Simulated blast radius from a nuclear bomb launched at Washington, D.C.
When we learned this past week that there was a fire at a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, we began to get worried. A nuclear explosion would threaten nuclear war, and we live close enough to a major U.S. city that we’d probably feel some effect – maybe not have the home outright destroyed, but face the threat of radiation.
There’s an odd passage in the Bible in 2 Peter 3 where it talks about the world being “stored up for fire” – the idea that everything we see and experience is sitting around like a woodpile, and some day it’ll burn in judgment. It’s the reason why Terminator 2 was called “Judgment Day” – a reference to the idea that nuclear bombs are dropped in judgment of the human race. It’s hard not to connect the two, but at the same time people have been connecting dire events to Christ’s return for centuries. Surely the people who lived through the “Black Death” of the 12th century thought that they were living through mankind’s final days, and that the “rider on the pale horse” had come to usher in the world’s end.
Would we, the people who call on God’s name for salvation, pray earnestly for His return to the earth in glory if it meant that the preceding days, weeks, or even years were filled with suffering? If a nuclear holocaust happened prior to the end of the age, would we want it to come? Or would we want our comfort to continue? I’m sure it would be the latter, for me. It’s a difficult and morbid topic, but when war and pestilence arrive so unexpectedly and vividly, it’s a tough one to completely avoid thinking.