Peace On Earth
A Conflict-Filled Peace Conference
Themes: Conflict; Peace
The Ninth World Congress against [the] Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb was due to be held in Hiroshima on August 5, 1963. But it never really took place. Less than an hour before the opening ceremony was due to begin in the Hiroshima Peace Park, leaders of the Japanese Socialist Party and others decided to boycott it, leaving the communists in command of the field. The head of the Chinese delegation delivered a violent attack on the Test Ban Treaty, and the whole Russian delegation rose while he was still speaking and turned their backs on him, snubbing him publicly. Meanwhile there were outbursts of yelling, screaming, drum-beating, and fights in sections of [the] crowd until 1,500 riot police marched into the park to remove the offenders.
Thus did a peace conference held in a peace park break up in violent confusion and conflict.
SERMON USAGE
University of Singapore (Sept 6, 1963)
The Emperor Cannot Bring Peace to the Heart
Themes: Envy; Grief; Jesus: Birth; Peace
The “Pax Romana” was being enjoyed at [the] time of Christ’s birth. But, as Epictetus, the distinguished first-century Stoic philosopher, said: “While the emperor may give peace from war on land and sea, he is unable to give peace from passion, grief and envy. He cannot give peace of heart, for which man yearns more than even for outward peace.”
SOURCE: Norval Geldenhuys, The Gospel of Luke (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1950), 112 (on Luke 2:14).
The Uselessness of a 1929 Peace Pact
Themes: Peace; War
In his book The Social Conscience of the Evangelical (SU, 1968), Sherwood Wirt writes:
In July 1929 President Herbert Hoover promulgated the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, which formally renounced the use of war as an instrument of national policy for the settling of disputes between nations. Forty-five sovereign states signed that document at the time. Their leaders made spectacular references to “peace on earth” in speeches before their respective national assemblies. Two years later Japan, one of the signatories, sent an armed invasion into Manchuria. Another two years passed, and Hitler swept into power in Germany, introducing the blitzkrieg as an instrument of national policy. World War II was the result. In September 1938 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich to greet the London crowds with the assurance of “peace in our time.” He had just signed a four-party agreement giving Germany the right to invade and occupy portions of Czechoslavakia.
SOURCE: Sherwood Wirt, The Social Conscience of the Evangelical (Scripture Union, 1968).