With the Middle East on the brink of a meltdown, Newsday headlined a blaring question: “Who will stop this?” It is a good question.

The Newsday article was written July 16, at the beginning of the war, while the G-8 summit was still in session. It challenged G-8 leaders to “put aside their vested economic interests and political rivalries to form an international consensus on ways to defuse the crisis.” It concluded, “Whatever the motives driving the conflict, it must be halted before it spreads. The leaders meeting in St. Petersburg have the power to do it. Can they find a way to use it?”

Well the G-8 summit ended, and the Middle East problem went unsolved. In fact, the leaders of the industrialized world could not even agree on a solution to the problem, and as of yet still can’t.

Why couldn’t they come up with a solution? For that matter, why have the world’s brightest and most powerful men and women been unable to solve the Middle East problem since its inception?

The United Nations has failed to bring peace to the Middle East. So has Russia. And Europe. What about fast-rising China? Or powerful Japan? The fact remains, nobody is solving the problem. Conditions are worse today than they were yesterday, and worse than the day before that, and so on.

So the question remains: Who will stop this?

Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986), editor in chief of the Plain Truth magazine and head of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, traveled around the world meeting kings, presidents, prime ministers, captains of business and industry, at their invitation, as a man without political portfolio, yet called an “unofficial ambassador for world peace.” At these meetings with the leading men and women of the world, he spoke to them about appalling world conditions, and how education and religion have utterly failed this world—failed to secure the kind of peace mankind so desperately needs.

The same is true today: Conflict is the nature of our world. Today we see Democrats fighting against Republicans, conservatives fighting liberals, Sunnis fighting Shiites, Arabs fighting Israel, Iran fighting the West, India and Pakistan at odds, North Korea at a stalemate with South Korea, China against Japan, Russia versus Europe, Europe against America, Protestants against Catholics, Muslims against Jews, atheists versus creationists, teens against parents and race against race.

Without intervention, is there any hope the animosity and hate that breeds war and the never-ending cycle of violence will ever end?

Who will stop this?

Herbert W. Armstrong answered this question in his book The Incredible Human Potential:

Most world leaders are of superior ability. Yet they are utterly unable to abolish world evils or bring about world peace.Many scientists and leaders say that the only hope for world peace is the formation of a supreme world government, controlling the world’s sole military power. Yet in the same breath they admit the utter impossibility of this, claiming that such supreme world power in human hands would enslave us all!Few realize it today, but centuries ago a famous personage issued a pronouncement forecasting this very solution. He was hundreds of years ahead of his time, and the world of his day rejected and suppressed the pronouncement. The world soon lost knowledge of his forecast.World leaders would do well to search out that amazing forecast, in the light of present world conditions.I have been privileged to announce to many of the world’s “great and near-great” this world’s only hope—sure hope—to occur in our time!

And what is that sure hope?

Few, indeed, know that Jesus Christ came, not as a religious leader on a “soul saving” crusade, but as a pioneer news forecaster. No man of historic note has been so completely misrepresented—so utterly misunderstood!He came as a messenger with a message from God Almighty to mankind. His message was big news—a vital and sensational news announcement for the future. It announced world peace. It was good news for the future, proclaimed as an advance announcement of assured and certain world peace in our time.

Taken lightly and scorned, few today believe in a literal return of Jesus Christ, to lead a literal world-ruling government. When Christ returns to Earth, He will come to quell a world torn asunder by bloody world war. When Christ returns, He will return to a world that never, in its 6,000-year history, ever learned the way to world peace. But when He returns, He will force world peace on mankind.

So, who will stop this? Jesus Christ, Himself, will stop this.

And we can all be thankful for that.