p. 7 | EDITORIAL by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 7, 1930

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 57, No. 39.

EDITORIAL

By Editor

“DRIFTING TOWARDS CHAOS”

“DRIFTING Towards Chaos” is the striking head to the leading editorial in a recent issue of the Mercury-Herald of San Jose, California, one of the most prominent dailies on the Pacific Coast. This editorial analyzes the recent elections in Germany, and shows that their result is creating great nervousness in France in particular, and, of course, other European countries are concerned and interested. The advance of “the soviet dictatorship of Russia” and the “fascist dictatorship of Italy” are pointed out as uniting to overthrow the Hindenburg government.

Dieudonne Coste (right) and his copilot, Maurice Bellonte, as they arrived in New York from Paris, in their plane, “Question Mark.” They covered the distance between the two great metropolises in thirty-seven hours and eighteen minutes, and this is the first time a passage from Europe to the United States has been made in one “hop” in an airplane.

Following the above-mentioned editorial, in the same column, is another, under the caption, “Incorrigible Europe.” The opening sentences of this editorial read: “Twelve years after the last guns on the western front were fired the state of Europe offers as sardonic a comment on the ingenuous hopes which inspired our first crusade to the Old World as history discloses. There has seldom been a time in European history when new wars seemed less obviously in the making. Behind the thin façade of the League, Locarno, the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, the Naval Limitations Conferences, the peoples of Europe, or at any rate their governments, are engaged in precisely the same processes that brought forth the vast disaster of 1914. Armies are training, new implements of destruction are being devised, new fortresses are building, new fighting ships are preparing. France and Italy have been on the ragged edge of open war for months.”

Since the World War, more strongly perhaps than at any other period in the world’s history, the most influential personages of the various nations have worked mightily to secure peace. The Prince of Peace Himself, the mighty Christ, has been hovering over the world to persuade men of the wickedness of war, and to point out the miseries of anarchy and brutal strife. But despite all these mighty agencies that have been working, great masses of men, in large measure forgetful of God, are drifting past the restraining forces, and ignoring the warning voices as they prepare again to plunge their fellow creatures into the awful vortex of war. And while Christ, the mighty Prince of Peace, has used all the agencies that He could command to point out the evils of war and the importance of securing peace, yet through His prophets He has given us the significant warnings that war will ultimately prevail in these last days in terrifying proportions. Note this word:

“The nations were wroth, and Thy wrath came, and the time of the dead to be judged, and the time to give their reward to Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear Thy name, the small and the great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth.” Revelation 11:18.

There is something strikingly significant in that expression, “To destroy them that destroy the earth.” How literally would the engines of destruction now being prepared in the various laboratories of the different nations of the earth destroy every living creature, were not the great God in mercy and in justice to arise to put an end to these destroyers that refuse to heed any counsel or to pay any attention to the kind-hearted rulers and statesmen who have labored so untiringly to keep their fellows from plunging themselves into the volcano of war!

It is understood and loudly proclaimed from every quarter that the next war will be vastly more terrible than the last one, and we all know that the last one was so appalling as to still leave its nightmares of horror, even after these twelve years of peace. In view of this whole situation as we face it, how important it is that we should understand for ourselves the great sources of protection and power that the Christ Himself, the truly omnipotent Prince of Peace, has prepared for those who will receive it!

Among the marvelously consoling and protective promises of His word, none is more precious, perhaps, than the ninety-first psalm.

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust. For He will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover thee with His pinions, and under His wings shalt thou take refuge: His truth is a shield and a buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold, and see the reward of the wicked.” Psalm 91:1-8.

What a consoling privilege to be able to dwell under the protecting care of the Almighty! And in this time when pestilence and destruction, through hurricane, tornado, and earthquake, are visiting vast portions of the earth, and when another great world war is looming, how important it is to know that Shelter that raises us above all fear and terror! Other things may be important in this time, but to know God for ourselves, and to avail ourselves of His protecting power, are vital and a grave necessity.