A Perfect God, Genesis, and…War?

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Bodie Hodge

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 4/16/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand and the Gap today. And it’s also our monthly focus on creation, apologetics and biblical worldview. Now, in this world of wars and rumors of wars, it’s easy to become consumed with a daily bombardment of headline news, not designed for the communication of truth, but for clicks, for attention, grabbing and scare mongering. But as we have attempted to regularly remind all God-fearing people who listen to this program around the world, literally people all around the world are listening to do this in a way, but looking at what Jesus said, and we’ve talked about it much over the last week or two, or actually much beyond that, but Matthew 24 in one particular place where Jesus said these days what happened, wars, rumors of wars, among other things, like deception and pestilences. But he said in this key word, “Don’t be perplexed when you see these things.” But that raises the question.

I’m sure you’ve thought of it. Ever wonder why we have war? Why are there wars? How about this one, maybe? When did war first begin? How long has war been going on? Has it just been always? Are wars perhaps ever necessary? Or are they always just plain horrible and always just plain senseless? Well, people have wondered these things for a long time, and these are good questions and they deserve an answer. But few, from my perspective, are able to answer them, mostly because they don’t really think about them. But I think on the other hand, when you do really bear down on these questions, they bring the searching soul back to Genesis and God, the creator. Yet, there’s a reason that Jesus says that wars and rumors of wars will increase, but we’re not to be perplexed because these things must come to pass. So there’s a reason.

So to discuss these questions and more, I’ve asked my special and returned guest today to join me. Bodie Hodge. He’s with me a number of times. He’s the president and the CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries. He’s formerly with answers in Genesis and for many years there as a lead speaker and writer and researcher. And he has a website, which I’ll give again, but it’s Biblical Authority Ministries, biblicalauthorityministries.org. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s program and also the title of a recent and timely article written by Bodie, which you can find on that site is this. A perfect God, Genesis and … War. Okay, you get the idea. I encourage you to stay tuned today as we address the following elements within it. Segment one, the world before war. The second segment, the fall and the history of war. Third segment, the distinctions of war mean is killing and murder.

Are they the same? How do we reconcile that? And then lastly, the realities of war, and we’ll get into that. But what that, Bodie, welcome back to the program. Always a thrill to have you.

Bodie Hodge:

It’s always great to be back on the program.

Sam Rohrer:

Bodie, the current and the escalating war in the Middle East between the US and Israel and Iran is certainly consuming the attention of the world and it’s impacting the world’s entire economy. I mean, more and more as we see the days go on, but in the midst of seemingly forever wars, because we’ve had wars going on somewhere around the world all the time. It’s a wise thing though to consider why is there a war? And is it unique in this century or last century? I don’t know, but I mean, I do know that, but I want your response on that. Your timely article on this very subject, what prompted you to write it?

Bodie Hodge:

Well, when you look at a subject like this, you see all these current events going on and there’s a lot of war that’s happening. I mean, obviously the one with Iran is dominating, but right before this, everybody was talking about the Russia-Ukraine war, or there’s things going on in Africa. I know with places like Nigeria, they had a horrible massacre there at Easter. We see these times of battles and wars, and I thought, you know what? How often do people sit back and say, “Hey, let’s look at the subject of war and let’s go back to the Bible. Let’s go see what the Bible says, why war exists in the first place.” And I think that’s an important subject simply because we have a lot of people that come up to us and they say, “Hey, if God is so perfect, why does war exist in the world?” And that’s a great question.

I’m glad people ask that question, but I also want them to hear what the answer is. And so when we want to tackle that, we want to go back to God’s word and find out about the origin of war. Why does it exist in God’s world?

Sam Rohrer:

And Bodie, like you do always and answers in Genesis does, as well as your new ministry here, biblical authority ministries, is that back to Genesis, because it’s back at the beginning. So take us to that time, Bodie, and describe, was there a time? Answer is there, yes. But what was that time when there was no war? Take us that time. God’s perfect world, as you put it.

