April, 1934
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
139
The Qreat RED DRAG ON and the WOMAN ’S CHILD— //? 1934 * B y LOUIS S. BAUMAN, Long Beach, California
A Great Question, and Its Answer, from Matthew 2 4 “And as he sat upon the mount o f Waves, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us . . . what shall be the sign o f thy coming, and o f the end o f the world?” (Matt. 24 :3 ). The Master granted the request. He said: “ Ye shall hear o f wars and rumors o f wars: see that ye be not troubled: fo r all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet” (v. 6 ).
o f a shaking earth; and some o f us have been receiving these reports even more directly! I f the words o f the Lord Jesus Christ mean anything— if He really intended that by signs we shall know— then, when all four o f these terrible sorrows—war, famine, pestilence, and earthquake— come together within a few short years, such a combination of circumstances ought to stop us in the busy rush o f things long enough to think! But the Master did not stop there. He said: “ A ll these are the beginning o f sorrows” (v. 8 ). Worse yet than them all— religious persecutions, demon-inspired, shall take place: “ Then [as My coming draws nigh] shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill y o u : and ye shall be hated o f all nations fo r my name’s sake” (v. 9 ). “ Ye” —whether Jew or Christian was in the Lord’s mind, that is now beside the point. The point is that because o f their relation to Jesus Christ, men and women are going to be made to suffer the wrath o f the dragon. That there is a world-wide anti-Semitic movement, no well- informed man doubts. But, the wrath o f old Beelzebub and all his ilk is not vented against the Jew alone. In the bosoms o f great masses o f the unregenerate, there is a rising antagonism to all who are in any way related to Jesus o f Nazareth, whether that relation is through the blood o f His veins or the blood o f His cross. Accumulat ing evidences come to us from Russia, Germany, Rou- mania, China, Japan, Germany, Mexico, and numerous other lands— yes, even from the United States o f America. Fast-growing religious enmities on all sides, under cover and aboveboard, make the prophecy o f the Master a por tent o f first magnitude. “ Then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another” (v. 10).
As s w e write, “ rumors of wars” from the four quarters o f the globe are disrupting trade, pro voking armaments, striking terror, and engendering hate. “ I spend some months o f every year on the Continent,” says Lord Rennell, of England, “ where I have many links and hear many opinions, and wherever I go, I have for the last year or two been deeply impressed with the universal apprehension of the imminence o f war.”
Louis S. B auman
“ War in Europe in 1934 seems to me inevitable,” says Henry Morgenthau, Mr. Roosevelt’s Secretary o f the Treasury. “ It is foreshadowed by signs ominously similar to those which were clearly visible in Europe in 1913.” Constantly, the men who, from the human standpoint, guide the destinies o f the nations, talk in terror o f “ the next war.” The London Daily Mail quite recently published an interview with General Hermann Wilhelm Goering, Pre mier o f Prussia and Nazi leader in the Reich, quoting him as saying that there is an abundance o f causes for war in Europe, and that when war begins “ it will mean that Euro pean civilization will perish in a universal blood bath.” “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom : and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places” (y. 7 ). Within less than a score of years, we have seen nation rise against nation until the far-flung battle lines encircled the eartlj, and seven million virile youth lay rotting on the battle-fields. That was, beyond question, the greatest war o f all the centuries. And we have seen twelve millions in China, and millions more in Russia, India, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere, wither and die in the greatest famines known to man. And Jwe have seen a single plague, influenza, sweep all the lands and seas o f earth, sending into their graves twenty-four millions j more— the greatest world- pestilence in human history. And we have seen the earth quaking from stem to Stern— quaking in regions never known to quake before—and two o f these earthquakes, in China and Japan, were the most terrible seismic distub ¿Has there ever been an hour in which human hatreds were more universal and more intense than in this present moment? Frenchman hating German, and German hating Frenchman; Greek hating Turk, and Turk hating Greek; Japanese hating Chinese, and Chinese hating Japanese; Hindu hating Briton, and Briton hating Hindu; Latin Americans hating Latin Americans'; Balkan Europeans hating Balkan Europeans; “ Brown Shirts” and “ Silver Shirts” hating Jews, and Jews hating “ Brown Shirts” and “ Silver Shirts” ; everybody hating Russian, and Russian hating everybody; Nazi, Fascist, and Communist—all hat ing each other, and all waiting to slab, shoot, poison, or blow each other to atoms; hate, hate, hate, everywhere and everywhere— ever increasing in ’ f l M B I o f the sea, foaming out their own “ offended,” and all ready to “ betray” each other to the ^reat pale conqueror o f a ll! ances on the records o f men. And the quaking con tin u e sjj^ j/ “And because iniquity [Gr., lawlessness] shall abound, Almost every morning the newspapers bring us new records’ ; tile love o f many shall wax cold” (v. 12). 7Tr T ,, .. ,, , , , . , , , « ' Never before in all the history o f man, unless in the *Next month will appear the fourth and last o f the articles under „ r tvt __ u i___ i _ _>> u , . ■ this caption, in the series by the pastor o f the First Brethren Church, days o f Noah, has lawlessness been more rampant in the Long Beach. In the next article, special attention will be given to rarth. Even in high places, lawlessness wantonly parades Hitlerism, and th'e. present world-wide wave o f anti-Semitism, itself. Lawyers, lawmakers, high executives o f the law,
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