Khrushchev has just issued a letter to world leaders.
He proposes a pact in which all states renounce force in settling territorial disputes.
Here's why it will not work — and what the Bible says will bring us peace at last!
WHY DOES the threat of world annihilation hover ominously over all the nations today? Why do millions fear that World War III might suddenly be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world?
Simply because there is no SUPREME AUTHORITY to stop it!
A holocaust could be triggered through a mechanical or electronic defect, through human carelessness or miscalculation, or through the irrational acts of a madman at the helm of any nation possessing nuclear weapons! No man-devised world government could prevent it.
Why a Supreme Authority?
All men who are intimately concerned with the problem of world-survival admit that something drastic must be done if Cosmocide is to be prevented!
Many of the world's foremost leaders and statesmen have publicly confessed that the nations urgently need a supreme world authority capable of holding aggressive nations in check.
If people are to survive at all, it can be only through the instrumentality of a WORLD SUPER-GOVERNMENT!
Said Edward Teller in the Saturday Evening Post, February 3, 1962, "International law HARDLY EXISTS today. Yet it is one of our most vital needs. . . We must work for the establishment of a world authority sustained by moral force and physical force — a WORLD GOVERNMENT capable of enforcing world-wide law."
Dr. Charles E. Osgood, of the University of Illinois, not long ago revealed his fear of the spread of nuclear armament. "'All this frightens the daylights out of me, but frightening people isn't enough,' he said. 'What we need, and that most urgently, is an enlivened search for NEW ALTERNATIVES to war as a means of resolving human conflicts. A WORLD GOVERNMENT may be the ONLY PERMANENT SOLUTION, ' he said" (Dallas Times Herald, Dec. 28, 1960).
But what man or nation has the WISDOM, or the POWER to establish a workable system of world government?
Bad Government the CAUSE of World Ills
There is a second important reason all the world needs the right kind of world government. Look around you, regardless of the nation you live in. Take a good look at the ignorance and superstition; the sickness, disease and insanity; the lawlessness, greed and competition, strife and bloodshed, the graft, bribery and corruption (yes, even in high places in government). Observe the misery, the poverty and unhappiness, the hopelessness. These are the symptoms of a sick and dying society!
What is the root cause of all these things?
These things don't just happen! They aren't just accidents — they are caused!
The root cause of all of the world's ills is HUMAN government!
There would be NO sickness or disease, poverty or misery, ignorance or superstition; neither would there be any unhappiness throughout the world — if man would accept and obey the laws and the government of God!
But who would be qualified to establish that World Government?
Why U.N. Cannot Maintain Peace
Following the nightmarish bloodbath of World War I, the LEAGUE OF NATIONS came into being. It was born on January 10, 1920. But it utterly failed to preserve peace in the world.
The League of Nations was unable to prevent the bombardment of Corfu (a Greek island) by Italy in 1923. It did not stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Or the conquest of helpless Ethiopia by Mussolini in 1935. Hitler's grab of the Sudetenland and his blitzkrieg against Poland in 1939 went unimpeded. The League of Nations proved totally incapable of maintaining world peace and preventing World War II.
Then, on April 18, 1946 (at the youthful age of twenty-six) the League of Nations officially died an ignominious death!
Meanwhile, another attempt at World Government began.
On October 24, 1945, the United Nations Charter became effective.
"Like the covenant of the League of Nations, this charter set up an ASSOCIATION OF STATES rather than a world government. Though armed force was used under the United Nations to check aggression in Korea, beginning in 1950, there continued throughout the world a realization that the preservation of world peace called for an organization STRONGER THAN THE UNITED NATIONS" (Ency. Amer., Vol. 13, art. "Government").
The United Nations, like its predecessor, the League of Nations, has proved incapable of either preventing or forcibly stopping the Cold War. It can put a check on brush-fire type wars and it can exert a limited amount of pressure on belligerent nations; but it has not forcibly stopped any war. Any nation, big and powerful or small and weak, can defy the United Nations with impunity! It has plenty of growl and bark; but no teeth — no real bite to check an aggressor!
