The brutal
terrorist attacks on the U.S. World Trade Center and Pentagon
buildings were like thunderclaps of a gathering storm—such as
there never was. What do these and other ominous rumblings of
society portend? Is there any hope for the world on the other side
of this trouble which will certainly climax in a furious storm?
After the
cold war ended with the collapse of communism, Third World Nations
became armed camps of instability that pose a continual threat to
world peace. The United States entered the new millennium with a
record debt and a staggering world recession. Of the world’s 6
billion people, 1.3 billion live in poverty on $1 a day or less,
and 1.1 billion are malnourished. Hunger and starvation shape
their lives. Thousands more eat canned pet food. Three million
Americans live on the streets. The top ten billionaires have
wealth equivalent to the rest of the world according to the U.N.
Human Development Report, 1998.
Most
historians now agree that since World War I our world has been
coming to an end. Not the destruction of the planet earth, but the
end of our social order—our civilization. Rowse states, "If
ever there was a year that marked the end of an era and the
beginning of another, it was 1914. That year brought to an end the
old world with its sense of security and began a modern age whose
chief characteristic is insecurity on a daily basis.’’ (Rowse,
Oxford Historian and Biographer, June 28, 1959.)
From 1914 to
1918, World War I shook Europe to its foundations. The 1920s
witnessed the overthrow or demise in power of the centuries-old
church-state ruling houses of Europe, in which kings claimed to
rule by "divine right." The Thirties offered the Great
Depression; the Forties, World War II. The Fifties saw the
communist takeover of more than one third of the world, while the
Sixties were terrorized by race riots and the youth revolt.
In the
Seventies, corruption in government reached its zenith with the
forced resignation of Vice President Agnew and then President
Nixon. Crime and violence continued to spiral. The sex revolution
began the eroding of long accepted moral standards of our society.
The Eighties became the "decade of greed." Junk bond
manipulation, S&L corruption and bank mismanagement helped
bring the economy to a grinding halt. These combined with the AIDS
time bomb and the pollution countdown made the 1990s a
"decade of uncertainty.’’
Is it any
wonder so many ask, "What is this world coming to?’’ Some
reason further, "If there is a God who cares, why does He
permit all of this trouble, evil and suffering?’’ Not finding
reliable answers to this question, many have abandoned religion.
Growing
Materialism…Shrinking Faith
The failure
of traditional churches to answer the many questions facing modern
man has divided the western world into two camps—the
non-religious "materialist camp" and the religious
"Christian camp." The materialist camp is composed of
atheists, agnostics, humanists, and existentialists. Materialists
like to think that observable facts and provable theories are the
only bases of their thoughts and actions. But as William James,
the noted philosopher, observed, all materialists have one thing
in common with the Christian—and that is faith. An atheist
cannot deny the existence of God by scientific fact and,
therefore, must assume his premise by faith. The agnostic accepts
the premise that there are many concepts that cannot be proven,
but even his premise is unprovable. All schools of philosophy are
based on faith.
Though the
Christian camp can agree that there is a God, Christians disagree
on almost everything else. No doubt, this fact is one reason so
many have joined the materialist camp today. Space-age man—staggered
by the complexity of the universe—complains that he is
"turned off" by the traditional churches when he
receives religious answers that are museum pieces from the
"Middle Ages." To modern religious groups like Seventh
Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, etc., the
materialist cries, "Your God is too small!" as they seem
to imply that only their group will be saved. Thank God, His love
is broad enough to include everyone—Catholic and Protestant, the
modern religionist as well as the materialist.
Lacking an
explanation and solution to man’s dilemma, the materialist
taunts the Christian camp to come up with answers. Unfortunately,
most Christians are unable to meet the challenge. However, there
have been notable exceptions. Since the late 1800s diligent
students of Bible prophecy warned that the Twentieth Century would
be devastated by political, social, economic and religious
upheavals. This unprecedented trouble would destroy what the Bible
refers to the "present evil world" or social order.
Galatians 1:4.
A Remarkable
Prediction
The August
30, 1914, issue of The World Magazine in a feature article
about Bible Student predictions reported:
"The
terrific war outbreak in Europe has fulfilled an extraordinary
prophecy. For 25 years Bible Students have been proclaiming to the
world that the Day of Wrath prophesied in the Bible would dawn in
1914.
"The
Bible speaks of a "time of trouble such as never was since
there was a nation.’’ This prophecy of Daniel Bible Students
identify as the "Day of Wrath," the "Time of the
Lord," and the so-called "End of the World,"
references which are plentiful in the Scriptures."
How Historians
View Current Turmoil
The following
is a part of the record:
"Looking
back from the vantage point of the present we see that the
outbreak of World War I ushered in a twentieth-century "Time
of Troubles" … from which our civilization has by no means
yet emerged. Directly or indirectly all the convulsions of the
last half century stem back to 1914: the two World Wars, the
Bolshevik Revolution, the rise and fall of Hitler, the continuing
turmoil in the Far and Near East. the power-struggle between the
Communist world and our own. More than 23,000,000 deaths can be
traced to one or the other of these upheavals..." (Edmond
Taylor, The Fall of Dynasties, Doubleday, N.Y., 1963, p.
16.)
"A world
mesmerized by Science and Progress mocked the mysticism of
religious sects which had long predicted that the world would end
in the year 1914; fifty years later the world isn’t so sure that
it didn’t end in 1914..." (The Great Ideas Today,
1963, Britannica Great Books, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., pp.
107, 108.)
Historians
mark 1914 as the ending of a world. The convulsions since are both
the processes of its disintegration and the birth pangs of a new
world. Britannica editors, as noted, observed that a religious
group (actually known as Bible Students) predicted 1914 would mark
the ending of a world in just this manner.
Thus, whatever this world is
coming to, assurance and even comfort lie in knowing that the Word
of God predicted today’s phenomenal happenings beforehand.
