War is so casually accepted among humans that we often pronounce the insanity of war as a self-existent Truth and the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction as the precursors of peace. We seek at every level to justify violence and justify war no matter how foolish it is, no matter how many people slaughtered in it, no matter what it destroys, and no matter how it magnifies hatred, no matter what it costs. Even the Latter-day Saints are not immune from this and will twist the scriptures in order to use their events to justify war no matter how many men, women, and children it murders – in shot, to justify reigning with blood and horror upon the Earth. Such Satanic ideas have long been the daily bread of the Natural Man. But when one studies the actual teachings of the scriptures (as opposed to simply assuming that because a “good” person did something then it must be right) and listens to the teachings of the Prophets of God we find that their teachings are the exact opposite. Repeatedly they teach that war is evil, that we do not need violence because God will protect us, and command us to renounce war in all its forms and justifications in order to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One such example of this comes to us from the September 1914 issue of The Improvement Era, the preeminent publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at that time. Towards the end of that issue, President Joseph F. Smith, editor of the magazine and Prophet of God upon the Earth, wrote a short article in the editor’s section of the magazine, an article that denounced the start of what we would come to call World War I (One) the month before. It is well worth reading for both what it teaches about peace and for how it so ably destroys the myths and justifications used to promote and defend war of any kind. I have reproduced it here below in its entirety. After the article is a short commentary pointing out some of the most important insights and teachings that President Smith expressed here on the nature of war and peace.
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The Great War
It would not be at all surprising if the present great war, now spreading terror over the nations, should end in upsetting and changing the forms of government now in vogue in Europe so as to grant more liberty to the masses. The time appears ripe for a change that shall take the power of declaring war from the single monarch or war lord and give it to representatives of the people. Many have expressed themselves that the day of the Republic is about to dawn over eastern and middle Europe. This war will go far in determining that question. One thing is certain, the doctrine of peace by armed force, held to so long and tenaciously by czars, kings and emperors, is a failure, and should without question forever be abandoned. It has been wrong from the beginning. That we get what we prepare for is literally true in this case. For years it has been held that peace comes only by preparation for war; the present conflict should prove that peace comes only by preparing for peace, through training the people in righteousness and justice, and selecting rulers who respect the righteous will of the people.
The dispatches report a common soldier of the German army as saying, “This is not a people’s war, it is a war of the leaders.” But as one writer has aptly said : “Out of this sacrifice will come a resolution firmly taken to have no more wheat-growers, and growers of corn, makers of wine, miners and fishers, artizans and traders sailors and store-keepers, offered up with prayer to the Almighty in a feudal slaughter, armed against one another, without hate, or without cause they know, or, if they know, would give a penny which way it was determined.”
Each of those who are responsible for the decision of war in the present European horror, expressed himself at the beginning of the war, as expecting that the Lord would be on his side and would work victory for him. Each commended his subjects to God. “Go to church and kneel before God, and pray for his help for our gallant army,” the Kaiser is reported to have said from his balcony to the people in the street. And to his soldiers he is reported to have said: “Go with your hearts to God, and your fists to the enemy.” And so, with the Czar and the Emperor of Austria—both commended their subjects to God. At the Kremlin, Emperor Nicholas prayed: “God be with us.” But is it because they believe in their righteous cause that these rulers call upon God, or is it done to appease their own ambitions and the religious feelings of their subjects, the better to spur them on to war and carnage to suit the rulers’ purposes?
The Lord has little if anything to do with this war. He will overrule things so that good will come out of it, but he will not heed the war lords who have transgressed his laws, changed his ordinances, and broken the everlasting covenant and arrogated to themselves authority which has never been conferred upon them. The true religion of Christ, which teaches peace on earth and good will to man, and which would prevent them from engaging in war and slaughter, they have never adopted. While they seemingly acknowledge allegiance to the Christian religion, they are not touched nor influenced by its teachings, for these are fundamentally opposed to war and discord, and look to a final gathering of all mankind into one great brotherhood ruled by love. These leading, so-called Christian rulers of the nations pretend to pray to the God of peace and love, and yet with all their might make preparation to fly at each other’s’ throats, even as the uncivilized heathens do who have never heard of Christ. Some are inclined, therefore, to consider their course an indictment against the gospel of Christ, because it has had no influence on their lives. It is not so much an indictment against the gospel as against those professing Christian rulers “who draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they teach for doctrines the commandments of men; having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” Many of them do not even pretend to live up to those teachings in their daily lives.
