Earlier text: THE CAUSE OF ALL MISERY

Three Millions to Study Peace

THE Federal Council of Churches has prepared a course of thirteen lessons on international peace, which “will be published during October, November, and December of this year, in the Sunday school and other periodicals of the various churches affiliated with the Federal Council.”

A circulation of three million copies is already assured, and it is expected that the distribution of these studies will reach five million. The lessons “aim to create and crystallize sentiment among professing Christians in the interests of international fraternity and interracial sympathy and appreciation.”

The expressed object of such studies in peace is certainly very highly commendable. Christian people, above all others, should labor to promote peace. They should emphasize the fact that their Master is the Prince of peace, and that they stand for the principles of meekness and lowliness that characterized the Christ of the living God.

But while recognizing and strongly affirming these principles, we must not lose sight of the fact that very many things that pass under the head of religion, and that even assume the name of Christ, are out of harmony with the clearest teaching of His word.

The great leaders of the Jewish nation in the time of Christ were the influential doctors of divinity. They claimed to teach the Bible. They boasted of being the descendants of Abraham, and of inheriting all the glorious history of Israel. Yet those doctors of divinity rejected the Christ that their Bible presented; they crucified the Messiah that their prophets had foretold.

The great theological leaders of the Middle Ages of the Christian era claimed to hold to the Bible. The cross of Christ was their insigne. They made the exalted claim of being the representatives of heaven. Yet in the name of Christ they perpetrated cruelties that were the disgrace of the human family.

And from the same prophets that foretold the suffering of Christ, and also the martyrdoms and suffering of His followers, we learn that the last generation of men will witness delusions the worst that the world has ever seen, and that these will be introduced and promulgated largely through the professing church of Christ. And it will not be Catholicism merely that will thus be deluded and in turn become a deluding power; but there is an “image” foretold by the revelator, that will swing corrupted Protestantism as well as Catholicism into line, and all will combine in flooding the world with deception.

In the time of Christ, those who followed the Bible in reality were not carried away by the delusions of the rabbis that caused the crucifixion of Christ. In the Middle Ages, those who followed the Bible in reality were not borne down by the deception that stained the earth with the blood of the martyrs. And so in the times in which we are living, the only safe course for either Catholic or Protestant—and all others, regardless of any church name or church affiliations—is to know and follow the Bible for himself.

Some of the doctors of divinity in the time of Christ were among God’s true noblemen. The record says that “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Acts 6:7. The Middle Ages produced from among the doctors of divinity some of the mightiest characters in history. And so in this time, we know that history will repeat itself; but the individual must understand and know the sacred Book for himself.

The true doctor of divinity will not impress us with the importance of accepting his views and notions of things, but he will urge upon us the importance of knowing the Word for ourselves, and personally and intelligently following the living Christ by the light of the clear precepts of the living Word.

The Prince of peace says to all His followers that “in Me ye might have peace.” And through His prophet-apostle, He has told us of a great multitude that would be saying, “Peace and safety,” as “sudden destruction” bursts upon them. 1 Thess. 5:3.

The Witness in Himself

“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which He hath testified of His Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself; he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son.”

God has so arranged the plan of salvation that the individual who receives the living Word, the blessed Bible, into his heart, has a witness to the truth that is beyond the powers of controversy. He has the witness in himself down deep in his heart, beyond all of the cavilings of men. He has a personal knowledge of the personal Christ. He knows for himself that God’s word is true. Men may dispute and argue against him, but their disputing and arguing does not change the fact of his definite personal knowledge.

We know our personal friends; and for a stranger to seek to convince us that there are no such individuals, would seem to us not only childish but imbecile. And to the individual who knows Christ for himself, the cavilings of an unbeliever who does not know Him appear as the height of folly.

Do you know Christ personally? Is He a real friend of yours, or is He only an imaginary character about which you have heard but do not really know? Do you have, through the living Word, and by the operations of the divine Spirit, the witness in yourself?

Can Education Alone Save Us?

In an address before the National Educational Association, Dr. David Starr Jordan, chancellor of Stanford University, expressed the thought and the conviction that the world must be saved from the atrocities of war and receive the blessings of permanent peace through the educational and enlightening influences of the school-teacher. The doctor recognizes that “the struggle of the next fifty years” will be “the most intense since the Reformation.”

Speaking of the work confronting the teacher, he said: “The problem is, how to hold in relations of mutual help a world in which mutual destruction has, through the prostitution of science, been made so easy, and in which all the traditions of history and of the limitation of patriotism cause such destruction to lie along the line of least resistance.”

Dr. Jordan has devoted much of his life to emphasizing the advantages and the blessings of peace, and he is a past master in depicting the cruelties, the absurdities, the imbecility of war. Without any question, he has done his full share in creating a sentiment in the world that has made so many rulers ashamed to acknowledge the responsibility of going to war. He was very sanguine in his hopefulness, before this European conflict, that the world would never again go to war.

But while recognizing this splendid work for peace that he and other strong men have done, it is important that the fact should be emphasized that it takes more than mere education, more than mere culture, to keep people from fighting. The culture, the education, the scientific attainments of this time, have combined to produce the most awful scenes of carnage and savage slaughter that the world has ever witnessed. And there are no more highly enlightened, no more profoundly educated, no more thoroughly scientific nations on the face of the earth than those that are now causing rivers of blood to flow all through Europe, with some of the streamlets reaching over into western Asia.

Therefore education and culture are not enough. Men must know the experiences, the hopes, and the divine principles of the Prince of peace in order to avoid wars. Education alone, apart from the experiences of the true Christian, has been shown to be incapable of keeping men from killing one another.

And it should be emphasized that a mere profession of the name of Christ is not sufficient; for have not all the nations at war been known as “Christian nations”? Therefore it is conclusive that mere education and the profession of Christianity are not sufficient barriers against the storms that may be raised by the war gods. A true and personal contact with the blessed Christ Himself is alone sufficient to curb the evil passions and the furies of human anger that so readily burst into the devastating flames of war.

The Coming Crisis

The men of this world, with but few if any exceptions, seem to be convinced that some great event in the form of an awful crisis is impending. There are many who have a hazy idea that this event is the second coming of Christ. These convictions that are stealing over men in spite of themselves show the mighty workings of God's Spirit to save them. If we will only turn to the light that is shining from the pages of the blessed Book, we may learn without a peradventure that the crisis before the world is, to those who are prepared to meet it, the most desirable event of the ages.

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