HMS Warrior

It was a pleasure to board HMS Warrior down in Portsmouth last month. She is a preserved, 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate, and was built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. Then, Great Britain was conducting an arms race with the French, and Warrior was Briannia’s signal to Emperor Louis-Napoléon that it was she who ruled the waves.

Within twelve years, Warrior was deemed to be obsolete, and it was the emergent German Empire which began to offer graver threats rather than the French. She who had been the pride of Victoria’s Royal Navy and the largest warship in the world, rendering Great Britain the global superpower, was outdated.

There are weapons today which seem terrifying; drones in Ukraine and Russia strike me as a most appalling weapon to be used against people. Doubtless, our corrupted race will develop even more efficient and crueller methods of killing folk. Yet the most powerful and dreadful weapon in the universe, never to be superseded or subject to obsolescence is that described in the nineteenth of Revelation:

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God…And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh. (vv15, 21)

This sword surely represents the power of His word, the communication of the divine will, against which no defiance or resistance may be successfully offered. Though terrifying to those who have rejected Him, this awesomely powerful speech is a source of great comfort to those who trust Him:

I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. Psalm 85:8

The Lord is a man of war: the LORD is his name. Exodus 15:3

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