the world organization hopefully and optimistically called the United Nations. It is hailed as the last and only hope for abiding peace, and we are told emphatical ly that if it fails, the hope of the world is gone. Again and again we hear the statement, “ Our last hope for this world in this atomic age lies in the United Nations.” We do not question the sincerity and honesty and earnest ness of our diplomats, but we emphatically disagree that the final hope of the world for peace lies in the United Nations. The United Nations, like all the efforts of man, will not achieve its noble objectives, until the King of Kings brings in Everlasting Peace. Jesus Christ is the only hope of this world; and until He comes, all the efforts of man must fail to fully achieve the dream of the tower of Babel. The present efforts to guarantee “ one united world” follow exactly the pattern laid down in the building of the city and the tower of Babel. According to the Bible and from the precedent of history, it can only result in another political and re ligious Babel. We have but to go back to Genesis 11 for the answer. We repeat it here. After Nimrod’s at tempt to produce a one-world security by the building of a city (the political side of Babylon) and a tower (the religious side), God finally steps in to assert His au thority. In all these efforts of men, God is left out. Man dreams that by his own efforts he can attain his goal and bring in a man-made millennium and Utopia, and so we read in the account of the first attempt at a United Nations: “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. “ Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. “ So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city” (Gen. 11:6-8). This is God’s answer to man’s efforts to bring about the solution of the world’s problems. While man is seek ing this coveted goal, the Psalmist says God laughs at their feeble, futile efforts: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision” (Psalm 2:4). “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Psalm 2:6). The important word in this verse is “yet” . It means “ nevertheless” or “ in spite of” man’s efforts to save him self, God’s program will go through; and He will send the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, and establish the Kingdom foretold by all the prophets and then the dream of man will find its ful fillment in the Kingdom of Christ on earth. This is the joyous prospect which lies before us, as we study the unmistakable signs of the times. Man has about reached the end of his efforts to bring in the “ peace on earth, good will to men” ; and before the threatened catastrophe strikes, the Lord of glory will appear and then He shall— “ Judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow shares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4).
G o d h a s a long-range plan for this world, a plan con ceived in the council of eternity, which will be consummated in the end of the age in a world-wide kingdom of peace and righteousness. There lies in the future, according to numerous passages of Scripture, a golden age of peace and prosperity when wars shall be no more and all the nations will be united under one head and one government, speak one language, and dwell in peace and harmony upon this earth. This era of bless ing, the future hope of this war-torn world, will be ush ered in by the personal return of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Until He, the Prince of Peace, comes there will and can be no lasting and abiding peace. Man will continue frantically to try to form a United World Alliance to insure peace and universal prosperity, only to have his efforts end in failure and the greatest war in history, the battle of Armageddon. And then, just before man succeeds in annihilating himself in this atomic end battle of the ages, the Lord will return, judge the nations, fully restore Israel, and set up His glorious millennial reign upon the earth, “ And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord” (Zech. 14:9). This is God’s future United Nations government over all the earth. And not only will there be universal, inter national, political unity, but also religious unity; for verse 16 states that all nations: “ . . . shall even go up from year to year to wor ship the King, the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 14:16). Genesis 11:1-4 is the first organized attempt ot man to establish a united kingdom and a united, universal world religion. It was a human scheme in opposition to God’s plan. This grandiose scheme for a one-world government and a one-world religion was conceived in the mind of a man, Nimrod, the first clear shadow and type of the superman of the end time, the Man of Sin, the Anti christ, who just before the return of Christ to set up His kingdom will succeed for a brief period in bringing about a union of all nations and a mock millennium of peace. This last effort at a truly United World will follow the pattern of this first attempt of Nimrod in the building of Babel. The irrepressible dream and yearning of the heart of man, since sin entered the world, has been for a United World of peace and prosperity, when war shall be no. more and all the world shall be at .rest, in a state of social and economic equality and religious unity. The first great organized attempt was in the building of the city of Ba'bel by Nimrod in Genesis 11. It was a union of church and state, a political city and a religious tower of Babel. Although this dream was frustrated by the in tervention of the Lord, the dream has never died, being revived again and again in the attempts of the great empires of history,—Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Hitler’s Germany, and modem Russia. Today this unsatisfied yearning has been revived after the disastrous experience of three great wars in one generation, and now the terrible threat of atomic destruction exists. Russia dreams of a superstate and world domination under the ideological dream of uni versal communism. The same undying, overpowering de sire for a one-world of peace, security, and prosperity finds its expression in the effort to establish a United Nations organization to insure peace. After all the efforts of the nations of history have failed, and the League of Nations organization to insure peace. After all the efforts
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MAY, 1962
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