March, 1936
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not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth” (Isa. 42 :4 ). T he D eepening F og During a . d . 1935, the great fog that has been rolling in from the raging seas for the past six years, became more and more dense. In fact, the new year ( a . d . 1936) was born in as impenetrable a fog as ever settled over this much- befogged earth. The nations stagger in Egyptian darkness, and grope about for each other’s hands, never really know ing whether it is the hand o f friend or foe when they touch. In the richest and most favored o f all the nations, America, after an unprecedented spending spree in which we have filched billions upon billions.from the pockets of our children yet unborn, in an effort to create employment and restore prosperity, twenty millions—a larger number than ever before—are still being fed on the dole. The best brains o f the worst brains that ever directed our old Ship o f State candidly admit that the only way out that they know, is through methods that the Supreme Court de nounces as but little better than pillage. Our enthroned leaders are utterly confused, confounded, befuddled! The famous columnist, Arthur Brisbane, looking ahead, says: After the Convention, another election, then what? Suppose November, 1936, finds us still in the doldrums. Millions idle, billions o f dollars pouring out, the dollar growing thinner and thinner, “share-the-wealth” yelling louder and louder, and the poor “best minds,” knocked off their security pedestal in 1929, still asking “ What bewildered and lost, need we marvel that in the rest of the Gentile nations o f the earth, conditions are far worse ? The story o f 1935 has only made more significant than ever before the words o f our Lord : “ And there shall be . . . upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity . . . And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Lk. 2 1 :25, 27). It is exactly as the prophets before Him declared it would be on the eve o f the Messianic reign (Amos 5:18-20; Isa. 60 :2 ). The year 1935 saw the shadows of the coming Anti christ growing more visible and creeping more surely over the earth. L awlessness in H igh P laces Lawlessness is assuredly one of the most certain tokens of the coming o f the Antichrist. The Holy Spirit specif ically designates the Antichrist as “ the lawless one” (2 Thess. 2:8, R .V .). “ The beast” is to ride into power on waves o f lawlessness, acknowledging no law save the law o f his own selfish, egoistic, and imperious will (Dan. 11 :36 ). He arrives on the scene in days when men shall be in rebellion against the laws of God and men. When he gathers his puppets about him, it will be to rend the bands o f God asunder, and cast away every restraining cord (Psa. 2:2, 3 ). Already into their seats of tyrannical power, dictators have ridden and are riding by lawless force. At this moment, international laws have become almost a joke. The dictators scorn them, except when those laws may suit their own selfish purposes. When rulers set the example o f attaining their ends by lawless ness, what can you expect o f the rabble ? did happen to us?” If you cannot restore prosperity or provide work for the idle by running up a national debt of thirty-five billions, financing with limitless billions every new theory, how can you restore it? And if, in earth’s richest and most favored nation, the rulers are thus utterly
Never has the heart of the writer been filled with much greater indignation than when, just as he sat down to write, he glanced at the morning paper to read of an oc currence in Washington, D. C., at a dinner at which the “ First Lady of the Land” was the “ honor guest.” She sat there, with a thousand others who paid ten dollars a plate, and heard Mrs. Florence Jackson Stoddard, a direct de scendant of Andrew Jackson, recite a ballad entitled, “ The Ballad of the Nine Old Men.” It runs: There were nine old men who sat on a bench, They could do mighty deeds with a monkey wrench, They could manage great hose, a fire to quench, They could clerk for a low wage—and retrench, They each could do more than favored wench. But nine old men were out of work, They sat on a bench, but not to shirk, For each was as strong as a fighting Turk, But the law had taken a stupid quirk, Called them too old to labor with hammer or dirk. Now far on a hill, in a hall white as snow, , Nine venerable men sit all in a row, As old as the others—and maybe more so. And they read the laws as they wanted it read. And the people, aghast, hardly knew what they said,
For each was too old to come under the head O f unemployable—able to earn his own bread, But with good fat jobs all the nation they led! Shall we let them lead till we all are dead?
The newspaper report does not indicate Mrs. Roose velt’s reaction. Have'we come to the hour when the “ First Lady o f the Land,” the wife of the man solemnly sworn
to uphold the supreme law o f the land— have we come to the disquieting hour when that “ First Lady” will sit through a meeting, without protesting, where the highest, most respected, and most honored judicial body in the land, and probably in the world, will be made the butt of
ridicule and contempt? A fine example for the youth of the nation even now filling our jails and penitentiaries be cause o f their contempt for law as law ! It is hard for us to see the essential difference between the “ honor guest” with the thousand women around her, and the Bolshevistic hoodlums who, only the day before, at Ames, Iowa, hung in effigy along a public highway, the six justices o f the United States Supreme Court who held the “ A . A . A .” unconstitutional. Even though the Supreme Court may have been mistaken in its momentous decision, that “ honor guest,” no matter what her convictions, because of her position, should have resented an insult to the Supreme Court of the nation, with words that would have rever berated from the rocky coasts of Maine to the Golden Gate! It was not surprising that, in the same week, a “ Red” news commentator, speaking on a nation-wide hook-up, spoke a veiled warning against “ government by the judiciary,” and mentioned “ the nine old men” who are running the country! No wonder the souls of old-fashioned patriots are sorely troubled! Let a similar contempt for the supreme courts of the nations once instill itself into the breasts of the great common people, and the absolute reign o f the dictator is at hand Where not from choice. The decisions o f the supreme courts will give way to the decisions o f the supreme man! Lawlessness compels dictatorship. When a free people can no longer respect and be governed by their own laws, then, o f stern necessity, some one must arrive to govern, and freedom vanishes. Lawlessness therefore calls for the centralization o f power. The more lawless the people, the more necessary for the governor to demand and to obtain centralization o f power. Dictators have no
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