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1914 Changed the World
The Year 1914
Is a Recognized Turning Point In Human History
The outbreak of an unprecedented
world war caused the following reaction from the publisher of a
noted periodical. The August 30, 1914, issue of The World
Magazine in a feature article 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.
Historians have much to say
about that eventful year 1914.
The following is a part of the historical record.
Edmond Taylor while quoting
Arnold Toynbee said:
“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.”
Britannica Great Books, THE
GREAT IDEAS TODAY:
“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.”
OXFORD HISTORIAN AND BIOGRAPHER:
“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.”
The list of writers describing
the unprecedented destructive forces unleashed in 1914 is
phenomenal and more continue to add their observations to this
day. The following are a small additional sampling:
“It is indeed the year 1914
rather than that of Hiroshima which marks the turning point in
our time.” — Rene Albrecht-Carrie, The Scientific
Monthly, July 1951.
“Ever since 1914, everybody
conscious of trends in the world has been deeply troubled by
what has seemed like a fated and pre-determined march toward
ever greater disaster. Many serious people have come to feel
that nothing can be done to avert the plunge towards ruin. They
see the human race, like the hero of a Greek tragedy, driven on
by angry gods and no longer the master of fate.” — Bertrand
Russell, New York Times Magazine, September 27, 1953.
“The modern era . . . began in
1914, and no one knows when or how it will end . . . It could
end in mass annihilation.” — Editorial, The Seattle Times,
January 1, 1959.
“In 1914 the world, as it was
known and accepted then, came to an end.” — James Cameron,
1914, published in 1959.
“The First World War was one of
the great convulsions of history.” — Barbara Tuchman, The
Guns of August. 1962.
“Thoughts and pictures come to
my mind, . . . thought from before the year 1914 when there was
real peace, quiet and security on this earth—a time when we
didn’t know fear . . . Security and quiet have disappeared from
the lives of men since 1914.” — Former U.N. General Secretary,
Konrad Adenauer, 1965.
“The whole world really blew up
about World War I and we still don’t know why . . . Utopia was
in sight. There was peace and prosperity. Then everything blew
up. We’ve been in a state of suspended animation ever since.” —
Dr. Walker Percy, American Medical News, November 21,
1977.
“In 1914 the world lost a
coherence which it has not managed to recapture since . . . This
has been a time of extraordinary disorder and violence, both
across national frontiers and within them.” — The Economist,
London, August 4, 1979.
“Civilization entered on a cruel
and perhaps terminal illness in 1914.” — Frank Peters, St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, January 27, 1980.
In his book, OUT OF CONTROL,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor and
professor of American Foreign Policy at John Hopkins University,
notes that the 20th century began amid great hope and promise,
but became the century of insanity. In elaborating on his
observation of 175 million slaughtered in the name of the
“politics of organized insanity,” he says:
“Contrary to its promise, the
twentieth century became mankind's most bloody and hateful
century of hallucinatory politics and of monstrous killings.
Cruelty was institutionalized to an unprecedented degree,
lethality was organized on a mass production basis. The contrast
between the scientific potential for good and the political evil
that was actually unleashed is shocking. Never before in history
was killing so globally pervasive, never before did it consume
so many lives, never before was human annihilation pursued with
such concentration of sustained effort on behalf of such
arrogantly irrational goals.”
These observations of history
confirm predictions that the old world
began to end in 1914 and is currently being ushered completely
out of existence by a consuming process of wars,
revolutions and anarchy. The evidence of history clearly teaches
that 1914 is the most significant date in modern times as it
marks a sharp break with the past. The wars and upheavals,
social turmoil and unrest since 1914 are greater, deeper, and
more unrelenting than anything mankind has ever experienced. No
one has given a better explanation of the events of the 20th
century.
The trouble of the present time
and recent past is merely the passing of the old order as a new
order of righteousness, peace, and everlasting life is to be
ushered in for the benefits and blessing of all the families of
the earth who accept and obey God's words of life. |
