Peace through Victory and the Sin of Pacifism

DW2B

Now a person's views on warfare, we have indicated, are determined by the degree of Bible doctrine concerning the doctrines or principles of warfare that he has in his human spirit. These in turn to guide the conscience, and these in turn to guide the thinking, and these in turn to guide the action. God has ordained, we have found, that humanity should function on earth as sovereign national entities, and each of these entities is to have its own culture and its own laws (Deuteronomy 32:8, Job 12:23). Satan goes around trying to destroy national entities. It is against the will of God for national entities to be destroyed. For nations to come under international control leads to the suppression of the Word of God within those nations. So a nation is responsible to preserve the free exercise of personal volition and to preserve its own national identity. Communism, in the nature of the case, stifles the expression of a national entity. It stifles the expression of free volition of the individual within the system.

Now let's review the two principles of doctrine that we have thus far dealt with. Number one: We have indicated that war will always exist in human history (Matthew 24:6). War is the result of the old sin nature in man. It is not the result of an economic system as communism says. Aggressive warfare, therefore, is going to be part of the human scene, and aggressive warfare can only be met by force to stop it. Communism's doctrines and goals are of such a nature that it ensures that wars will never cease on this earth. The only time that wars will cease, and that the promises of instruments of warfare that the prophets envisioned being converted into instruments of peace, will come when Jesus Christ is ruling in the millennium.

Secondly, we saw that just warfare is from God (1 Chronicles 5:22). Any war which resists the destruction of the free choice of a national entity is a just war. God uses war against an aggressor to stop the threat to a national entity. He uses it to bring judgment upon a nation in the form of discipline.

Now we continue with the principles of warfare. War is inevitable and only people who are oriented to the Bible doctrine of war can meet the pain and death that accompany war. We have an age of apostasy upon us which has produced a generation of young people who are ready to surrender to communism for peace and slavery. So the United States' future lies in the hands of spiritually mature Christians--those of the population, leaders and military men, who have within them a perspective from God to enable them to take the right actions. There is no scriptural ground to be a conscientious objector. You may not like war. You may prefer not to be engaged in war. However, you cannot say that the Bible is against war; you cannot say that it is immoral to kill in conditions of combat; you cannot say that God is opposed to war; and, you cannot say that there is any element of conscience on a scriptural ground to justify your refusal to perform military duty.

The commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," from the code of the Jewish law, I remind you once more, does not say, "Thou shalt not kill." It says, "Thou shalt not murder," and it refers to crime. It does not, again, refer to national defense. Human government was established in the days of Noah following the flood, and a government has the right to go to war for just cause. When it goes to war, the people are obliged to be obedient and to be subject to military duty and to perform that duty.

Peace through Victory

Isaiah 36-37

Now Sennacherib himself was a cruel king, but one of great ability, and he conquered all who opposed him. Sennacherib was a real meanie, but he was a military genius. Now he has come and laid siege to Jerusalem. Sennacherib's chief officer, a rank call the Rabshakeh, is sent by Sennacherib to the walls of Jerusalem to speak to the Jews who are defending within in order to try to demoralize them with threats. Isaiah 36:4 says, "Rabshakeh said to them, 'Say now to Hezekiah (who was king of Judah at the time): Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria. What confidence is this in which you trust? I say (but they are but vain words) I have counsel and strength for war. Now in whom do you trust that you rebel against me? Lo, you trust in the staff of this broken reed on Egypt, on which if a man lean it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust him. But if you say to me, 'We trust in the Lord our God,' is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, 'You shall worship before this altar?'"

Hezekiah was in many respects a good king because he cleaned up idolatry among the Jews. So Rabshakeh knows about that. He is saying, "Now you're really a godly boy, Hezekiah. And you've told the people God is with us, and you do the right thing and God is going to come to bat for us."

"Now therefore, give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the King of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to set riders upon them. How then will you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants and put your trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? And am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord said unto me, 'Go up against the land and destroy it.'"