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah. Let’s go back there. Let’s go back to that perfect world. When we think of God, let’s think of the nature of God first off. God is perfect. And that’s something we need to step back and recognize. God is perfect in every aspect, every sense of power on my presence. You name it, he is perfect in all those aspects. Now, when a perfect God makes a world, he’s going to make it perfect. That’s just a logical conclusion. And we expect that. Deuteronomy 32: four is one of my favorite verses actually. It starts off, he is a rock. Speaking of God, he is a rock. His work is perfect. We expect every work of God to be perfect. So when he created everything, he created everything in six days, rest on the seventh, it was perfect. We know that because of Deuteronomy 32: four, but we also know that because of Genesis 1:31.

At the end of the creation, God declared everything that he made very good. It really was perfect. It was very good in Hebrew. This is exceeded good if such a thing were possible. It really was perfect. So at that point, at that moment in history, everything was perfect. There was no death, there was no bloodshed, there was no war, and there was no need for war. You see, everything was perfect. Now, all that changed. All that changed when Adam and Eve sinned against God. And that would bring us up to the third chapter in the Bible. And I love the third chapter of the Bible. I have some favorite chapters in the Bible. And I love Romans eight. I love John chapter three. I love the 23rd Psalm, for example. But Genesis chapter three is so pivotal. When you understand the impact of what happened in Genesis chapter three, that’s what explains the world today.

Everything changed. We’re not in a perfect world anymore. We’re in a sin cursed and broken world. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they committed high trees and against God. They rejected what God had to say when it came to eating a particular fruit. He said, “Don’t eat this fruit or you’re going to die.” And so when they disobeyed God, they sinned against God and they ate from that fruit. God cursed the ground. He cursed the animals. He sentenced men to die. The world went from a perfect state to an imperfect and broken state right there in Genesis chapter three. That’s why we’re not in a perfect world anymore. That’s why things are broken. It all comes down to man, sin. We’re the ones that messed it up.

Sam Rohrer:

And ladies and gentlemen, stay with us. We’re going into this break. We’ll come back in just a moment. My special guest today is Bodie Hodge. He is the president and the CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries with me generally once every other month or so. Website is biblicalauthorityministries.org. And our theme today is this, a perfect God. Just talked about that. Genesis talked about that, talked about more. And then war. Where in the world did war come from? We’ve already touched on that. We’ll go further into depth when we come back in this next segment, the history of war. Well, if you’re just joining us today, thanks for being aboard. And I hope that if you didn’t catch the beginning, this theme today is this. Well, let me get it straight here. A perfect God. That’s where we’re going to start. We started there. We talked about that in the first segment.

Genesis, that’s the beginning. That’s why I went to Genesis. And then, and this is the theme, war. The question of war. Obviously, we’re in days when there is war all about us. We can’t turn on the news without seeing it. It’s dominating everything in our day today. And really no better person to have talked to us today about this aspect of war from an apologetics and biblical world perspective than my guest, Bodie Hodge, who is the president and the CEO of biblical authority ministries. And he’s actually written a short treatise, very well put together on this very theme that you can find in its entirety on biblical authorityministries.org, as well as other things that he is writing. So let’s go into that now. In the book of Genesis, some of this one I’m going to say is a bit of a repeat. We just talked about a bit of it in the last segment, but lay down the foundation again because in the book of Genesis, or it means beginnings, that’s why it’s Genesis or beginnings.

In Genesis one: one, God records that in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Then at the end of that chapter, verse 31 of chapter one of Genesis, and then Genesis two, chapter, and the verse one follows. I’m going to put those two together. It says this, “And God saw that everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” And as Bodie said from Hebrews, it talks about good beyond good, as in no way to describe how good, exceeding and excellent in every way. That’s what it was. It’s the creation. Perfect. And then it says, “And the evening and the morning were the sixth day, thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them.” So a perfect creation spoken into existence by a perfect creator saved the creation of man who was formed from the dust of the ground and shaped by the very hands of God, made in God’s image into which was breathe the breath of life, distinct from all of the creation and living thing.

