The War Storm Spreading
By Editor
TURKEY has at last been drawn into this Old World conflict, which was certainly bad enough already. And since Turkey has been drawn into it, there is hardly a possibility that Italy and the Balkan States can be kept out. Strong influences are brought to bear upon Italy to have her join in the strife. Her war party is so vigorous in its activities that quite likely by the time this paper reaches our readers, she will be lined up in the conflict, and possibly the Balkan States will have followed her. How these things show the mad spirit of war that is in the world! And how literally do they fulfil the great word of the prophet, that in the time when the Judgment hour was pending, the nations of earth would be enraged! Men have been talking peace, because they were counting on the "Christian nations" to keep the peace. It was recently pointed out by a leading editor in Montreal that "if this were not an epoch of sham and hypocrisy, the fact that nations are making use of their tools of destruction would not cause so loud an outcry of astonishment and horror." We do have a loud outcry against the war; but nevertheless, all the nations involved so far, with the exception of Turkey and Japan, are what are called the great Christian nations of the Old World. Now, if their Christianity were genuine, they would not be embroiled in this war. Hence the truthfulness of the Montreal editor's assertion concerning the sham and hypocrisy of this time. The cruelties and the barbarities of war are in no sense related to Christianity. If an individual will take the pains to search the Old Testament records which tell of God's directing the movements of ancient Israel in times of war, he will find that the nations which Israel was commissioned to destroy were so degraded and hopelessly vile that the only merciful thing to do was to destroy them. God destroyed the old world by a flood, and He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by fire, for the reason that wickedness had become so great that the condition was absolutely hopeless, and their destruction was the only merciful course. In like manner, nations were visited by destructive wars; but we have the record of God's waiting four hundred years before sending war upon the Amorites until their iniquities would become full. God does destroy hopeless wickedness — sometimes in one way, and sometimes in another. But He does not lead in the ordinary wars, even though the people that are engaged in them may be professing His name; and it is wicked for ministers of the gospel, who pretend to understand and know His word, to teach that cruelties of ordinary war have the authority and direction of God. For wise purposes, God may not restrain in some of these wars; but He has foretold that the spirits of demons would be the power working in the times in which we are living. One of the characteristics of Satan is to seek, in fiendish delight, to charge his deeds upon God, and get men to believe that He is the author of them.