Thanks for listening to the podcast as you have probably felt for yourself in the past year or so global tensions have risen to a boil.

It's hard to believe how often World War III

has been a top trend in Twitter in the past couple of years.

Way too often, to be honest, and this leads to today's question from Malcolm

who lives in Fishers Indiana an email that resonates with a lot of other emails

in the inbox in the past year. Pastor John hello to you I'm a 22 year old and the

unbox in the past year. peace and things were looking calm.

But now there are wars in Ukraine and in Palestine and a threat of war looms over Taiwan.

All the world's major armies seem to be awakening from a long slumber.

NATO is growing.

Enemies of the West are uniting.

The weapons manufacturers are in overdrive.

As we step into this new age of global tension and as you see the news, the wars and the rumors of wars,

what are your spiritual reflections about global conflicts?

The Bible seems to say a lot about warfare between nations, so how do you comfort

yourself with biblical truth and with God's sovereignty when it seems that the world is growing

more hostile? And World War III is talked about more and more openly as a real possibility in the near future.

Well, I could, I suppose, answer Malcolm's question with a very general biblical observation about the absolute

sovereignty of God over nations and over the church and over my life and then combine that sovereignty with the sweet precious

promise that he works everything together for the good of those who love him. I could do that and it would be wonderful.

That would be glorious. However, I want to answer his question with something much more specific, just because I saw it

while preparing a message on missions last October and it did for me just what Malcolm is asking

...