Last Updated on March 11, 2022 3:24 PM by herald
While it is becoming more and more popular to reject the Bible and religion in general, Russia’s war in the Ukraine is providing support for the authenticity of the Bible by bringing Bible prophecy sharply into focus. In this article we explain how the war in Ukraine meets the features of the three types of war outlined in the Bible.
At the most elementary level of analysis, this war is fulfilment of the “wars and rumours of wars” Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24. One must remember that Jesus was not only Messiah but also a prophet and is recognized as such even by Islam. Neither must we forget that by one count, about 1/3 of the Bible (27%) is prophecy.
The accuracy of Bible prophecy is perhaps one of the most important proofs that the Bible is inspired by God and can be trusted.
As the map shows this war is occurring right in the middle of Europe. Europe has not seen a major war for more than seventy-five years. As you might recall, World War II was started by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis of Germany and engulfed Europe and the rest of the world from 1939 – 1945
Three Types of War
This is not to say that there have not been other conflicts. The Bosnian War or Serbo-Croatian war which lasted from 1992 to 1995 was essentially an ethnic conflict. That puts it squarely in the prophetic group described by Jesus as “nation- against-nation”.
In Matthew 24: 7 where this phrase is used, the word translated “nation” is the Greek “ethnos” from which we get the word “ethnic”. In other words, this particular phrase is speaking of ethnic wars of which there have been several.
Jesus spoke of another type of war, “kingdom against kingdom. A kingdom is a political entity and can be anything from an empire to a monarchy to a nation or nation state. From this definition, it is clear that there have been hundreds of wars.
In today’s terms, these types of wars are perhaps best described as “geo-political wars”. According to the Oxford dictionary online, the term “geo-political” refers to “the political relations between countries and groups of countries in the world, as influenced by their geography”. It can also mean the study of these relations”.
This type of war is nothing new; it is perhaps as old as mankind itself. So its existence in the list of signs of the endtimes has to be taken in the context of totality of all the other signs of outlined by Jesus. These include earthquakes, famines and diseases.
But there is a third and indirectly stated type of war in this chapter. On the surface, we might call it a religious war as the brunt of it will be persecution.
According to Matthew 24:9 – 11
Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
Of course, there have been many religious wars. The best known are those between the Catholic and Protestant Churches and the ongoing war between Muslims and Christians which started with the rise of Islam in the seventh century. AD 632 is regarded as the start of the early rise of the Islam.
However, one aspect of this war leads one to think that it is more than just religious. The idea of believers in Christ “turning from the faith” suggests that there will not only be competing faiths but competing beliefs and philosophies.
The term ideological war covers all of the above possibilities of competing faiths, beliefs or philosophies. Moreover, the broadness of the term allows us to easily include modern information phenomena such as propaganda, information, dis-information and fake news.
More importantly it allows us to include the concept of deception which is the end game of dis-information, mis-information and fake news. We know this type of war will be a feature of the endtimes ideological war because Jesus spent five verses warning about deception alone:
At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time. “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. Matthew 24: 23- 26 NIV
Three Dimensions of Ukrainian War
The current war between Russia and Ukraine involves all of the three types of war we have outlined.
The relationships of kinship between Ukrainians and Russian makes this partly an ethnic war. Russians account for 17.2% of the Ukrainian population according to worldatlas.com.
“Because of their countries’ complex and intertwined history, many Ukrainians and Russians have relatives from both sides of the border who are now standing on opposite sides of the war” reports the Chicago Tribune of March 01, 2022.
The Ukrainian war involves the Russian Federation and Ukraine two former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) states in Europe. Putin’s stated goal of rebuilding the Russian Empire makes this war geo-political. In other words, part of the war is the capture as territory which is as old as Europe itself.
For this reason, more than one analyst has expressed the view that Putin will not stop at Ukraine but is likely to go on to recapture other parts of the former USSR. This means that Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Balkan states could be in his crosshairs.
Finally, what is not readily known is the ideological element of this war.
The New York Times in an article entitled Ukrainian Orthodox Christians Formally Break From Russia reported the formal separation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from the Russian Orthodox church.
The formal break came as the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, formalized the split with the Russian church to which it had been tied for more than four centuries. For more historical background on this please see the video.
One source suggests that Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine partly as a defense of the Moscow-leaning Orthodox Church of Russia.
If you are following the war closely, you will know that there is strong information war element as part of the hostilities. Russians have been ordered on the point of imprisonment for 15 years not to refer to the conflict as a war but a “special military operation”. All Russian media must follow this directive.
Both the Ukrainian and Russian military give competing accounts of the events and casualties of the war.
As is often said, “the first casualty of war is the truth”.
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Submitted by Dr. Aldon D. Tull who can be reached at 246-228-3720 or Whatsapp 246-846-3191
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