WORLD GOVERNMENT

By D. M. PANTON

The approach of a Federation of the World has long been foreseen, following a Federation of Europe. Napoleon said:-

“There must be one Code, one Court of Appeal, and one coinage for Europe; the States of Europe must be united into one nation.” “Federation,” said Lord Salisbury, shortly before his death, “is the only hope of Europe.” The late Kaiser had this in full view. He said:‑“From childhood I have been influenced by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II., Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of German world empire, and my mailed fist shall succeed. A new empire shall arise more splendid than the world ever saw - a new Roman-German empire which shall rule the world, and the world shall be happy.”

World Federation

Since the first World War the advance has been rapid towards this ominous goal. The League of Nations, which endeavoured to produce universal peace, has been succeeded by the Organization of the United Nations, which has far greater power and influence. It is now proposed to hold a Peoples’ World Constituent Assembly in Geneva in the autumn of 1950, with representatives from every country in the world - a representative for every million inhabitants; at a cost of £1,000,000; and forming a world government which would have a monopoly of armed force, the control of atomic development, the promotion of international banking and currency, a world Food-Board, and world citizenship. One example of what has been already achieved is sufficiently startling. For over a generation the world has been talking about a world bank - and now it is a reality. “The other day,” says Eugene Meyer, first president of the world bank, “thousands of American investors took £60,000,000 of their funds and eagerly purchased the first bond issue of the world bank - The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to give it the official title. The world bank is off to a good start.”

Peace and Safety

Now the object is profoundly right, and the method completely impossible. The object is a gigantic effort to be made by all nations to create a peace which will never be broken; a peace which will be based, not on reconciliation with God - not a single official document of the United Nations has once even named God - but on the political and economic organization of the world. “They are saying, PEACE and SAFETY” (1 Thess. 5: 3) - that is, security; a security established on a peace enforced by military power over all nations. So much is this the language of to-day that the United Nations names its chief agency as ‘the Security Council’; and so Mr. Eden, when he was Foreign Secretary some years ago, said, - “The Charter is to draft an international organization for the maintenance of international PEACE and SECURITY.”

The Church Entrapped

It is most remarkable how this very scheme exercised the False Prophets of old. “Behold, the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword; but I will give you assured peace in this place” (Jer. 14: 13). And this, we are forewarned, is a deception that will entrap the people of God. “They have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace” (Ezek. 13: 10). President Wilson, who was a member of a League to Enforce Peace founded at a cost of £80,000, said:‑“It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind.” The Church is being entrapped at this moment. Martin Luther’s words ought to be written in letters of gold across the horizon:‑ “The idea that the world is to be converted before the coming of Christ comes from Satan.”

Against God

The Second Psalm portrays the coming storm. “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed” - that is, Christ - “saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2: 1). The fundamental laws of every State will be made anti-Christian and deliberately God-defiant. Various Atheist organizations in American Colleges reveal, by the names they have chosen for themselves, what is coming:- in Philadelphia, “God’s Black Sheep”; in Wisconsin, “The Circle of the Godless”; in Los Angeles, “The Devil’s Angels”; in Rochester, “The Damned Souls”; and in North Dakota, “The Legion of the Damned,” with a president entitled, “His Satanic Majesty.”

Antichrist

Lord Balfour foresaw wonderfully the inevitable World Empire. He says:- “It is only a military despotism of the German type that can, through generations if need be, pursue steadily, remorselessly, unscrupulously, and appallingly, the object of dominating civilisation and mankind. And, mark you, this evil, this menace under which we are suffering, is not one which will diminish with the growth of knowledge and the progress of material civilisation, but, on the contrary, increase with it.” And the Kaiser remarkably foreshadowed the Antichrist. He says:- “The German people has in the Lord of Creation an unconditional and avowed Ally: on me, as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon, His sword, and His vicegerent.” But Julius Caesar forecast the Man of Sin even more exactly. He had the picture of himself stamped upon the globe of the world, with a sword in his hand, and this motto - En utroque Caesar. A master genius, and a Hell-selected man, the Lawless One will win the world by his accomplishment of its aim for peace and safetly, bringing to rich fruition the plans of the United Nations: the United Nations will at last give birth to Antichrist. “He shall come peaceably” - in time of security (R.V.); “and shall obtain the kingdom by flatteries” (Dan. 11: 21) - by fulsome approval of the United Nations.

Coupons

One extraordinary detail in our midst to-day is incredibly significant. It is coupons. Stamped rations now alone make food procurable: never before in the history of the world, so far as we are aware - certainly never before in the history of Britain - food is unobtainable without coupons. The only change that is coming - possibly because coupons stamped on paper can be forged, or stolen, or lost - is a government decree that they must be stamped on the flesh. “A mark on their right hand or upon their forehead; that no man shall be able to buy or to sell, save he that hath the mark, even the name of the Beast or the number of his name” (Rev. 13: 16). The overwhelming fact is that coupons, without which all peoples on the earth must starve, are already here.

Destruction

We now reach the crisis. “When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh”: at the very moment they are most concentrated on peace, and imagine themselves as secure as never before, destruction like lightning wipes them out. Even men of the world sense the coming danger. In the words of Louis Kossuth:- “There is a cry of alarm upon the ostensible approach of universal danger. The decisive struggle is near. It will be the last in mankind’s history.” Or in the words of Professor Sohn:- “The society of our day is like the earth on which we live - a thin crust over a great volcanic, seething, revolutionary heart of liquid fire.” “And they shall in no wise escape.” It is possible that even science will yet be able to penetrate - by the death-ray - into earth’s deepest caves where even the atomic bomb cannot reach; but a far more awful power will make escape totally impossible. “Though they dig into Sheol” - Hades, the under-world in ‘the heart of the earth’ (cf. Matt. 12: 40) – “thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven” - in aeroplanes – “thence will I bring them down; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea” - in submarines – “thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them” (Amos. 9: 2).

The Age of Gold

But beyond it all lies an infinitely golden vision. A re-born humanity will introduce a re-born world. A great British statesman of the nineteenth century, John Bright, expressed it thus:- “It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast federation stretching from the frozen north in unbroken line to the glowing south. I see one people and one language, and one law and one faith, and over all that white continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and every clime.” In the exquisite words of the hymn:-

For lo, the time is hastening on

By prophet-bards foretold,

When with the ever-circling years

Comes round the age of gold;

When peace shall over all the earth

Her ancient splendours fling,

And the whole earth send back the song

Which now the angels sing.

“The kingdom of this world” - the Greek is singular – “have become the kingdom” - the Empire, a vast federated world under one Monarch – “of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11: 15). “The Lord shall be king over all the earth; and in that day shall there be one Lord and his name one” (Zech. 14: 9).

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