It was this reality of a perfect creation that was in the beginning. Okay, Bodie. Now, while no one alive has ever seen a perfect world, that what Genesis talks about, or perfect people. There isn’t anybody I’ve met that’s perfect, or a perfect creation which the Bible says, no, the places literally groans. It groans today under the curse of sin. It means something cataclysmic happened to destroy this perfect world. And you described that in the last segment, but again, go through that again. What happened that created no longer a perfect world, and then walk into this because now the sins entered the world and you talk about that, we’re now at a time where, well, we see what sin was, rebellion and violence and all of that kind of … Take us then right into the history of war from that point of perfectness to this present day.

Just lay it out. Right.

Bodie Hodge:

You know what? Right there, when Adam and Eve sinned against God, they realized something was wrong. Their eyes were opened. They realized they were naked. They were ashamed. You start to see conflict right there between Adam and Eve. We see conflict between Adam and Eve and God. And so we see those types of behaviors right there at that point. Now, of course, for war, you need more people. And of course, Adam and Eve, they have other sons and daughters in Genesis five: four that answers those famous questions like, “Where did King get his wife?” Well, it was a sister. It could have been a niece, but either way, brothers and sisters originally had to marry. And as you follow down through the account in Genesis, we start to have more and more people. And these people were getting very violent. They were getting incredibly wicked.

According to the Bible, every thought of their hearts were evil all the time. I mean, when you start thinking about that sort of thing, evil just permeating your culture, violence and wickedness, permeating your culture, you’re going to have conflicts. And these types of conflicts are then going to be more aggressive. You’re going to have retaliatory responses to one another. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was all sorts of wars going on before the flood of Noah’s Day. Between that time of Adam and Eve, going up to the time of the flood, there were probably a lot of skirmishes, wars. The Bible simply doesn’t tell us with the word war. Although it gives us a lot of hints that, hey, there was a lot of terrible things going on, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there was war. Although it wasn’t stated, it’s definitely a possibility.

As you go through that, then you get to the time of the tower of Babel. After the flood, no one in his family come off the earth. We have a reset on the population that drops all the way down to eight people. Eight people survived the flood. Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives. That was it. And then not long after that, we see people rebelling against head. God says, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. They have whole earth to pick from.” But instead they came together and they built a city and tower and said, “Let’s try to defy God.” That’s really what they tried to do. They tried to deny what God wanted them to do. And of course, God comes down like, “Really, I’m not going to let you get away with this. ” And he confuses their language. And now different family groups are being spread to different parts of the world.

And when people can communicate with one another, sometimes that can cause conflicts between one another, especially if they’re living in proximity to one another. All of a sudden you start to see little skirmishes and wars in this time. One of them was with Nimrod. I remember Nimrod was one of those things. My brother used to call me a Nimrod. I used to think it was just a name you called someone. Turns out there he is in the Bible, but Nimrod, he was very powerful. He actually invaded Asyria according to the Bible. So he went into another’s land, took some of it over, made cities, so there were probably battles in war there. Even though the Bible doesn’t use the word war, we see that that was an invading force. The first actual war mentioned in the Bible, Abraham was involved in. And this is after Nimrod.

Nimrod had died. His kingdom had been broken apart. And then you see all these other petty kings. And some of these kings were fighting back and forth with each other for quite some time. And we see this situation there in Genesis and you have five kings against four kings and they’re battling one another and Abraham’s nephew Lot got caught up in the middle of it. And in that, he gets carried away. So Abraham enters into that war and goes out and does battle and rescues lot and boom. From that point forward, we see war all throughout the Old Testament. We see it in the New Testament. We see it all over the place. War has been rampant ever since those days.

Sam Rohrer:

Bodie, it’s kind of interesting that whether there’s a few people or many people, it seems like as you’re describing that, it was great to hear that great from the standpoint of exciting, but great as a standpoint of educational that throughout history, whether there were just two people, Cain and Abel, and there were others there at that point, obviously, but that conflict between two people was a mini war. And then as you’re describing, the more people there became, the more war there is and the more harm there comes because you now have more people. But build out on that a little bit, if you don’t mind, because Cain’s problem, Cain killed Abel, and we’re going to talk in the next segment about killing. I want to go there quite yet, but when Cain killed Abel, or when later conflicts happened, and Nimrod went into the series you talked about, or throughout history, is war really at its root just about trouble between people, or does it rise higher than that?

