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IS IT PEACE?

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 23, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 34.

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IS IT PEACE?

WILL this wicked old world, composed of a thousand different States and peoples, bristling with bayonets and booming with battle-ships, ever find anchorage in the beautiful harbor of peace? Will the war drums beat only muffled dirges for the dead, and the weapons of war be known only as relics of a long-past age? So some have dreamed and some have sung.
The basis of dream and song is the desire. The world longs for peace. It was a noted fighter who declared, "War is hell." The bravest warriors who ever marshaled men on the battle-field have been the first to rejoice when peace was declared. No people desire to see their country laid waste, its buildings burned, its grain fields trodden down, its people demoralized, its women ravaged, and the flower of its manhood slain. All this has never been desired, save by incarnate demons.
Why then war? The answer lies just here. Man is in rebellion against "the God of peace." "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Here lies the secret of all the strife in the world.
He who is subject to God's law, seeks to do the will of God. He is concerned for God's honor and the success of God's cause. He will do all in his power for its advancement, and he will do it in God's way. He will not seek to force his opponents, but to "persuade" them. He will know that it is not by human armies or human power that God's kingdom is carried forward, "but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." The true Christian has yielded his heart, his flesh, his all, to God; the carnal mind is crucified, Christ, the Prince of Peace, comes into the heart, and man is a warrior for God, not against Him. The weapons of his "warfare are not carnal," but spiritual, and "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."
Jesus Christ said: "Put up again thy sword into its place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Jesus Christ said: "For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."
Again He said: "My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight; . . . but now is My kingdom not from hence."
The warfare of the Christian lies in the thought realm. The carnal mind, with all its evil, selfish imaginations and devices, must die and be cast out by the presence and power of Christ, who "abolished in His flesh the enmity," that He might abolish it in ours.
Now if all were thus Christian, if all were thus in obedience to Christ, there would be no bloody wars; there could be none. There would be no separated nations; no jealous, ambitious kings. There would be no human tigers lying in wait for prey, no human vampires longing for a brother's blood, no human vultures scenting the battle afar off. All would be peace, and Christ, the Prince of Peace, would reign. And then it would be said: "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever."
But the world is carnal. Every carnal man desires peace, but he wants it in his own selfish way. Every political party wants peace, but according to its own selfish policies. Every nation wants peace, as the response to the recent Peace Conference proved, but each wants it in harmony with its own selfish aspirations, as the farce of the "peace" proceedings demonstrate.
Peace is impossible while human hearts remain unchanged. Just as long as men's hearts are ruled by selfishness, just so long the demons of lust and of greed and of war will control; they will heap high the burdens of standing armies and increased pensions for mutilated manhood, of heavier taxation, and the increase of all that is evil, cloaking all under the names of martial glory, patriotism, manifest destiny, benevolent assimilation, and similar pretty phrases.
We are not condemning the world for doing just what is the inevitable logic of the carnal mind. For war is but one of "the works of the flesh." But we are saying by the authority of the Word of God that in the world—even tho it may be called "Christian," in whole or in part—there is no peace.
War preparations are increasing mightily. The strong and the weak nations of earth are borne down with their armor. In the medley of the nations the seductive voice of optimists sing of peace, while the serious statesmen predict the on-coming war. It is a strange bewildering chorus, and only the soul in harmony with God's law, the great harmonic chord of the universe, can hear amid all the discords, the trumpet of the eternal God pealing forth the truth for this generation.
War is inevitable. Notwithstanding the profession of Christianity, there are more men trained for war now than any other generation of men ever saw, and the strongest armies are composed of professed followers of Him who said: "For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."
All nations have drunken of the wine of Babylon, and imbibed her warlike spirit. The trio of demons are out into the world among the nations of earth "to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Rev. 16:13. We are living in the time foretold by the weeping prophet, when the nations are drinking from "the wine cup" of God's fury—the result of sin, "and they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad." See Jeremiah 25.
Men may cry, "Peace, peace;" but there is no peace save in Christ Jesus. They who know His peace, after the short strife of this world is over, will reign with Him forever, and "delight themselves in the abundance of peace."