This is an interesting term. Rabshakeh said, "We believe in the Lord too. We are godly religious people too. And as a matter of fact, the Lord told me to come in and whip the tar out of Jerusalem." I don't know how often I've had kids come to me when we've tried to warn them about the mixed multitude of the religious system in the public schools, who have come to me, the kids who have been on the way out. They have phased themselves into the world system, and more and more they're drawn into it. They've come and said, "These people are Christians. These kids are Christians. These kids go to church." And they try to defend some activity or some participation in a motley religious ceremony of saved and unsaved or some school activity by the excuse, "These kids are Christian schools too. They go to our fine churches in Irving." Well, that's what Rabshakeh was doing. He says, "Say listen man, that was a good thing you did, Hezekiah, getting rid of all those bad worship places. We're for you, and we want you to know that we are sympathetic toward you. We are very broad-minded. Our minds are so broad and open that our brains have fallen right out. But we're for you, Hezekiah. We're going to appeal to the same God."

He's trying to put some doubt in the Jews' minds: "Are these people really all that bad?" Are these Assyrians under Sennacherib really such bestial characters that we should stand here and resist them to the death with war?" That's the same question that the hippies, the yippies, the Black Panthers, the SDS, and all the radical sympathizers and fellow travelers in this country are also asking about communism today. And then Rabshakeh takes another tact, and he decides to seek to discredit God's ability to save Jerusalem from him.

Isaiah 36:13: "Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language and said, 'Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus said the king: Let not Hezekiah deceive you for he shall not be able to deliver you. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord saying the Lord will surely deliver us. This city shall not be delivered into the hand of the King of Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah, for thus said the King of Assyria. Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me and eat every one of his vine and every one of his fig tree, and drink every one of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own--a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware, lest Hezekiah persuade you saying the Lord will deliver us. Have any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria. Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these lands that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?" And he holds to contempt that none of the gods of the nation he has conquered have been able to stand. And now do they think that their God is going to stand against the mighty force of the Assyrian army?

Now Hezekiah the king of Judah is in a bad military situation. He has three advisers who are panic stricken by all this. Isaiah 36:22 says, "Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of Rabshakeh." This was the sign of their panic and their mourning that Sennacherib was so confident of victory over them.

So in this moment, Hezekiah, king of Judah, turns to God's man, Isaiah, for information. This was a wise move. He turned to the man that God had placed among them to deliver divine viewpoint. This is exactly what Isaiah has been doing. He has been teaching the people Bible doctrine. He's been telling them what God is going to do, what he's capable of doing, and what he plans to do. And those who have believed have grown in courage, and battle courage, in the face of seemingly hopeless odds. Hezekiah turns to Isaiah, and Isaiah reports to him that God will indeed deliver Jerusalem from a military defeat.

Isaiah 37:6-7: "Isaiah said unto them, 'Thus shall you say to your master, thus said the Lord, be not afraid of the words you have heard with which the servants of the King of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I'll send a wind upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land. And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.'" Isaiah says that God will protect Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, He is going to do something that is going to cause Rabshakeh to leave, and he going to cause Sennacherib to leave and Sennacherib to be killed in his own land.

So Sennacherib sends a letter, following up his psychological warfare here at the wall. He now decides to send a letter to Hezekiah, and in this letter, he again scoffs at Hezekiah's hope in God which has now been confirmed by Isaiah. Isaiah 37:10: "Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah saying, 'Let not your God in whom you trusted deceive you saying Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the King of Assyria. Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them that my fathers have destroyed as Gozan and Haran, and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?'"

When Hezekiah gets the letter, he is in a bad military situation and he is very much concerned. He takes it into the temple to pray over it before God. Now we have to commend Hezekiah because in Isaiah 37:18, he has enough discernment to spot Sennacherib's human viewpoint. Hezekiah says, "Of a truth, Lord." This is in his prayer to God. "Kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their countries, and they have cast their gods into the fire, for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands--wood and stone. Therefore, they have destroyed them." He sees Sennacherib's human viewpoint. "Sure you have destroyed those gods and their nations because they were no gods. They were simply religion that somebody had created."

Then he declares in verse 20 his own divine viewpoint: "Now therefore, O, Lord our God, save us from his hand, that the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord, even You alone."

Isaiah comes with a second message to Hezekiah. He reveals God's plan to bring the Jews to peace, and that's our point here. How did God bring peace to the Jews in this hour of tremendous national danger before an enemy who seemingly was absolutely unconquerable? Isaiah 37:30: "And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall eat this year what grows of itself, and the second year that which springs of the same: and in the third year you sow, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward: For out of Jerusalem so go forth a remnant, and they escape out of Mount Zion: the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this."

Sennacherib, Isaiah says, is going to be defeated. You people are going to eat what God has produced for you, and you will rise again to a position of prosperity. This time will pass. Sennacherib is going to fail to take Jerusalem. Why? Isaiah 37:33: "Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria. He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, says the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for my own sake, and for my servant David's sake."

