IS IT PEACE? by M. C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 9, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 32.

"IS IT PEACE?"

By M. C. Wilcox

TRUE peace is found only in Jesus Christ. Jehovah is "the God of peace." Heb. 13:20. Man is in rebellion against God. "The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. 8:7. The world is composed of carnal men, and the world is in rebellion against God. Being in rebellion against God, the world is by virtue of that condemned to death; "for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die." Verse 13.

Jesus Christ has, by His own life, purchased for the sinner pardon and peace. He took upon Himself sinful flesh, broke down in the flesh "the middle wall of partition" separating man from God, and so became "our peace." It therefore follows, if man wants peace, that he must find it in complete surrender and obedience to God through Jesus Christ. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Rom. 5:1.

To secure the peace we must surrender on the terms proposed by our gracious God. To maintain that peace man must maintain constant submission to God's righteous will. Then he will have peace, peace that floweth "like a river," peace that "passeth all understanding." "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever." Isa. 32:17. So much for the humble, obedient child of faith. The peace of God is his. The world can not take it away.

But of the world—is it peace? The question is not new. Wicked King Joram, led by his wickeder mother, Jezebel, asked the question of the swift on-coming scourge of the house of idolatrous Ahab, "Is it peace, Jehu?" And the answer is applicable now in principle, "What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" How can there be peace when there is rebellion against the God of peace? There can be none.

To-day the world is in rebellion against the "God of peace." They will not choose His ways. Neither is this because they are ignorant of them. In time past men did not know God; "and the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." Acts 17:30.

For nearly two millenniums the Gospel of the Man of Calvary, the Prince of Peace, has been heralded to the world. It has changed tigers to lambs, the fierce to the mild, the dishonest to the honest, the licentious and degrading to the pure and elevating. It swept through the great Roman Empire, and idol shrines fell before it. Its heralds, it is true, gave their lives; but their blood fertilized the Gospel seed sown, and it bore rich harvests of righteousness and peace among men, unsupported save by the Spirit from on high and the eternal truth of the Gospel.

God demonstrated to the world what the Gospel of Christ would do if it could have free course and were willingly received. He showed that that Gospel was not dependent on human worldly-wise plans, or methods, or legislation, or kingly decrees. It needed them not in its promulgation nor defense nor support. The church in that time had one husband—the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone was the Head of the church and the Head of every man.

In an evil day the "mystery of iniquity" wormed its way into the church of Christ through worldly men and half-converted heathen philosophers. They brought the world into the church. The church with a worldly spirit reached out her hands to the State. The State and the Church became united. The union was poison to both. The church became Babylon; committed, in this union, spiritual fornication, and the result was the darkness, the error, the ignorance, the persecution of the Dark Ages.

God, in His mercy, sent the Reformation of the sixteenth century, not based upon the sinful men whom Satan connected with that movement, but founded in the Word of God in contradistinction to "fathers," "councils," "creeds," "popes," "bishops," "priests;" supported not by State power, but by the Holy Ghost.

And God blessed mightily in the Reformation which started so auspiciously, yet which, in a short time, refused to go forward in the increasing light of an open Bible, let the world into her councils, divided, retrograded, and, like the early church, united with the various civil governments of earth. There the divided Protestant Church stands to-day in the Old World; and in America there is an increasing and ever-growing demand that the State shall enforce ecclesiastical dogmas, notably the Sunday.

These governments of earth, in whose boundaries live, praise God, many sincere children of light, call themselves "Christian." But "'tis sad 'tis true," they are Christian only in name. In each and all of these so-called "Christian" powers of earth, despite the high profession, despite an open Bible and a universally-preached Gospel, despite the demonstration of the truth of God's Word in the past history of nations and church, are found oppression of the poor, robbery of the weak, iniquity framed by law, jealousy, deceit, overreaching, political chicanery, rebellion against God. This is emphatically true as regards the fourth precept of God's great moral constitution, the Decalogue. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . . the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God," declares the eternal law. And yet under the influence of the "man of sin" the nations of earth have decreed, are decreeing, or are about to decree that the first day is the Sabbath of the Lord, the Lord's day. What is this but insult to the "Most High," who "ruleth in the kingdom of men"?

"But would you have the governments of earth enforce the Seventh-day Sabbath?" asks one. Not for one moment. In the first place, they can not do it. Human law can not make men holy, nor can it make men keep holy the holy Sabbath. God's plan is that the civil State should forever attend to its own business of enforcing civility among men, protecting the weak against the wickedly strong or evil; and that the church should look to God for power to uphold His own law by establishing it in the hearts of His people.

Here is the condition of the nations of earth. Here is the condition of the great professed Church of Christ, drifting from the Word, drifting with the world, honoring men above the Word, making void the Word by the traditions of men, and following the very course

of the early church, expecting to escape her doom.

"Is it peace?" How can there be peace when there is rebellion in both Church and State against the God of peace, in respect to tradition, to dogma, to statute law, and in practise?

They may cry, "Peace, peace," but "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." Isa. 57:21. Like the troubled, restless sea, casting up from its depths mire and dirt, so the great restless, sobbing, troubled sea of human life, not yielding to the voice of its Maker, knows neither rest nor peace, but continually casts up from its depths the sin, the war, the strife, contained therein. Peace in the government of earth can be founded only when God shall take to Himself His great power and reign.