Wars and Rumors of Wars

Elsewhere in this issue of Tomorrow's World magazine, you have read about wars of the past. However, even while you are reading this article in January 2007, many parts of our world are at war right now! Every kind of conflict is being waged. From clashes of nation-state and rebel armies on traditional battlefields, to small-scale hit-and-run guerilla raids and low-tech banditry, human blood is flowing in an ever-widening river of pain, suffering and death. This chaos threatens to engulf the Western democracies in a rising tide of international hatred, terror, rebellion, carnage and economic upheaval that will lead to the dramatic end-time events prophesied in the pages of your Bible! "For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty" (Revelation 16:14).

Many of today's wars are over control of the dwindling supplies of natural resources needed to keep nations' economies afloat—and their people alive. As population pressures grow in arid parts of the globe, nations are even competing for the most basic resources of all: arable land and water. Other wars involve age-old tribal or ethnic animosities, often between groups within the same country. Each group seeks its own advantage, rather than the good of the nation. "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures" (James 4:1–3).

Warfare, or the threat of it, is a deterrent to foreign investment and development. Many nations now in the throes of political chaos or actual conflict are sources of valuable raw materials and petroleum reserves. Not only are these resources sought by the industrialized nations; less developed countries also seek them as they struggle to establish manufacturing-based economies and lift their peoples out of severe poverty. Most of these war-torn countries are in dire need of economic development and education for their peoples, in order to increase their standard of living. Yet because of greed, covetousness and nations' jockeying for advantage over one another, leaders often seek to divert attention away from their nations' own problems by inflaming among the discontented masses a hatred against and jealousy toward their neighbors. This sets the stage for war, when one country feels entitled to steal the resources of another.

When the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, one motive was to stop America from being able to intervene against Japanese plans to seize Southeast Asia's raw material resources. Because of an oil embargo the U.S. had placed on Japan, that nation had only a 90-day reserve of petroleum. Without fuel, Japan's economy would have ground to a halt, its people would have faced unemployment and massive food shortages—and its war effort in Manchuria could not have been sustained. That oil embargo pushed Japan to the extreme of launching a "do-or-die" war many high-ranking Japanese military officials feared they could not win. When the attack began, Japanese pilots discovered that the American aircraft carriers were not in port at Pearl Harbor. Japan's fate was sealed. Since then, economic pressures have continued to provoke wars around the world.

Many of the nations battling piracy are near important shipping lanes, and are also involved in armed conflicts and banditry on land. When economies are disrupted by war, and people are unable to earn a living from their normal occupations, some will raid their neighbors or harass unarmed merchant vessels, cruise liners and even oil platforms. When nations must then divert scarce resources to fighting off piracy at sea, law enforcement on land often suffers, and nations fighting piracy may fall victim to increased banditry on land.

News reports contain accounts of criminals boarding cruise ships to kill someone who had witnessed a crime, or to hold a ship's crew or passengers for ransom. Once a smaller ship has been seized in the Philippines or Indonesia, where most of today's pirate attacks occur, those nations' small, outdated navies find it almost impossible to locate the missing vessels hidden among thousands of inlets and islands.

Where piracy is a threat, the economic cost to protect coastal and high-seas commerce is staggering. Insurance premiums are high for ships and their cargoes, adding to the financial strain placed on the world's merchant fleets—already under duress because of high fuel prices. In 2000, marine insurers sustained $16 billion in losses due to piracy alone, and the problem has only grown worse since then.

The world's great trading powers—dependent on the sea lane arteries that deliver their nations' commercial life's blood of raw materials, petroleum products and finished goods, upon which their economies thrive—will inevitably need to send more of their naval forces to sea to protect merchant shipping, as piracy and banditry increase in the years ahead. This will only add to the political stresses threatening fragile relationships in many parts of the globe.

Jesus Christ foresaw the events that are making news headlines today. He told his followers not to be overly concerned, because these occurrences are not the end—but rather are the beginning of greater disasters that would lie just ahead. "But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified; for these things must come to pass first, but the end will not come immediately." Then He said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom" (Luke 21:9–10). The increasing frequency of war and violence today is preparing the world for future global war on an unprecedented scale. Conflicts and troubles we see today are just the tip of the iceberg. As more civil, religious and regional conflicts break out in politically unstable nations, watch for more reports of small- and large-scale banditry, piracy and warfare in the news, but take heart—Jesus Christ is coming, soon!