Peace on Earth?

Luke 2:8–14 NKJV

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

The World Longs for Peace

Mankind longs for lasting peace.

Miss Universe candidates are often asked what their greatest wish would be. The most common and expected answer is, “World Peace!”

Peace evades us and war is a continual threat.

The death, devastation, and destruction of war have been described as hell on earth.

Men continually negotiate, ratify, sign, and break peace treaties.

Men make military alliances to protect themselves in the event of war.

World War I was considered the “war to end all wars”.

In an address to the United States Senate in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson said, “The League of Nations is the only hope of mankind.”[1]

Global leaders are pursuing the establishment of a one world government.

This will initiate a war against the saints.

Revelation 12:17 NKJV

And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

We cannot achieve peace until we first understand the origin of war.

The Origin of War

The first war began in heaven.

Revelation 12:7–8 NKJV

And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

What are the root issues behind war?

1 John 2:16 NKJV

For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.

James 4:2 NKJV

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.

War resides in sin-sick hearts.

Satan is the mastermind and instigator of all wars.

Ephesians 6:12 NKJV

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Can Mankind Achieve Lasting Peace on Earth?

In his book “Peace with God” (1953) Billy Graham said: “If the United Nations could bring lasting peace, man could say to God ‘We don’t need You anymore. We have brought peace on earth and have organized humanity in righteousness.’ All of these schemes are patchwork remedies that a sick and dying world must use while waiting for the Great Physician.” [2]

That was said seventy years ago. Are we any closer to peace today than when we were then? Sadly no.

In commenting on the peace of God, Spurgeon testified: “I looked at Christ, and the dove of peace flew into my heart; I looked at the dove of peace, and it flew away.”[3]

Our advancements in science and technology have only made war more destructive and the world a more dangerous place to live.

Men will never achieve peace apart from submission to the Prince of Peace.

Peace and the Birth of Jesus Christ

Jesus was born in a time of conflict.

Israel had been conquered by the Romans who now controlled it.

Jesus came as the Prince of Peace

Isaiah 9:6 NKJV

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Luke 2:13–14 NKJV

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

Jesus brings peace through the reign of His kingdom in the hearts of men.

Isaiah 9:7 NKJV

Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Illustration: World War I Christmas Truce by Christopher Klein [4] (see below)

Jesus will bring ultimate peace when He puts all enemies under His feet.

1 Corinthians 15:22–26 NKJV

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

Response to the Word

Receive the Prince of Peace into your heart.

Romans 5:1 NKJV

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Don’t be troubled by the presence and threat of war.

Matthew 24:6 NKJV

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Receive the gift of Christ’s peace in a troubled world.

John 14:27 NKJV

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Share the good news of Christ’s peace with those around you.

The angels did. So can we.

Footnotes

[1] Tan, P. L. (1996). Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times. Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc.

[2] Billy Graham in Quotes, p. 251

[3] Jones, G. C. (1986). 1000 illustrations for preaching and teaching (p. 272). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers

[4] The World War I Christmas Truce by Christopher Klein [https://www.history.com/news/world-war-is-christmas-truce]

The World War I Christmas Truce

Charles Brewer never expected to be spending Christmas Eve nearly knee-deep in the mud of northern France. Stationed on the front lines, the 19-year-old British lieutenant with the Bedfordshire Regiment of the 2nd Battalion shivered in a trench with his fellow soldiers. After Great Britain entered World War I in August 1914, many of them had expected that they would make quick work of the enemy and be home in time for Christmas. Nearly five months and 1 million lives later, however, the Great War had bogged down in intractable trench warfare with no end in sight.

Although disappointed to be far from home on Christmas Eve, Brewer at least took solace in the fact that the perpetual rain, which made moving through the trenches as much of a slog as the war itself, had finally abated on the moonlit night. All was jarringly quiet on the Western Front when a British sentry suddenly spied a glistening light on the German parapet, less than 100 yards away. Warned that it might be a trap, Brewer slowly raised his head over the soaked sandbags protecting his position and through the maze of barbed wire saw a sparkling Christmas tree. As the lieutenant gazed down the line of the German trenches, a whole string of small conifers glimmered like beads on a necklace.

