(Revelation 7:9-10) After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a mighty shout, "Salvation comes from our God on the throne and from the Lamb!"

I've been thinking a whole lot about ethnicity lately. This war with Yugoslavia is a war over ethnicity and territory, and I've been in a steep learning curve trying to figure out what's going on there. Like the President I've been reading about the history of the Balkans and the groups who people the region. And in so doing I've even learned more about my own national history.

First off, the Greek word "ethnos" means "nation." When you read in the New Testament about the nations you're reading about ethnos. Now in the biblical account, nations are a result of God's activity in his damage control effort against sin. They came about when God scattered the people after the Flood. (He's not all that crazy about united nations. It seems that when they form great alliances they usually ally themselves against him. And of course there's the final great national union that wars against the people of God under the direct command of Satan.)

This Kosovo problem, as you know, dates back to 1389 when the Ottoman Turks defeated the Serbs and ran them off their land and out of their country. And as long as the Turks ran the place there was little the Serbs could do about it. But as all empires eventually do, the Ottoman's decayed and collapsed. And when they did, the Serbs decided they wanted their land back. I think it was in 1912, and ever since, with time-outs for World War I, World War II, and the Communist dictatorship of Tito, the Serbs have been working at getting the Albanians off their turf.

I really can understand why the Serbs want their land back and why the Albanians don't want to give it up. Here in Hawaii the original immigrants—the Hawaiians—have lost their homeland to Americans and Japanese and Chinese and Filipinos and Koreans and Samoans and whatevers. And they'd like to have it back! It hasn't been all that long since they lost their sovereignty—really only about 100 years—but it might as well have been for millennia. They can march and protest and petition until the cows come home but Waikiki is never going to become a Hawaiian homeland. The current titleholders call it home now and they're not about to give it up.

Similarly, America had other occupants when the Mayflower came to Plymouth Rock. The European settlement of America is a story of conquest and dislocation. My English & Scottish ancestors terrorized and murdered my Cherokee ancestors right out of the Carolinas and Georgia. And wish as they might, my Indian cousins are never going to get the land back. The new owners claim it as their own.

I don't know how long the new owners have to be on the land before they can claim it as theirs without counterclaims by the previous inhabitants. As far as the Hawaiians are concerned, 100 years isn't long enough; as far as the Cherokees are concerned, 200 years isn't long enough; and as far the Serbs are concerned, 600 years isn't long enough. (I guess I should have added the Jews into the mix. They were expelled from Palestine in 126 and reclaimed the land from the Palestinians 1,800 years later!)

What I'm trying to say is these conflicts between ethnos are inevitable. What's mine is mine and I want to keep it—even if it used to belong to your great-great-great-great-great grandfather!

There's only one solution to the ethnic problem: God must create a new nation out of all the nations. And that is exactly what he's done. The Apostle Peter says of the Church, " you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God's holy nation (ethnos), his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light."

The day is coming when Americans and Indians and Hawaiians and Serbs and Croats and Bosnians and Albanians and Greeks and Turks and Russians and all the rest of the redeemed of the Lord will truly fulfill our national motto: e pluribus unum. That day is the Day of the Lord.

Lord, hasten the day when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord. Stop the madness! Amen.

—Major Dale Forrester