As everyone knows, we live in a very problematic and unstable world. It seems as though every morning, the news gives us a report of one kind of disaster or another. But we will agree that, in all probability, the greatest disaster is one that comes upon mankind on a regular basis. It is the advent of devastating war.

Because most other disasters grow out of the fearful conflict between nations, we need to think about the causes of war. Are there events, conditions, and attitudes which, when combined give almost certain rise to hostility? There are, and they are nothing less than the "Ingredients of War!" Today there are many recipes for disaster, simmering in areas throughout our world, of which each one of us should be aware.

This past century has been characterized by more wars than most. Even as you read these words, you can be very sure that deadly hostilities are going on between one nation and another. Though outwardly at peace, others are looking across troubled borders, wondering, "How can I get those people, and get even, or conquer their nation?"

The world today seems to overflow with brutal hatreds that lead first to one war, and then another, and then another. Such hatreds are the prime ingredients in a recioe for disaster that we do well to keep in mind.

By the way, the disciples, as you know, one day spoke to Christ, and they asked, "what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the age?" (Matthew 24:3).

Jesus said, "I'm going to give you two characteristics that will obtain through all of the time of history"; ". . .many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. . ." (Matthew 24:5-6).

So Jesus Christ told us that wars will be a perennial thing. Then He said, if you want to know what will characterize the "beginning of sorrows," that time which leads into the Tribulation, "nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom" (Matthew 24:7). The word for "nation" is "ethnos." There shall be racial warfare and conventional, kingdom conflict, one against another.

So the endemic situation in which war is always the case in the world precipitated the question asked by James:

"From where come wars and fightings among you? Come they not here, even of your lusts that war in your members?" James 4:1.

Of course, the answer is yes. Remembering that - that wars come because people's hearts are not right toward God and toward one another - let's look at some of the actual, tangible, predictable fragments that come together and make the outbreak of war almost inevitable.

Political Fragmentation

First, we want to mention political fragmentation. In thinking about the way it is across the world, it seems as if God has raised up dependable nations with strong leaders, such as America in its day, and England in her day. He has allowed them to exert a very strong influence on other nations of the world. This produced a kind of a unity, a political cohesion, that prevented fragmentation and consequent war.

However, when the leadership of the great powers is reduced, it seems as if other nations fragment themselves into a thousand pieces. There is no dominant power to challenge their internal collapse, and so the weaker nations are scattered all over the place. The result is that you have a smashing crisis come to pass.

This can be illustrated in many ways. For instance, the current situation in Bosnia, and the condition of the Balkans throughout this entire century, is marked by a host of small nations that vehemently hate one another. When there is the absence of a dominant power, like the dominance of Marshal Tito over all of Yugoslavia after World War II, or the potential dominance of the Soviet Union, these nations start blasting away at one another. Already. you have hundreds of thousands dead in the Bosnia situation. You have "ethnic cleansing." You have 4 million refugees going in every direction. When nations and people begin to come apart, they amplify the differences they perceive between themselves. They start a war over differences, which, many times, others cannot figure out.

Take the United States Civil War. America was starting to fragment because of a lack of a dominant ideology to keep it going. Once upon a time, the ideology was "Manifest Destiny," the belief that America was destined to rule this continent from sea to shining sea. But as that approached fulfillment, the mucilage of a shared destiny began to lose its hold. Along came the Civil War in which 700,000 young men died, because the nation was in the process of coming apart.

Where is there political fragmentation? I've noticed that the Bible speaks about Solomon in this regard, and says:

"But King Solomon loved many foreign women; in addition to the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites," 1 Kings 11:1.

He brought these people into his court, and they pressed their influence upon him from every quarter. Finally the Bible says:

"And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not after the Lord, as did David, his father," 1 Kings 11:6.

Up until that time, when the nation was loyal to God, Israel stayed together. But after Solomon, there was political fragmentation. Because the leader had lost his leadership, and many of his subordinates had turned from God, the nation was divided in two, under Rehoboam and Jeroboam. That started the interecine wars on the part of Israel against Judah. Many tens of thousands of young men died, as Israel, in terms of its old cohesion, came apart.

Watch this, across the world. When you see nations losing their sense of great purpose, fragmentation sets in. Soon life becomes exceedingly dangerous for one or another element within those kingdoms, as former friends and even relatives forget how to get along.

"Kings and kingdoms will all pass away," goes the old song, and that is one of the most obvious developments in our time. There are major ingredients that keep a kingdom together. Allegiance to God is one of those pieces of magnetism.

