Justification Is More Than a Truce

I remember one of the scariest moments of my life when I was eight or nine or ten years old, somewhere in that range, I was invited by some of the guys in the neighborhood to spend the night sleeping out in a tent. And I went out to that tent and as we were getting ready to go to sleep, one of the guys started talking about the atomic bomb. And we had had exercises in school where we had to practice the air raid alerts and so on in the event of nuclear attack. And this older fellow was telling us how destructive the atomic bomb was and how in his judgment, it was inevitable that it was going to fall sooner or later because we were involved in the midst of a cold war that was terrifying to children.

And I became so frightened that I left the tent and came home and I was sick at my stomach. And I remember living on the edge of fear that another war would come about because we know that when peace treaties are established in this world and in human history, up to this point, they’ve never been the last one. They’ve never been the final one. All of our trusses in this world are guarded trusses, and we realize that at any moment hostilities can break out again and the domestic tranquility will be thrown into upheaval anew.

That is not the case with God. When we are justified, we have peace with God that is forever.