A Delusive Hope

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jun 28, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 26.

WHAT strange contrasts this earth of ours presents! The gospel of love is finishing its mission in the world in the face of a storm of ruin and death such as has never raged on earth before. The ministrations of mercy and the agencies of death and destruction are seen on the same field at the same time. The warring nations have scattered terror, starvation, and death among the unarmed, the infants, and the aged; and amid this work of desolation and terror is seen the kind hand of charity giving bread to the hungry and alleviating distress. One wounds, and the other binds up; one smites, and the other mollifies it with ointment; one causes hunger, and the other feeds the hungry.

And this is the age of peace congresses, of peace parleys, of peace treaties, of The Hague peace tribunal, of militarism to prevent war, of big navies to protect all nations from the horrors of conquest. This is the age in which the nations would not dare to go to war because of the fearful machinery dedicated to the business of slaughter; the age which had made war impossible because soldiers would not dare to face the modern weapons of death; the age in which considerations of humanity were too strong to permit such slaughter as modern war would entail; the age when so many of the rulers and statesmen were Christians that a declaration of war by any of them would shock the conscience of united Christendom.

But the bubble has burst; and humanity has come to realise that its trust in the elimination of war through the dissemination of culture, enlightenment, and international business and economic relations was a broken reed. Humanity leaned upon that reed and was wounded for trusting.

Framing Another Groundwork

However, the proponents of the universal peace idea are already recasting their creed and framing another groundwork for trust in the reality of their dream of peace. It is now seriously declared that the horrors and miseries and expense of the recent great war will cause the world to be so sick of militarism that the nations, in self-defence against another deluge of blood, will form some kind of parliament of the nations that will settle all differences for the future, and ensure amity and peace throughout the world.

This hope rests upon the same foundation as those rested upon that have come clattering to the ground during the recent great war. It is a foundation of sand. There is nothing in that foundation to stand the strain of the superstructure. The heart of man will never be so purged of greed, distrust, and selfishness that every man will look first to others' interests and secondly to his own. The truly converted heart has a basis of peace; but it is an individual peace, and can be had even amid war's alarms or the flames of the auto da fé.

The recent war has stirred up more hatred between nations than any that has ever been carried on in this world. Each of the embattled nations finds in the conduct of its foes a course against which it protests with bitter vehemence, and this feeling is extending to many of the neutrals also, because of interference with what the neutrals considered their rights. The issues raised by this war require an Armageddon, and the world is sweeping toward that event with marvellous velocity. The cry of peace will ring through the world again; but that cry will be hushed in the fearful tumult of earth's last great war.

BUT we need not trust in that delusive hope. The business of the gospel is reaching its consummation, and with that consummation every controversy and every trouble will be settled forever. When Jesus Christ speaks from the opening heavens,

and His voice rings around the world, nations, organisations, and individuals will realise that the time for controversy and quarrelling is gone by; that the day of eternal destiny has come; and that, if not ready to stand in His presence, they are lost for all eternity! The day when that will take place draws swiftly on; and Jesus Christ has made every provision so that we need not be found wanting in that day. If our house is not set in order already, it is high time we should set it in order. “Behold, the Judge standeth before the door.”