A World Federation

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 3, 1914

A World Federation

IN a recent address in Boston, Hamilton Holt, the editor of the Independent, had for his subject “The Federation of the World.” He expressed the sentiment that in this lies the success of the great modern peace movement. He advocated the calling of a third Hague conference, and that one of the first steps looking toward universal peace be to put into practical effect Winston Churchill’s suggestion of a naval holiday. The idea of a world federation is coming more and more prominently to the front. It is suggested in both political and religious circles. There is no question but that it will be one of the accomplishments of the near future; and when it is finished, it will be both a political and a religious federation, with the religious element in the ascendancy.

Most Protestant commentators are still agreed in saying that the beast power spoken of in the first part of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation refers to the papacy, which was the great ecclesiastical despotism of the Middle Ages. The world has been educated into the idea that religious bigotry, religious intolerance, and religious despotism are things of the past; but this prophecy in the thirteenth of Revelation, speaking of the papal head, not only calls attention to the deadly wound that it received, but immediately informs us that this wound was to be healed.

Most literally did the papal power receive a deadly wound through the great work of the Reformation, and many people fondly hoped that that power would never be restored. But this prophecy has been saying, all these years, that the deadly wound would be healed; and not only so, but we have the strikingly significant words, that “all the world wondered after the beast,” and again, that “all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear.”

In the seventeenth chapter of Revelation, the kings of the earth—the civil power—are considered in this great last-day federation, and of them it is said that “these have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.”

There are conditions growing up in the world that baffle the strongest minds. The papacy will step to the front, claiming to be the only power that can handle the complex situation and the turbulent difficulties that have been produced in the world. She is making and will continue to make the claim that these perplexing conditions have been produced because she was dethroned, and finally the whole world will fall in line with her.

The political world is now afraid of her. There is not a nation on earth, not even excepting the United States, but that reckons with her power; and many decisions are made contrary to the best judgment of those who are acting, and all because of the fear of giving offense to Rome. The world is headed strongly toward a great universal religious despotism, and of course all religious despotisms must ride into power and maintain their supremacy through dominating the state as well as the church.

To men who ignore the word of God, this world confederacy will appear as the only solution of present-day problems. But there stands the word of the divine Book pointing out the whole thing, and men who will study the Book can see it clearly, and when all is accomplished, and the great climax is reached at the second coming of Christ, with what chagrin will men see that they have turned aside the clearest light that divine love and divine foreknowledge could present!