MUCH has been said by our leaders of a New Plan for the nations after the War. Our leading newspapers have also expressed their views on this momentous subject but with the fate of the Tower of Babel builders and the schemes of the League of Nations before us, it would be well for us in all our planning not to leave God and His Anointed out of account. God has a plan for the nations as surely as He has a plan for every individual and no Axis or Allied plans, however pretentious on the one hand or pleasant on the other will succeed if they run counter to God’s great plan. Again, it is made clear in God’s Word that this divine plan has irrevocably decreed that Jesus Christ shall reign until all His enemies shall be put under His feet. It is the divine purpose that He must reign. All power in heaven and in earth has been given to Him. But what place is accorded Him in the high councils of our own nation and the other nations at war? Is it not the case that He is being treated as if He were practically non-existent. Take our national attitude to the Man of Sin and the False Prophet. What a lurid light is thrown on our trafficking with the criminally silent occupant of the so-called Chair of Peter. Britain it is said protested against the Vatican receiving an envoy from Tokyo. If we had a Cromwell at the Foreign Office guiding the high diplomacy of the nation a protest would be the feeblest kind of weapon that would be thought of. Our open and avowed enemies, pagan in their outlook and cruel and bestial in their conduct in war, are entrenched firmly in the Vatican by a representative where they may get information useful to their partners in crime in the Western world. It seems almost incredible but there it is.
Again, our great pro-consuls who did so much in building up the Empire while jealous of Britain’s glory had not the same concern for the honour of Christ as the Son of God. Mohammedanism with its carnage-stained propaganda of the faith of Islam was very tenderly nursed lest it might interfere with some of the schemes that had in view the extension of our far-flung imperial boundaries. What part Islam is playing in the present upsetting negotiations in India we are not in a position to say whether helpful or the reverse but one thing is certain Islamism is not a friend to Christ and has no place for Him as the Son of the Highest.*
Passing from the general aspect of our subject to its more particular; viz., its bearing on the so-called Christian nations in this struggle such as Britain with her Commonwealth of Nations and America we may ask ourselves, did these nations betray any symptoms before the dreadful outbreak of war in 1939 that things were not altogether right with them? It is not difficult to give an answer to this question. The divinely instituted means of grace were despised and neglected to an alarming extent. The Sabbath Day was increasingly turned into a day of pleasure until God thundered in the heaven. He took away their rest day which millions despised and it became a day of stern work—works of necessity and mercy facetiously called by their military leaders. The pulpits of the land, generally speaking, had begun to speak about sin in a half-apologetic way as a remnant of the jungle heritage which would be shed as we reached higher stages in the evolutionary process. Man was making great progress, discoveries of epoch making importance were made, his inventiveness reached a height hitherto unattained in the past ages and German philosophers and theologians and the poor dupes in Britain that followed them were announcing, if not in exact words, yet by implication that mankind was fast on the way to pass into the ranks of the angels. Thousands believed this delusive teaching. Then came the stunning crash of 1939 and men and women shaken out of their false security began asking ugly questions. Is there a God? and if there is why is He permitting this war? They never stopped to ask themselves the question, Is this war not an evidence that there is a God? and that He is not to allow men to go on any longer as if He did not exist at all. Then came galling defeat in the field that silenced the idiotic song-singing that was indulged in by our army in France, followed by the cruel, indiscriminate bombing of our cities and then questions were asked: Is our civilisation to go down in the crash? The real servants of God did not cease to tell the people their sins and pointed them to God’s remedy. A shallow view of sin means a shallow view of the atonement and the modernist has no need of the Cross in his preaching. He does not know and cannot explain what the Apostle meant when he said: “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ.”
* This was written prior to the failure of Sir Stafford Cripps’ negotiations and before the attitude of the Moslem League, which was antagonistic to the British proposals, was made public.—Editor.
Casting our eyes abroad over a world drenched in the carnage of war we ask ourselves the question, is there any remedy for the present condition of things? any outgate from this confused welter of blood into which the nations, through some of their leaders, have been plunged and out of which they are not able to extricate them? We believe there is and that God has commanded us to listen to His Well-beloved, the Prince of Peace. He, too, wages war, but His battles are not with confused noise and garments rolled in blood (Is. ix., 5) but with “fuel of fire”—burning up that which is vile and dishonouring to God. We need a John the Baptist to proclaim to the peoples of the nations their sins and then as the Friend of the Bridegroom who delighted to hear His voice to point them to the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. This is what Germany, Italy, Japan and their allied partners need. This is what Great Britain, America, Russia, and the associated nations need and any plan for the future, if it is to have permanency and God’s blessing must be based on the recognition of Him whose right it is to reign.
The great doctrines proclaimed by Spirit-taught men at the Reformation and still, such as the awful evil of Sin, Repentance, Regeneration, Justification, the Law of God, the Atonement, Saving Faith and Eternal Judgment, became almost unknown as far as many pulpits were concerned. The language of the New Testament on these subjects was an unknown tongue to many. Neither law nor gospel, that is the true gospel of the grace of God, was preached. Even in the more orthodox denominations the doctrine of justification was rarely heard yet without a heart understanding of this comforting doctrine in combating Romanism with all its delusions we are as a man entering the conflict with a wooden sword. It was the heart realisation of the truth of this doctrine that made Luther such a power for God.
Then the Word of God was no longer proclaimed as God’s infallible truth. Theologians and preachers boldly declared that it contained pagan ideas, barbaric teaching handed down from ancient times, mythologies of primitive nations and their folklore. And if children accepted the Genesis narrative as historical these teachers announced they would have to give up all this when they grew older. God’s law was set at nought. His Day was commandeered by a pleasure-loving generation for their own purposes and gradually games and entertainments were becoming the order of the day. The anti-kill-joys had a flowing tide with them and a favourable breeze and then the loud thunders were heard in the heavens.
God, it was said, was a merciful God and He would never punish for a few sins committed in this world for all eternity. Soul deceivers worked on the uninstructed minds of the people and said to them in so many words: “How can God be just and punish sinners for ever?” It was never a problem to these deceivers: “How can God be just and justify the ungodly?” as it was with Paul.
The sooner the professing Church returns to the good old Scriptural teaching of Ruin by the Fall, Redemption by Christ and Regeneration by the Holy Ghost the better it will be for the religious life of this country. These doctrines as the realised experience in the hearts of the messengers of the Cross are required for the revival of the professing Church. It is not only that our statesmen are at their wits’ end in the catastrophe that has overtaken us but our religious leaders also are at sea. The state of things religiously has reached a crisis beyond the power of man to remedy. Power from on high—the life-giving power of the Holy Ghost—is the only remedy and when He comes disloyalty to God’s Word, law and gospel will disappear.
As we write these words our thoughts go out to our young men and women who have been called up in the service of their country. Their lot may be trying owing to being cast into company with fellow-mates whose whole religious outlook is different to what they have been taught. Their views of the Bible, the Sabbath Day, God’s law, His truth as set forth in His Word may be ridiculed by these and the reluctance to be singular may prove a snare. They will have to listen to language they may never have been accustomed to hear and to witness conduct which is contrary to all they have seen in their parents’ homes but let them pray to God that He may keep them as in a tent from the language of men who fear neither God nor man. They have the assurance that those who love them and the people of God who wish them well for time and eternity are praying for them night and day that God may keep them from evil, danger and temptation.