There is only one thing that can bring peace into the world. It is the adoption of the gospel of Jesus Christ, rightly understood, obeyed, and practiced by rulers and people alike. It is being preached in spirit to all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples of the world, by the Latter-day Saints, and the day is not far distant when its message of salvation shall sink deep into the hearts of the common people, who, in sincerity and earnestness, when the time comes, will not only surely register their judgment against a false Christianity, but against war and the makers of war as crimes against the human race.
Not long hence, and the voice of the people shall be obeyed, and the true gospel of peace shall dominate the hearts of the mighty. It will then be impossible for war lords to have power over the life and death of millions of men as they now have, to decree the ruin of commerce, industry, and growing fields, or to cause untold mental agony and human misery like plague and pestilence to prevail over the nations. It looks much as if after the devastation of wars, as promised in the scriptures, (and who shall say that it may not follow this war?) the self-constituted monarchs must give way to rulers chosen by the people, who shall be guided by the doctrines of love and peace as taught in the gospel of our Lord. There will then be instituted a new social order in which the welfare of all shall be uppermost and all shall be permitted to live in the utmost liberty and happiness.
In the presence of the appalling combat now going on, whatever may befall, we can only pray that peace may speedily come to the afflicted nations, and that the Lord will open the way for the gospel of peace, liberty, and spiritual and temporal salvation that it may be espoused by every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.
The Improvement Era, Sept. 1914, pg. 76 of the PDF version
Joseph F. Smith
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Commentary
Warmongers defend their warmongering by saying, “Without al the guns, bullets, and bombs then anyone could invade us, overthrow our government, and conquer us! Therefore our weapons and soldiers protect peace by keeping us constantly prepared for war.” President Smith completely demolishes this fallacious argument immediately. The only thing preparing for war does is ensure war. The means of preparing for war will always lead to their only possible end – the waging of wars. If we want peace then we have to prepare for peace; we have to taken all that money, time, and effort that we would on programs of war and weapons of destruction and use it all on programs of peace. Instead of teaching people to be soldiers and fighters we must teach them to be be peacemakers and to ever seek justice and mercy. When we have a society that shuns war, treats the waging of war as a gross sin, and teaches its sons and daughters to renounce war and embrace peace no matter what then war and all its horrors will end.
Next he teaches that those who imagine God will bless them and their nation as it wages war are either liars or fools. In fact he uses language reserved for describing the Great Apostasy – “broken the everlasting covenant” – to describe just how much of a violation of God’s will war is and driving home the apostasy being committed by Christians who are promoting or defending the waging of war. War is an act of apostasy, and as President Kimball would later explain as well, idolatry. The true religion of Jesus Christ would prevent all war as His followers would never engage in it. This means that if you are waging or justifying war then you are teaching doctrines in opposition to the teachings of Jesus Christ. War is anti-Christian, anti-Christ, and, as the Apostle John taught, war is of the Devil. False Christians make war. True Christians renounce it as a crime against humanity and those who wage it as criminals. When the Gospel of Jesus Christ as has spread to all the people across the Earth war will be impossible as Christians will not wage war, they will be peacemakers. In this way the Gospel provides for the temporal and spiritual salvation of man.
In order to make sure you understand him and didn’t miss his meaning here, President Smith follows up this direct rebuke of war and those who justify it with a series of short articles all of which drive his main point home: Those who call themselves Christians and justify war or, even worse, those who call themselves Latter-day Saints and justify war, are false Christians and false Saints because the Gospel of Jesus Christ completely rejects war and is in direct opposition to it. You can either be a disciple of Christ or you can promote, defended, justify, and engage in war. You cannot be both.
In closing this article I will quote some of these follow up pieces hoping, like President Smith, that they help the reader understand the truth of war and the doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.
Here President Smith strengthens his teachings on the destitution, cruelty, and uselessness of war with quotes from respected and beloved philosophers, generals, and political leaders:
Their Verdict of War
George Washington: My first wish is to see the whole world at peace, and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving which should most contribute to the happiness of mankind.
