Swords into Plowshares: Part 1 of 6

The following is from a booklet by Rev. Blake Purcell titled Swords into Plowshares, Three Dimensions of Bringing Peace on Earth (and Ukraine)Isaiah 2:1-4, 11

Associated Press, January 2014, Kiev, Ukraine, Orthodox priests stand between police and demonstrators.

An Invitation to a Communist Party Meeting (Part 1 of 6)

February 1991 – I was ushered into an ornate marble room in a rundown palace. My friend introduced me to the fifty or so people at the meeting and I was asked to share why an American with three children and an expecting wife would move to their country when everything in it was falling apart, and tens of thousands of citizens were looking to emigrate.  

This was not just any meeting. It was one of history’s last assemblies of the Communist Party of the USSR, in the birthplace of that party, Leningrad. I shared why we moved to their country by explaining Revelation 3:20 and how Christ came into my life, forgiving my sins and giving me a reason for living. I said that made me willing to move my family to the USSR and share that message with Soviet citizens so that they could know the joy of having their sins forgiven and be able to live an abundant life, a message straight from my Campus Crusade and Navigator training.

I do not doubt that I was the first Gospel preacher their militantly atheistic Party had invited to speak, but I had to also have been the first American they had ever seen in the flesh. They probably were curious to see if I had horns on my head and a pointy tail as their propaganda had said, and to see why any sane man would bring his wife and three kids into a country that had no food in the stores. At the end of my remarks an older man raised his hand tentatively, and said, “You came here for that?” It did not seem that he doubted my motives but rather my sanity.

What does all this have to do with peace on earth and good will toward men? Bear with me as I read Isaiah 2:2-4 and 11:

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths”. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more…

The haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and the pride of men shall be humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

These verses refer directly and indirectly to three dimensions of biblical world peace. Those dimensions are the vehicle of that world peace, the purpose of that world peace, and the cost of that world peace, all three of which we will explore now. Along the way I’ll explain what my partying with the Communists had to do with some of these things.

Click here to continue to Part 2.

Rev. Purcell is an evangelist from the PCA's Pacific North West Presbytery, and Field Director of the Slavic Reformation Society