Why have the League of Nations and the United Nations utterly failed in their attempts to establish and preserve world peace?
The answer is simply that this "association of nations" was not designed or willing to seek peace God's way!
"ASSOCIATE yourselves, O ye people, and YE SHALL BE BROKEN IN PIECES; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take COUNSEL TOGETHER, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand (Isa. 8:9, 10).
Though the DIS-United Nations have associated themselves, and though millions of words have been uttered in the U.N. Council Chamber — yet there is no peace, because these nations have left God out of the picture!
"If we will not be governed by God, then we will be governed by tyrants," said William Penn, one of the early leaders of America. That was never truer than today! But today men believe God is a tyrant and that man's laws are better than God's laws.
"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it" (Psa. 127:1).
The nations of this world have REJECTED GOD and HIS LAWS — His way of government. They grope helplessly and hopelessly in their attempt to find the solution to world peace! But there is no real peace!
World leaders, statesmen and scientists do not say, "If war comes." They talk of "WHEN nuclear war comes!"
God solemnly declares: "The WAY of peace they [the nations] know not" (Isa. 59:8).
"Government" — What Does It Mean?
Have you ever stopped to analyze what the word "government" means?
The English word "govern" is derived from the Latin word "guberare" meaning "to steer a ship, guide, rule." But there are different kinds of rule or government. Not all governments are the same!
Some individuals even advocate no government at all, or ANARCHY. If a citizen has total unrestrained license, he is an anarchist. Such lack of government results in utter disregard for the rights, properties and lives of others. Nothing but total disintegration of society can follow anarchy. We must have government!
But what kind of government is the BIG QUESTION!
There are THREE BASIC TYPES of human government existing on this earth today — the same three types which have governed mankind since the dawn of history.
Every government which has existed since the beginning of history has been some form of MONARCHY (rule by one), or OLIGARCHY (rule by a few), or DEMOCRACY (rule by the people). These three types of government still rule this present world.
How Democracy Began
DEMOCRACY is not a modern invention. The ancient Greek city-states were democratic — ruled by the "people" — the demos in the Greek language.
Men have invented two types of democracy: (1) PURE democracy, and (2) REPRESENTATIVE democracy.
A PURE democracy is a government in which all of the people have a direct voice (vote) in all issues or matters of their government. A pure democracy is admittedly cumbersome. It is far too costly, too time-consuming, too complicated and too difficult. It is just not practical!
The second type of democracy is called a REPRESENTATIVE democracy. Most modern democratic or republican governments (such as the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa) are actually representative democracies. This means that the people elect representatives to vote in their behalf — and supposedly as they would vote.
Who were the first persons to try the democratic or republican form of government? Our first parents! Mother Eve was the first to choose a way which she thought was right — contrary to God's established law. Adam was the second person to cast his vote, following naively in the footsteps of his wife. Of course, that way ended in DEATH! (Gen. 2:17, 5:5; Prov. 14:12)
When God was establishing Israel as a nation in the wilderness, Korah and 250 assemblymen tried to overthrow God's government and establish a democracy with themselves representing the people (Num. 16:1-3). They failed.
But how did the idea of democracy become rooted so deeply in modern times? "In 1762, Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French writer, published his Social Contract in which he took the position that ALL GOVERNMENT SHOULD GET ITS AUTHORITY FROM THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE GOVERNED" (Ency. Amer., 1960 Ed., Vol. 13, art. "Government"). It began in France, a nation with a history of unstable government!
In a democracy the people are usually permitted to criticize their leaders and government policies. The result is often bitterness, rivalry, corruption and assassinations.
A second type of government by which man has governed himself IS OLIGARCHY, or ARISTOCRACY. This means that a few (usually the elite — the wealthy or influential) have complete control of the state. Communism has the form of an oligarchy — but it has usually ended as a dictatorship. Military juntas, feudal systems, Councils or Tribunals are various means by which an aristocracy or an oligarchy can rule. An oligarchy usually continues only long enough for the strongest man among the ruling few to rise to the top and then some form of monarchy or dictatorship is born.