(Exodus 23:23 NIV) My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.

Here is an important New Testament warfighting principle: Make sure you can win the war before you start the fight! (Luke 14:31-32)

Now here's the question of the day: Did God give Israel—the nation he called out of Egypt and fashioned for his purposes—did God give Israel guidance on soldiering and war? And if he did, how do those principles carry forward to our day of Christian soldiers and the secular state?

OK, those are two questions, but to question #1: Did God give Israel guidance? Yes! This is by no means an exhaustive listing but here are some of the more important ones:

1. War doesn't come in gradations. You're either at war to win or you aren't at war at all. (2 Kings 13:19)

2. Soldiers don't make war on soldiers. Nations make war on nations; people make war on people. When the nation's at war, everyone's at war. (Judges 1)

3. War results in the death of men, women, children, pets and farm animals as well as the destruction of cities, towns, and villages. And that is its purpose. (Joshua 6:20-21)

4. The draft is God's idea. It distributes the risk and burden of injury and death evenly through all regions and social classes. (Numbers 1:1-4)

5. Leaders lead from the front. Those who would commit soldiers into battle must share their risks. (2 Samuel 11:1)

6. Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing in their occupation of Canaan. They invaded an already occupied land and systematically killed its inhabitants. And they did so at God's direction. Sometimes people become so wicked the only solution is to make war upon them. (Deuteronomy 9:4-5)

7. War is not an immoral act. When it is pursued in a righteous cause (an old-fashioned concept that there really is right and wrong, good and evil) it is a righteous act—God's work even. (Numbers 31:3)

OK, so I mixed both questions together. But I have a point to make: God recognizes the conditions into which sin and Satan have placed us. Faith doesn't produce a helpless surrender to evil and evil men. Faith makes good men brave and honorable men courageous. He has called holy men from the time of Abraham and throughout holy history to defend the defenseless and to press the cause of justice into the camp of the enemy.

Lord, thank you for the ministry of preservation you have given to us soldiers. Bless our men and women in uniform today. And help us not be fearful of putting our sons to the defense of our people (ethnos). Use our hands to bless Kosovo's refugees. Amen.

—Major Dale Forrester - U. S. Army, Hawaii