The Vindication of Victory 11

Crown Him Lord of the Arsenals

Isaiah 9:6 (KJV)

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

I want to put before you the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, because every defence of the Earth must finally be measured against it. On the cross, the Prince of Peace laid down even the legions Peter would have called down. The cross is the founding act of the only nation in human history that disarms itself by definition. I am writing as a citizen of that nation.

The fifty-eighth solution is the most fundamental of all: the recognition that the government - every government, including the government of nuclear arsenals - already rests upon His shoulder. The Prince of Peace did not ask permission to take that authority. He took it. Believers are not lobbying for Christ to be made Lord of the bombs; they are announcing that He already is. The arsenals belong to Him by the inheritance of Isaiah 9:6.

Hear the witness of the Quakers. From George Fox in the seventeenth century to the Plowshares activists who have entered missile facilities and hammered on warheads, the Religious Society of Friends has stood at the gates. The defence of the Earth includes the names of those who have been imprisoned for taking Isaiah two, verse four, literally.

I am writing this in faith and in trembling, and I am asking the Lord to grant you the same faith and the same trembling as you read it.