Talk about this matter of rebellion.

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah, let’s go back. Let’s look at the hearts of those going as far back as Cain and Abel, because that really was. I like the way you put that. That really is a battle. That was probably one of the biggest battles in the early stages of history, and people were garnering sides. Cain was actually fearful of those that would come after him, and the Lord put a mark on him. But you go back and you look at the heart of them. Abel was trying to follow after the Lord. He actually mimicked what the Lord did and did a blood sacrifice from his flocks. Cain, he offered first fruits. Not that that’s bad, but that wasn’t the proper sacrifice. He didn’t mimic what God did. You needed a blood sacrifice. And here, sin was then crouching at the corner of Cain’s mind. And instead of saying, “Oh, wow, Lord, I was wrong.

Let me do it right.” He went out and he attacked his brother. That was absolutely dead false, but you can see the heart in there. One wanted to follow the Lord, the other wanted to follow himself. And so we see that brokenness right there. That’s a result of sin. And we see a battle as a result right there. In this Genesis chapter four, you can go back and just take a look at that. Genesis four: eight is when King murdered his brother. We also see an example of Lamic. This is not Lamic Noah’s father. There is another Lamic in there. There’s two of them that sometimes confuses people, but he also killed someone and he was bragging about it. So we see that kind of stuff happening before the flood. The heart of an unbeliever can sometimes go into those very far deep rests, recesses of our mind where people are just very hostile to one another.

And that’s something that’s beautiful with the blood of Christ and the Christian mind. When we receive Christ as Lord, we want to follow after what the Lord is teaching us. We want to have a heart for others. We don’t want to go out and murder them. We don’t want to attack them. We don’t want to destroy them. We want to see them come to repentance

And receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. So you have two different hearts right there from that day all the way to today’s day.

Sam Rohrer:

Ladies and gentlemen, think about that. Sin lies within our heart. It crouches at the door. That’s a result of the fall. Rebellion. Rebellion’s not learned. It’s innate. It’s just the way it is. And ultimately, it’s against God. That is the point. Rebellion sin is ultimately rebellion against God. And it finds its way into taking the lives of others. Isn’t that interesting? But we learned that from the word. When you come back, we’re going to go into this matter of the distinctions of oral. Well, in the last segment, my special guest today, Bodie Hodge, who’s the president and the CEO of Biblical Authority Ministries, we have a website again, biblicalauthorityministries.org, gave a review. And we went back to Genesis and we’ve started with a perfect God, a perfect creation, talked about the fall where sin came into the world. And then from that rebellion, which started in the garden where sin occurred, began to multiply and extend.

From Canaan Abel one-on-one to larger and larger groups down through the thousands of years to the very moment in time, wars have never ceased. They have been ongoing. And we’ve talked about that. Why? Well, because the heart of man is deceitful above all things. Sinful, depravity of the heart of man, born in rebellion against God. So it comes naturally. That’s not a justification for it by any means, but it comes of the nature of man. And into that, we step ourselves today. War in the Middle East, war’s going on. I actually tried to Google. You can’t hardly find a time where there was not some war going on. So all right, so that’s the point. But now let’s talk about the aspects of war because with war, things happen. After the flood, and Bodie talked about that, lots of people, God sent the flood, destroyed the world because among many things, there was just nothing but violence, among other things.

But the Bible says that after that flood, man began to multiply on the earth again. And God had told Noah and Noah, his descendants, that God’s design was that mankind was to be fruitful, same command as in the beginning of Genesis, and to multiply and to spread around the earth and to replenish it, to refill it with people. Now, the universal sacredness of man created in God’s image remained unchanged because God is unchanged and God made it perfectly clear that each life was sacred. Why? Because it was made in the image of God. And as Cain learned, we’ve talked about that. The shedding of innocent blood was a sin that God would revenge. And he did, and that’s a story of Cain and Abel. Then in time, along came the 10 commandments, delivered to Moses with God’s universal moral code, and it put into writing those codes.

