Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to ask you, what constitutes a just war in the sight of God and man? What constitutes a just war, if there is such a thing? Is that an oxymoron?

Or can there indeed be a war that is considered to be right and just in the sight of God and man? Ever since our Lord first traveled the highways and byways of first century Judea and Galilee, we in the church have wondered if there is ever a time when it is right and fit to fight a war. This is an important question for the church to ask today. For example, is the war we are fighting with Russia in Ukraine justified? Do we have any business sending troops to Ukraine or helping her with any kind of aid?

For example, weapons or the immense amount of treasure that we are sending to them. Can evil men and women like those ruling over us here in the United States even conduct a just war at all? Oh, dear listener, the drums of war are being steadily sounded. Our emotions, your emotions, my emotions are being stirred by stories of atrocities by one side or the other. Justice belongs to the Ukrainians, some will say.

Others say Russia was deliberately provoked by the United States and NATO. So for the purpose of bogging Russia down in a fruitless conflict. Oh, where is the right here, dear listener? Whence the truth and what criteria can we use to sort out the just cause if there really is one at all? Oh, dear listener, do not be lost in the passions of the moment.

Many with far greater wisdom than us in the past have wrestled with this question. And they've done it for centuries. In fact, the church has long wrestled with the question of whether it is right and good for the Christian to pick up a weapon and fight or whether a Christian king should maintain an army at all. Oh, the early church asked these questions and many, many more. Was Jesus a pacifist because he told us to turn the other cheek and love your enemies?

Does that mean we can't defend ourselves when threatened by thieves and murderers or invading armies? Is a Christian prince forbidden to raise an army and fight an enemy on behalf of his people? These were all pressing questions in the early church, especially to those being persecuted by the authorities of the Roman Empire. Those were the same soldiers and magistrates and neighbors of the Christians being persecuted and killed. For them, it was fairly easy to say no to being in the army or even the police force, and it was easy to extrapolate that prohibition to engaging in any warfare or self-defense of almost any kind.

The early church was almost all pacifist, but that attitude began to change, excuse me, that attitude began to change as more and more people became converted to the Christian faith within the Roman Empire. More and more people came to recognize that the magistrate, the prince, is a servant for your good, as the Apostle Paul says, who is an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer, as Paul says in Romans 13. And so often in the life of the early church, the wrongdoer was the invading barbarian horde that primitively raped and pillaged and destroyed.

It is the appointed authority who does not bear the sword in vain, as Romans 13 says again. He is the one who must undertake to defend the average citizen. And consequently, when emperors like Constantine or Justinian, when they asked the bishops of the church, when is it permissible to wage war? Under what circumstances does God look with favor on the magistrate when he bears the sword? How should a Christian prince conduct a just war?

These were important questions for the early Christian kings when they triumphed finally. All of these questions and many, many more came to the forefront when the sword of the state was suddenly found in the hand of Christian kings instead of at the throat of Christian martyrs, as it had been for centuries. Yeah. Suddenly, the sword passed to the state in the hand of Christian kings rather than to the throat of Christian martyrs. The answer that the church gave back to the Christian prince when he asked these questions is what has come down to us as the just war theory.

The just war theory. I want a treat of this today. And it took centuries to craft. We do not have the time really to go into its history completely today. But just know, dear listener, that the fathers of the church spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears literally forming and crafting the just war theory.

And it was shaped not in the ivory tower of the intellectual, but rather on the bloody battlefield of the soldier and in the councils of the courts of kings. The just war theory was given perhaps its finest expression in the work of St. Augustine in his magisterial work, The City of God. This is still worth reading today. St. Augustine's work, The City of God. And there are seven major principles to the just war theory that Augustine articulated.

What are those seven principles? Let me briefly outline them for you here today. Number one, the first principle of the just war theory is that a just war can only be waged after nonviolent options have been exhausted. Yes, a just war, not just any old pagan war, right? But a just war in the sight of God and man can only be waged after nonviolent options have been exhausted.

