Dark Days for Ideals

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 2, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 43.

“Dark Days for Ideals”

THE Christian Herald says:

“These are rather dark and discouraging days to talk about world ideals. It is a particularly discouraging time to talk about the power of Christianity to lead the world to the highest ideals. For just now the greatest of the Christian nations seem bent upon turning the world into a slaughterhouse instead of into a Paradise.

“The fact needs to be emphasized again and again that although the warring nations are called Christian, yet the war came, not because they were Christians, but because they were false to the principles of the faith they profess.”

It has been our contention, all the years, that there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Nor has there ever been such a thing, in all the history of this world, as a Christian nation. And furthermore, there will not be such a thing as a Christian nation in this world until Christ comes the second time and establishes His government in person, as He has predicted through all the prophets that He would do.

We have great nations like the United States, England, Germany, and others that might be named, that have been mightily influenced by the power of Christianity; and there has been manifested in these nations a degree of civilization that has never obtained where Christianity has not been allowed to work as it has in these countries. But while Christian men and women and Christian principles have mightily influenced the peoples of many of the nations of western Europe and of the New World, yet at no time can these nations be said to be Christian. The very fact that two of the leading Protestant nations of the Old World are also the leaders in the death struggle that is in progress there, shows that the thought of a Christian nation as such is a delusion and a snare.

One of the greatest delusions yet to sweep over this world will be the false ideals of Christian nations and what may be done by them. Without any question, this deceptive Christian nation idea will spring up like a mushroom after this great European war.

According to the prophecies of the Bible, the greatest ecclesiastical despotism that the world has ever seen is one of the very next numbers on the prophetic program. Those who are not following the Bible closely will think it to be not only a great Christian nation, but that we have really a great Christian world; and to use the language of the apostle Paul, “When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them; . . . and they shall not escape.”