Even though we've had a couple of "wars to end all wars" in this past century, war still continues to roar down upon us. Let no nation that is living in relative peace today even think that it will be able to avoid war, just because it's some kind of prima donna in the world. "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars," Jesus said, and when all is said and done, you won't be able to prevent them.

Leadership Vacuum

A second characteristic that produces war is a leadership vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does politics. A leadership vacuum is given to us in the Word of God as a sign that God is bringing a given nation into a time of devastating judgment from Him. The Prophet Isaiah says:

"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honorable man, and the counselor, and the skillful craftsman, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor; the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable. . . .As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. . . .," Isaiah 3:1-5, 12.

These are signs of Divine judgment: there are no leaders, no capable people. They have all cut off their heads and forsworn their strength, in order to create an egalitarian fantasy that lumps them in with everyone else. No one is allowed to excel. No one is applauded if he does excel. When leadership is gone, who takes over? The Bible says, leaders who are not qualified, and children, rule over them, and women shall be their governors and their leaders.

Is there any similarity between that and what's going on in the world today: leaders who are incapable; women and children ruling? Leaders who are so very young that they have no real competence or experience in the things of life or state - do we see any of that today? The Bible says here in Isaiah and in other places, that this is a sign of Divine judgment. What does it take to keep a nation strong? Among other things, wise and godly leadership. David said:

". . .He who ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God," 2 Samuel 23:3.

David put this in such a context that it is one of the most serious things he ever said. It's one of his last pronouncements before his death. David said this matter of running a nation, because it holds in its hands the lives of many millions of people, is very serious. Therefore, he who rules over men must be just. He can't be bribable; he can't be a cheap politician who claims he doesn't sell his vote, but will rent it out every now and then. He can't be blown about by every wind of doctrine. He must be strong, capable, resolute and just. That means righteous; that means reputed to be righteous. That means that you stand for moral principle, and you don't sign your life away, no matter what pressures come upon you from one direction or another.

But when righteousenss is gone, when you have a leader who is a time-server, when you have a leader whose first loyalties are to something other than the good of the nation, then what do you have? You have a leadership vacuum.

I have noticed in these very days, that the people of this nation, and most of the nations of the world, seem more perceptive than ever regarding the shortcomings of their leaders. They also seem more willing to talk about it. They are thinking deeply, and have generally lost a large measure of confidence in the politicians that purport to lead them. This is a very dangerous condition.

When nobody is in charge, people begin searching for leadership that is strong, truthful, and able to help them where it really counts. At that point they become vulnerable prey to a charismatic leader of great promise, who is convincing, but who leads them astray.

This happened in a dissolute Germany, once upon a time. This happened in Italy, when it was terribly down and felt inferior to the other nations of the world. Many nations have found themselves in a bad position, and have surrendered authority to a popular leader who promised great things.

Consider Napoleon, for instance. France bought this man's line from top to bottom, and said, "He will be our leader." That cost 4 million lives, 2 million of the young men of France, and a couple of million more people in the rest of the world. Napoleon was able to convince the people of France to do anything. Why? Because the Revolution had cut off the heads of their qualified leaders, and Napoleon was the man who offered to fill the vacuum.

Because of a lack of leadership, there will be one day, maybe very soon, a man who stands before an onlooking world and says, "I'll be glad to lead you into a brilliant future. Yes, all is not lost. You can be master of your own fate for the years to come. We'll see the dawn of a new age, the establishment of a bright new world order, if you will just consent to follow me." Simply a leadership vacuum, and that alone, could produce the rise of Antichrist.

Economic Distress

Another recipe for disaster contains the ingredients of economic distress. Economics is not only a dismal science, but is a very serious thing.

There was a person who lived in this last century, and died just before the close of World War II, who had an interesting influence across the world. His name was John Maynard Keynes. Keynes wrote about this matter of economics, and was himself a successful British economist. He became a wealthy man, because he played the stock on bond markets pretty well. Riding on that success, he presented himself as having the answer to the economic problems of the world.

He had a big influence in the United States. He influenced President Franklin D. Roosevelt into adopting and implementing what was later called "Keynesian Economics." The idea of this was simple: that is was the responsibility of the government to spend itself rich. It was the responsibility of the government to borrow money and put it back into the economy. This would create full employment, thus producing the trigger mechanism to prosperity.

Keynesian Economics in effect said the government is the arbiter of it all. The government, by what it does economically, causes the ebb and the flow of economics within the nation, and therefore, prosperity is in the hands of the government. The government can make or break anything. In effect, the government is God; the government is the source; the government is the ultimate object of confidence.

