General William Tecumseh Sherman, a famous Union general of the American Civil War, spoke out against the travesty of war in an 1879 speech at the Michigan Military Academy. He punctuated his warning with his now-famous quote "War is hell!"

Why is it that mankind still engages in wars to arrive at peace? We want peace, but we just can't seem to find it. As long as people continue to solve differences through arguments and war, we will continue to fail.

Yet your Bible tells us that international peace is in sight, revealed through three major steps or great leaps forward that will play out on the world scene—maybe in your lifetime!

Game-changer for peace

God is a game-changer for good because He gets good things done perfectly. Try as we might, our human efforts just can't compare to what God is able to plan and do: "'My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,' says the Lord. 'And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

"The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it. You will live in joy and peace'" (Isaiah 55:8-12, New Living Translation, emphasis added throughout). God's promised global peace is based on the return of the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7), Jesus Christ.

The conventional wisdom of human beings is seldom based on God's will. It's based on faulty human reasoning with often selfish intent.

God wants us to instead learn His way of peace today, something we can't do without His Spirit. "They don't know where to find peace or what it means to be just and good. They have mapped out crooked roads, and no one who follows them knows a moment's peace" (Isaiah 59:8, NLT). Yet global peace is only three giant steps away.

Three feasts that show the way

You can know the mystery to personal and global peace now, a great mystery kept hidden from humanity for nearly 6,000 years (Matthew 13:10-11). Three biblical festivals that occur in the autumn in Israel and the rest of the northern hemisphere reveal this otherwise hidden secret—the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. How can these festivals help you find peace? God's Spirit unlocks the grand mystery to global peace, given to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32).

The first momentous future step to global peace will be God's removal of human misrule. The second step will be His removal of evil spirits now busily at work on earth to wrongly influence mankind (Job 1:6-7; 1 Peter 5:8). The third step will be the establishment of uncontested governance over the earth by the Messiah, the Prince of Peace. God's peace will then come to pervade the entire earth.

Let's take a look at each of these huge steps in more detail and talk about the biblical festivals that picture them.

The Feast of Trumpets: overthrowing of wrong human rule

One key to understanding the Feast of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:23-25) is discovering what trumpet blasts represent throughout the Bible. In biblical times a trumpet blast was often used as an alarm of war.

But it was also used in times of celebration.

The book of Revelation foretells that seven trumpets will sound in sequence in the end time. Each one will herald cataclysmic events that will deeply affect hard-hearted human beings leading up to the Messiah's glorious return at the seventh and final trumpet.

This will be a time of jubilation at the proclamation of Jesus Christ as King (Revelation 11:15) and the resurrection of His followers at the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). But, again, it will also be a time of catastrophe and great war, the nations even attempting to fight Christ Himself. 

Where does the urge to fight and destroy ultimately come from? Satan is its author. Initially an archangel of God, he brought about the first war when he rebelled against God and attacked to overthrow Him (Isaiah 14:13-14). God and His angelic forces defeated Satan and cast him to earth (Luke 10:18).

This powerful being had gone rogue: "You were blameless in all you did from the day you were created until the day evil was found in you" (Ezekiel 28:15, NLT). When God later created human beings, Satan was aware of God's plan for us to become God's children (Hebrews 2:10) and to rule over angels (1 Corinthians 6:3).

Since Satan could not overcome God, he made it his goal to destroy humanity. How does he accomplish this? One of his methods is by influencing us to destroy ourselves through ongoing wars (James 4:1; Isaiah 14:6, 17). Satan is ultimately to blame for conflict leading to war and the lack of godly peace.

God is opposed to people determining to destroy one another in warfare (James 4:1-6). This is among the reasons God the Father will send Jesus Christ to intervene in human affairs at the end of the age. After waging war Himself to defeat those who oppose Him, He will at last bring an end to war. 

God the Father will send Jesus back to save us from ourselves: "For then there will be great tribulation . . . and unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved [alive]; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened" (Matthew 24:21-22). For a period of time before Christ's return, divine judgment through great upheaval will devastate human governments. Then Christ will come at the last trumpet as the world's rightful Ruler and, at the end of a series of final plagues, will dispatch a great gathering of human tyrants and their armies at Jerusalem (Revelation 19:15, Revelation 19:17-18; Revelaton 14:20).

But ending human tyranny is not enough, as it would return if the cause behind it were not removed. This brings us to the next great step.

The Day of Atonement: removal of evil spiritual influence

Just like the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement is another of God's annual Holy Days (Leviticus 23:26-32). It depicts the time when Christ will remove Satan and his demons from their evil influence and rule over mankind (Revelation 20:1-3).

On this special spiritual day, God commands us to afflict ourselves for 24 hours, referred elsewhere in Scripture to fasting or going without food and water (assuming one doesn't have a health condition that prevents it). This is the only one of God's Holy Days observed this way. Fasting on Atonement reminds us that human flesh can't overcome Satan and the demons without God's help. Fasting with prayer draws us closer to God (Matthew 17:21).

The Day of Atonement also presages the day humanity as a whole is brought near to God in a time of deprivation to at last repent and truly receive Christ. It further looks forward to complete oneness with God when we won't have need of physical nourishment. God's resurrected children will exist as divine spirit, just like the resurrected Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:49-54; 1 John 3:1-3).

God's Day of Atonement, representing the removal of Satan and the demons and the offering of reconciliation with God through Christ to all peoples, fits between the Feast of Trumpets, representing the time of judgment on despotic human rule, and the Feast of Tabernacles, prefiguring the time when global peace will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (see Isaiah 11:9).

Notice what will happen at Jesus Christ's return: "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished" (Revelation 20:1-3).

After Satan's removal, global peace can at last begin to be established—symbolized by the next feast, as just mentioned.

The Feast of Tabernacles: Jesus Christ reigns on earth!

Portraying the third great step or leap ahead in God's plan to bring peace to the earth, the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:33-43) embodies God's peace. It boldly proclaims and rejoices in God's lasting peace that will follow Christ's second coming (Isaiah 9:6-7)—when all nations will be led to observe it (Zechariah 14:16-19).

During the 1,000-year period of Christ's peaceful reign (Revelation 20:4-6), humankind will enjoy an international Garden of Eden: "So they will say, 'This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited'" (Ezekiel 36:35; see also Isaiah 51:3).

Isaiah says of this time in a verse cited earlier: "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9). In that day, God's truth will be understood and obeyed on a global scale (Hebrews 8:10-11).

And there is yet another feast—the day following the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:36, 39)—which in its meaning extends the blessings of peace to those who have died without a proper understanding of God and His ways. They will be resurrected after the 1,000-year reign of Christ and given the opportunity for eternal peace in God's Kingdom (see Revelation 20:5, 11-12 and "God's Plan as Revealed Through the Resurrections" beginning on the next page.)

Global peace is coming

Jesus promised His peace: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you" (John 14:27). God's plan of peace is symbolized by and embedded in these festivals and their awesome fulfillments to come.

Jesus, His apostles, and the early Church all observed these feasts. You can observe them too! "Blessed are those who do His commandments [including the observance of God's annual festivals], that they may have the right to the tree of life [eternal life], and may enter through the gates into the city [the New Jerusalem to come down from heaven]" (Revelation 22:14).

Observing God's festivals are small steps to take personally each year, but these signify giant leaps forward for all mankind. May God give you His peace now so you can help others enjoy it forever!