Prayers for Peace

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 27, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 17.

Prayers for Peace

POPE BENEDICT has composed prayers for peace that are to be recited in the Catholic churches throughout the world during the month of May. The activity of the papacy in peace plans and peace proposals is very marked; but if we study them closely, we will see that there is a political element running through them all. The papacy is working to gain again supreme power in the world. The prophecies of the Bible show that she will succeed; and when her success is achieved, it will be found that the great Protestant world, in so far as its massive organizations are concerned, has taken its stand with the papal power.

Christianity is a thing for the individual heart in the individual life. Christ, through His word and by His Spirit, works upon the individual. Organizations working in a political way are no part of the divine plan. His church, as the Bible clearly shows, is carefully organized; but it is organized for the purpose of winning the individual soul, and working upon the individual heart, and not to make nations Christian in a wholesale way.

The idea of a temporal kingdom for Christ, or the “Christian nation” plan, has been one of the most pleasing delusions for mankind during all the ages. The disciples were misled through false notions concerning the kingdom; the Jewish nation went down because of its wrong conceptions of the kingdom teaching of the Bible; all through the centuries, the prevailing opinions concerning the temporal kingdom of Christ have resulted in persecutions and tyrannies, and have worked havoc; and the greatest and most deceptive manifestation of this kind is to come at the close of time, and in it Catholicism and federated Protestantism will be united.

As individuals, we need to study the Bible, and to know God’s plan of salvation for ourselves; and whether we be Protestant or Catholic, mere professions will not save us. We must have the abiding knowledge of Christ in our own lives, and this knowledge must be based upon our personal acquaintance with Him through His word.

The Master has warned us against deceptions, and particularly so in the closing years of probationary time; and if ever there was a time when men needed to depend upon a personal acquaintance with God and Christ through a personal knowledge of His word, that time is now. We cannot afford to trust to either minister, priest, or bishop, however good or learned we may think them to be; for if these good men are what they ought to be, they will show us in God’s own word the things we ought to know, so that we can see them for ourselves. They should impress it upon us that we must depend not upon men nor human teaching, but upon a personal knowledge of the Word. The Book plainly tells us to “put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” Ps. 146:3. And, “Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.” Hosea 10:13.

We are to be in sympathy with men; we are to respect them. For Christ’s sake, we are to learn to love them. But under no circumstances should we allow them to stand for us in the place of our own personal knowledge of God’s word.