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.
Air-Ship Raids on London
RUMORS through the daily press are persistent that Germany is successfully building a mighty fleet of Zeppelins to sail across the channel and hover over London while it drops upon the city its mighty engines of death. The reports say that one factory alone, with a thousand workmen engaged, is turning out one of the big Zeppelin air-ships every three weeks. One of these latest Zeppelins is said to carry torpedoes and bombs capable of as much damage as the shells of the famous sixteen-inch siege-guns that had been kept secret and that were brought out for the first time in the recent destruction of the Belgian forts.
These reports are probably greatly exaggerated; but nevertheless, who can imagine the horror of living in a city with the constant dread of being awakened by a fleet of such destructive monsters hovering overhead? All the nations are building similar war implements, and they are building them with the expectation of having to use them.
When we consider what is meant by dropping such bombs out of the sky upon defenseless homes—killing innocent children and defenseless men and women—it shows that our boasted civilization is a miserable sham.
When Christ was here in person, there was great religious ostentation and show. People claimed the highest form of devotion and morality. Priest and ruler engaged in their religious ceremonies in the most devout manner. From the standpoint of outward appearance, they were holy men, living above reproach. But these selfsame persons dragged the sinless Christ from Gethsemane by way of the judgment-hall to Calvary and the cross. They put Him to death in the most shameful, cruel manner; and while doing this, they vociferously professed their belief in the prophecies of their Bible, which taught that He was to come.
If we may believe the prophecies of this same Bible, they show us that at the close of time, there will arise a class of men who will have the same sham pretensions of devotion and piety, but who in reality know nothing whatever of the Christ they claim to adore.
Men have been boasting of our great Christian nations; but the Author of Christianity has ever told us that the straight and narrow way would find but few people in it, and He has said that in the last great day many will come to Him saying, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity."
We should study the Bible to see how plainly it unmasks the sham of these times, and with what remarkable clearness it shows the vortex of destruction toward which this world is headed. Our hope as individuals is in the Christ who was crucified by the sham professors over nineteen hundred years ago, and who, if He appeared in His blessed simplicity and advocacy of truth and righteousness, would be crucified in the twentieth century by the very men who are now professing His name.
Professing Christianity does not make us Christians. Men who are full of hate and of a determination to kill their fellows, and who would take a god of commercial supremacy, are not Christian, no matter how high their pretensions, nor how eloquent their prayers.
Jesus of Nazareth, looking down to this time in which we live, raised the question, "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8.
Urging National Defenses
THE question of our national defenses and the building of more battle-ships, etc., promises to be one of the most earnestly discussed propositions that will receive the attention of the present Congress. The president and his cabinet are determined that this nation shall keep out of war. They do not believe that it is necessary to build big guns, big battle-ships, and equip large armies, in order to do it. On the other hand, some of the most influential editors of the time are writing the strongest editorials that they know how to write, in favor of this nation's plunging with feverish earnestness into the building of super-Dreadnoughts, big guns, submarines, and all the rest of that kind of equipment, and then organizing an army and a naval force commensurate with the equipment provided.
In New York City a "National Security League" was organized for the purpose of supporting those who are in favor of building these proposed armaments. It is said that the league is composed of some of the strongest and most influential men in the nation. If we get at the real sentiments of these men who are urging the war equipment so strongly, we will find that they will all express themselves in favor of peace; but they fear for the safety of the nation unless the "mailed fist," with the display of its mighty power, is kept waving in the foreground. This shows that regardless of the sentiments of men to the contrary, the divine Book was correct in saying that in the time of the end the nations would be angry.
War-Stricken Sufferers
By Editor
THE suffering in the various sections of war-afflicted Europe grows more and more intense as the rigors of the winter are upon them. They not only have to suffer for want of food and clothing, but for shelter as well. The generous-hearted people of America are relieving a great deal of this distress, but there is still much to be done. Our hearts must be touched with the suffering, especially of little children, women, and invalids. In such a time as this, each individual should do everything within his power to relieve this distress.
Our people, from the first, have had an organized plan for assisting these suffering people. We have agents right on the ground who are carefully doing the work of distributing the funds. Thousands of dollars has already been raised and forwarded, and many other thousands is still needed. Persons desiring to assist in this good work may send their contributions to the treasurer of the Pacific Press Publishing Association, Mountain View, California, and they will be promptly forwarded through our responsible and trustworthy agencies.
Russia and Vodka
RUSSIA has awaked to the fact that she can not feed her soldiers on bread if she uses her rye and wheat and oats for the manufacture of vodka. Hence the Russian Duma has passed a law that the manufacture and sale of spirituous liquors in every form shall cease. Incidentally this is a great blessing for their nation. Much moral good will come out of it. But the action was taken largely because of the necessity of having bread in order to win success in the present war. Bread would form a better basis for success than would vodka or any other spirituous drink, with other people as well as with the Russian soldier.
Civilization, Literature, and War
By William Henry Smith
It is said that juries in Arizona have been and are very slow to convict a person accused of murder, but yet that there has been a great decrease in the proportion of homicides to the population. This is thought to be due to the fact that as the country becomes settled, the custom of carrying a "gun" is dropped. In outlying districts, where it still prevails, homicides are much more numerous proportionally. Perhaps if real civilization could once get into the saddle and take the reins of government in the Old World and the New, a similar decrease in the preparations for international murder would come, and have a similar effect. W. H. S.
WE are continually reading of remarkable instances of conversion resulting from the reading of a scrap of literature picked up by accident. There is danger that we will take this as evidence that the work will go whether we help or not. It will; but we must be in it, if we are true to our colors, and share the final reward. Such incidents serving to show the power of the printed message, should only make us more zealous in circulating it. Coupled with personal influence, it can always accomplish more.
WRITING from the front, amid the strain and horror of the field hospital work, a nurse says, "If there ever is another war after this massacre, then the whole human race should be blown to pieces, and completely wiped out of existence." There is some reason to think that there will be more wars, and the last of them will end in a way much like annihilation of the race,—in the blotting out of the participants at the coming of Christ. W. H. S.
No Paper Next Week
By Editor
THIS issue concludes the volume for 1914; and following our custom that has obtained for years, there will be no issue of the paper next week. The next number will be dated January 5, 1915. Many of our friends, not noticing this announcement of the dropping out of a paper, think that they are missing an issue, and so write to us saying that their paper has failed to come. We hope that all will read this note, and will thereby understand our plan, and will not occasion us a lot of unnecessary correspondence, especially in view of the fact that our necessary correspondence is unusually heavy just now.