitude continuously increases. At the beginning of the thorough and carefully documented history of conflict mankind, one learns that at the beginning men fought face-to-face and hand-to-hand. Cain’s fratricide was certainly a primitive one-on-one, personal conflict ending in Abel’s death.

The war museum carefully documents the evolution of weapons of conflict and death from crude bludgeons to the latest sophisticated, computer-guided missiles and contemporary warheads. The section documenting the machinery and strategies of World War Two slowed our progress to a standstill as my father-in-law, Roy W. Kolas, a veteran of the war, reminisced, telling of his experiences that spanned more than four years and travels across Europe all the way to the "The Bulge." My mother-in-law, Martha, along with Pat, and I had no idea. War became a vivid, real-to-life horror that Roy allowed us to experience it vicariously. I will never forget. The guns fired in John Wayne television movies were noisy things, part of a movie plot were inches away and were frightfully large, ominous and menacing. Photos of destruction and death are etched forever in my memory with Roy Kolas’ sound track playing in the background.

Richard Feynman, a Princeton University graduate physicist, was enlisted by the United States to serve on the team that developed the atomic bomb. Feynman was present at the first detonation of the bomb in a western desert. So awful was the explosive force of the detonation that for years Dr. Feynman slipped into his self-described "depression." He, and some fellow scientists, lamented that evil people would acquire the technology and materials needed to reproduce their prototype and obliterate the world. President Truman elected to eradicate Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the bomb. When Feynman saw men building a bridge or tall building, he often wondered aloud, "What’s the use? It will be destroyed."

The order of magnitude has advanced from weapons made from sticks and stones to unimaginable atomic power. The fratricidal evil in Cain’s heart resides in heads of state. Religious zealots have raised the stakes from a suicide dive-bomber attacking a plane directed at a military supply ship at sea to commandeering a passenger plane to use as a weapon to destroy a city skyline and thousands of citizens. Almost simultaneously, men with simple swords primitively lop off heads because of a shared hate boiling within human hearts.

This week I have read and listened to The Revelation, the Bible’s final Word. While reading and listening simultaneously, I remembered the fears of Dr. Feynman and the experiences of Roy Kolas. The horrors of the end are too awful to imagine. I will leave the time line and sequence of events to those with greater understanding. And, I choose to remember one of my father-in-law’s statements, "Those who lived through what Europeans experienced in the war believe they have lived through tribulation." Fellow Christians who are being beheaded today certainly know that their adversary, the devil, is roaring as a lion, seeking to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And, while evil men have sophisticated tools to kill and destroy, the power of the Gospel of Jesus, the Christ, remains greater than the evil in the most vile human heart and all the weapons deployed to destroy.

Our future on earth is uncertain at best. Let us remember that the One who sits on the throne, Jesus, God’s Son, has declared for all to know an eternal truth that will never be compromised.
The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever."
And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: "We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. (Revelation 11:15-17).
Take courage friends. Roy Kolas’ confidence in the eternal omnipotence of Jesus is greater than the evil in men that cause the ravages of war. In contrast, Dr. Feynman lived with fear that the wrong people would use an invention he helped develop to destroy civilization. My father-in-law got it right! The word is "courage" friends!