Unholy Ambition

TimeWatch Editorial
January 20, 2016

There is a periodical dated July 11, 1900 entitled Signs of the Times. What is incredibly interesting is the date of the article, and the accuracy of the statement found therein.

“There are wars and rumors of wars. Nation is rising against nation. Selfishness and covetousness lead to violence, crime, and all kinds of wickedness. Nation is watching nation, to see if there is not some advantage to be gained. A concession made by one nation to another only opens the way for another concession to be called for. The presumptuous, daring deeds of unholy ambition, done to gain power by robbing others, show that men do not realize that those who take the sword shall perish with the sword." {Signs of the Times, July 11, 1900 par. 5}

Let’s take a look at this statement in light of the times in which it was written. At precisely the time of the writing of this article, the “Boxer Rebellion” was on its way. The Boxer Rebellion, Boxer Uprising was a violent anti- foreign, anti-Christian uprising which took place in China, towards the end of the Qing Dynasty between 1899 and 1901.

But, why was there a rebellion in the first place? Notice this:

“By the end of the 19th century, the Western powers and Japan had forced China’s ruling Qing dynasty to accept wide foreign control over the country’s economic affairs. In the Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60), popular rebellions and the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), China had fought to resist the foreigners, but it lacked a modernized military and suffered millions of casualties.” http://www.history.com/topics/boxer-rebellion

So the statement in Signs of the Times, July 11, 1900, was not an imagined condition, but rather, spoke to the “unholy ambition done to gain power by robbing others.” Because the Chinese had no modernized military, they sought to rely upon other skills to protect themselves from the greed of those western nations who were watching “ to see if there is not some advantage to be gained.” Listen to this:

“A Chinese secret organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there. The rebels, referred to by Westerners as Boxers because they performed physical exercises they believed would make them able to withstand bullets, killed foreigners and Chinese Christians and destroyed foreign property. From June to August, the Boxers besieged the foreign district of Beijing (then called Peking), China’s capital, until an international force that included American troops subdued the uprising. By the terms of the Boxer Protocol, which officially ended the rebellion in 1901, China agreed to pay more than $330 million in reparations.” http://www.history.com/topics/boxer-rebellion

To this day, we are fascinated by the fighting styles of the martial arts, not recognizing that this was the tool, the only tool used in defense of the invasive greed perpetrated upon this nation by Western Powers. We admire the movies that show the Native Americans being removed from their land, and treated as less than human, not recognizing that these people were here before we were here. Thus the statement in Signs of the Times 1900 is a more than accurate description of “Selfishness and covetousness leading to violence, crime, and all kinds of wickedness.” The Boxers of China, in spite of their lack of military equipment fought valiantly.

“The uprising took place against a background of severe drought and the disruption caused by the growth of foreign spheres of influence. After several months of growing violence against the foreign and Christian presence in Shandong and the North China Plain in June 1900, Boxer fighters, convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing.” Thompson, Larry Clinton (2009), William Scott Ament and the Boxer Rebellion: Heroism, Hubris, and the Ideal Missionary.

Brave they were indeed.

The Boxers believed that through training, diet, martial arts and prayer they could perform extraordinary feats, such as flight. Furthermore, they popularly claimed that millions of spirit soldiers would descend from the heavens and assist them in purifying China of foreign oppression.Lanxin Xiang (2003). The origins of the Boxer War: a multinational study

So how accurate was the statement found in Signs of the Times, July 11, 1900? Very accurate indeed! Japan, The Russian Empire, The French Republic, The United States, The German Empire, The Kingdom of Italy, Austria and Hungary were all involved in that conflict of greed against the Boxers of China. Surely:

The presumptuous, daring deeds of unholy ambition, done to gain power by robbing others, show that men do not realize that those who take the sword shall perish with the sword." {Signs of the Times, July 11, 1900 par. 5}

Cameron A. Bowen