While working this week on a future Beyond Today television program titled "Armageddon in Your Lifetime," I was looking for a quote about President Ronald Reagan's fascination with Bible prophecy. This morning while reading through the news, I found this example mentioned in the context of presidential leadership.

Historian Michael Beschloss has written a book on the faith of American presidents. He tells the story of Ronald Reagan's concern over Armageddon. President Reagan understood what Revelation said about armies gathering in the Middle East in a climactic battle at the end of the age. He feared this scene was near and openly discussed it with visitors. His aides asked him to stop, since he was scaring people! I find it fascinating that an American president would be so bold about his belief.

The most compelling example Beschloss studied is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a skeptic through most of his life, but the agony of the Civil War and the death of two of his sons changed him.

He felt his moral duty was to discover what God wanted him to do. In a handwritten, undated note found in his desk after his assassination, Abraham Lincoln gave perhaps the best clue to his religious faith.

He scrawled that while "the will of God prevails," he was struggling to understand His attitude toward the Civil War. The Almighty "could have either saved or destroyed the Union" without a civil war. "And, having begun, he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."

President Lincoln observed that it was "quite possible" that God's purpose is "something different" from either North or South. Thus as Commander-in-Chief, he felt he must keep on trying to discover what it was.

I find this is a sound approach to understanding what God is doing in any part of our life. It is better to seek to understand what God is doing rather than force our will and call it God's will. God says His ways are higher than ours are and His thoughts are different from ours. Anytime we seek to push our own will forward, we are likely to run into snags.

Humility says we should hesitate to follow our first impulse, instead seeking God's will through deliberative Bible study and prayer. When our will shouts so loud in our minds that we cannot hear God, we are headed for a fall. Pride has overtaken our spiritual senses and canceled out any chance to understand what God is doing in our life for that moment. Humility is getting ourselves, and our will, out of the way long enough for God's will to be understood. That is the right path to guidance and empowerment.

June World News and Prophecy

We are working this week on the June issue of World News and Prophecy. Each issue tends to take on a theme. This time our writers seem to be focusing on events in Great Britain. Melvin Rhodes writes about our fascination with Queen Elizabeth II. The queen was in America earlier this month. Her presence is a reminder of the special relationship between our two nations. That relationship is deeper than politics, language and culture.

John Schroeder has written about the drive for Scottish independence that threatens to break the union that helped to make Britain "great." You may not know much about this subject, but this article will help fill in the gaps.

Keep watching.