It was a serene autumn morning in Ohio. I'd had my breakfast on the patio, reading my morning meditations as yellow leaves fell from an overhanging walnut tree. I clambered into my old Chevy pickup to go to the office and turned on my local news station. The voices I heard sounded strained, upset: "Terrorists have flown hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Buildings have collapsed. Thousands have died.

It was like a plot from some thriller novel--the sort of thing I thought would never happen in real life. But now it had.

Questions flooded my mind. What kind of people would do something like this? What's going to happen now? But most of all, where was God in all this? He could have stopped the tragedy at any point. He didn't. Why not?

Perhaps this is hard to accept right now, but please believe me: God was there all the time. As the hijackers made their plans, as they took over the airplanes and flew them into the buildings, killing thousands, God was there. I know this to be true, because that's the promise He made. "I will be with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:20 NIV) Jesus assures us. Paul insisted, "[Nothing] in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God." (Romans 8:39 NIV) And the psalmist promised, "Though the earth be removed, and the mountains cast into the sea," God is there. (Psalm 46:2 NKJV)

"It's fine to say He's there," complained one of my friends the day after the tragedy, "but why didn't He do something about it?"

How do we know He didn't I suspect that except for God's intervention, the tragedies in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania would have been much, much worse. I've come to believe that if God weren't intensely at work in our world, our situation would be unbearable.

There's a picture in Revelation of four angels holding back the four winds. The winds are a metaphor for the effects of evil: wars, terrorism, and tragedies. "Do not let these winds loose to do harm to the earth," warns one of the angels. (Revelation 7:1-4 NIV) The message is clear: if God weren't restraining evil by His merciful power, the world wouldn't survive at all.

Two Wars

President George W. Bush called the destruction at the twin towers in New York City and at the Pentagon in Washington an act of war. What we don't always realize is that God, too, is in a war. The flesh-and-blood wars we fight on this planet are just reflections of those in the spiritual realm.

God has an adversary too--a stealthy terrorist named Satan, who with his angels is waging a spiritual campaign that makes even our worst battles seem small. We can't see this war, but it's happening even as you read these words. And the stakes are high: God's rulership over the universe.

You and I must enlist on either one side or the other. To ensure that the choice we make is our own, God has granted us a terrifying freedom: the freedom to choose between good and evil. Only in this way can God avoid the accusation that He coerces us by His superior power.

The paradox is that such freedom means we can choose to sin. Should it be at all surprising, then, that some human beings would let Satan influence them to do horrible things--such as flying airplanes loaded with passengers into buildings loaded with people at work?

God has assured us that in the end, He will win the war. But in the meantime, Satan occasionally wins a battle. And sometimes the battles he wins are devastating and painful.

That's what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That's what happened when Ugandan president Idi Amin killed his own people, when the Hutu and Tutsi people slaughtered one another in Rwanda, when the rebel Khmer Rouge army killed millions of Cambodians, and when the Nazi regime gassed millions of Jews.

And on a more personal scale, that's what happens when a young mother dies of cancer, when a marriage breaks up, when a car crash kills a child, when a thief breaks into a house and steals. Each of these says just one thing: Satan is still fighting God, and sometimes--more often than we like--he wins a battle.

He will not win the war

The book of Revelation describes a time when a rider on a white horse appears on this earth. It's clear from the first that this heavenly General means business: "With justice he judges and makes war." "He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood." Heavenly armies--billions and billions of angels--follow Him.

At first, His enemies aren't sure who He is. "He has a name written on him that no one knows but himself." But the words emblazoned on His robe tell it all. He's "King of kings and Lord of lords." (These descriptions of Jesus all come from Revelation 19:11-16.) This heavenly General is none other than Jesus Christ, appearing at His second coming! And His patience with Satan's terrorism has reached its end.

The devil doesn't surrender. He gathers all of his followers--every wicked king and president, every terrorist, every criminal, all those who loved selfishness and hated God--to make war against Jesus Christ and His followers. (Revelation 19:19 NIV) But the battle is short. Satan is captured and imprisioned "to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore." (Revelation 20:3 NIV)

The destruction of evil will be complete when, a thousand years later, Satan is thrown into a lake of burning sulfur and fire comes down from heaven and devours him and all his followers. (Revelation 20:9 NIV) That will be the end of terrorism. It will be the end of war, hatred, ethnic violence, genocide, homicide, and suicide. It will be the end of all the hurtful, sad things, large and small, that Satan has caused us to suffer.

The Bible promises us that sin will not rise again, (Nahum 1:9, KJV) for God will have made everything new, including us. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:4 NIV) And as God's people spend eternity on the new earth, He promises a restored land with no ruined cities. (Isaiah 61:1-4 NKJV)

Living here

In the meantime, though, we have to keep living on this old earth. And here, so many things cause us to fear. In case we should forget it when life seems good, Jesus reminded us that "in this world you will have trouble." (John 16:33) And, of course, He was right. It's easy, when we're feeling happy and content, to forget that we're under spiritual siege.

The terrorism in American cities is the prelude to earth's final war. There are no assurances of what will happen to us on this planet. Some of us may even die from Satan's terrorist attacks.

"What if I had been in one of those airplanes," a friend asked me. She shuddered. "It could have been me."

"Yes," I admitted, "it could have been any of us. But if it had, you would have seen a fiery crash and the next instant, from your perspective, you would be resurrected and looking into the face of Jesus--with all fear and sadness gone forever!"

That's the promise Jesus made. *And He will fulfill it.*

So take heart! This world is not our final home. We were created for a new and better world, where there'll be no terror or evil of any kind. Jesus has a world without fear just waiting for us! All you have to do is give your life to Him, and He will make you a citizen of His kingdom. Why not sign up with Him now?