No Peace in World
The weekend of December 7, 1941, started out to be another routine weekend. The aircraft carriers were at dockside and the crews were enjoying the day with rest and relaxation. The sky was clear, the sun was shining and the weather was beautiful. This was a perfect picture of peace, but something happened that brought disaster into the lives of many people.
Within a couple of hours, 3077 men would be killed or missing in action. The United States would lose 8 huge battle ships. Six major airfields would be destroyed along with most of the aircraft.
At 7:00 a.m. on that December 7 Sunday morning there were 360 Japanese war planes 137 miles or about 50 minutes away from Pearl Harbor. These planes were picked up on radar by two US soldiers at a small radar station in the Pacific Ocean.
At first, the two soldiers noted a few dots on their radar screen and the entire screen was filled with dots. The soldiers notified their young youthful lieutenant supervisor because there were no other officers around.
The young lieutenant responded with these words: “Don’t worry about it” because these are probably planes from a California base. A grave mistake was made and soon peace would be turned into disaster.
If the lieutenant had made the right decision, there would have been time to scramble all the US planes, prepare the huge warships and provide shelter for the men. This did not happen, so 50 minutes later, 7:50 a.m., peace was converted into disaster and the United States entered World War II.
Sixty-eight years have gone by. World War II has ended, the Korean Conflict is history, Viet Nam is past, the Gulf War is over, but there is still unrest in Iraq. There is no peace in the world.
From a sermon by Bill Butsko, Jesus - Our Peace, 12/2/2009