Potentially more serious is that militant political groups around the world seek either to develop or buy biological weapons for possible terrorist use.

Smallpox would be particularly deadly as a weapon in the bioterrorism arsenal. It kills one in three of its victims and blinds and disfigures many others. In 1980 the disease was declared extinct by the World Heath Organization. Yet the virus lives on, legitimately, in hundreds of vials stored in heavily secured laboratories in Russia and America.

The Times reported that "the threat of a smallpox epidemic caused by bioterrorism is so serious that the U.S. is pouring money [$177 million a year] into developing an antidote" (emphasis added). A fresh outbreak would be particularly devastating because the vast majority of people have no immunity to the virus, since routine vaccinations have not been available for decades.

That such a threat could even exist in a supposedly civilized world and that some few could actually contemplate using this and even more horrendous weapons on other human beings is mute testimony that something is drastically wrong somewhere. No wonder Jesus Christ urged us to pray "Thy Kingdom come." (Sources: The Times [London], Foreign Affairs magazine.)