Friends of Peace Will Meet
By Editor
A FEDERATION of a dozen or thereabouts of peace organizations have arranged to meet in Chicago, September 5 and 6. The program provides for a "grand peace demonstration on Labor Day, September 6." The principal sessions of the convention will be held at the colosseum, but overflow meetings will assemble in various other auditoriums. The convention is an outgrowth of big peace meetings held in Madison Square Garden, New York, June 24, at which it was claimed a hundred thousand persons assembled; and later at San Francisco, where the estimate is made that one hundred and twenty thousand people attended. One of the chief objects of the convention will be "to voice the existing overwhelming sentiment against America's participation in the present world conflict." The various churches are "invited to send to the convention as many delegates as possible, as the sentiment against war will be measured largely by the number of delegates." Among the renowned speakers that are expected to address the convention are the Hon. William J. Bryan, the Hon. James Nagel, Senators Hoke Smith of Georgia, Works of California, Hitchcock of Nebraska, and Clapp of Minnesota, Congressmen Mann and Buchanan of Illinois, the Hon. Mr. Porter, Ex-Governor Pennypacker of Pennsylvania, and Miss Jane Addams of Chicago, as well as many clergymen and other scholars of national reputation. Movements looking toward the peace of the world are being inaugurated everywhere; and sooner or later, without much doubt, these combined influences will meet with apparent success, for it is difficult to see how the prophecies concerning the world-wide message of the soon coming of Christ can be fulfilled without a further time of peace in which to accomplish this work. And it is only proper that we should hail every movement that is truly working for the peace of the world, since God will doubtless use such movements in fulfilling the remarkable prophecy in the book of Revelation which tells of His divine power holding the winds of war in this time when the nations are so angry. But while recognizing all true efforts for peace, we at the same time must not lose sight of the prophecies, particularly those in Isaiah and Micah, as well as some of the statements of Paul, which predict world-wide peace movements that are based upon wrong principles, and that are doomed to utter disappointment. There will come a time, in the very last of the last days, when the people as a whole will be "saying, Peace and safety." Paul unmistakably affirms this. Hence, while the student of Bible prophecy, being a follower of the Prince of peace, will ever favor peace, and will ever work to secure it, yet on the other hand, he will know that it is useless to hope for any permanent peace in this wicked world. We are living in the time when the prophecies have foretold that the nations will be angry. Three or four years ago, when strong men were affirming that we would never have any more wars, because the world had become too intelligent and too businesslike to engage in such destructive work, the students of prophecy were everywhere proclaiming that the seers of old had foretold that wars, the worst the world has ever known, would characterize the last days. Moreover, they affirmed that the whole world, in the madness of demoniacal war, would meet on the battle fields of Armageddon just before the second coming of Christ. The war now raging in Europe is not this Armageddon war. In all probability, it will be succeeded by the profoundest time of peace, to outward, superficial appearances, that the world has ever seen. But if we are standing in the light that is shining from the Guidebook, we will not be entrapped by the fatal delusion; for Armageddon lies on just ahead of us, just as surely as God is God and has spoken through His word.