The sixth command of the 10 was very clear, “Thou shalt not kill.” That’s in the King James that says that, “But by definition in the Hebrew, this actually meant thou shalt not murder.” And there’s a difference. But through time, there’s been debate including in our very day as to the full meaning of the sixth command. All right. Now Bodie, with that set up, would you expand a bit more on the sixth command? Because if it means thou shalt not kill ever, then where does the meaning of thou shalt not murder come in? In other words, is some killing wrong and some justified? What’s the Bible say? Because that gets into this whole issue that when we talk about war, where to come from, we’ve got to answer this question too.

Bodie Hodge:

Right. And that’s a powerful statement. In fact, most places around the world, most governments would agree, “You shall not murder.” They’re borrowing that from the scripture. And we know that murdering another human being in cold blood, that is an unlawful, intentional killing of someone is wrong. And we know that going all the way back to Cain killing Abel. We just talked about that, and that was murder. That was not the right thing to do. So we have murder. Murder is established as a sin. It is false. You don’t do that. But yeah, sometimes people look at that and they say, “Oh, well, that means you can’t kill in self-defense. If somebody’s trying to kill you, you can’t kill them to protect yourself.” Well, now hold it. Now all of a sudden you’ve jumped into something different. This isn’t someone who is intentionally trying to go out and kill that person.

They’re trying to save their own life. So now all of a sudden the definition is different. The same sort of thing in something like war. Soldiers go up and they do battle with other soldiers, other militaries and so forth. We just think back to scripture, Joshua. Joshua led the Israelites and the Israelite army into the promised land to judge the Canaanites who were there. The Canaanites were being extremely evil. Their list of sins is in Leviticus chapter 18. They were doing some pretty terrible things and the Lord was very patient with them and finally judgment came and he used an army to enact that judgment. You can’t help but think of David, David and Goliath. We sometimes think of that, wow, he’s pulled out the sling. He takes out this big mean giant. Well, he was just one of many people as part of a big army of the Philistines that actually triggered the entire battle right there.

So when we look at that, there is a form of killing that is not murder and that is things like self-defense, that is actions within war. Those are entirely different from say a cold-blooded murder that the Bible’s talking about here. So we have to understand the context of what’s going on. We have to understand what the Bible’s clearly saying on those issues. And throughout scripture, I think it’s pretty clear on some of those when you actually do a good thorough study. And I want to encourage people to do that, by the way, because I know sometimes people get confused on this. “Hey, go back to the Bible, grab a search program. We have it. It’s real easy nowadays. You can search for the word murder, search for battles, different things like that to give yourself a good, proper understanding of what it means to murder versus say killing.

We see instances where the civil government was in charge of enacting justice. If somebody was a murderer, for example, and they get caught and after a fair trial, they are found guilty. There was capital punishment. That is putting someone to death for their crimes. So we see those kinds of examples as well. The point is the Bible delineates between those different things, and I want to encourage you to make sure you know what the Bible says on that subject.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. So in the context, Bodie, if we’re talking about war in this context, and we made it very narrow, Cain and Abel, many wars, actually someone premeditating and taking the life of another innocent person, really. Or whether you have those two where you have a million man army comes against another million man army, which was frankly going to happen at some point in the future. Scripture tells us that too. But that being the case, God in Romans 13 laid out the section there where it says that God ordained or sanctioned and ranked all authority, the ordering of human civilization from the individual to the family, to civil authority, to the church ultimately in the New Testament when Christ came. But those institutions of authority are established by God. They’re ranked and they have their purpose. And when we do what God says, then things work.

And when any of those don’t do their thing, they’re part right, then there’s problem. But God gives the sort of government, the sword it says, to civil authority to be able to actually take a life, capital punishment, but that’s also therein the ability to wage war. But here’s my question to you. When the sword of government with a sword of justice is given to government, what are the limitations on it? Because when you look around the world, it seems that some people just say,” Well, if I have the power, then I’m going to kill you. “Others say,” Wait a minute, wait a minute, that’s not quite the way it’s supposed to be. “So when there is killing by an authority, a government, war, what is the limitation and what is the restraint that those in positions of authority need to consider if in fact that war is going to be put this way justified?

