The Weak Becoming Strong
By W. A. S.
IN Joel’s prophecy of the military preparations in the last days, he says: “Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.” We have seen in this generation not only the older and stronger powers feverishly turning the produce of the plow and the pruning-hook—the wealth from the soil—into preparations for war, but nations formerly weak have suddenly sprung to the front. The London Contemporary Review remarks on this development in one conspicuous case, that of Japan:— Lately a despised race, she has swiftly made good her claim to rank as a highly enlightened nation with the first military and naval powers of the globe. While the nations are fulfilling the prophecy,—and now no nation feels itself too weak to join the mad rush of preparing war,—it is time for another prophecy to be fulfilled. It is a promise for soldiers in the army of the Lord: “And he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.” So now, “Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come.”