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We are all in a holy war together. We are fighting together for our faith, truth, and freedom! We are determined that the poor of the world shall be fed, clothed, housed, and be enabled to labor in freedom, peace, health, and happiness to obtain their needs. We have pledged ourselves to lay down our lives in love for our brothers and sisters around the world. We have dedicated our all that all may be free to live lives of happiness together in cooperation.
Freedom from want, freedom from bondage, freedom from pain, freedom from evil, and freedom from fear—these are our united goals. Mankind cannot be happy when enslaved by oppression, tyranny, and exploitation, robbed by the rich, suffering the pains and pangs of hunger, malnutrition, disease, ill health, overwork, evil abuse, the tortures of war and constant conflict, and nightmares of perpetual fearful insecurity.
We believe that all of these evils are caused by men’s lack of love for God and each other, and their defiance of His laws of love and faith and peace and harmony with Him, each other, and His whole creation, which are the basic beliefs of true faith and every true believer in God and His love and His concern for His creations.
But we must not only know what we are fighting for and against, but also how we must fight. This is not a war of weapons and armies and bodies of men. This is not a war between man and man, nation and nation, race and race, rich and poor, socialism and capitalism, political and economic systems, societies and cultures, religions and faiths. This is not a war of hate and bitterness, killing and slaughter, revenge and vindictiveness, torture, dying and death.
This is not a war for the bodies and possessions and lands and pride of man. Such carnal wars of man have seldom ever settled anything or solved the basic problems of mankind. They have usually only resulted in more suffering, more agony, more pain, more hunger, more slavery, more bitterness, more vengeance, more fighting, more torture, more privation, more destruction, more waste, more misery, more poverty, and more death.
Ours is a war of the spirit in faith and love to win the minds and hearts and spirits and save the souls as well as the bodies of men. Ours is a war to free men from the evils of the spirit and mind and heart of man which cause them to be selfish and unloving and vicious and cruel and unkind to each other, man’s inhumanity to man because of his lack of understanding of how to be happy due to his lack of knowledge of the love and faith and power of God and loving laws of God designed for our eternal happiness.
Ours is a war to free men’s minds and hearts and spirits from the bondage of evil and the soul-slavery of the Devil which bring all these miseries upon us. We are in a war of the worlds—a war between good and evil, God and the Devil, goodness and wickedness, flesh and spirit, angels and devils, love and hate, life and death, joy and misery. Ours is a war of the universe between the good spirits of heaven and the evil spirits of hell contending for our souls as well as our bodies, not only on this earth but also in the spirit world.
Therefore we must fight the much greater warfare of the spirit with the far more powerful weapons of faith, love, compassion, and words and deeds of kindness. We must free men from fear with faith. We must free them from hatred with love. We must free them from sorrow with joy. We must free them from war with peace. We must free them from poverty with plenty, and we must free them from death with eternal heavenly happiness.
The pen is mightier than the sword. Ours is a war of words and ideas to thrill men’s minds with faith and hope, and fill their hearts with love and peace and joy to set their spirits free, as well as acts of love and deeds of kindness to free their bodies from pain. We must therefore wage a war of words against the ideas of evil, a war of faith against fear, a war of hope against doubt. We must inspire men’s spirits to believe in God and His love and His plan for the glorious future of man in the kingdom of God on earth run by the righteous, in which there shall soon be no more sorrow nor crying nor pain nor death, but all shall be light and health and happiness and peace and plenty for everyone.
We must teach them the loving, life-giving words of God Himself through His holy prophets in His holy book, the Bible, that they might have His life and love and happiness forever. Mighty empires of the sword have come and gone, but His words of love and life go on forever and continue to give joy and peace and love and life and hope to billions for generations. The Alexanders and Caesars and Genghis Khans and Napoleons and Hitlers have come and gone, but the words and ideas and religions of the philosophers and the prophets of God live on forever.
They know no boundaries, no nation, no race nor empire, and are not bound by time or space, nor limited by man or war or force of arms, but embrace all mankind and unite their hearts and minds and spirits in faith and love of God and each other for the good of all. The philosophers, teachers, prophets, and men of God seldom ruled empires, but they won worlds of men with their words, faith, and ideas which captured hearts, minds, and spirits and set them forever free. The followers of God are numbered in billions for millenniums, and God’s eternal kingdom of His words of life and love has conquered worlds of men’s eternal spirits, far greater, longer lasting, and happier than man’s mere worldly empires of the sword.
We cannot force men to be good; we cannot legislate righteousness. We must persuade their minds, win their hearts, inspire their spirits, and save their souls so that they will willingly want to do good and not to do evil. You cannot change the world of man without changing his mind, and you cannot change his mind unless you change his heart, and you cannot change his heart without the inspiration of God’s Spirit to save his soul and not only his body.
We must work to save all of man, not merely his body and his environment. He will never be happy with a heavy heart, a troubled mind, a discouraged spirit, and an unsaved soul. We must work to save the whole man, not just part of him. We must work to save the whole world, not just part of it. We must work to save them for eternity, not just for this present time.
Only the power and life and light and love and words of God can do this. We must get His words to all men by every means available throughout the earth. We must convey His ideas, hopes, faith, love and plans for His creations to the eyes and minds and thoughts of all men everywhere, that all hearts may be changed and all spirits inspired and all souls be saved.
We must have a world vision of universal salvation of all mankind. We must not confine ourselves only to the mere matters of the moment and the cares of this life and environment, or those of only one people or one nation or one race or one culture or one ideology or one political view or one economic system of East or West or North or South.
The salvation of man must be for all if it is for any and must include everyone if all are to be happy. Though ninety-and-nine were in the fold, the Good Shepherd was not content until the last lost one was found and saved and rescued.1 Their number was not complete and they could not have been completely happy as long as there was still one unhappy one astray. We must search and find them all, all of His lost sheep, with His loving words of life and faith and duty to both God and man, and we must bring them all into His fold that they may be of one fold with one Shepherd forever.
We must tell all, even though all will not listen nor respond nor be saved. We owe the message of God and His life of love to every man.
If God be for us, no man can stand against us, however great their power or numbers. “Have faith in God.”2 “If God be for us, who can be against us?”3 If you do good, who is he that will stop you?4 None can withstand the power of God nor His forces of heaven if He is on your side and you are on His, doing that which is right.
We are in a fight to the finish, and the victory is ours, praise be to God! We may lose a few battles, but we’re winning the war and the world will soon be won for God and His kingdom. Never give up. Be not discouraged, but be of good faith and of good cheer, for if God is with you, you cannot fail. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”5 We are bound to win, for God is with us, and we fight a holy, right, and just war of faith and love for God and others, and love never fails, for God is love.6
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but His words shall never pass away.7 They are settled forever in heaven8, and none can deny nor defy them forever. So use them andspread them and His love through every means at your command to give people light and hope and life and love and peace and heavenly happiness forever.
You are no fool to give a life you cannot keep for a love you will never lose.
Originally published May 1975. Updated and republished August 2012.
Read by Peter Amsterdam.
1 Luke 15:4.
2 Mark 11:22.
3 Romans 8:31.
4 1 Peter 3:13.
5 Romans 8:31.
6 1 Corinthians 13:8; 1 John 4:8.
7 Mark 13:31.
8 Psalm 119:89.
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