p. 132 | Russia Advancing

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 28, 1875

Russia Advancing.

Such is the heading of an article which lately appeared in the Irish World. And Russia advancing, means, if we read the prophecy aright, advancement in one of the the most important and decisive prophecies relating to the present time. Dan. 11 : 45 ; 12 : 1. When nations have the power to carry out a long-cherished desire, it does not usually take them a great while to find a pretext. Russia has long cherished the wish to crowd the Turk out of Europe into his Asiatic dominions. According to the following article she now has the power to do this, or is fast acquiring it. But she seems inclined to array herself in such a panoply of strength that there shall be no doubt of the issue when the time shall come to strike. Every indication points to that hour as not far distant. We look upon the near future as crowded with momentous events, which shall signalize the oncoming of the time of trouble such as never was. Let us so live and labor as to be accounted worthy to escape the things that are coming upon the earth, and to stand before the Son of man.

“Russia has conscripted into the army every able-bodied man from the age of twenty to sixty. At present, the regular standing army of that empire is one million of trained soldiers under arms, with a reserve to recruit from of at least four millions more, perhaps five millions! We are at no great loss to guess what these colossal forces are intended for—the extension of empire most undoubtedly, and that both eastward and southward. Whoever lives twenty-five years more on this earth will see Russian governors, soldiers, and priests in Constantinople, and also scattered along the banks on both sides of the beautiful Bosphorus. The Russian soldier is driven on by the Russian priest more than by the Russian emperor. The national church of Russia is the Greek Christianity. There is no pope or chief bishop at its head, as as in the Roman Hierarchy. The emperor is chief of the church, and their jealousies toward other forms of religion, whether Mohammedan, Christian, or Buddhist, are so intense that Russian governors, generals, and people, yield implicit obedience, and risk life to promote their behests.

“We are not to be surprised, then, to hear of Russian advances. The emperor of Russia will advance until he meets the British soldier in India. He will annex Khan after Khan, annex Persia if its shah refuses him a passage through his mountains to the Indian Ocean. Russia must have a vent in the East through the Indian Ocean, in the South through the waters of Greece and the Mediterranean Sea, in the North through the Amoor and the Pacific Ocean, and westwardly by the Baltic. The latter is closed by ice half of every year, but the vent by the Greek waters is ever open. To be master of the vent, he must have Constantinople, and to have Constantinople, he must be able to defy England. Now, the sultan owes principally to the money dealers of England a debt of one hundred and eighty millions sterling, about a thousand million of dollars. If the Turks and the sultan are wiped out, the English money-lenders will lose every penny of this money. Hence, they will urge on a war to sustain things as they are—the balance of power; but the emperor of Russia knows well how to check this move. The English Empire of India is a vast booty—thirty-one kingdoms to be robbed. True, they have been pretty thoroughly robbed already by the English; but the Russian thinks his turn has come, and would try a further squeeze. Hence his onward move.

“The English press begins to talk big, and our generals begin to tighten their waist girths. Just hear the Telegraph, the London paper which represents the Liberals and Whigs: ‘The solid facts are there and speak for themselves. Reason laughs at the notion that the continuous and progressive labors of five-and-twenty years are the fruit of accident, and refuses to believe that operations so vast and sustained are not limbs of a policy stretching its arms from the Black Sea almost to the Himalayas, and having as its end aggression in Persia and Asia Minor. As we intend to maintain our imperial position in the East, we are bound to look forward, and hold ourselves prepared to grapple with an emergency which, sooner or later, is certain to arrive; always remembering that we did not seek the encounter, and that we shall be justified in employing all available means to overthrow an adversary who has advanced so far out of his way to cast down his challenge and court a struggle for empire.” —Irish World.