ISAIAH’S PROPHECY STILL UNFULFILLED

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, May 12, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 19

ISAIAH’S PROPHECY STILL UNFULFILLED.

A CLERGYMAN of this city, preaching about Christianity and war, last Sunday, was forced to come to the conclusion that the day is still far off when, as Isaiah prophesied, the nations would beat their swords into plowshares and learn war no more.

Christian France has only just come to peace with heathen China after the useless slaughter of thousands of human beings. Christian England is still fighting the Mohammedans of the Soudan. In Central America hostilities which may more and more involve this country are now going on. In Canada the Riel rebellion of Christianized Indians against those who had converted them, is to-day in progress, and the war may be long and bloody. France makes threatening demonstrations against Egypt. Ireland is pervaded by a spirit of bitter animosity against England, which would delight to express itself in a bloody conflict. All Europe is armed to the teeth, and the military preparations of the powers are on a scale of magnitude never before equalled. Finally, England and Russia, two great Christian nations, make ready for a probable war, induced by the greed of conquest of the one and the determination of the other to hold fast conquests made long ago.

The prophecy of Isaiah, therefore, is not likely to be fulfilled in the nineteenth century, and war has been and still is about as much the business of Christians as it was of the pagans before the day when Christ preached the brotherhood of man and celebrated the virtues of meekness and humility.

A few years ago people were flattering themselves that so stupid a method of settling differences between nations was about to give place to peaceful arbitration, and that the time was near at hand when two countries would no more think of resorting to arms against each other than two great merchants would propose to engage in a slugging match to settle a dispute about accounts.

Yet since that time the European armaments have been extended to an unprecedented degree, and wars have been in continual progress. Krupp’s gun foundry has become the greatest industrial establishment in Germany, and the most active inventive and scientific minds the civilized world over are devoting themselves to the perfection of the engines of warfare, so that they shall be more destructive. To-day the busiest industries in this country are the manufactories of munitions of war, and they are turning out cartridges by the hundred million to be used in killing human beings. Russia is ready to fall on English commerce in case of war, hoping to drive thousands of peaceful ships from the seas. She is planting torpedoes in her harbors to blow up the great vessels of her enemy and destroy the lives of their crews, and in the dock-yards and gun shops of the empire the hours of labor upon the engines of war are lengthened by the use of the electric light which Christian civilization has introduced. Night and day the workers are ceaselessly at their toil completing all sorts of infernal machines. Like preparations for wholesale slaughter are going on in England, where the government has thousands of men at work to get ready ships and munitions of war, and is giving orders for the building of great numbers of other vessels, more guns, more torpedoes, and more shot and shell. Hospitals for multitudes of wounded men are going up on the borders of Afghanistan, ambulances are manufactured by the thousand, lint is scraped, and surgeons are sharpening their knives.

All these horrible preparations for coming slaughter are going on in the sight of the civilized and Christian world, and they are made by nations which daily send up their prayers to the Lord of peace and righteousness. They are made not only in contravention of the teachings of Christ, but even in contemptuous disregard of them; and yet Christendom is not shocked, is not surprised any more than we are surprised to see two bulldogs snap at each other in the street. Christendom rather stands by wondering that the fight has not already begun, and ready to visit with its derision either power which refrains from war because it would avoid bloodshed. We hear, at least, of no general assembling of the Christians of Europe and America to protest against the awful struggle as a crime against the religion of Christ. A few advocates of peace on principle have begged the English government to desist, but they are laughed at as cranky visionaries even by the clergy, who declare that it is craven for an Englishman to obey the precepts of Christianity and not retaliate for a blow.

All this may seem very commonplace, but why is it commonplace? Is it not because such a thing as genuine Christianity has almost no existence in the world? People do not expect to see the teachings of the sermon on the mount obeyed, but treat them as impracticable, as beautiful poetry merely. In their individual dealings they do not pretend to be governed by them, and collectively they disregard them as a matter of course.—New York Sun, April 28, 1885.