Bodie Hodge:

You know, that is a great question and I’m glad you’ve asked that question. Here’s what it comes down to. Yes, when we look at government systems around the world and we look at the fact that there are different people that are in those positions over the years, it always comes down to the same thing. And it’s the same thing that Cain and Abel battled against. It is a heart issue. When a sinful heart is going against what God and his word have to say, they’re going to go down paths. They can be very aggressive. They can be very evil. They can do terrible, terrible things. Let me just give a really good example of this. World War II, we go back to Adolf Hitler and Adolf Hitler, some of the things that they were doing was absolutely terrible and atrocious. We just think of the concentration camps and the death camps and the things that they were doing in there, that was not right by any standard.

And yet here they were trying to do that and trying to justify it at the same time. Now, allied forces go in and they fight against Hitler. Was that a justifiable war to end those types of atrocities and those types of war crimes and that sort of thing? Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s no question about something like that. Now, we deal with similar issues like that today. There are people who just want to go out and exterminate other people. They want to destroy other people. Really what it is, is they’re using the governmental system that God has granted them charge of to do murderous acts instead of wielding the sword for good. And so that’s where we have to compare these things and say,” Hey, let’s look at the heart of what’s going on behind this, what’s going on. Is it something like murder or other types of evil aggressions that need to be limited Because let’s face it, God has set it up so that we have different governments at different places that can also act as checks and balances on other governmental systems.

“It’s a great question. I’m glad we’re talking about this and I’ll tell you what, once again, just like a Always, you’ve got to go back to the scriptures to get a proper understanding of it so that we know how to deal with it from today forward.

Sam Rohrer:

Ladies and gentlemen, as we say regularly, that God has given us in his word, God’s word, everything we need to know about how to live in this world. It’s a matter of whether or not we want to, well, fear God and keep his commandments and be blessed, which is the result, or rebel against God and think that we are God. We’re going to do our own thing, which then brings judgment and with that comes war. All right, now that’s the way it is, but the Bible tells us all we need to know, including this matter of war that dominates the news of our day and frankly has dominated the news of somewhere around the world, probably since the beginning of time. When you come back, we’re going to conclude with some final thoughts, the realities of war, and we’ll conclude it in that. Well, as we go into our final segment here now, and I hope that you’ve been with me from the beginning, if you were not and not able to pick it up, and I know how things are with listening to radio, go back and pick up the entire program in its entirety, which you can do on our website and standinthegapradio.com or on our free app, stand in the gap.

And when you do that either place, you will also have access to a transcript of the entire program. And it’s a really nice thing. People have told me that they have done it. Actually look at that transcript or print it out and then listen to the program again, particularly on ones like perhaps today or others where we give certain specific pieces of information or references to scripture or things of that type that you can’t just write it down immediately. So if I can do that, I hope that what we’ve talked about today and my guest, Bodie Hodge, we’ve gone through will be something that perhaps you’ve not thought about, but I would dare believe everyone who fears God needs to know and have given some thought to because in this world, even having an answer to this question is a great way to share the gospel because people who do not fear God do not understand this matter of war and violence and why it is and God and God’s love and God’s justice, perfect time to work all of these things together because without you can’t really understand it.

But so you can find, again, this program at the sites I just gave you, or the article from which a lot of this was lifted, which is at Bodhi’s website, biblicalauthorityministries.org. All right, so what is difficult for many people I know to understand is how war by its very nature is horrible. It is. War is always horrible, and it’s always accompanied by great suffering and pain and death. Yet into the consideration of war is this concept, and I raised it in the last second, talked about it briefly, of just or justified war, and thereby death that comes by mere war, or there is unjustified war, and therefore, unjustified and senseless death. But into that, instead people who in most cases don’t really believe in God, though they say they do, they’ll take exception with God’s word and they’ll fixate on their own definition of love, not understanding what God is.

