He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
Isaiah 2:4
It didn't take long after the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903 for airplanes to be used militarily. The first world war began just over ten years later when aircraft started to be used in the war effort. World War 2 drove many of the major advances in aviation technology, helping to usher in the jet age and modern aircraft as we know them today.
Isaiah prophesized in the above verse that in the last days nations will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. That is, they would take instruments of war and turn them into instruments of peace.
I’ve always somewhat thought of the work that we do in that way. When MAF started shortly after the second world war, aviation had, for the most part of its history, been used for death and destruction. The first MAF pilots took what had been instruments of war and used them to help bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
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LAMP’s Cessna 182, GODX, takes off from Cooking Lake Airport in Alberta
Obviously, the planes we use on the mission field today are not the same as the planes that are used in the military. The plane needs to be suited for the job and it’s critical that the right aircraft is used for the right mission.
