Signs of the Times by Editor

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

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 43.

Signs of the Times

By Editor

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER 3, 1914

Peace Movements and the Disappointment Awaiting Them

IF there is one thing that is as prominent in this generation as the war spirit and war preparations, it is the peace movements that have been and are being organized. We have international peace societies in New York and Boston, in London, and in various other leading centers of the Old World and the New. One of the strongest of these peace societies is a secular movement organized with a gift of ten million dollars from Mr. Andrew Carnegie in its treasury. More recently Mr. Carnegie gave another two million to found a church peace society, which will be controlled and operated by churchmen.

The Federal Council of Churches, one of the greatest religious organizations that has been perfected in the world's history, has a peace organization as one of its departments.

We have had two international peace conferences at the Hague, and plans are under way for a third one. Numerous other international conferences have been held by these various peace societies.

These organizations have been telling us that the war spirit was doomed, that our civilization would not brook any more wars. Yet some of the strongest writers among these men have recognized the absurdities of some of the positions that were held; for marching in strong array and far in advance of our peace organizations, have been the cohorts of war, with the mightiest armies and navies and the most dreadful equipment that the world has ever seen. While making these preparations for war, diplomats, rulers, and clergymen have mingled in love-feasts of peace. The big guns and the big war-ships have been named "peacemakers," but the building of these "peace-makers" has been impoverishing the nations.

As expressed by Charles E. Jefferson, D. D.:

"A volume setting forth the cost of armies and navies reminds one of a book on astronomy. The only figures used are millions and billions. . . . The imagination is first dazed, and then paralyzed. When one scrutinizes for an hour the tables compiled by the statisticians, showing the cost of armed peace, the mind is stupefied and the heart benumbed. . . . Governments are to-day not only impoverishing the living, but hanging millstones of debt around the necks of generations yet unborn. Guns are bought with borrowed money. The house is being mortgaged that the foolery may go on. All schemes of internal improvement are curtailed and embarrassed, and every program of social betterment is handicapped or postponed. Militarism blights like a pestilential wind the higher life of nations, and eats like a gangrene into the vitals of civilization. The very sinew and bloom of humanity are going into this expanding establishment of gold braid and steel, and the end is not yet. One thing is certain, the world can not go on indefinitely in the direction in which it is now moving. Something is going to break. . . . Well may any man who believes that nations, as well as individuals, are in the grip of inexorable moral law, tremble when he beholds the satanic heartlessness with which the peoples of Christendom are being plundered and oppressed by the ever accumulative expenditures for the enginery of slaughter.

"One is dumbfounded by the impotency of every force which has thus far been called into play for the checking of this militaristic movement. Every sane-minded man confesses that the present policy of the great powers is folly, wickedness, madness."

Dr. Jefferson wrote the foregoing just before the outbreak of this awful European war; and although he is prominently connected with the peace movement, yet he recognized that the unparalleled military preparation could not go on without a crash, and the crash has come.

While depending upon human theories, we are likely to make great mistakes. The theorists in these peace movements have been saying that our civilization and enlightenment ought to keep us from war, and therefore they have reasoned that we would have no more wars. But those who depend upon a stronger source of information than human reason, have known, from the infallible Book of God, that the war spirit in this very generation in which we live would be awful beyond description. This paper for forty years has been pointing to the prophetic Word that foretells it, and we find that the facts in the field of war harmonize with the prediction of the divine prophets. Hence we know, from this same infallible Word, that the men who are even now proclaiming that the awful barbarities of this war are such that they will forever discourage future wars, are doomed to another very sad disappointment.

This European war, with its slaughter of hundreds of thousands, and with the hundreds of thousands of others who are rendered homeless and penniless, has broken the spell of the notion that this world would have no further wars. But the majority of men are preparing to have themselves deluded again. They are depending upon humanity, believing that it will rise above the spirit of war; but the divine Book says:

"Know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away." 2 Tim. 3: 1-5.

And again in the same chapter we read, "Evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." And to these statements may be added the words of the Master:

"And there shall be signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows; men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the things which are coming on the world: for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads; because your redemption draweth nigh." Luke 21 : 25-28.

The Master's coming, according to this scripture, is immediately preceded by a distress among the nations, with perplexity. Men will be fainting for fear, and for expectation of the things that they see coming on the world; but in the face of all of these predictions, even the professed church of Christ will allow itself to depart so far from God's word that many of its teachers will be teaching fables instead of the living truth.

To quote from the Twentieth Century Version of Paul's second letter to Timothy: "I solemnly charge you, in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus, who will one day judge the living and the dead—I charge you by His appearing and by His kingdom—Proclaim the message, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, encourage, never failing to instruct with forbearance. For a time will come when people will not tolerate sound teaching. They will follow their own wishes, and, in their itching for novelty, procure themselves a crowd of teachers. They will turn a deaf ear to the truth, and give their attention to legends instead." 2 Tim. 4: 1-4.

It is a sad commentary on these times, that many men who bear the title of doctors of divinity have, through their so-called higher criticism, introduced wide-spread infidelity right in the church itself. Very recently in our columns we called attention to utterances of doctors of divinity who stand high in the church and in its councils, which are identical with the infidel utterances of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and other men of that class. Men who have thus rejected God's word will not see that their propaganda for peace is upon a wrong basis. They will go on proclaiming "Peace, peace; when there is no peace," until finally, in the language of the apostle Paul, while they are saying, "Peace and safety," "sudden destruction cometh upon them."

We should labor for peace, and we should pray for peace, because we are under the banner of the Prince of peace; but we must keep alive to the fact that the Prince of peace, who knows the end from the beginning, has told us that the closing years of this world's history, while they would be marked with great peace movements, would nevertheless be characterized by the spirits of demons that were marshaling the whole world to the great war of Armageddon.