II TIMOTHY magnitude today. This is not a community problem — it is a na tional problem. In fact, a world wide problem. When Jesus gave prophecy in Matthew 24 regarding the times just before His return, He said it would closely resemble a woman in travail, waiting for her child to be born. As pains increase in in tensity and frequency, you know a baby is getting close to being born. We have seen these same symp toms through the ages. Now, how ever, we are seeing them increase in frequency and intensity unlike any time in history. The decay of our society is all around us. We have literally a drug epidemic in the United States to day. John Ingersol recently pre sented figures to a conference of law enforcement officers wherein he pointed out in 1960, we knew of fifty-five thousand hard-core drug addicts in the United States. In 1970, the number rose to five-
hundred and sixty-thousand known hard narcotics addicts! These are only the ones we have recorded. In Los Angeles alone last year, thirty-three thousand arrests were made for drug violations. Indeed, a drug epidemic. Crime is definitely on the in crease. In one month last year, over three-thousand people in the city of Los Angeles were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. Drugs, crime, and other urban problems are all on the rise with no answer, humanly speaking, on the horizon. In a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled, "Mental Depres sion Afflicts More in U.S.," it stated this deep problem of depression leads to complete immobilization and in many cases, suicide. Dr. Gerald Clearman, professor of Psy chology at Harvard University, es timates one out of eight Americans can expect to experience this prob-
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