COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22431, 18 June 1938, Page 20

COMPULSORY MILITARY TRAINING

to thh ■Diiom or ifi» PkE»s. Sir,—Mr Pritchett is not the only Bible student. Others besides the ad' herents of the British Israel theories can be included in that category. As a Bible student myself, I will endeavour to answer Mr Pritchett's questions Without unduly encroaching on your space. - • (1) I agree that God's principles in governing, His people are ever c.nsi *• ent. That these principles are those of a loving Father has been shown by our Saviour, Jesus Christ. For a everything in the Bible must agree with the teaching of Jesus, if it is to be authoritative as determining his c*. - duct. Therefore, that Moses, without the full revelation of God which Chi Ist taught to us, believed in conscription, is no reason for a Christian doing to. That Christ Himself rejected as an ethical standard anything that did not agree with' His own knowledge of God is shown by the passages in Matthew V, where m altering the Old Testament law, He said, "Ye have heard it said of old . . . but I say Unto you." For a Christian, Christ must be authoritative. .(2)Ldeny that God has ever used war to punish nations, except in a permissive sense, in that He allows the ev}l. consequences of war to fall on those who practise it, and thus forsake Hißway 0 f Jove. The text in Revelation 1 xix, 11, obviously refers "o a The whole book is allegorical. (3) I agree that the will of God th»-Father is one with Jesus Christ. Christ taught us, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect," and He also claimed,"T and'the Father are one." "He that hath seen Me hath seen 11 ■» Father." Therefore, it follows logically that, Christ having absolutely rejected the way of war, God the Father must also. (4) When Christ fulfilled the

Law and the Prophets in the course 'f that fulfilment He gave a new, complete revelation of the nature of God, and thus ended the partial and erring belief which His predecessors had held. The Old Testament shows a progressive growth in the conception of the Jewish idea of God. In the earlier parts, Jahweh is a tribal God: gradually He becomes the God of all people, almighty, all-powerful. Later, the idea of His moral nature is developed, Christ’s revelation was the completion of that process. (5) Luke xxi, 20-24, is a very accurate picture of what happened when Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70. <6) When AUenby drove the Turks from Palestine he replaced one lot of Gentiles by another, the British. Therefore Jerusalem and Palestine are still under Gentile rule. The present trouble in Palestine, incidentally, would seem to show that the British are not making much more success of an admittedly difficult administrative problem than did the Turks. (7) Ido deny, as emphatically as possible, that it will ever be God’s will that Great Britain or New Zealand should fight, I do not see any connexion between them and Judah. May I, in turn, ask Mr Pritchett: (1) Can he love his enemies, bless them and pray for them, and at the same time kill or maim them? (2) If God is a Father of all men, all men rre brothers. Is not fratricide condemned in the Bible?— Yours, etc., R. J. SCARLETT. June 17, 1938.