The apostle Paul laid down this principle. He said, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. And that principle is richly reflected in all of the Bible. Even Israel, in its wilderness wanderings, negotiated with Edom to pass through their land. But when Edom refused and instead marshaled its army, well, Israel went around Edom rather than fight.

Every Christian prince or magistrate is obliged to pursue this course sincerely. Charlemagne, for example, tried to deal peaceably with the Saxons. But when they kept betraying every peaceful arrangement that he established, well, then Charlemagne had no other recourse than to use force against them. Can we say that we have exhausted nonviolent options with Russia over its dispute with Ukraine? No, I think not.

There is ample evidence that we, the United States of America, have been interfering in Ukrainian politics for decades now. And this is something that most Americans are completely unaware of because it has not been brought to our attention. And most people don't have the time to do the homework. But America has been interfering in Ukrainian and Russian politics for decades now. Destabilizing, for example, the democratically elected president, who was Yanukovych back in 2014, and setting up a puppet president friendly to the United States, who was Poroshenko.

And this was done back in 2014. And Russia remembers this. The Ukrainians remember this. And we have also insisted for years that Ukraine join NATO, right? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which would be a direct threat to Russia.

It would be comparable to Canada, for example, joining the Soviet Union back in the day. We wouldn't stand for that. And yet we expect Russia to stand for Ukraine, which is loaded with many Russian heritage person in Ukraine. Many portions of Ukraine are indeed Russian in character and nature and language. Additionally, we have been secretly training Ukrainian military forces, and we've been arming them long before the outbreak of this war.

Yes, we have. That hasn't been trumpeted on the news either. But Russia certainly knows it. Vladimir Putin certainly knows this fact. So to say that we have exhausted nonviolent options is disingenuous in the extreme.

In fact, it's safer to say that we, the United States of America, have encouraged warlike means rather than nonviolent ones. America is in direct violation of this first provision of the just war. A just war can only be waged after nonviolent options have been exhausted. Not only have those nonviolent options not been exhausted, but in fact, provocative things have been done by the United States against Russia in Ukraine. Well, the second principle of the just war theory is, number two, a war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority.

Oh, we've covered this principle in the past, but I want to highlight it again. A war is considered just before God and man only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Dear listener, justice is not served by actions taken by individuals or groups, rogue individuals and groups, terrorist individuals and groups. Governments duly constituted are deemed legitimate. So this, too, is a long-established biblical principle.

Excuse me. Treasonous actions like that of Athaliah in the Bible, in the Old Testament, in Kings and in Chronicles, you'll find her story. Athaliah, Queen Athaliah, slaughtered the line of David in Judah with the exception of Joash, who was hidden away in the temple. And she did this in order to establish herself as queen. And it's precisely this kind of action that is prohibited by this principle.

A just war is fought only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Athaliah was not legitimate. On the positive side, David, King David, future King David, refused as an individual to raise his hand against the Lord's anointed, that is King Saul, because it was illegitimate to do so. Only after Saul had died and the people acclaimed him as king, was it legitimate for him to take the throne? So I have covered this principle in history in previous broadcasts.

A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. I've covered this in the past, specifically in my series on Oliver Cromwell and Guy Fox. Oh, from English history. Guy Fox, of course, was a 17th century terrorist who acted with a few other conspirators to blow up Parliament in the gunpowder plots in order to overthrow King James I. And Oliver Cromwell, on the other hand, and the other extreme, he was a member of Parliament, an elected member of Parliament who undertook to throw off the tyranny of King Charles I.

And he did it as a legitimate authority. His new model army, as it was called, commissioned by Parliament, defeated the king and established the English Republic. Oliver Cromwell versus Guy Fox. What can we say then with this second principle? What can we say about the legitimacy of the Biden administration?

It is clear to me that he is a fraud who got the presidency by cheating in the election of 2020. He is not a legitimate authority. And this is becoming clearer every day. Evidence is accumulating that indeed Joe Biden has taken the presidency by fraud. The president administration is not a duly constituted government.

