men
A for-men-only feature dealing with basic Christianity/by Lloyd Hamill
THE COUNT-DOWN
solutely certain. Here’s how the Bible puts it (por tions of 2 Pet. 3 as translated by J. B. Phillips) : “ But you should never lose sight of the fact, dear friends, that time is not the same with the Lord as it is with us ■— to Him a day may be a thousand years, and a thousand years only a day. It is not that He is dilatory about keeping His own Promise as some men seem to think; the fact is that He is very patient toward you. He has no wish that any man should be destroyed: He wishes that all men should come to repent. Yet it remains true that thè Day of the Lord will come as sud denly and unexpectedly as a thief. In that Day the heavens will dis appear in a terrific tearing blast, the very elements will disintegrate in heat and the earth and all that is in it will be burnt up to nothing. “ In view of the fact that all these are to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be? Surely men of good and holy character, who live expecting and earnestly longing for the coming of the Day of God. True, this Day will mean that the heav ens will disappear in fire and the e lem en ts disintegrate in fearful heat, but our hopes are set not on these but on the new Heavens and the new Earth which He has prom ised us, and in which nothing but good shall live. “ Because, my dear friends, you have a hope like this before you, I urge you to make certain that such a Day would find you at peace with God and man, clean and blameless in His sight. Meanwhile, consider that God’s patience is meant to be man’s salvation, as our dear brother Paul pointed out in his letter to you written out of the wisdom God gave him. In that letter, as indeed in all his letters, he referred to these matters.” God spoke these words for a pur pose. The rest seems up to us. END.
believable instant the entire eastern sky erupted in a blinding, bluish light. It was far more brilliant than any noonday sun. The train was gone now. There was no sound. W e drove on into the silent Mojave. Juniper and joshua trees were quiet silhouettes against the desert dawn. I switched the radio off. M y wife said, “ I just can’t believe it.” I said I couldn’t believe it either. The next day the morning paper said the blast was twice the size of the one that had leveled Hiro shima. This one had been attached to a 700-foot tower. The tower was vaporized. Grass and trees were set on fire more than two miles away. Up until Saturday we had only read about the bomb. It hadn’t meant too much. Now we had seen the blinding light of one. The re sult was profound. This isn’t an unusual illustration. W e humans are just built this way. If we weren’t skeptical about the unknown we’d still be believing in haunted houses. But sometimes an otherwise scrupulously honest man will use this built-in tendency of skepticism to avoid things he just doesn’t understand. It’s an easy way out. A thorough, honest inves tigation can be a lot of work. Apply this illustration to religion. We have a natural tendency to dis believe what God says in the Bible. But deep down inside we know that, God being God, what He says is final. And when we do take time to take a good hard look at the facts the results may be profound. Here’s a fact we’ll want to look at: Jesus Christ came to earth 2,000 years ago to outline God’s one and only plan of personal salvation. Another fact: the Bible says Christ will come again and the results somehow re mind us of the dissolving power of the atom bomb. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s just as absolutely certain as the atom bomb is ab
The unknown has a way of being ■somehow vague and a little ion- real. I saw an illustration of this one Saturday recently. M y wife and I were heading out to a little lake on the edge of the Mojave Desert for some trout fish ing. This spot stands out in sharp contrast to the trout lakes in our high mountains of California. In stead of jagged granite and ever greens and aspens this little lake out on the Mojave is set among picturesque ju n ip e r and joshua trees. W e had gotten up at 3:30. At ,5:30 we stopped for a freight train at a Crossing just a few hundred feet south of Highway 6 near Palm dale. W e had the car radio on, lis te n in g to a midnight-to-dawn telephone interview program over KFI. Anyone who considers him self an expert on any subject can call in and consume anywhere from five minutes to an hour. One old- timer who calls himself Doc can be heard sounding off almost as reg ularly as the sunrise. He’ll give a fascinating dissertation on cor- vina or debate the question of whether or not a rattlesnake can see a bullet coming and dodge it. (They can’t. I’ve shot several.) While we were stopped at the railroad crossing the announcer switched to a different subject. An atomic bomb, code-named Smokey, was to be exploded in a few seconds in Nevada. M y wife asked me if we’d be able to see it. I said I didn’t think so. The sky in the east was already getting light and there were 250 miles and two 11,000-foot mountain ranges in be tween. But we watched anyway. A reporter was in a telephone booth near the blast site and gave the KFI announcer the count-down cue. The count-down came at an awe some, no-turning-back pace — 10 ...9...8...7...6...5...4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . Then in one un
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The King's Business/October 1957
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