—or "THE PUSH BUTTON WAR"! DO883 5 March 1980

1. THIS IS THE EARLY MORNING OF WEDNESDAY MARCH 5TH, 1980. I had gone to bed unusually early last night, & so, as is my usual custom, after two or three hours sleep I woke up. But this time I woke up immediately after a rather strange dream that I felt was significant & that I can still remember very clearly.

2. THERE WERE TWO PLAYERS SITTING AT THE CONSOLE OF AN ELECTRONIC GAME BOARD. I was looking over the shoulder of one of them & watching them pushing these lighted buttons in turn. There were a lot of buttons & each had a different label, but I can't remember them all. There were names like:

3. NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, NUCLEAR LEAKS, NUCLEAR WASTES, Nuclear Pollution, Nuclear Cancer, Nuclear Leukemia‚ Oil Shortage, Recession, Depression, Monetary Crisis, Unemployment, Riots, Military Coup, Jewish Conspiracy, Dictatorship, Nuclear Armaments‚ Nuclear Missiles, Nuclear Ships, Nuclear Planes, Capitalism, Communism, Survival, Incidents, Provocations, Interventions, Invasions, Brush Fire Wars‚ Conventional Warfare, Pre-emptive Strike, Nuclear Retaliation, Devastation, Self-Destruction, Atomic Fallout, Plagues, Starvation, Cannibalism, Savagery, Nuclear Jungle & so on & so on.

4. THERE WAS A WHOLE MASS OR MAZE OF THESE BUTTONS WITH LITTLE LABELS beside each one describing what that button did or represented. As each player took his turn punching the button of his choice‚ the result would light up on the display panel along with the score.

5. YOU DIDN'T KNOW IN ADVANCE WHAT THE RESULT WAS GOING TO BE nor the score, so that it seemed like a game of chance, but you were playing in a certain sequence which you thought might bring you the victory.

6. IT SEEMED THAT BOTH SIDES WERE HEADING FOR DESTRUCTION, but the idea was to see who could destroy the other one first by all these various methods. I was watching, taking in the scene almost in horror at how these two cold-blooded cruel players could be sitting there gambling with each other's lives & things which represented the peoples & nations of the world! As the effects were flashing on the panel & the scores were mounting,

7. THE TWO SEEMED TO GET MORE AGITATED & MORE EXCITED & more like two gambling addicts or drug addicts with that fire in their eyes, nervous & excited & extremely agitated, moving faster & faster & pushing the buttons faster & more furiously!

8. AT LAST TRIUMPHANTLY ONE OF THEM PUNCHED THE BUTTON "PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE", but then the other one without hesitation followed with "Nuclear Retaliation"!—And all of a sudden all the lights went out: The lights in the panel, the lights of the buttons, the lights in the room—all the lights went out completely & it was totally dark!

9. THE MACHINE HAD GONE INTO LOCK POSITION & you had to have a special key to turn it back on again. I don't know how I knew that, but I just seemed to know it, like you do in dreams. When he punched that final button—"Nuclear Retaliation"—all the lights went out!

10. IT WAS PITCH DARK & THERE WAS TOTAL SILENCE & it seemed like the machine was completely dead & locked & couldn't be re–opened or turned on again without the key. And suddenly I woke up, & I lay here wondering, "Well, what is the key? What is the key?" And my first thought was,

11. "WELL, WE SPEAK OF LOVE AS BEING THE KEY TO HEARTS." This thing was not a heart—it was a machine—but it seemed to represent life & politics & world events, so I was questioning, "Well, could it be that love would turn things back on again? Could it represent Christ who is God's Love? Could it represent His coming again to rescue the world from total destruction & to turn the lights on again?"—For

12. IT SEEMED LIKE THE LIGHTS HAD GONE OUT ALL OVER THE WORLD. There was total darkness. So that was the impression I had: Somehow the key had to do with love—The Love of God, Christ, God's Love! That was the only key that could turn things back on again & bring things back to life & bring back the light once again & bring light back to the board, which seemed to represent events of the world or life for the peoples of the world.

13. AND I LAY THINKING, WHAT A CHILL OF HORROR, almost a fearful fright, had come over me as the lights went out! Well‚ maybe I should say more like a feeling of awesomeness at the horror! It was almost like I was stunned & awed at the awfulness of it‚ the darkness, total stillness‚ no light, no sound, no life, just almost like total death!

14. BUT THEN THE THOUGHT CAME OF THE KEY—that there was some hope that it could be turned on again if you could find the key! And that was my first thought as I lay awake trying to thing what the key meant. Why, it was love!:

15. THE LOVE OF GOD, His mercy, Jesus‚ & His return to rescue His own & the world & the people of the world & restore the light & the life & love again!—And that was it! Praise the Lord!—Amen?

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family