What has Keynesian Economics done for the world? Keynesian Economics is a part of the reason that the world is facing economic disaster today. America bought this package of Keynesian Economics, namely, government debt producing a good thing for people. That debt has grown from then until now, and now the Federal government of the United States is over 4 1/2 trillion dollars in debt, that it admits. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion. A billion dollars is a thousand million. It's fantastic, what we owe today.

The government of the United States has to borrow $1.1 billion every day just to keep ahead and pay the interest on the money that it owes. That figure will go up every day until we no longer add to the debt.

We talk about reducing the deficit. That's the new thing in Washington. A lot of people don't know the difference between a debt and a deficit. The debt is how much we owe; the deficit is how much we add to that debt with every day that passes.

Now, they say that we are reducing the deficit, which, in my judgment, will not turn out to be true. But even if we are reducing the deficit, by, $100 billion, we are still expanding the debt. If we continue to do so, there will finally come a time when there isn't enough money to keep our country going, because the income will all go to paying interest on the debt.

One analyst suggested that at the current rate of increase in the national debt, by the year 2012 there won't be money left in the Federal Budget for anything other than entitlements (welfare, social security, medicare, etc.) and interest payments on the national debt. That means no maintaining of the highways, no defense budget, almost no structure to hold the country together!

Remember something: there's not enough money in the world to meet everybody's needs. Therefore, the test of what people get can't simply be a matter of the fact that they exist, or that they have needs. You must include some other standards. Those standards are fast disappearing, not only in America, but all over the world. And so we are entering a time of global economic crisis.

The Bible talks about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You have, first of all, the rider on the white horse, the Antichrist. You also have the rider on the red horse. And then you have the rider on the black horse: "And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, Come. And I beheld and. lo, a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures say, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius, and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine," Revelation 6:5-6.

The four horsemen are four kinds of judgment that come upon the world. The rider of the black horse has a pair of balances. That speaks of money, balance, and value. He holds that up and says, "a measure of wheat" (that's about a quart) for a "denarius" (that's a day's pay).

The Bible indicates that economic manipulation will produce a critical situation in the world. It will eventually cost you a day's worth of hard work to buy a measure of wheat, which is only enough to make a loaf of bread or two for your family.

Can you imagine what will happen across the world when that takes place? We already have pictures of it, from Central Africa, Bosnia, and other places - starving people, willing to give anything for a portion of bread to stay alive for just a little while longer. What happens when that condition spreads across the entire planet? It's happening now, and it could happen soon in many other places in the world.

Each of these things is a recipe for disaster which could well produce the rise of the Antichrist. The ingredients of war are mounting and combining together, any one of which could trigger a tremendous war. Indeed, in the last days, perilous times shall come, and that is a provable proposition, just by listening to the news today. Be aware, be sober, be vigilant, and be ready, for the return of Christ for His own.

Many have been around long enough to say, "Look, the world has always been a troubled, chancy, problematic place," and that is true. But the degree of trouble that has come upon this present world of ours really approaches the point of the fantastic.

Aren't we seeing horrendous things happening in these times, as against problematic things in days gone by? Is there any way to keep those horrors from overtaking us?

In that wars are predicted, and cannot in the final analysis be avoided, we would delude ourselves if we thought we could erase them. Rather, we should look to see if there is any course of action that we could take which might prevent a greater catastrophe, or prevent ourselves from being involved in one form or another of devastation.

There are many Jews, like Einstein, in the 1930'3, who foresaw the catastrophe coming upon them, and they moved to the United States. By the way, we can thank God that Einstein did that, because it meant that we, rather than the Nazis, developed the nuclear weapon before World War II was done.

Let's think further about the components of chaos that produce such devastation on a world like ours. People ask every day, "Why can't we have peace, and why can't it be better?" There are many reasons, more of which we shall examine now.

Conflicting Interests

One component of chaos is conflicting imterests - people with very divergent ideas as to what they want to come to pass. These conflicting interests, if they aren't resolved, have a way of producing a smashing war.

Take, for instance, the Korean situation. North Korea has been led by a man by the name of Kim Il Sung, and he was one of the most deadly tyrants in the whole world. He cared zero about the rest of the world. The rest of the world wants peace, or professes to want peace. Not Korea: they want supremacy. In that they have now come to a place of capability, they want to be a part of world conquest, in the name of communism, or some egregious ideology that wuld be successor to communism.

