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December, 1945
When He Returns
Because our Lord was human, too, perhaps some day His feet May seek the scenes where once He trod; His heart may find it sweet To see again the manger where the Lord of glory lay. His boyhood home in Nazareth, fields where He used to play; But when He stands on Olive's brow, where once His brow sweat blood. And where He prayed that night, alone, "Thy will, not mine, O God," Although they hail Him Lord of lords, and mighty, everlasting King, While men and angels praise His name. His heart will pause, remembering. —Martha Snell Nicholson. And sometimes He may linger on the shores of Galilee, Or find again the winding road which led to Bethany.
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Peace Among Men of Good Will (Continued from Page 457) Whv Wars Are Inevitable
things: he saved his own family, and he condemned the world, Including himself, there were only eight persons saved; everyone else in the world was drowned. Upon leaving the ark after the flood had dried up, Noah built an altar unto Jehovah, and offered burnt- offerings thereon, the odor of which rose to Heaven as a sweet savour. Not only in saving his family, but also in taking a stand against the wicked world of his day, Noah “smelled -good” to God. Fragrant Offerings In the offerings of Leviticus, there were sweet savour and non-sweet savour offerings. Of course, they -all typified the:one offering of Christ on Calvary. Dr. C. I.: Scofield commented thus on this subject: “The sweet savour offerings are so called because they typify Christ in His own perfections, and in His affectionate devotion, to His Father’s will. The non-sweet savour offerings typify Christ as bearing the whole demerit of the sinner. Berth are substitutional. In our place Christ, in the burnt- offering, makes good our lack of devotedness, and in the sin- 9 ffering and. trespass-offering, suffers because of our disobedience.” In all of this pouring out His soul unto death, He was.a sweet fragrance to the Father. Isaiah, in describing Christ as the King upon His Millennial throne, states that Jesus is “ of quick under standing in the fear of the Lord” (Isa. 11:3). However, the Revised Version marginal reading shows the original Hebrew rendering to be: “ quick of scent.” This was revealed when Peter sought to dissuade1 Jesus from going to the Cross (Matt. 16:21-23). “But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Peter did not “smell good” to his Lord ,on that- occasion. Calvary and Christmas It was in order that He might go to Calvary that Jesus was born. Bethlehem was only the door to Calvary. It is not by His birth that we are saved, but by His death. The event which should be celebrated by Christians is that “ decease” which He accomplished at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31) rather than that birth which took place in Bethlehem. Certainly we thank God for Christmas, for without Christmas there could have been no Gethsemane, no Golgotha, no Calvary, no resurrection morn. From our hearts we cry: “ Thanks be unto God for His unspeak able gift”!
Now, no right thinking person wants war. Wars have only losers; some lose more than others; no one ever wins. “Blood and sweat and tears” are war's in evitable concomitants. But, as General George S. Patton recently reminded us, those who believe that wars are the result of “logical events” and that wars are finished for all time are mere “wishful thinkers.” “For,” said he, “no wars are logical, because logical thinkers would not create them. There fore, we have to conclude that wars are started by mad men—madmen who claim some kind of outrage. Since 1812, 133 years, there have been nine wars in which the United States has participated. In every one except the War between the States, they were fought outside of the United States! Who, except God, is capable of tell ing when or where a situation will occur that will de velop another madman? .And who can tell,” concluded General Patton, “if the next madman will be fully clothed, or in short pants, or diapers?” Pacifists or Realists? When such madmen appear, one must take his stand as either a pacifist or a realist. “Pacifism,” says Dorothy Thompson, “is an individual anticipation of a world society that does not exist.: Though the pacifist, like the rest of us, lives in this world, by rejecting equal moral responsibility for its failures, he invests himself with a righteousness that he does not deserve. He pub licly washes his hands of the dirty business . . . But pacifism is a moral luxury.granted to the few by the many who live life as it is. The pacifist wants to get to Heaven before he dies, and ho lives in a world of pre tense . . . He demands the unique prerogative of divorc ing himself from catastrophe, as though he were not a co-member of the human race . . . Yet pacifism defeats its own purpose. Action in 1933, or as late as 1936, would have m'ade World War II a police expedition, and a rela tively bloodless affair, if it had occurred at alt. But even that was too much for the pacifists.” The realist, on the other hand, deplores war, but rec ognizes that there is something worse than war: for in stance, living under the soul-destroying wickedness of Nazism. Like Dr. George W. Crane, he recognizes that mankind has “changed from sailing ships to the great (Continued on Page 466)
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