What the World Needs in 2005
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, the world rejoiced. The vast concrete and barbed wire scar running for miles across the German countryside, so vividly symbolic of the great divide between rival ideologies, was no more. The old Soviet Union quickly crumbled and millions of people breathed free for the first time.
Liberty had triumphed at last and a Pax Americana would soon engulf the world, we were told. Many historians even referred to the coming era as “the end of history.” They were wrong.
Even though communism, the great enemy of our way of life, and its harsh dictatorships has faded away in many parts of the world, new threats have arisen in its place to test our mettle. Thus it has always been, and thus it will be. History has not ended, as we euphorically believed only a few short years ago. Quite the contrary.
The evil one, the father of confusion and strife and misery and death, would have it no other way.
Since those heady days of the late 80s and early 90s, we have witnessed genocide on a scale not seen for more than a half-century. Tribal conflicts in the African nations of Rwanda and Burundi resulted in the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women, and children. The Balkans erupted in flames over centuries-old grievances, and mass graves are still being uncovered.
An especially cruel war continues to rage in the Russian state of Chechnya, with schoolchildren and other civilians paying a high price. In the Darfur region of Sudan, massive destruction of life is occurring with government sanction. North Koreans have resorted to eating grass to avoid starvation — that is, the North Koreans who have somehow avoided that country’s Stalinist gulag system.
Many other areas of the world are a powder keg, waiting for the fuse to be lit. Anyone who remotely doubts the presence of the Devil and evil schemes in the workings of this world must have his/her head in the sand. He is real, and he roams among us seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8).
What the world needs today is what it has always needed: Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the world. It just seems that the world needs Jesus more and more with every passing year.
If the world knew Jesus like we intimately know Jesus, the Tutsis and Hutus would join together in brotherhood. Chechens and Russians would put aside their political differences for a far greater cause. Warring factions in Sudan would seek the Heavenly Father, not more artillery. North Koreans would have hope, and all the ethnic groups in the Balkans would gather in friendship to raise one voice in praise to the Light of the world.
The only way that will ever happen is if those people know Christ. The only way those people will ever know Christ is through the witness of Christians. It’s that simple (Matthew 28:18-20). If not us, then who?
The historians in 1989 were right about one thing — history will end. They’re just off on the date by a little bit. If today is the day, may our returning Lord say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21)