A Nominally Christian World
There is much that is called Christianity which exists only in form. It is true that the nations of to-day which are leading and controlling the world are nations nominally called Christian, tho in many things anything but Christian in practise. It is also true that all that is superior in these nations, as compared with the oriental peoples, came through the teaching and influence of Christianity, directly and indirectly. The lives of the Christians in the great nations of earth have had their effect on the government and people in general. And yet failure to live the principles approved have given the people a low and perverted conception of Christianity. The great majority look upon it as a better system of ethics than is presented by the oriental cults, as giving superior moral instruction; but they know not its life and power. They laud the name and results, but deny in life its life, and pervert its power to selfishly ambitious ends. The nations of the Orient are looking upon it in the same way. Japan is rapidly becoming nominally Christian. Kang Yan Wei, the leader and inspiration of the movement which is mainly responsible for the present outbreaks of the “Boxers in China,” is the one who presented a letter to the emperor which provoked the edict that “the subjects of the realm should shave off their queues, adopt American clothes, and take up the Christian religion.” He is now in India studying the system of government there. His daughter is coming to this country to learn the English language and American form of government. Thence she will go to Europe, and then join her father in India to help on his modernization of China. And when the world becomes nominally Christian, it will naturally count as its earthly head the head of nominal Christianity, the Papacy. It will become a part of the great mystical modern Babylon, of which the head and front will be the Papacy. Then Rome will sing, “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow;” and then the prophet tells us sudden destruction immediately follows. This is the whole fulfilment of the world's dream of peace. It ends in the destruction of Armageddon.