PEACE AND WAR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 14, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 49.

PEACE AND WAR.

I KNOW the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil.” Jer. 29:11. But the world is not now at peace. God’s voice is not speaking in the blare of the trumpets; His Spirit is not moving the engines of war. The hand that bears War’s standard is not His. The eye that sights down the rifle barrel is not the eye nor the agent of the “Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

War is Satan's answer to the second table of God's law.

“PEACE and good-will toward men,” was the theme of the Redeemer’s annunciation; and peace and reconciliation was the mission of the Son of Man. But the world is filled with violence, and the cruelties of war are wringing the hearts of the people. God is planning peace for man and for the earth upon which He placed him; and failure in His purpose can never be. His word will not return unto Him void, but will accomplish that which is pleasing to Him, and will prosper in the thing whereto it is sent. It is sent for peace; and the Gospel of peace is the Gospel of Christ.

BUT “from whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” James 4:1. The primal seed of war is found in the principle of self-serving, as opposed to the effacement of self in the service of others.

War is the weapon of the common enemy of God and man. It is Satan’s answer to the second table of God’s law.

God said, “Honor thy father and thy mother;” but the warrior son has slain them both, and the warrior father has slain the wife and children. God said, “Thou shalt not kill;” but war has put a red girdle around the earth, and every generation sings the story of national murder in the ears of those that come after. In the glamour of war man has not stopped at the slaying of mortal foe; but his hungry steel has tasted the marrow of those who nursed at the same breast that nourished him, who looked up from the same lap into the same mother face.

God said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery;” but Satan, through this agent, has flung defiance at this command wherever the hot breath of war has seared the green earth; and he whom God had set for the shield of woman has caused her a thousand deaths wherever a glory-mad nation has flung down the gage of battle. God said, “Thou shalt not steal;” but war has stolen everything, from the thrones of kings to the last morsel of food in the house of the poorest peasant—stolen everything from the virtue of womanhood down to the tinsel on the cloaks of royalty. God said, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor;” but the fear of war has given us the falsehoods of diplomacy, and has taught the denial and denunciation of the most binding and solemn engagements.

God said, “Thou shalt not covet;” but the war lords of earth have coveted everything that God has made or men have fashioned on the earth, and have used the sophistries of patriotism and the glamour of national glory to obtain for themselves the things they coveted.

VERILY, war is Satan’s contradiction of all that God designed for man. It was born in heaven in the envy and jealousy of him who has fostered it from then till now. It was born on earth in the envy and jealousy of him who slew his brother without cause; and this scourge of the heavens and bane of the earth has become the science through which the ends of selfishness have ever been attained, and the insults of men and nations, fancied or real, have been and are being avenged. “Master, remember the Athenians,” was the actuating force inspiring the successive blows that Persia struck at Greece. It was the spirit of revenge for these repeated attacks that instigated the counter blow of Greece to crush the power of the eastern kings. And Islam in Europe, with all the slaughters of the Mohammeds, is Asia’s answer to the challenge of Europe in the conquests of Alexander.

THUS have the thistle and the thorn of human

hatred been sown around the world in the wake of war, till the work of preparing the world for its last and greatest battle is nearly done. In every nation on earth the fever of war is quickening the pulse of the people, and the trip-hammer has displaced the sledge in beating out the implements of death. Look where you will, the forges of Vulcan are burning, and war-ships are dragging anchor on the rising tide.

AND this is not a dream. The fearful day is rushing on apace; the culmination is no longer distant. In the language of the prophet, “The nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldest give reward unto Thy servants; . . . and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.” Rev. 11:18. That time of anger has come; and soon will the vials of God’s wrath be poured into the earth to close this part of the history of sin.

BUT God does not leave it there. With the culmination of the work of sin there comes the long-promised reward of the tired hands that have wrought for God, and the tired feet that have run to speed His message. The earth that has been marred by war and sins of every kind will be purified and made new in God’s refining fire (Mal. 4:1; 2 Peter 3:10–13), and sin be found no more in all the universe of God (Matt. 13:41–43). Then, indeed, “truth shall spring out of the earth” that once was cursed, and then will it be true that “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” War will no more return to wreck and ruin the earth, for “He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth.” Ps. 46:9. Even the dread of its memory shall pass away; for the righteous nation which “shall inherit the earth” shall “delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” Then will the peace of God which passeth knowledge fill the earth as the waters fill the sea; tranquillity reign as in the ages before self-will and unbelief gave birth to the Ishmael of war; and the conquest of love be the “science and the song” of all who pass through the glittering gates of Paradise restored.