First, a God of justice from which flows the character trait of God’s love. And within that comes the aspect of being able to balance that. So in most cases, most wars are not based on justice, in my opinion, or any consideration of God’s word. The wars that are going on right now, they’re not based on people waging war because they have a fear of God. They’re driven by greed and money and power. That’s the way it is. So God will ultimately demonstrate his justice against nations for their rebellion to God, and in the end, God’s justice and his love will be seen. But in the meantime, there are going to be wars and rumors of wars. Now, Bodie, so with that, as I just laid out there, in conclusion here, again, speak again to the reality of war, the cause of war, the sometimes necessity of war.

And then give your final thoughts on this subject as we’ve attempted to address today, a perfect God, Genesis and war. Bring this all together as we conclude today’s program, please.

Bodie Hodge:

Yeah. Just as you said, war is horrible. It does cause so much suffering, but we need to remember that God made the world perfect. It was in his perfection. There was a perfect world, no death, no bloodshed. There was no war originally because a man said that war is now part of this creation. That’s why we see the death, the suffering, the horrible atrocities that sometimes occur. And you know you’re right, nations are going to be judged. People are going to be judged individually by God, and we need to make sure that we have our hearts and our minds right there, following the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We need to recognize that Jesus Christ stepped into history and died on a cross to save us from our sins, to save us from the punishment that we deserve for the sin and the horrible things that are happening.

We know that Jesus Christ has conquered sin on the cross. He conquered it when he came out of that grave, and it really is a powerful thing. And you know what? The Bible doesn’t just leave us in a sin cursed and broken world. It gives us something to look forward to. Christ conquered it all. And we look forward to a day when there’ll be just peace. There will be a new heavens. There’ll be a new earth, a time to look forward to when the curse will be removed. There’ll be no more death or suffering or crying or tears. All the war pieces will be forged into plow shares, things like that. I’ll tell you what, it’s something to look forward to. And as a Christian, when you have a big picture mindset, we understand that the fall is the foundation for the gospel. And for those in Christ, we have something to look forward to, something greater.

Tell you what, it really does transform your mind to follow after the mind of Christ. So even when it comes to the issue of war, death, suffering, the answer is always in scripture and it’s going to point you to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Sam Rohrer:

Bodie, that is the way the word of God ends. I’m just looking here at Book of Revelation where it comes to the end. So as Genesis begins, the history of man and perfect creation and sin entering in and all that we’re describing and how the curse has affected the entire world and nations, ladies and gentlemen, given the ingredients, the recipe by God himself to the nation of Israel back in the Old Testament, “Fear me and keep my commandments. If you do, then blessing will come and you’ll have so many good things and live in peace.” That means no war. You won’t be able to handle all of it, but if you walk away from me, rebellion, that’s what we’re talking about. Sin, rebellion. If you walk away from me and say, “I don’t need you, God. I don’t like your Bible. I don’t like your written word.

I don’t like anything about you. ” You see the world of today. And God says, when that happens, then judgment will come. And I’ll say, if you read, well, any number of places, go to two Chronicles chapter six as an example. You have the list of Solomon’s prayers, prophetic prayers as he prays them about the sins of the people, if they happen to walk away from God. Do you know how it ends? It ends in war. God says, “I will send other nations to punish you. ” That’s where Babylon come into the picture and Israel was taken away. God uses nations to punish other nations, but ultimately the nations of the world, even though they know what God says, just like today, the nations of the world lift their fists against the God of heaven and they say, Psalm chapter two, “They blaspheme the God of heaven.” We’re seeing it today and God says, okay, God sits in the heaven and he laughs because these people who think they are God will find out one day that God is God and that’s what Bodie referenced.

He referenced earlier, Jesus Christ will come back at the end of time of tribulation and he will come back and the nations of the world will fall before him in final justice. And ladies and gentlemen, then the millennial kingdom comes when we have a king, the king of kings, who will reign physically from the city of Jerusalem in Israel right now, in perfect administration. And for the first time, we will see government act justly. There will be no war. There will be peace because the prince of peace, the king of kings will reign. That’s good news. And for that, I am looking and I hope that you are too. So Bodie Hodge, thank you again. We’ve run out of time. Thanks for being here with me today. What a wonderful thing. Again, his website, biblicaluthorityministries.org. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today and the Lord willing will be back here tomorrow.

Until then, stand in the gap for truth.