What Rome Sees in Turkey’s Transformation by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jun 10, 1909

What Rome Sees in Turkey’s Transformation

By C. M. S.

It will be interesting to the readers of the REVIEW AND HERALD to know how a representative Catholic journal views the recent change in the government of Turkey. Says the editor of the Western Watchman, in the issue of May 6, 1909:—

They call the recent events in Turkey a revolution; it is a dissolution. Abdul Hamid is the last of the sultans. The reign of Antichrist on the Bosporus has come to an end. The world, having passed through one of its worst periods, the crescent, which always meant an eclipsed Christ, has disappeared forever. . . . The Turk must leave the banks of the Bosporus and hie himself back to Asia and the fastnesses of the Altai range. His stay of four hundred years in Europe has come to an inglorious end. . . . The reign of the Turk in Europe was a punishment of Christian dissensions. Islam and Protestantism are twin born. They made their appearance in Europe almost simultaneously. . . . Were it not for the aid the Turks were ever ready to lend the Protestant princes, Austria would have made short work of the rebellious Reformers. Islam and Protestantism came into the world together; they go out together. Turkish domination is not more extinct than is Protestantism. The two great scourges of the Christian world drop back together into the dark from which they came.

The Christians of Turkey will now regain their autonomy, and the East will soon again blossom as a rose. The East needs the West to teach it the way to liberty and self-government; the West needs the East to learn from it the instinct of the supernatural. The union of both in the Orient is destined to bring untold development to the church of Christ. Not to St. Petersburg but to Rome will the gaze of the Eastern Christian henceforward be turned, for Rome is the mistress of the East once more. . . . Upon the dome of the great St. Peter’s of the Eastern Church will soon again be raised the symbol of man’s redemption.

Rome is looking with the utmost confidence to the complete domination of the world, the eradication from the world of everything that offends her, and an unbroken, unobstructed reign to the ages of ages. The changing attitude of the world toward her, and the program of her purpose as arranged by herself, both indicate that we are nearing the fulfilment of the prophetic Word concerning Rome’s destiny and the close of God’s work in the earth. C. M. S.