FOR years, the great nations of Europe have been standing, as it were, on the crater rim of a great volcano, which threatened every moment to belch forth its white-hot lava, and overwhelm them.
Statesmen and diplomats of the powers have seen in the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor the key to world empire, and no nation has been willing that another should wrest this prize from the Turk. For some years, a keen diplomatic contest has been in progress at Constantinople, and this has resulted in increasing friction between the great nations.
Speaking of the calamity that would accompany the fall of the Ottoman empire, Lord Salisbury, in his Mansion House speech, in London, in 1895, said:
"It would not merely be the danger that would threaten the territories of which that empire consists; it would be the danger that the fire there lit should spread to other nations, and should involve all that is most powerful and civilized in Europe in a dangerous and calamitous contest."
In an article entitled "The Ominous Hush in Europe," by H. R. Chamberlain, appearing in the October number of McClure's Magazine, 1909, the following sentences occur:
"It is to the imperative interests of all peoples to take cognizance of the facts of the specific international situation, to recognize the crisis toward which the affairs of man are tending, and to seek to avert the almost equal evils of war or peace in the conditions that threaten to supervene."
Mr. Chamberlain quotes from a speech delivered by Lord Rosebery before the press delegates in June, 1909, as follows:
"There never was in the history of the world so threatening and so overpowering a preparation for war. That is a sign which I confess I regard as most ominous."
The same year, Sir Edward Grey, minister of foreign affairs in the British cabinet, speaking in the House of Commons regarding the enormous preparations for war, said, "The whole of Europe is in the presence of a great danger."
The editor of the North American Review wrote in the September, 1914, number thus:
"Well, the great conflagration has come at last, and to-day all Europe is wrapped in flames."
Careful Bible students have not been surprised that statesmen should thus express their fears; for more than twenty-five hundred years ago, Jeremiah in prophetic vision was permitted to behold conditions now prevailing in this world. In writing of this, he said:
"I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled." Jer. 4: 19, 20.
More than twenty-seven hundred years ago, the prophet Joel wrote of our times as follows:
"Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong." Joel 3: 9, 10.690
For more than half a century, Seventh-day Adventists have taught publicly, from the pulpit and in their literature, that troublous times were before us; that eventually all the nations of earth would be involved in wars which would lead at last to the war of "the great day of God"—the battle of Armageddon.
In about 1890, Mrs. E. G. White, a very prominent Seventh-day Adventist writer and lecturer, wrote thus: "We are standing upon the threshold of great and solemn events. . . . Prophecies are being fulfilled, and stormy times are before us. Old controversies which have apparently been hushed for a long time will be revived, and new controversies will spring up; new and old will commingle, and this will take place right early. The angels are holding the four winds, that they shall not blow, until the specified work of warning is given to the world; but the storm is gathering, the clouds are loading, ready to burst upon the world, and to many it will be as a thief in the night. . . . All heaven is represented to me as watching the unfolding of events. A crisis is to be revealed in the great and prolonged controversy in the government of God on earth. Something great and decisive is to take place, and that right early."
As a further indication of the teaching of Seventh-day Adventists regarding the meaning of present world conditions, I quote from the same writer the following that appeared in print in 1909:
"The fast fulfilling signs of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand. The days in which we live are solemn and important. . . . The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude.
"The agencies of evil are combining their forces, and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones.
"The condition of things in the world shows that troublous times are right upon us. The daily papers are full of indications of a terrible conflict in the near future."
Europe Sick unto Death
Careful students of prophecy have long foreseen the gathering of the storm clouds; and their voices have often been raised and their pens employed in forewarning, that all might know what to expect, and how to escape the general ruin which must shortly follow.
What do these things mean? Are they not symptoms of some serious malady that threatens the life of the nations, and that, unless cured, must end in their dissolution?
"Beneath this fair exterior of power and glory, a canker has long eaten into Europe's very heart—the canker of jealousy and internecine hatred, which threatens to put all in jeopardy, and which menaces its warring children with a sudden fall to the dead level of a common ruin. Europe has long been sick—perhaps sick unto death. The forty years' peace has been no peace, only a feverish truce, wherein national rivalries and racial hatreds have intensified and deepened until the day of reckoning was bound to come. That mad piling up of fleet upon fleet and army upon army against which so much rhetoric has been expended these later years has been but the most striking symptom of a disease curable only by a fundamental change in the European state of mind, a malady which no machinery of arbitration could reach—only the conversion of the European soul."
The Supreme Convulsion
"And of late, this disease has plainly been growing worse. Four times in the last nine years, Europe's feverish frame has been racked by an acute crisis portending the inevitable end. 1905, 1908, 1911, 1912: the crises have been becoming more frequent, more violent, more general. It really could not have gone on much longer. Therefore it is not at all surprising that the little war on the middle Danube should have sent all Europe forthwith into the supreme convulsion; the miracle would have been had it been put off another year."—"Europe at Armageddon," the North American Review, September, 1914.
Not only is Europe "sick unto death," but all the world is manifestly afflicted with the same deadly malady. The symptoms that have long been apparent in Europe are becoming more or less apparent in every quarter of the globe. The canker that has long eaten into Europe's heart is likewise eating into Asia's heart, into Africa's heart, and into the heart of the youngest child of the great family—America.
There is but one remedy that can ever cure this disease, and but one physician who can administer it. That remedy is the cross of Calvary, and that physician is Jesus.
Individuals in all nations are to-day accepting the remedy for the deadly malady of sin, and the great Physician is successfully treating their cases. The Redeemer is also preparing a kingdom where the deadly miasma of sin in any form will never enter, one that will stand through the eternal ages.
Unfailing Symptoms of Dissolution
The supreme convulsion into which so many of earth's nations have been thrown, as viewed in the light of the prophetic Word, is seen to be an unfailing symptom of approaching dissolution.
"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows." "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Matt. 24: 7, 8, 14.
"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." "When ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." Luke 21: 25-27, 31.
"And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldest give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear Thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth." Rev. 11: 18.
"I saw three unclean spirits . . . which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." Rev. 16: 13-15.
As the gathering of the Roman armies about Jerusalem was an unfailing sign, to the Judean Christians, of its impending destruction, so to-day, to the student of the prophetic Word, the gathering of from twenty to thirty million men on the fields of carnage, from fourteen of earth's great nations, and the feverish haste manifested in the preparation for war, on the part of all nations not now engaged in conflict, point unfailingly to the speedy destruction of all the nations of earth, and the establishment of the eternal kingdom of righteousness and peace. We are driving toward the Armageddon of the Bible. Tremendous changes will soon take place.