It is a fraud in every respect. And as long as we continue to fight this war in Ukraine with a fraud who stole the election, we cannot say that we are honoring the second principle of a just war theory. A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Wow. The third principle of a just war is that, number three, a just war must redress wrongs suffered.

Oh, a just war, a truly just war before God and man must redress wrongs suffered. This provision was included so as to exclude wars of conquest and empire. How often do kings just look at the panoply of history? How often do kings march off to war in order to add to their lands and increase their sphere of influence and power? This seems to be the history of kings of the earth.

And what the church, the early church, hoped to capture within the sphere of the just war was a remedy for actual wrongs suffered by the people and by the nation that undertakes a war. The princes of the crusades, for example, the crusades are a good example of this. The crusades, contrary to the barrage of criticism level, let them, the crusades actually went to the holy land to reclaim formerly Christian lands that had been lost to a predatory Islam, which had been brutalizing Christians there for centuries.

The king of the Byzantine empire, in fact, had appealed to the west to come and right the wrongs, which had been suffered by them at the hands of the Seljuk Turks. I cover this in my church history course that meets on Thursday evenings. The crusades were, they were indeed just and legitimate wars to redress wrongs suffered. They honored this third principle of the just war theory. So this is another long established biblical principle.

A just war must redress wrongs suffered. For instance, Israel went to war against the Amorites on behalf of the Gibeonites, with whom they had a fast treaty. The Amorites had wrongfully gone to war against Gibeon and Israel marched to their defense to redress wrongs suffered by them. This is a long established biblical principle. What can we say then of the Biden administration's war against Russia?

Oh, dear listener, we have no treaty with Ukraine. We have no national interest, for that matter, in fighting this war in far off Ukraine, even less reason than we were in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have no business investing American blood and treasure in what is essentially a Slavic civil war. That's what we're looking at in this war, Russia versus Ukraine. This is indeed a restricted Slavic civil war.

How many times must we become bogged down in fruitless wars like the 20-year disaster in Afghanistan? Dear listener, does anyone really trust the commander-in-chief who shamefully withdrew from Afghanistan and left so many Americans behind, thousands of us, and billions in military hardware in the hands of a terrorist regime? Can we really trust this commander-in-chief that he is going to competently redress wrongs in Ukraine? I submit to you that the Biden administration will only commit new wrongs and compound the evil that is being done there. They will not redress wrongs.

They will compound wrongs and evil. Now, certainly, Russia has inflicted suffering upon Ukraine, but ignorant Americans fail to calculate what Ukraine has done to Russia, too, with our aid and comfort, with all of the wrongs inflicted on Russia by our own governments. She might well be justified. Russia might well be justified in saying that she is fighting a war to redress wrongs suffered. Alas, America cannot say she is honoring this third principle of a just war theory.

That is, a just war must redress wrongs suffered. Our involvement, the involvement of the United States of America in this war is not honoring this third principle. Rather, we are not redressing wrongs suffered, but rather, evil men and women in our government are only creating multiple new evils. The third principle of a just war theory. There is also a fourth principle of a just war theory, and that fourth principle developed, indeed, by the early church, to answer the questions of Christian princes, when is a war I might undertake a just war in the eyes of God and man.

And they asked the church this question, and the church came back with seven different principles of a just war. That fourth principle of a just war is, a just war must be undertaken with a reasonable chance of success. Here is one that the Biden administration and the American deep state has failed miserably at fulfilling. A just war before God and man must be undertaken with a reasonable chance of success. This principle notes that casualties incurred in a hopeless cause, they're not morally justifiable.

This is really a prohibition on the old romantic lost cause of many a rebel, right? For example, the Bar Kokhba rebellion in the Middle East, in A.D. 132 to 136, in which the Jews of Palestine rebelled against the Romans one last time, this is a case in point. The Bar Kokhba rebellion. The Jews had no chance of success, really, although they wistfully hoped to reprise the Maccabean revolt of their early fathers against Hellenist tyranny. And they hoped to do this and free themselves of Roman domination and tyranny.

