The Peace Jubilee

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 2, 1872

The Peace Jubilee.

THE great Peace Jubilee now in progress in Boston, Mass., may be summed up in a few words: 1. A vast building capable of accommodating 100,000 persons. 2. A ransacking of this country and Europe for singers and performers. 3. An assemblage of the great musical celebrities, and best performers, and national bands, from all the leading civilized nations of the globe. 4. A chorus of 20,000 singers, and an orchestra of 1,000 performers. 5. The production day after day of a series of the most brilliant musical performances, to immense audiences who, by stamping, cheering, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and by every other available means, gave every possible evidence of enthusiasm and delight. 6. Another item in the fulfillment of 1 Thess. 5:3: “When they shall say [or sing] Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.”

This is called a Peace Jubilee; but it cannot be to celebrate a universal peace already in existence; for such is yet far from being realized. It must therefore be taken as referring to a peace yet to be achieved. It is meant as a prophecy and a token of a time soon to come when universal peace shall reign over a world whose discordant elements are all hushed into harmonious repose. But this can never be while sin reigns; and sin can never end by peaceable means. It can only be rooted out by such judgments from on high as will adequately express God’s indignation against this foul blot in his universe. All this Jubilee is, therefore, in reality, is simply an expression of the hope and desire that reigns in the human breast for an age of peace and quiet; which desire is the father of the many prophecies of the good time coming. But these can never be realized under the present constitution of things.

In the Jubilee now in progress we take no interest, only as it is an indication of the blind groping of the race after some unattained, and, in their present condition, unattainable, good. But there is a Jubilee coming, in which the desires of our heart all center: a Jubilee, which will celebrate a peace that will not be a mere burlesque on the name, and a mockery of all our hopes; but a peace that will be real because introduced by the gathering out and destruction of all that do iniquity and offend, of all the causes and agencies that have introduced discord and strife into our world; and a peace that will be eternal, because it will be under the reign of that King of righteousness of whose dominion there shall be no end.