Three Stories

The first story I want to tell is the story of the 1959 film “The Mouse That Roared.” It is a British film starring Peter Sellars playing most of the characters. The film is set in the world's smallest (fictional) nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The main export of this country is wine and when their wine becomes undercut but a Californian copy the nation is faced with bankruptcy. The Duchy decides to declare war on the United States, with the idea that it will certainly lose and will then be magnificently rehabilitated by the generous, victorious Americans. They then send 20 soldiers in chain main with bows and arrows to invade the USA. In New York, an air-raid exercise has closed the entire city, with the exception of the laboratory at the New York Institute of Physics, where a professor and his daughter are working on the new Q-bomb. When the Fenwickians arrive they look around New York but can find no one to surrender to as anyone they see think they are “men from Mars” due to their shiny mail. They eventually find their way to the Institute of Physics and gain control of the Q bomb. At which point the Americans surrender to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The upshot of everything is that the Americans discontinue the Californian wine and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick disarms the Q bomb which turns out to be a dud all along. The absurdity of the film and the underlying message of nuclear disarmament aside (for the moment) in the simple events of the film we have what could be described as the “normal Christian life.” The smallest, most unlikely country to ever win a war against the greatest military power on Earth does. With Jesus all things are possible. So what happens when things don’t quite work like that?
My second story is from the Argentinean revival. There were a group of pastors who were travelling around Argentina spreading the word of God. They received a message from a group of Satanists who were praying against them warning that if they came to their town they would be killed. This group of pastors decided to go anyway. On the way their bus crashed and they were all killed. Why this happened I do not, and never shall until I get to heaven and can ask (if I still care by then). I tell this story for one reason, even these people who were seeing loads of people come to the Lord and seeing revival in their land didn’t always win. There will be trials, there will be pain, God does not want us to always win against the odds.
The third story is from the book of Jeremiah. The second half of the book of Jeremiah recounts the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. At this point God has sent a number of prophets to the various kings of Judah telling them to repent warning that if they didn’t the kingdom would fall but mostly they didn’t so, as prophesied the Babylonians turned up to defeat them. The Babylonians besieged Jerusalem and God told Jeremiah who was inside to tell the people to lay down their weapons as they were going to lose, not the most heroic of attitudes. As telling everyone they were going to be defeated is not a wartime attitude that Churchill would have been proud of Jeremiah was locked up. When the king realised he was going to lose he went to Jeremiah to ask him what God’s will was, hoping that God was going to deliver a victory. Jeremiah told him, however, that God had given the victory to the enemy and his only hope was to surrender but that if he surrendered God would protect him. I was Babylonian custom to humiliate their enemies when they were defeated so that no one would dare to stand against them. Jeremiah told the king that if he surrendered God would influence the king of Babylon so that he would not harm the king or his family and that they would be left in Jerusalem rather than be taken back to Babylon and that he would be given favour with the man appointed to preside over the region. The king did not believe and refused to surrender. When Jerusalem finally fell he was caught trying to escape. His family was killed in front of him, his eyes were put out and he was taken to Babylon where he ate at the kings table so everyone could see what the king of Babylon did to those who defied him. Was it God’s will? No. Could he have got out of it? Yes. Was it God’s will for his people, the Israelites to win? No. This is the challenge to God’s people in the face of violence in modern day culture. Understanding that God has won the final victory but in many battles it is not always his will for the good (or the slightly less bad) guys to win. How do we bring God’s peace into these situations? This is the challenge that intend to explore in the future, how do we God’s peace rather than mans peace in the conflicts of today?