Will we ever see an end to war?

Will we ever see an end to war?

“[God] shall judge between nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

The Prophet Isaiah wrote these words some 400 years before the birth of Christ during a time of war and violence. Judah in the South and Israel in the North were engaged in civil war. Judah was also doing battle with the Assyrians under King Hezekiah. And everyone wanted the warring to end. This is when Isaiah voiced his vision of peace, overturning what the Prophet Joel told the people to do 2oo years earlier.

Joel told the people to prepare for was by beating their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears; while Isaiah called for the people to prepare for peace by doing the exact opposite! 

However, this wasn’t merely philosophical idealism, Isaiah was preparing the people for the real peace that would come when the Messiah was born, or as the poet John Milton referred to it as, “a perpetual peace.” This is because the Christ Himself brings peace because He is our “Peace.”

Will we ever see an end to wars? Not until either everyone accepts Christ as the Savior from such evils…or at the world’s end.

Ironically, in a garden outside the United Nations Building stands a statue entitled, “Let us beat swords into plowshares,” by the famed Russian artist Yevgeny Vuchetich. It was a gift given by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Fr. John