What the War Teaches

Our subject is, “The Greatest Lessons of 1917.” You will find the text in John 9 :4, “We must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” You may not see at first the connection between the subject and the text, but you will as we go on, and especially as we close. The year that is just ending is the most momentous that any man now living has ever seen. There is reason to suppose that 1918 will be still more momentous, but that still lies in the future, about which it is not very safe to speculate. The day in which we are living is the day of the largest opportunity and loudest call to unstinted self-sacrifice and untiring service. I would rather live today than any day of this old world’s history. Every year has its lessons, but no other year is so rich in lessons as this.

The first great lesson that 1917 teaches is that the Bible is the Word of God.

There has always been abundant proof that the Bible is the Word of God, but the occurrences of the present year give fresh, up-to-date illustration and proof that it is so. The year 1917 proves that the Bible is the Word of God in three ways:

1. First of all, the year 1917 proves the Bible to be the Word of God by fulfilling its prophecies. Fulfilled prophecy is conclusive proof that the Bible is the Word of God. Any book that has the power of looking centuries into the future and predicting with minuteness, precision and accuracy of time person, place and circumstance, events to occur centuries later, must have for its Author the only Being in the universe that knows the end from the beginning, that is, God. Three lines of prophecy have been particularly fulfilled this year:

(1) First, prophecies about the Jews. There are two lines of prophecy concerning the Jews that have been fulfilled in a striking way during the past

year. ‘In the first place, prophecies regarding the sufferings to come upon the Jews in consequence of their disobedience to the revealed will of God as given through Moses. In Deut. 28:37, 41, 47, 48, 58, 59, 64-67 we read, “And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word, among all the peoples whither Jehovah shall lead thee away.... Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be thine; for they shall go into captivity.... Because thou servdst not Jehovah thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies that Jehovah shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things; and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. ... If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, JEHOVAH THY GOD; then Jehovah will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance... And Jehovah will scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, even wood and stone. And among :hese nations shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot; but Jehovah will give thee there a trembling heart, and failing Df eyes, and pining of soul; and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have no assurance of thy life. In :he morning thou shalt say. Would it were even, md at even thou shalt say, Would it were morning; for the fear of thy heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.” rhese predictions made so many thousand years igo, have been in the process of fulfillment for cen- :uries, but never have they been so remarkably fulfilled as during the past year, notably among the fews in Poland, but also in other lands. In the second place, a second line of prophecies concernng the Jews have been fulfilled in a notable manner in 1917, namely, prophecies Concerning the returning fullness of blessing and glory that is to come to Israel, and their return to their native land. These promises of future glory for Israel have for centuries seemed impossible of fulfillment, but today we see them in course of fulfillment before our very eyes. This is indicated in two ways: first, by the place the Jew now occupies in the government of nations. There is not time to go into this in detail, but if there were it could be shown that to an amazing extent the leading men in the control of the government and commerce and international relations of England and France and Germany are Jews. The man who stands at the forefront in Russia at the present time, Trotzky, is a Jew. A Russian friend who left Petrograd Nov. 29th and who is well informed told me today that there are forty men who really rule there, and that thirty of these forty are Jews though they have taken Russian names. The Jew will have much to say about the settlement of the present war. In addition to this, we have the recent capture of Jerusalem by the English forces, and England’s declaration that Jerusalem is to be turned over to the Jews. In such things as these there is the clearest indication that we are well on the way toward the fulfillment of the seemingly incredible prophecies of the Bible regarding the future glory of the Jew, when “the times of the Gentiles” shall have ended. For centuries Jerusalem has been trodden down of the nations (that is, the Gentile nations), as the Lord Jesus

predicted it would be (Luke 21 :24); and now that “the times of the Gentiles” are near their fulfillment Jerusalem is apparently about to pass from the Gentiles back to the Jew, as our Lord predicted it would (Luke 21:24).

(2) A second class of prophecies has been fulfilled in a remarkable way during the year that is just ending, and that is prophecies concerning war. The Bible declares that in the last days of this dispensation there shall be a multiplying of wars. Our Lord said, “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that ye be not troubled; for these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places. But all these things are the beginning of travail.” (Matt. 24:6-8. See also Jer. 25 -.26-33.) And God declared through the prophet Daniel, in Dan. 9 :26,, that “Even unto the end (i. e., the end of this dispensation) shall be war.” A short time ago these prophecies seemed impossible of fulfillment. Our wise men, our philosophers and our statesmen said that a great war was an impossibility. We had our Hague Conferences, and built our Peace Palaces, and on the very day of the outbreak of the war, the representatives of different nations were gathering at Geneva for a Peace Conference. Any one who dared to say that the most awful war in the world’s history was coming was regarded as a crank and a fanatic. A few years ago, before the outbreak of the present war, The Christian Herald wrote to me and to different persons in this country and across the water, asking our opinion about these Peace Movements, and whether we thought that there ever could be another great war. In answer to this letter of inquiry, I wrote that I was in favor of anything that made for peace even temporarily, but that as far as there never being another great war was concerned, I knew my Bible too well not to know that there could not be permanent peace, but that there was ahead of us the most awful war in all the world’s history. Many regarded me as a crank for this statement of opinion, but where are we today?

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