What's more, they have announced that they now have nuclear capability. A recent complication has been the death of Kin Il Sung, so his son, Kim Jong Il, has taken over. Talk about a whole set of conflicting interests: you now have a nuclear capable nation, with a son who's still trying to find himself. A recent defector from North Korea has said that North Korea now has the capability to make five nuclear weapons. Watch out for North Korea. When you have two nations, like North and South Korea, with such deadly opposite interests, the components of war are there. This whole matter of the conflicting interests of nations, which are not resolved by anybody, backed up by deadly weapons, is quite a combination.

They used to say about the Colt revolver, that it made men all of one size. It didn't matter if you were 6 feet 6, or 5 feet 4. If you had a colt revolver, that was the great equalizer.

People have thought about it since, and they have said, nuclear weapons have made nations all of one size. North Korea has only about 22 million people, but it could become a threat to the rest of the world, and could plunge the world into global war because of its interests conflicting with those of the rest of the world.

Almost as a reward for their machinations and threats and the rest of it, North Korea was promised a free nuclear reactor worth billions of dollars. It's interesting how these clever diplomats, with their inflexible commitment to their plan for the future, are many times able to take advantage of the soft democracies, until finally, they lead us around by the nose. Watch out for conflicting interests.

People often say, "Why can't we all get along?" The answer is, because in one heart and in another are two conflicting purposes that will not be resolved. They may have their roots in racial things, economic things, or ideological things, but they are there. And it is incredibly naive to say that we can do away with conflicting interests just by the wave of the hand.

As you see abrasions grow rather than subside between nations today, you are watching another component that could pass over the line and break out into a smashing war. Chaos lies ahead, because we do not have a great resolving factor in the conflicting interests of the world.

Social Instability

An expanding form of chaos that gives rise to war is social instability. We have a couple of illustrations of that going on in our present time that are worth noting. One is the situation in Eastern Europe. There's one of the elements of the Eastern Europe situation in which social instability was resolved, and that's the land of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs and the Slavaks decided that they really didn't like one another. But they didn't decide to shoot it out and have a war. Rather, they said, "Why don't we divide the country down the middle? You take one side; we'll take the other, and we'll live happily ever after." They did, and it has been a remarkable story. There have been no reports of military abrasion between the two nations. They had the wisdom, which is not common, to take social instbility, and resolve it short of an overwhelming war.

But at the same time, the nation of Rwanda made an opposite decision. As you know, you have two general races in Rwanda. They are the Hutus and the Tutsis. These people have incidental racial differences between them, and after years of conflict, they came to despise one another to the extent that they tried to exterminate each other.

As a result, half a million people have died. Bodies floated down the river into Tanzania, spreading disease and plague to that country. People at one point were dying by the thousands, about 15,000 every day. Their bodies were buried in large, open graves made long and deep and wide by bulldozers. Many have died of cholera, but also it has been estimated that up to 50 per cent of these people may have the AIDS virus. Many more are dying from that.

Social instability has been resolved in the wrong way over there, and it has become so horrendous, that we hardly know what to do with it. Watch for developments like that, because a similar catastrophe could bring to pass the very abrasion predicted in Scripture. If so, those events could lead us into the time of the end. Keep an eye on social instability.

Proliferation of Weapons

Also keep an eye on the proliferation of weaponry.

Have you ever collected things for a hobby? If so, you remember the first item you got, and how you displayed it. But if you collected avidly for any length of time, you also remember the day you looked at all that stuff and wondered what to do with it!

The governments of the world have been collecting weapons for many years, and they've had a lot of money to spend. The nations of the world are currently spending a trillion dollars a year - that's a thousand billion - on weapons. Think of how those stockpiles grow every year, and where the excess weapons go!

One of the things that has kind of startled me, and maybe you, is how even a little conflict, in some out of the way place, becomes a big war. All of a sudden, two armies are blasting away at one another with thousands of weapons. Where did they get them?

There must be weapons all over the place, and newer and more sophisticated weapons being fed into the maw of global hatred with every day that passes. A trillion dollars a year worth, like AK-47 rifles; a simple but very efficient thing. AK-47 rifles could once be had for $100 in the south Balkans; they are now up to $1000 a piece, these deadly weapons imvented by the Russians. The Israeli Uzi, a short machine gun that fires more bullets than anything else - these are being proliferated across the world as well. Weapons are one of the lenders of capability for war.

What's the answer to that? Is global disarmament going to be the answer to war? Well, let me say that there never will be global disarmament. You can't take a weapon away from some person, unless you have a weapon that's bigger than his. Still, you're going to have some trouble, because he might be watching out for you, and "dry-gutch" you along the way.

