Armageddon and Beyond

Most of us realize we live in a very dangerous world. Decades ago, a new weapon of unprecedented capacity was first unleashed when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945. A new era of mass destruction had begun.

At the end of World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender. Aboard the battleship USS Missouri, General MacArthur summarized the danger and the choice facing humanity in this new era:

Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be the way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out this alternative. We have had our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence [renewal] and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of the past 2,000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh (emphasis added).