Father, help us to find peace, in you.
World conflict features many times during scripture; the rise and fall of world powers, invasions and murder and the prophetic battles to come.
Why God allows this can be difficult to understand and is cited by some people to highlight God as uncaring. Yet the solution is the removal of free will, and they would complain even more strongly if that was implemented!
Dominance, greed and the lust for power are hallmarks of humanity, even right back to Adam and Eve's fall from grace. And it seems mankind has gone from bad to worse ever since. Rather than wanting to be 'as gods, knowing good and evil' (Gen3:5) mankind has wanted power over other people. Conflict is just greed on a wider scale.
In Matthew 24 (and Luke 21) Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, especially the temple. This all came to pass with the Romans, when they destroyed the Temple in AD70. However from verse 3 it talks about things which may not yet have come to pass. If we look at the chapters in a little more detail we get these points;
From verse 15 it seems that Jesus is fleshing out the above points and providing advice and exhortation to help us through this time of trouble.
Until the last point, the list is one of doom and gloom. Where are we on the list? We could be anywhere. Nations are constantly rising against nation. The Jews have certainly been afflicted and the holocaust is but one example. (The holocaust was the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War). There's been plenty of examples of in-fighting between various religious factions, perhaps there's more to come. It may be that we are waiting for the 'false prophet' as the final piece of the jigsaw before the coming of Christ.
The Apocalypse is another biblical word that often gets used when talking about world conflict. Often people refer to it as 'the final battle'. The word simply means 'something that is to be revealed' or 'something that is not yet known'. In some ways this is now any conflict will end, rather than the conflict itself.
After all the bad news, we finally get to the good. Because Jesus will put an end to conflict when he builds his own kingdom at his return. We need to make sure we're the ones that Jesus wants to be in his kingdom.
… and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Matt 24:30,31