December, 1934
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
49S
Highly symptomatic is the incongruous fact that Al fred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize for Peace—the man who bequeathed 1,500,000 pounds sterling for his Prize Fund, made his riches through the discovery, in 1866, of dynamite. Later, he created so many other “vil lainous saltpetres” that he held 120 patents in England alone, and controlled fifteen factories for making them throughout the world. You see, “thar’s gold in them thar planes, tanks, gases, bombs, submarines, and battleships!” Unregenerate men may talk loudly of “the brotherhood of man” and blather forth protestations of peace. But the world will lie in greater security when once it is man aged by men bom from above! C ovenant -B reakers Only born-again men can be trusted to keep their cove nants, yet reliability is utterly essential to any disarmament and peace. In 1899, Tsar Nicholas II, impressed by the piling up of armaments in the world, sent out an invita tion to the powers. There was a conference, and the dele gates spent their time making laws prohibiting poison gases, dumdum bullets, and bombs from balloons. The boys who fought fifteen years later on Flanders Field can tell you how much these solemn covenants were worth! The famous German, General Ludendorff, in 1930 wrote that, in the next world war, Aerial and naval warfare will begin immediately in the night of the first day of mobilization. . . . Military operations will be begun in Europe with an elemental fury in the first moment. . . . Everywhere and from the first instant, fighting of unprecedented barbarity will be begun on the land, in the air, and on the sea. Less attention will be paid to interna tional law than in the World War, 1914-18, when the enemy powers exploited it to the utmost All agreements concerning warfare, the prohibition against dropping gas bombs from aeroplanes, for instance, or restrictions concerning the use of submarines, will be ignored. “Wars and rumors of wars” (Matt. 2 4 :6) will continue to the end of the age, simply because unregenerate man is a covenant-breaker. No agreement he can make gives assurance. Where there is no assurance, there is fear. And it is the spirit of fear which haunts the nations today and rushes them forward into piling up the vastest munition dumps of all the centuries. F irst , J oel —T hen , I saiah ! Odd as it may seem, the “sure word of prophecy” sets forth the beating of plowshares into swords and of pruning hooks into speaks as an outstanding sign of the near approach of the day when swords will be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. First comes Joel. Then follows Isaiah. A world familiar with Isaiah’s great prophecy of peace (Isa. 2:4) is not so familiar with Joel’s prophecy of battle: “Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war. . . . Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears” (Joel 3:9, 10). And Joel makes this proclamation of preparation for war the immediate harbinger of the day when “Jerusalem [shall] be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more” (3:17). And in the peace of Jerusalem shall all the nations of the earth find peace! A rmageddon Remember that is it Armageddon of which Joel speaks: “For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat” (Joel 3 :1 ,2 ). And there, in that valley where Jabin’s hosts and their
nine hundred chariots of iron were destroyed, where Sam son with the jawbone of an ass piled the enemies of Jehovah in “heaps upon heaps,” where little David spilled the blood of the mighty giant of Gath, where Josiah fought his fatal fight with Pharaoh-nechoh, where of old “The kings came and fought” and “the stars in their courses fought against Sisera” (Judg. 5 :19, 20)—in that cockpit in which more blood has drenched the ground than in any other equal area on earth—there it is that Arma geddon’s horses will wade blood even to their bridles’ bits (Rev. 14:20). T he L ast C hallenge of O mnipotence If ever a challenge went forth from the almighty God, Joel is the prophet of that challenge: “Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; P repare war !” When on the clock of the Eternal, the hour strikes for the issuance of the order: “Remove the diadem, and take o ff the crown" (Ezek. 21 :26) from the head of “the prince o f this world" (John 14:30), “when iniquity shall have an end" (Ezek. 2 i :25)—when the moment arrives for Him to come and reign “whose right it is" (Ezek. 21:27), then all the Gentile nations of earth will turn from the paths of peace to an unprecedented “preparedness” pro gram. If the Gentiles’ program now beggaring the peo ples of earth is not a fulfillment of this, then, pray, how can it ever be fulfilled ? “Beat your plowshares into swords" — and the unre generate millions rush to obey! “Let the weak say, I am strong" (Joel 3:10)—and the little nations grasp their swords immediately and outrattle the mighty! Austria outrattles England, and Yugoslavia outrattles the United States of America! “Assemble yourselves"-^ t is God’s final summons to Armageddon. “Come, all ye neathen . . . gather yourselves" —and the nations gather! A British Government White Paper declares that 4,000,000 peace time men of war are now standing on guard on the fron tiers of Europe. Military experts reckon that 32,000,000 trained men await the beat of the drum; 7,500,000 men and women in Russia alone would leap for the Red flag at the first shot. And in this hour, authoritative voices in every land are telling us in no uncertain tones that it is not a matter of years, but of months, when the battle flags of the nations will again unfurl, and the scourge of the earth will be on the march— to A rm ageddon tjy - 6 S Lord Rennell (Great Britain) says: “ I spend some months of every year on the Continent, where I have many links and hear many opinions; and wherever I go, I have for the last year or two been deeply impressed with the universal apprehension of the imminence of war. To the question as to what occasion could provoke it, or whose interest it could possibly be to engage in war, no answer is forthcoming. But a menace of war is in the air.” Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the United States Treasury, and a chief adviser of President Roosevelt, re turned as a delegate from the recent London Economic Conference and issued the following statement: “War in Europe in 1934 seems to me inevitable. It is fore shadowed by signs ominously similar to those which were clearly visible in Europe in 1913. . . . Dominant leaders have sought what might be made to appear, before the eyes of the world, ‘just’ cause for a war of ‘defense.’ When that is found, and it is likely to be created, war will break with spectacular suddenness. There will be no in terval permitting mediation. During years of anxiety, general staffs have perfected plans for a far swifter action than was possible twenty years ago. Planes and standing armies will be on the move instantly; mobilized millions will be en route almost overnight.”
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