“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matthew 24:7).
“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Mark 13:8).
“When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.” Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Luke 21:9-10).
The word nation in these verses is the Greek word ethnos from where the word ethnic comes from. Ethnic wars are also known as civil wars. Civil wars are not political wars between kingdoms like Canada and the United States or Iraq and Israel, but between the individual ethnic groups that make up the kingdoms.
Though we have had civil uprisings and civil rights movements, the United States has not had a civil war since the Civil War. At that time the country was divided over the liberty of all men as the Declaration of Independence stated and the right to own men as property as suggested in the Constitution of the United States. It was during this time that Abraham Lincoln quoted the Scriptures showing that such division causes destruction.
“Yeshua knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25).
Today there is a division between the idea of liberty for all men or servanthood to those who control government, are more wealthy, less wealthy, more religious, less religious, more conservative, less conservative, more white, less white. These differing political, socio-economic, religious and ethnic divisions threaten the idea of liberty through self-government. So, the ethnos fight and argue, banter and threaten one another while on the verge of not only civil war, but even insurrection.
Yeshua explains that these wars and revolutions are the beginning of birth pangs that must happen before ‘the end’. Along with earthquakes, famines, diseases, persecutions, betrayals, signs in the heavens, men fainting from terror, false prophets, and Jerusalem surrounded by armies, there will be civil and political wars and rumors of wars.
Yeshua warns that we must watch our hearts so that they are not weighed down with dissipation (wasteful expenditure or consumption, indulgence in sexual pleasure, lack of restraint), drunkenness and the anxieties of life so the coming events will not surprise us. He tells his followers to be on the alert and to pray for a way to escape all that is about to happen.
Yeshua encourages those of His Kingdom who love and follow him with these words,
“When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Matthew 21:18).
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