#8. “There’s a War On.”
Its effect upon the liberty of the subject.


Having reviewed the teaching of the Scriptures regarding the existence and character of the conflict of the ages, we now apply the lessons we may learn to the affairs of daily Christian life and experience.

A skeptical objection, which we occasionally met, to the belief that a wise and beneficent Deity still holds sway over this world, may be illustrated by the following conversation, which has been recorded elsewhere. The speakers were two seafaring men, the one a Commander in the Royal Navy and the other a Captain in the Merchant Service.

Said the Commander, “If there be a God, what a mess He has made of His world. Look at my ship. Every plank is scrubbed white; every piece of brass shines; every man is at his post; I have made a far better job of my ship, than your God has made of His world”.
“Yes”, replied the Captain, “but tell me, WHAT WILL YOUR SHIP LOOK LIKE WHEN THERE’S A WAR ON AND YOUR SHIP HAS BEEN IN ACTION?”

When we meet anyone who is inclined to grumble at the necessary restrictions imposed by the Government on individual freedom of action and speech, we silence his objection by the observation, “There’s a War on”. Traveling facilities are curtailed; certain discomforts are inevitable; passengers have to wait a little longer for their particular bus, or a convenient train service has been suspended. Certain areas that once were common property or open of access become restricted and prohibited. But it were folly to murmur and wise to recognize that these things must be, if “there is a War on”.

One of the things that strike us as sad is to realize, that by reason of the fact that they were born after 4th September, 1939, there are children suffering the consequences of War who have never lived in any other atmosphere. For them, the air has never been without its menace: for them, there has never been unlimited supply of the fruits of the earth: for them, there has never been the ability or opportunity of abundant life. Thus, also, it is of the utmost importance that we should remember that since the creation of Adam, it can be as truly said of mankind as of the children born since 4th Sept., 1939, that it has never yet known what it is to live without the conditions of War. Before Adam was formed in the image of his Maker, the spiritual conflict had broken out. The Anointed Cherub had rebelled against his Lord; he had attempted the usurpation of Heaven’s dominion, and at the reconstruction of this present world and the creation of man with dominion in it, he immediately recognized in this new being his incipient foe, and laid plans for his overthrow. Man has never yet known true liberty. The presence of spiritual foes; the threat of invasion of his territory; the destruction of his fair inheritance; the employment of every artifice of deceit; all these have rendered the odds against him very great. They have beset man before and behind with all the spiritual equivalents of War conditions, so that, even though by his very constitution as a moral agent, whose will can remain “will” only if it be “free”, he finds himself so surrounded by the consequences of conflict as to realize that his “liberty” must, for the time being, be seriously curtailed, and can only be fully enjoyed when the present conditions of conflict shall cease.

We find this limitation of full liberty in the command to abstain from one tree in the garden of Eden. We find it in operation when, in order that weaker brethren might not be stumbled, the Apostle Paul gladly and willingly curtailed some of the very liberty he might as a Christian legitimately have enjoyed. Had anyone challenged the Apostle on this point, asserting that his actions denied the championship of liberty and freedom with which his epistles abound, he might pertinently have replied, “There’s a War on”. His advice to the Corinthians regarding buying and selling, marriage or abstinence, was governed by “the present necessity” (or “distress”) (I Cor. vii. 26). He urged those who used this world, not to “use it to the full” (“abuse”) (I Cor. vii. 31); and that while they knew that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, they might recognize that it might, on occasion, nevertheless be incumbent on them to allow another man’s conscience to limit their own individual freedom (I Cor. x. 28, 29).

For over a thousand years the peoples of these islands of Great Britain have slowly and patiently acquired a liberty that has become the envy of other lands. Yet, with less stir and fewer headlines in the daily press than would be given to the sinking of one battleship, this people, of their own free will, have yielded the blood-bought rights of a thousand years, handed over their most sacred liberties for the duration of the conflict, voluntarily placed themselves in a state of bondage and accepted the possibility of a curtailment of rights comparable with that obtaining in a slave state. For what reason? There is but one answer: “There’s a War on.”

With this national lesson before his eyes the believer would do well to ponder its application in the spiritual realm, and as he becomes conscious of many restraints, of irksome limitations of his present enjoyment of spiritual freedom, let him acknowledge that in their willing renunciation the children of this generation can teach a wonderful lesson to the children of light, for true liberty must wait the crown of true peace for its unrestricted enjoyment. “The liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. viii. 21).

(From The Berean Exposxitor volume 33, page 231).

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