The End of World War III

"...My peace I give to you: not as the world gives..." (The Bible, New Testament, Gospel according to John, chapter 14, verse 27) - I read these words of Jesus Christ for the first time in 1990, in the worst time of my life. My wife became disillusioned with me and left with my five-year-old son. I, in my turn, got disappointed with my work, in the majority of people surrounding me, with all this frail life, and also intended to bang the door. But as far as I am a peace loving man and not a revolutionary, I decided not to leave this world forcedly. Fortunately, Marxist-Leninist philosophy appeared to have alternatives at that time, and in the thick books I started to seek the answer to the question - what is the sense of life? To my great surprise, respectable thinkers of different times and nations, acknowledging their incapability in this problem, suddenly directed me, a confirmed atheist, to seek the answer in God himself. Bible studying gave an amazing feeling that the solution of all my longstanding suffering was extremely close - literally at arm's length. And then I had the following dream...

...I was looking from space to the Earth in its primeval beauty. I liked the planet that was not yet inhabited by people so much that only in a moment I was walking in the paradisiacal garden viewing unusual plants and animals. And suddenly I saw a puddle right in my way, in the middle of the lawn among unfading flowers. "How? Where from?" - I wondered, but didn't walk around and in an instance was floundering in the bog. And not an ordinary one. The morass was devouring me with lighting speed. I brokenly snatched the flowers but they fluttered in my hands becoming a sepulchral bouquet. "Help!" - instinct of self-preservation extorted this outcry from my throat, though I knew that the planet was uninhabited. Deadly bog water overflowed my mouth, eyes and at last - consciousness. My right hand taken wing over the morass was sinking into the bog, when suddenly Somebody strongly snatched my palm being devoured by the abyss, and snapped me out of the arms of death.

Life instantly returned to me, ejecting bog water from my lungs. And the first thing I did after feeling hard ground under my feet - I wiped at the mud streaming down my face to see the Savior, but nobody was around except flowers, birds, and blue sky. However, through the saving touch of His mighty palm I learnt His name - Jesus Christ...

And then I woke up. It was a fall rainy day, but this fact didn't make me feel sad. The rain was singing! Slippers near the bed, the switch on the wall - everything around was singing! Suddenly I realized what a great gift life was! But the thing that struck me even more was the silence that started reigning in my heart. As long as I can remember, in spite of all my cheerfulness, somewhere deep inside my heart was harbored that strange melancholy, sometimes developing into a terrible nuclear war, the III World War, which only I knew about. But that morning it STOPPED, and then I recalled the words of Jesus Christ, read the day before in the Bible: "...My peace I give to you: not as the world gives..." (The Bible, New Testament, Gospel according to John, chapter 14, verse 27), "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (The Bible, New Testament, Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 11, verse 28).

Andriy Silenko

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