Pope Benedict and This War
POPE BENEDICT proposes an armistice among the nations during the Christmas holidays. The pope has made frequent appeals and suggestions of a similar character. There is a conviction growing in many quarters that the religious element must intervene to settle this conflict. Protestants as well as Catholics are saying that if the religious power had been doing its duty, we would not have had this war. The pope is regarded, by a growing class of people, as the only world power that is sufficiently neutral and influential to step in and talk peace among the warring nations. A very significant thing was done by England a few days ago when she sent Sir Henry Howard, whose picture appears on another page of this paper, as an ambassador from England to the papal throne. Other nations that have not maintained ambassadors at the papal court are talking of following Great Britain's example. This shows how the world is turning toward the papacy as a power that will help them in solving many of these difficulties. The individual who has carefully studied the prophecies of the book of Revelation knows that a great religious despotism is one of the things that will arise at the very close of time. The currents are already running very strong in that direction. One of the things, without much question, that will grow out of this war will be the religious power standing forth in a position of influence that this world has not known since the Middle Ages. That religious power will be a combination of professed Protestantism with the papacy standing at the head. The greater part of the Protestant world has ceased to protest, and is coming more and more to harmonize with the papal plan. We are standing upon the eve of developments that will throw the religious strength of the world to the front, and place it upon the throne of power; and some of the worst persecutions that have ever been known will come as the result of it. If you have not been studying the prophecies which disclose this thing, this statement may come to you as a jarring, discordant note; but please do not throw it aside as unworthy of your consideration. Study the prophetic Word, and compare it with the tides of influence that are running in this world. Unless we are blinded by prejudice, or refuse absolutely to receive the divine warnings, we ought to be able to observe, particularly in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation, that God has foretold a mighty religious conflict as one of the very last things to occur in the last days. In the thirteenth chapter, He tells of a religious power that would arise demanding worship and seeking to enforce its mark and its image. In the fourteenth chapter there is proclaimed against this false worship one of the most thrilling warnings that were ever placed in human language. These things mean something, and our eyes should be wide open to the divine predictions and to the events in the world that are fulfilling them.