Brewer then noticed the rising of a faint sound that he had never before heard on the battlefield—a Christmas carol. The German words to “Stille Nacht” were not familiar, but the tune—“Silent Night”—certainly was. When the German soldiers finished singing, their foes broke out in cheers. Used to returning fire, the British now replied in song with the English version of the carol.

When dawn broke on Christmas morning, something even more remarkable happened. In sporadic pockets along the 500-mile Western Front, unarmed German and Allied soldiers tentatively emerged from the trenches and cautiously crossed no-man’s-land—the killing fields between the trenches littered with frozen corpses, eviscerated trees and deep craters—to wish each other a Merry Christmas. Political leaders had ignored the call of Pope Benedict XV to cease fighting around Christmas, but soldiers in the trenches decided to stage their own unofficial, spontaneous armistices anyway.

Far from an organized, top-down ceasefire, the Christmas Truce instead was a series of small armistices that bubbled up from the men in the foxholes deciding to fraternize with the enemy. “We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years,” British Corporal John Ferguson wrote of the encounter between his Seaforth Highlanders and German forces. “Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!”

“Almost always, it was the Germans who at least indirectly invited the truce,” writes Stanley Weintraub in his book “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.” That was partly because the Germans were winning the war at that point and many of their troops had worked in Great Britain before the war and could speak English.

The soldiers exchanged makeshift gifts such as cigarettes, chocolates, sausages, liquor and plum puddings and likely swapped stories about the miseries of war. German soldiers in Houplines even rolled barrels of beer they had seized from a nearby brewery across no-man’s-land to the British trenches where, according to British soldier Frank Richards, they raised toasts to one another’s health and united in agreement that “French beer was rotten stuff.”

In some cases, the strip of death between the trenches even came alive with pick-up soccer games as soldiers navigated around the shell craters and barbed wire in no-man’s-land. “We marked the goals with our caps,” German Lieutenant Johannes Niemann recalled. “Teams were quickly established for a match on the frozen mud, and the Fritzes beat the Tommies 3-2.” Where soldiers lacked a real leather ball to kick with their waterlogged boots, tin cans and small sandbags sufficed.

Not every fighting man, particularly those who had just seen comrades killed in action, felt moved by the Christmas spirit. Gunfire continued to be exchanged in certain locations along the front, and in some unfortunate cases soldiers were killed by enemy fire as they emerged from the trenches in the hope for a day of peace. The unsanctioned truce concerned high-ranking officials, afraid that their men might lose the will to fight, and outraged others, including one young German corporal who would launch the next world war. “Such a thing should not happen in wartime,” Adolf Hitler scolded his fellow soldiers. “Have you no German sense of honor left?”

As the sun set on Christmas, the fighters retreated to their respective trenches. A few ceasefires held until New Year’s Day. In most locations, however, the war resumed on December 26. At 8:30 a.m. in Houplines, Captain Charles Stockwell of the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers fired three shots into the air and raised a flag that read “Merry Christmas.” His German counterpart raised a flag that read “Thank you.” The two men then mounted the parapets, saluted each other and returned to their sodden trenches. Stockwell wrote that his counterpart then “fired two shots in the air—and the war was on again.”

The guns quickly extinguished the brief flicker of peace, and British Expeditionary Force commander John French issued orders that such a grassroots ceasefire should never happen again. When Christmas returned to the trenches in 1915, the truce did not. Holiday cheer was in short supply like so many other rations after a year that saw the unleashing of poison gas, the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania by German U-boats and the deaths of millions more on and off the battlefield.

The guns of World War I did not fall silent again until the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918. The Christmas Truce, however, provided an unforgettable memory for many such as the British soldier who confessed in a letter the following day, “I wouldn’t have missed the experience of yesterday for the most gorgeous Christmas dinner in England.”