The Pope and Peace Measures
A RECENT dispatch from Rome says that the “Vatican is preparing to publish further facts concerning efforts by the pope and the Vatican to prevent the war and the measures now being taken to end it.” It is expected that a papal encyclical will soon be issued upon the subject, and it is also understood that “the pope is contemplating a meeting of the Roman Catholic bishops at which will be expressed the feeling of the Catholic world toward the war.” The activity of the papacy in the propaganda for peace is very marked. Every few days, there are dispatches telling of new developments in that direction. As the nations become more exhausted by the war, they will be all the more eager to turn to some source that will afford the prospects for peace. Without much doubt, events are shaping so as to place the church power, both Catholic and Protestant, in the lead. Powerful international organizations will be formed to prevent war. The church power will be the very core of this work, but it will not be successful. God has foretold how it will result. The intensity of these times causes very sudden eruptions of the social forces. This was remarkable in the outbreak of the European war in 1914. As some have expressed it, it came as an explosion of dynamite. But men had been saying all the time, that it could not come. They had been prophesying, for a quarter of a century, that we had had our last war. And thus they will prophesy again. These forces that will unite following the European war, will tell us that peace has been secured throughout the world. They will tell us again that we have had our last war. But the mutterings of the feebly suppressed social volcano that will be manifest throughout the world, ought to enable men to see that their theories are not founded upon either evidence or reason, and the Book of God tells us what will be the outcome. It says, speaking of the time just before the second coming of Christ, that “when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” 1 Thess. 5: 3. We need to stand in the light, so that the deceptiveness of appearances may not lead us into delusions; and the only sure way of doing this is to study and heed the prophetic declarations of the sacred Book.