The world seems to be spinning out of control: mass shootings; pervasive COVID-19 variants; division on every subject; the 2021 storming of the Nation’s Capitol; political wrangling; continuing racial injustice; global warming causing natural disasters worldwide; skyrocketing inflation; record debt; and the list continues…
The disintegration of the family unit—the “core” of human society—only erodes hope to repair this world’s problems. Over a million school children do not have a home to go back to at night! Did you know there are approximately 100 million street children worldwide? Schools have been turned upside down with staffing, masking and bus driver issues—let alone children’s reading and math scores down with school officials having to lower the testing standards. People are fighting feelings of depression and suicide like never before; the economy forcing over three million people living on the streets, many with drug and alcohol addictions, etc. When will all these very stressful conditions end? Will we ever see a time of “peace on earth”? If there is a God—WHY doesn’t He do something about it? WHY does God permit evil? So we ask: What is this world coming to?
Most historians now agree that since World War I our world, as we have known it, has been coming to an end. This end is 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 1930s offered the Great Depression; the 1940s brought the Second World War; the 1950s saw the communist takeover of more than one third of the world; and the 1960s were terrorized by race riots and the youth revolt.
In the 1970s, 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 1980s 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.”
The turn of the century saw the beginning of the unwinnable war against global terrorism by religious extremists. Attacks on 9/11/2001 stunned the world and set in motion an avalanche of political, financial, and social responses. The stock market experienced repeated major drops with the start of the new century. There was a 16.7% drop in value in 2002, a 33.4% in 2008, and again in 2022. The hope of financial security, time after time, is replaced with the spirit of fear—in the hearts of both the working class and retired Americans—of another 1930s U.S. economic calamity. In over 19 months the recession erased trillions of dollars of wealth, destroyed 8 million jobs and robbed tens of thousands of their homes. More than half of the adults lost a job or saw a cut in pay or hours and almost everybody’s wealth fell.
What have we seen with every recovery? The economy has grown slowly in fits and starts. Millions of workers have remained unemployed for months, even years. Millions more, facing huge drops in home values and uncertainty of their income, made radical changes in their plans and life styles. Seniors stayed in their jobs longer, young adults “cocooned” in their parents’ basements. Will the world be able to recover from a global recession?
In 2020, the outbreak of Covid-19 had not only a regional impact at the source, but it rapidly spread to a global health and economic upheaval unlike any that had ever occurred before in mankind’s history.
The May 29, 2020 edition of the National Library of Medicine featured an article on the Economic Consequences of Covid-19.
“COVID-19 is not only a global pandemic and public health crisis; it has also severely affected the global economy and financial markets. Significant reductions in income, a rise in unemployment, and disruptions in the transportation, service, and manufacturing industries are among the consequences of the disease mitigation measures that have been implemented in many countries. It has become clear that most governments in the world underestimated the risks of rapid COVID-19 spread and were mostly reactive in their crisis response. As disease outbreaks are not likely to disappear in the near future, proactive international actions are required to not only save lives but also protect economic prosperity.”
The 21st century has brought in the Arab Spring revolutions, a wave of terrorist attacks resulting in unprecedented numbers of refugees fleeing their homes, cybercrime and cyber espionage, corporate corruption, and the eruption of Ebola and other serious diseases impacting every nation.
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 basis 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 such as the existence of God that cannot be proved, but actually 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 as the “present evil world” or social order. Galatians 1:4
A Remarkable Prediction
A feature article in the August 30, 1914 issue of The World Magazine reported this about Bible Student predictions:
“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 the 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
Many historians mark the year 1914 as the ending of a world. The convulsions are both the process 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 progressive steps toward 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.
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When Will God Answer the World’s Cries?
“For the creation [world of mankind] waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Romans 8:19-21 (RSV)
Waiting for Thy promised earthly Kingdom to come with its Restitution of all things.