My dear readers,

Answers to Remaining Questions from Calvary Pandan Church Camp 2025 (14)

Question 1: In wartime, is it biblical that we pray if it's the Lord's will to give our country an advantage/victory in the war, etc?

Answer 1: If it is a war whereby you are the defender and not the aggressor, it is your duty to pray for His mercy to protect your country. Believers are required to defend their country, thus defending their homes and loved ones. Unless God tells you not to do so, but to surrender, which was what the LORD commanded Jeremiah to tell the Jews in his days to do so. God called Nebuchadnezzar His servant. This was God’s ordained judgment against Judah for her unrepentant idolatry for decades. 

Jeremiah 27:6-14: “⁶And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him. ⁷And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the very time of his land come: and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him. ⁸And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the LORD, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. ⁹Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers, which speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon: ¹⁰For they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land; and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish. ¹¹But the nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him, those will I let remain still in their own land, saith the LORD; and they shall till it, and dwell therein. ¹²I spake also to Zedekiah king of Judah according to all these words, saying, Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live. ¹³Why will ye die, thou and thy people, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, as the LORD hath spoken against the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon? ¹⁴Therefore hearken not unto the words of the prophets that speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon: for they prophesy a lie unto you.”

If you are conscripted to fight in a war where your country is the aggressor, you may choose not to fight, especially if the things asked of you are unjust killing and genocide, but you have to suffer the consequences of your decision.

The prayer for an advantage and victory has to be for God’s glory as Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer.

Question 2: How are we to apply Psalm 122:6? Is it biblical to pray for Israel? What should we pray for in affairs of war if "world peace" is part of the Antichrist agenda? Then how should we pray in response to war?

Answer 2: Psalms 120 to 134 are songs of degrees or ascension. The worshippers sang these psalms as they ascended toward Jerusalem to worship the LORD since David placed the Ark of the Covenant with the mercy seat inside the city when he was crowned king of all Israel in 1003 B.C.. The purpose was to remind Israel that she was a spiritual nation and not a political or an economic one, like the Gentile nations of the world.

Psalm 122:1-9: “¹A Song of degrees of David. I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD. ²Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. ³Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: ⁴Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD. ⁵For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David. ⁶Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. ⁷Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. ⁸For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. ⁹Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.”

Jerusalem was not a normal capital city. Jerusalem was the city where God’s dwelling place was located. God’s presence was there in the midst of the city. When King David, the psalmist, called God’s people to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, he meant for Jerusalem to be spiritual and holy as a witness for Christ. Jerusalem did not have peace only when the LORD punished her for her unrepentant sins. The LORD protected Jerusalem, for His dwelling place was there. No one could harm or touch Jerusalem without His omnipotent permission. When the kings of Judah, one after another, were idolatrous and refused to repent, and the sins of the Jews were full in God’s eyes, God exiled the people and razed the city and the temple to the ground. Thus, praying for the peace of Jerusalem meant praying for Jerusalem, i.e., the people of God to be holy as God is holy.

God’s blessings for Israel as a nation were spiritual and physical (cf. Lev 26 and Deut 28 – two chapters that explain the blessings and curses for obedience and disobedience, respectively). Hence, the second half of verse 6 says that the ones who pray for Jerusalem’s peace and love her shall prosper. To love Jerusalem is to pray for her peace; only God’s holy and righteous people would do that. These are the people that God is pleased with.

Jerusalem of today does not have the dwelling place of God. Israel rejected Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ (Messiah in Hebrew) when they crucified Him like a common criminal. The Israel of today has not changed in its rejection of Jesus as the Christ. Pray for Israel the same way one prays for any nation that is at war. Pray for God’s mercy and Christians to remain faithful, and to continue to share Christ so that more sinners might be saved on all sides.

World peace will never come until Christ returns in glory. The world peace that originates from the world is false. The world cannot have real peace until it makes peace with God in Christ. With salvation, they become new creatures in Christ. Then only can they be true peacemakers. The “peace” that the world calls for is the absence of war. That is not the biblical meaning of peace. When peace is experienced between two parties, they become part of the same family, and brotherly love prevails. They sincerely care for and desire the best for each other, and esteem the other to be better. The believer cannot pray for “world peace“ because the Antichrist will reign. The peace the world offers is deceptive whereby sin prevails and the leaders who propose them are diabolical.

Believers can pray for the peace of the Bible, i.e. the return of Christ who alone can bring genuine world peace. World peace will come when all sinners and places of sin and idolatry are destroyed. Only Jesus Christ can do this with perfect power, justice and holiness.

Question 3: God will judge every superpower and do to them the same evil that they have done to others. Will that apply to Israel also? Or will Israel be exempted as the nation of God?

Answer 3: God's just and equitable divine justice is always based on His holiness. He is no respecter of persons in judgment. All humanity is conceived and born in sin. All are bound for death and hell; but through the divine intervention of God in Christ, the destination can be changed. Through Christ and His finished work at Calvary, He became the holy standard for all to enter God’s kingdom. Christ is not the standard for sending anyone to hell, as all are already bound for hell. Those who hear the gospel and reject Christ are just adding another sinful layer on top of the innumerable layers of sins they have committed against God since birth.

God did not send Christ to condemn but to save. John 3:17-20: “¹⁷For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. ¹⁸He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”

When God judged the Israel of the Old Testament, He based it on His covenant with Israel. The yardstick of God's judgment was the Holy Bible. More was given, more was expected of Israel. The conduct of Israel today is no different from that of the Gentiles. Sin and carnality prevail. No one can be saved by looking at today’s Jerusalem in contrast to the Jerusalem of the Old Testament. 

When He judged the Gentile nations, He based it on a Creator creature perspective. The standard will always be His creation. This is revealed to us in Romans 1:18-32.

The revealed certainty of God’s judgment on all humanity and its order is taught in 1 Peter 4:15-19: “¹⁵But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. ¹⁶Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. ¹⁷For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? ¹⁸And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? ¹⁹Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.”

God will judge all without respect to the faces of man. But remember that the only “thing” of this old earth that God will retain in eternity is the name “Jerusalem”. He calls every believer’s new eternal capital city “the New Jerusalem”!