And instead, Rome decided to make a final solution, if you will, of the persistent problem of Jewish rebellion. And they massacred the population, and they dispersed the surviving Jews all through Syria and the surrounding region. The Bar Kokhba rebellion, a fruitless, a hopeless rebellion undertaken with no reasonable chance of success. The resistance of Ukraine has no reasonable chance of success either, despite the bravery of the Ukrainians. I do not wish to diminish that in any respect.

They've been very bravely fighting and resisting. But they have no reasonable chance of success. But rather, our participation has only escalated the conflict to the brink of nuclear war. Do we realize what we're in for, dear listener, on the brink of nuclear war? The ignorant, careless fools in the Biden administration, and also the lackey Republicans who go along with them.

Oh, they keep sending further billions to Ukraine. We are only provoking, arguably, the most heavily armed nuclear power on the planet. Silly men, too, like Congressman Adam Kinzinger calls for acts of war, like imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. That is an act of war and is poking the bear, if you will. He also calls for committing U.S. troops if evidence of chemical weapons or biological weapons are found to have been used.

And we know perfectly well that false flag operations have been characteristic of the deep state government in the United States. We cannot trust the reports that Russia may be using biological or chemical weapons. And the same can be said for other reckless leaders, not only Adam Kinzinger, but other reckless leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi or that pathetic excuse for the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley. I must ask you, dear listener, what reasonable chance of success is there in an all-out nuclear war? Yes, an all-out nuclear war, because that is where we are headed.

Not many people seem to realize this. Who succeeds in that case? Who succeeds in a nuclear war? Does anyone succeed in a nuclear war? Anyone involved in such a fight, anyone involved in such a war indeed loses.

And the same could be said for other reckless leaders in America. Can we have said to have succeeded in a just war when our nation is a smoking cinder from an all-out nuclear exchange? Albert Einstein said this about the upcoming World War III. He said, I know not what weapons World Wars, with what weapons, excuse me, I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. That's ominous, isn't it?

But it is indeed what we are in for if we are not careful. The church has no business baptizing this war as a just war when we consider the unreasonableness of its success. There's no way that there will be a good outcome for the war between Russia and Ukraine, especially with our amping up the stakes and amping up the conflict by sending billions in resources and billions in military equipment and hardware, and perhaps in the future, military resources, military troops, or even nuclear exchange. No one wins when this happens. Instead, brothers and sisters, we need to be advocating peace in the Ukraine.

And let us instead pursue peace and reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine. Above all, the United States should have no part in the fighting of this war. Indeed, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn says, a state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. And that indeed is what is being encouraged in America as the passions of war are fanned, as the constant drumbeat for war increases. A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn puts it.

So while the just war theory that I've just outlined for you is in many respects a high ideal, and it is, and we'll cover the remaining three articles of that just war theory. While that just war theory is in many respects a high ideal, that is really very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve perfectly. It is, nevertheless, a metric by which we can gauge our performance before an all-holy and righteous God.

Oh, dear listener, I urge you to pursue these principles of a just war and see just how far short we fall, and yet how successful previous princes and governments have been in the past in aspiring to achieve these ideals in wars that they fought. So I think that the church, in crafting this metric, the metric of a just war theory guided by the scriptures, has nevertheless given us a very high ideal by which to live. And so, dear listener, pray for peace in this conflict. Work for further understanding. Let us grasp coolly and calmly, not in passions that are driven by war hysteria.

Rather, work for true understanding. And may the peace of Christ be yours, dear listener. This is the first and necessary step for peace amongst mankind, is to find peace in Christ first. If we were to do this, we would find ages of peace to be lived by subsequent generations. If we indeed first seek the first peace.

And the first peace is peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. May this be yours today, dear listener. This is New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

And you can call us for more information at area code 208-523-0196. Area code 208-523-0196.