Producing Peace

Verse 36: The technique for producing peace in Satan's world: "Then the Angel of the Lord (which is Jesus Christ before he took on a body, the pre-incarnate Christ) went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000 (infantry). And when men arose early in the morning, behold these were dead." 185,000 crack infantry troops were killed one night by the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. When they woke up the next morning, they woke up dead men. They woke up with dead men all around them. Can you imagine what a sight that must have been? Bodies upon bodies upon bodies. The very soldiers that were getting ready to storm those walls and to reduce Jerusalem to a rubble and take its people into captive slavery were destroyed in one night.

The result was the retreat of Sennacherib. Verse 37: "So Sennacherib, king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh." This great city which had experienced such a tremendous revival under the ministry of Jonah that gave the empire a new lease on life has now fallen to this debased condition under Sennacherib. He goes home, and verse 38 tells us how his sons killed him there. What was the condition back in Jerusalem? Peace. Peace is secured by the annihilation of the enemy and the destruction of his ability to make war.

This example is confirmed by Psalm 46:8: "Come behold the works of the Lord. (This is the annihilation of God of enemy troops.) What desolations He has made in the earth (the destruction of the enemy's ability to make war). He makes wars to cease until the end of the earth." How does God make wars to cease and bring peace? Verse nine: "(One) He breaks the bow, (two) He cuts the spear in sunder, (three) He burns the chariot in the fire." He makes war by destroying the enemy's matériel, as in Isaiah he destroyed the enemy's personnel.

Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations." "Be still" means to relax--to have a relaxed attitude of mind. It takes courage to face the fear of combat. Battle courage is secured by knowing what God thinks and adding His attitude and outlook. "Be still" means to have a relaxed mental attitude that comes from Bible doctrine on warfare. "And to know that I am God" is again referring to divine truth. "I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth." How? By securing victory and stopping the enemy. This is how God is honored.

Throughout history, peace has been maintained through a decisive military defeat of the enemy. This means destruction of his personnel and his source of supplies. This means unconditional surrender as in World War II. This means going to where the enemy supplies are, and to destroy them--not just fighting whenever he happens to come along to hit you. However, the minds of Americans today are so brainwashed, and we are so disoriented from God's point of view in this matter, that we settle for something less than victory. Consequently, we never have peace. Peace in Satan's world is secured through the decisive defeat of the enemy.

Joshua 11

Why did the land rest from war? Why was there peace? Because he took the kings; he smote the leaders; he slew the generals; and, he slew the military commanders, because he destroyed them utterly; because he destroyed their cities where they were producing the armaments and the food supplies; and, then the land rested from war. This doctrine, had it been obeyed, could have saved, as of this date, 50,000 American lives in Vietnam alone because of a nation who will not do this very thing that the Word of God lays forth as the technique to secure victory. "And the land rested from war." It is God who is our refuge and who is our military tactician. And with Him, it is unconditional surrender that brings peace.

Numbers 32

Gad and Reuben were two the tribes, and Manasseh was included with them, who were ranchers. They were cattle people. When they saw this country here east of the Jordan, it struck them as being very attractive ideal cattle country. So they came to Moses and they said, "We're cowboys. We're ranchers. We want to stay east of the Jordan. We just want to settle down right here and proceed to put up our buildings and proceed with our ranching." So they said in verse 5, "Bring us not over the Jordan," which means, "Don't order us to cross over the Jordan," because they were shaping up for a military expedition. Moses had a plan to conquer Palestine. Joshua was to be the leader. They were going to cross and then they were going to move through the land picking off the heathen groups that God had placed under divine judgment one-by-one.

Now Moses, when he hears this request, rebukes Reuben and Gad for wanting to let others go to war while they stayed home and benefited by the victories of their brethren. Verse 6: "And Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, 'Shall your brother and go to war, and you sit here?'" Now the first problem with their doing this was that it was very bad for the morale of the rest of the troops. Verse 7 says, "And wherefore discourage you the heart of the children of Israel from going into the land which the Lord has given them." For Reuben and Gad to dodge military duty would serve to discourage all the rest of the tribes who were standing poised on the side of the river ready to make beachhead on the other side to discourage them from attempting the landing and the crossing altogether.

