When David was delivered from his enemies, he said, “God trains my hands for war. I pursued my enemies and destroyed them, and did not turn back until they were consumed.” (2 Samuel 22: 1, 35, 38)
Millennia later, in the middle of a fateful night, Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr., Major Thomas Ferebee, and Captain Theodore Van Kirk took off from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Six-and-a-half hours later, 8:15 a.m., at 31,000 feet, Ferebee said, “I got it.” Van Kirk confirmed they had their goal in sight, the Aioi Bridge, and Ferebee released “Little Boy.” It was August 6, 1945. The plane was the Enola Gay. “Little Boy” was the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Navigator Van Kirk said, “The entire city was covered with smoke and dust and dirt. I describe it looking like a pot of black, boiling tar. You could see some fires burning on the edge of the city.” He said he felt “a sense of relief.” A sense of relief? Yes, “you just sort of had a sense that the war was over, or would be soon.” A plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, August 9, and Japan surrendered August 15. (New York Times, July 30, 2014; A18)
“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24:6) Whenever the end does come, “It shall come to pass in the latter days…nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:1, 4) Oh, for that day when faith turns to sight! Because it is said of God, “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth,” we yearn in hope for that “sense of relief” when “the former things have passed away.” (Psalm 46:9; Revelation 21:4)
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