Pentecost in War & Peace

THE PRODUCT: Understanding war and peace in general requires first a look at the ultimate source of moral conflict at the root of all warfare. The five chapters of Part 1 explore in broad strokes the question, "Why is there war?" You'll see the two sides have opposite strategies for waging war, and only one side is waging peace. Skip to Part 2 if you're impatient to get down to raw historic details.

In Part 2 we explore 14 tangled tales of warfare in antiquity and their causes and outcomes, thereby discovering how to experience Pentecost in times of both war and peace.

Part 3 celebrates the triumphant dogmas of the Christian faith as stated in the Apostles' Creed and God's anticipated victory in the cosmic battle. These four concluding appointments with the Warrior Prince of Peace are inspired by Samuel J. Stone's 1866 publication Lyra Fideium: Twelve Hymns on the Apostles' Creed now set to more easily sung tunes. Now we have a newly relevant tool to embrace the freedom of Christian worship in times of either war or peace.

THE MOTIVE: In 2024 our congregation needed to make sense of then current events including the shooting war in Ukraine and the verbal civil war that characterized the presidential election cycle in the United States. In the church calendar it was the season of Pentecost, so we placed these War & Peace concerns into the large context of the story of God's involvement with human history.

We walked through the wars of antiquity recorded in the Bible to discover motives and consequences of human conflict. Beyond that, we discovered a violent fight first staged in heaven, then cast down to earth. Now finding ourselves in an ongoing good vs. evil conflict, we hit upon a better question than "Why is there war?" We clearly saw the reason for that, then moved on to the deeper mystery: "Why is there peace?" Through these worship appointments, we found enhanced understanding of (and greater intimacy with) the Warrior Prince of Peace.

Dan preached these messages for two congregations in Michigan, always striving for both political and theological objectivity. Read carefully with this question in mind: Where in this book is there any evidence of the author's personal opinions ever stated about either politics or doctrine? What you will detect instead is the bias stated in Paul's second letter to Timothy: "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work" (2 Tim. 3:18-19 NLT).

The intent of these messages is to always speak only the dogmas of the universal Christian faith as opposed to the views of various churches represented in our nondenominal congregation. God's opinion is what matters and is what we always seek to discover by keeping our weekly appointment to explore God's words as revealed in the Bible.