Now this is what you have today. We have now literally thousands of draft dodgers, something like maybe 50,000 or more draft dodgers who are now in Canada, who just have left this country in order to evade their call up in the military service. The hippies, the yippies, and the conscientious objectors were all doing the same thing that Gad and Reuben were doing. "Let us stay here." Moses said in verse 7, "You're going to discourage the heart (that is, the soul)." The conscience is going to give wrong signals to the mind because cowardice is a mental attitude sin. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that we have not been called to a spirit of fear. 2 Timothy 1:7: "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." If you have a sound mind, a mind oriented to divine viewpoint, you're not a coward.

So the parents of the Exodus generation had acted in the same way seeking to evade military service. 40 years before, they had come to Kadeshbarnea. 40 years before they were ready to come in. In verses 8-13, Moses recalls how their parents insisted on doing this. Caleb and Joshua said, "Let's cross into the land. Let's defeat the enemy. God is giving us direction. This is a just war. He will give us victory." And they said, "No." And the whole nation of the Exodus generation was a bunch of draft dodgers. The reconnaissance party discouraged the rest of the people from going over. The result was that everybody who was 20 years old and up (that's when you're an adult), anybody who was 20 years old and up was disciplined for the sin of not going to war (verses 10-11).

So this nation wandered. Their human viewpoint in their conscience caused them to go negative toward the doctrine of warfare--this justified war to which God had called them. So they were told, "You will wander for 40 years." Well, you remember what happened. Then they went emotional. This is why we have been saying that you must not trust sincere people. Sincere people act on emotion, not on truth, not on things the way they are, and the result is they'll get you in trouble. Now this Exodus generation went emotional like a bunch of religious fanatics, and they charged up the hill, and the Amalekites beat their brains out, and they went into defeat. So they left Kadeshbarnea and that's the last they saw of it for 40 years while they had been wandering out there. Now they come back again and a new generation has taken over. And what do they do? The first thing they want to do is act just like their parents and be a bunch of draft dodgers. And Moses says, "Do you know what you're doing? You're inviting the same kind of disaster upon this generation as your parents brought upon their lives.

Numbers 32:14: "And behold you are risen up in your father's stead, an increase of sinful men." You notice what God called them. They didn't want to go to war. You're acting as "Sinful men, to augment yet the fierce anger of the Lord toward Israel. For if you turn away from after Him, he will yet again leave them in the wilderness; and you shall destroy all this people." Not God, but you, shall destroy all this people. Why? Because you're feeding up wrong information to their consciences.

The spirit of conscientious objector can lead the whole nation to destruction. This moronic viewpoint that so many young people are promoting today, that if only the United States would disarm, if only the United States would just refuse to use military forces on any communist action anywhere, the Reds will feel secure and they'll disarm and they'll leave everybody alone. These brilliant intelligent college students will look you in the eye, and I've had one do it not so long ago, and say, "If the United State would just disarm, if the United States would just get rid of its weapons and would stop fighting the communists, then they wouldn't feel so threatened. They wouldn't be so insecure, and peace would descend on the world, and they wouldn't fight us anymore." When these same draft dodgers sit behind barbed wire in slave labor camps, it will be too late for them to realize how defective their thinking was.

I'm happy to say that Reuben and Gad, who lacked Bible doctrine on the subject of warfare and therefore came up with this suggestion that they be permitted to evade their military duty, went positive when Moses explained the doctrine to them. We have the reorientation beginning at Numbers 32:16. Bible doctrine from Moses on warfare was received by them and it says, "They came near unto him and they said we will build sheepfold here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones. But we ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel until we have brought them unto to their place, and our little ones shall dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land."

They are ready to do battle. Notice that they are ready to do battle where? They said we want to live here, but we are to do battle over here away from our homeland. We are going to cross this river. We're going to cross this protective water barrier, and we're going to do our fighting here while our people reside in security back at home. They recognized that the enemy on the west bank was their enemy on the east bank too. When they fought the enemy here, they were fighting and preserving their own homeland. That, dear brethren, is exactly what we're doing in Vietnam today. We are fighting on foreign soil because we have a vast ocean, the Pacific Ocean, to control. If we don't fight on that soil, we will eventually fight on this one.

When the Japanese decided that President Roosevelt had pushed them too far in stifling their ambitions for the domination of the Asiatic world, they made their decision to fight the United States. They knew that to fight the United States and to bring the United States defeat, one thing had to be done above all else. They could not fail. This was what was behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese must gain control of the Pacific Ocean. As long as the United States had power and dominance in the Pacific, nobody was going to get at us. So the Japanese hit at Pearl Harbor. The object being to destroy the Pacific fleet which they did, except by the grace of God that the carriers were at sea.

