The Winds of Strife

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 6, 1909

The Winds of Strife

DURING recent years there have been a number of international complications and great national occurrences, that, to the child of God, are demonstrations of the divine commissions to the angels to hold the winds of strife until the completion of the work of God. Those “winds” are constantly demonstrating their willingness and readiness to blow. The program leading up to the recent overturn in Constantinople seemed specially calculated to loose the furious winds of war that would involve all Europe, and large portions of Asia and Africa. Authentic despatches from Turkey declare it to have been the sultan’s plan to institute a general massacre of foreigners in Constantinople, including the representatives of foreign governments. This would have been a tacit invitation to fanatical Moslems of three continents to turn their hands against the unbelievers wherever found. Such an occurrence at Constantinople would have been a blow at every nation of the world, and it would have been impossible to prevent the clash of nations while they concentrated troops and ships of war in the territory of the Turk. But the work of God was not yet finished, and the commander of the constitutional troops, learning of the plan of the sultan, entered the city with his army early on the morning of the very day appointed by the sultan for the carrying out of that terrible work. The troops’ first task was the protection of the foreign embassies. The sultan’s plan was frustrated. Verily “the heavens do rule.”