But if we somehow did take away all of the weapons in the world, would we then have peace? The answer is no. We'd still have wars fought with butcher knives, and axes, and things like that.

So, the solution is that you must put superior military capability in the hands of nations with moral sensibility. That's why the West has run the world - because the West was a Christian civilization, plus we had the guns to enforce our will on the rest of the world.

Taking away everybody's weapons won't do it. There continue to be nations possessed by deep and dark wickedness who will never settle for peace, and they ought not to be protected. Military superiority that is conjoined with moral discernment is the best human answer to the needs of our world.

That's not going to happen any more, I fear. At least, it's not going to happen until the moral superiority of a returning Jesus Christ one day controls the world, and all of the world is compelled to worship Him.

My, we are living in a time, in which out of this milieu of global concern could happen an event that would sound like the resolution of everything. There are some very spectacular events that are coming up in the history of our world, and they are going to be so interesting, that we ought to think about them in advance, and, if possible, prepare for them.

We have mentioned that if you are looking for some kind of human answer to the terrible abrasions of our world, you must put superior capability into the hands of people who are morally and intellectually reponsible. If you don't, you have a world that turns into anarchy. That is a proposition that cannot be denied, and cannot be withstood.

We have been thinking about the developments in our world that will be the components of chaos, if we continue to follow them. Chaos is an interesting condition. It is intellectual anarchy. It is social instability. It is hatreds that could become endemic. It is the whole thing coming apart.

Chaos is absurdity that has no answer. And then, if there is any possible answer, one little suggestion as to what to do, people grab that something so quickly.

That's what's going to happen over the whole world one day. Global chaos will be so ferocious, that only the word "fantastic" can be used about it. Nothing is happening; money has no value; your house could be burned down in a minute, like the one next to you was last night. People could be killed on every hand, like is happening today in Rwanda and Bosnia. What do you do? Desperation sets in, and so people say, "We must find a way out. We cannot live. Our children are starving. Out father was killed yesterday, and bullets are flying everywhere. A grenade may go off in a minute.

Even as I write, people must run across the streets of Sarajevo, because the snipers are firing at anything that moves. How do you finally resolve this? You don't resolve it by sitting around some conference table. You don't resolve it by hoping for the best. You resolve it by superior force, by everyone committing themselves to a great unifying principle.

A Leader for the Masses

What will that great unifying principle be, as we move toward the end of the age? It will be in the form of a great leader. That leader, who epitomizes all of the hopes of people, will stand before the world, dressed in his white robe, appearing on world-wide television, noticed by all the people on the face of the earth. He will say, "Ladies and gentlemen of the earth, we face desperate problems, and we must change the future. I am a man with a great plan. Follow me, and I will show you the way out."

You say, "That doesn't sound like much." But if you have nothing, and you're going down the drain, that sounds like everything. You'll grasp at whatever straw there is, and you'll follow that person. Millions in the world will do it. That person will promise to bring order and stability and predictability, along wirh food, and clothing, and organization. People will say, "He is God. He is the Savior." They'll buy his program.

Who is this person? The Bible says, he is the Antichrist. He will come with a soluton that will sound great. But before it's done, he will produce the greatest chaos imaginable, war against God. He will be the one who impersonates Jesus Christ. The world will gather around him in a fit of ecstasy, with tears of joy, saying, "We've been looking for you." He will say, "Here I am," and they will follow him. The Bible says the whole world will follow him. The whole world will worship him. They will gather about him, as if he were the deliverer of mankind, which he will appear to be.

Thank God, we'll be taken from the world before that time. Christians having been taken in the Rapture will look upon this from a larger distance away. But in the midst of all the war and chaos that will bring to pass the rise of the Antichrist, you and I need to be very aware of where we are. It is a time to look up for a redemption that draws nigh.

Ending Your Personal Chaos

The world is passing away, but God offers to us the opportunity of being a part of the world that will never pass away. The name of that world is heaven, and the way that you get there is salvation.

Do you know that you are saved? You can be saved today, by trusting Christ as your very own. If you want to know that you are a Christian, pray this prayer, and mean it. Accept the Lord Jesus, and He'll come to live within your heart:

"Heavenly Father, I know that I'm a sinner. I know that Christ died for my sins on the cross, and rose again. I believe in Him, and want to trust Him as my personal Savior. Please give me the assurance of salvation, I pray in Jesus' Name, Amen."

If you have prayed that prayer, and meant it in your heart, you have begun an exciting journey that will bring peace rather than chaos to you as a Christian.