So the main thing that the Japanese were after, they did not destroy. This then scared them off from their second strike at Pearl Harbor which they could easily have carried off. Then they went after the oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies and they secured Indochina. They knew that they had to have the landmass of Indochina to be able to control the Pacific to be able to get at the United States. They were exactly right. When they took Indochina, the very countries in which we're fighting today--Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. When they defeated us at Pearl Harbor, and eventually when they took the Philippines, they had us. The United States was rolled back to its own doorstep. There is some serious doubt that we could have resisted them very well if they had made landings on our West Coast.

Today, the communists are following the identical technique. They know that they have to get hold of the Pacific, and have to remove that as an American lake. If they are ever going to conquer this country, they must have the Pacific. To have the Pacific, you must have Indochina. That's why so much is at stake. Yet Americans all over the world don't recognize this basic little Bible principle. Moses did. You fight on this side and you secure this river. You secure this river, and you secure your homeland. If we lose in Indochina, we have gone a long way toward losing the Pacific which is exactly what General MacArthur and other military leaders warned us about a long time ago.

So they decided that they would go, and in Verse 19, they said, "We will not inherit them on the other side of Jordan or beyond because our inheritance has fallen to us on this side of the Jordan." Now Moses was pleased with what they said. In verse 20, "Moses said unto them, 'If you will do this thing, if you will go armed before the Lord to war.'" You are to cross the Jordan, and you're to go as before the Lord, which shows that God approves warfare. This was a justified war. "And will you go all of you armed over Jordan before the Lord, until He has driven out His enemies from before Him."

The Sin of Pacifism

Our draft dodgers are as guilty of evading military duty for what we are doing in Vietnam as our government is in failing to fight for victory. It would have been sin. Notice verse 23. This is dedicated to all of you conscientious objectors and people who think that the United States should not view the communist as our enemy and engage in conflict against him. We dedicate verse 23: "But if you will not do this," Moses says, "Behold you have sinned against the Lord." It is a sin sometimes not to go to war. "And be sure your sins will find you out" In time they are sure to suffer for their refusal to go over and fight this battle here on foreign soil to protect their homeland.

Now you've heard this verse since the days of your youth, "Your sins will find you out." You've usually found it applied to some social sin, and you notice that it doesn't apply to that. It isn't that you're going to steal something and your sins are going to find you out. You're going to be immoral and your sins are going to find you out. What it says is that if you refuse to go to war when it is justified, and thus in the will of God, you will suffer the consequences of your act. It is sin not to go to war under certain conditions. If you do, that sin will bear its fruit for you. The National Council of Churches provides a service for any young man who is facing a call up to military duty in which they give him a course of study on how to evade military service. That's the National Council of Churches.

Numbers 32:31: "And the children of Gad and the children of Reuben answered saying, 'As the Lord has said unto your servants, so will we do." Notice what their attitude was toward Bible doctrine: "Moses you have taught us, but we know that what you have said is what God has said, and we accept it with positive volition." They didn't say, "What you think, Moses, what you say, we're going to do." They said, "What the Lord has said." Their pastor-teacher Moses had delivered the message, and they went positive toward it. We will pass over before the Lord into the land of Canaan, that the possession of our inheritance on this side of Jordan may be ours. They fought in the West so that the East could be theirs. To keep a country intact, you don't wait until the enemy comes and hits the Dallas / Fort Worth area. You hit him on his ground.

This is exactly what the Jews did in that Six-Day War. As they watched what the Arab nations were doing, as all of their intelligence information that came filtering in, they realized the strike that was going to be made against them. The Jews would have been defeated had it not been that they followed this principle, unknowingly I imagine. They followed this principle and they fought the enemy on his own ground before he could cross over into Palestine. The Jews in the Six-Day War did exactly this.

Yet, we suffer in this country today because under President Kennedy we failed to clear the communists out of Cuba. President Johnson tried to make the issue in Vietnam to fight the war there, but unfortunately he rejected the idea of victory. President Nixon is trying to appease a disoriented citizenry. So we are in a pretty hopeless state as a nation, because you don't beat these principles. Peace is secured by the annihilation and the decisive defeat of the enemy, and as long as this isn't done, there will be another day and another day and another day of war. Refusal to go to war, when it's in defense of national identity, is a sin. And your sin will find you out.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1970

Back to the Warfare index