Abraham Lincoln: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive * * * to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Emanuel Kant: The method by which states prosecute their rights cannot under present conditions be a process of law, since no court exists having jurisdiction over them, but only war. But through war, even if it result in victory, the question of right is not decided.
William Ellery Channing: The doctrine that violence, oppression, in humanity, is an essential element of society, is so revolting that, did I believe it, I would say let society perish, let man and his works be swept away, and the earth be abandoned to the brutes. Better that the globe should be tenanted by brutes than by brutalized men.
Robert E. Lee: But what a cruel thing is war, to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joy and happiness God has granted to us in this world to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors and to devastate the fair face of the beautiful world.
Victor Hugo: A day will come when the only battlefield will be the market open to commerce and the mind opening to new ideas. A day will come when bullets and bombshells will be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by the venerable arbitration of a great sovereign senate, which will be to Europe what the parliament is to England, what the diet is to Germany, what the legislative assembly is to France. A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be astonished how such a thing could have been. A day will come when these two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, shall be seen placed in presence of each other, extending the hand of fellowship across the ocean.
The Improvement Era, Sept. 1914, pg. 81 of the PDF version
And finally, President Smith includes the following newspaper editorial printed at the very start of World War I. The quoted section does an excellent job of summarizing the anti-Christ evils of war and the threat it is to the very continued existence of humanity. It summarizes in brief everything President Smith was teaching in his own editorial quoted previously. The preparation for war did not ensure peace then. It only ensured slaughter, barbarism, and mass destruction. This is as true today as it was in the past. Calling the idols of stone and steel that we build to destroy each others the defenders or insurers of peace is propaganda and blasphemy.
The Great War of the Nations
This paragraph is quoted from a stirring editorial on the great war of the nations, which appeared in the Glasgow (Scotland) Herald, August 3. On that date the war was impending. Today it is engulfing Europe in blood and tears, – and filling the whole world with terror:
“‘It is done.’ In apocalyptic vision the opening of the seventh seal saw the nations gathered together to Armageddon. “And there came a great voice * * * saying. It is done.” The calamity by which men have been fearfully attracted or terribly repelled for a generation is upon us, and who shall say that before the world has exhausted its horrors the language and imagery of religious prophecy, so often employed to describe the possibilities of the day of universal trial and suffering, will exceed the grim realities? Four of the great military powers of the Continent have appealed to the vast engines of destruction, on which for more than a generation they have expended countless millions, to determine their quarrel. From the Danube to the Seine a state of war prevails. Hundreds of thousands of combatants are already in motion; the movement of millions of armed men is impending. Europe is shaken by the tread of its embattled hosts. The bonds of union constructed by trade and commerce have been dissolved, and civilization has shrunk behind walls of bayonets and the instruments of slaughter. The reason on which we had depended to avert the tremendous conflict has been dethroned, and the religion which ought to have prevailed for the benefit of humanity has been claimed by the combatants to redeem what, on one side or the other, must be the worst of causes, each appealing confidently to a tribal God. So be it. The means have brought the tragic end. For decades Europe has groaned under the tyranny of the armed peace. Progress has been mocked by the conditions which a triumphant military system imposed. The fine dreams which enchanted the nineteenth century reformers and inspired so many heroic actions fled before the reality of liberty achieved for the sole end of magnifying a military despotism. As somebody has said, German and Italian enthusiasts fought for Paradise and found a parade ground. The conditions have proved to be intolerable. The structure poised on bayonets has toppled over, and in its fall threatens to crush to the dust the nations beneath, and to paralyze for incalculable periods of time activities which the world can ill spare.”
The Improvement Era, Sept. 1914, pgs. 80-81 of the PDF version
My prayer is that we listen to this wisdom from the Prophet of God. I would say before it is too late, but the truth is that for those men, women, and children who are suffering, starving, and dying because of war it already is too late. The only thing we can hope to do is stop further violence, seek to atone by using all our efforts and wealth to save those places and people we have harmed, and pray God forgives us for the barbarism already committed.
Note: For a digital reproduction of the originals see The Improvement Era, Sept. 1914, pgs. 76-81 of the PDF version