April 1932
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K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
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1 CDay ¿Fu lfillm en t o/PRQPHECY . . . B y L ouis S. B auman
(Present
selves with the seed of men” and “ shall not cleave one to another” (Dan. 2 :43). “ In unity there is strength.” There fore, the whole image suddenly comes to its end in one colossal collapse. And thus ends an unregenerate world’s fond dream of a superstate without God. The Tragic Failure o f Present-Day Governments est an orthodox preacher of the gospel of the Book be accused of undue bias in discussing a subject like this, we quote from a secular newspaper. It is a remark able delineation, in the shortest possible space, of the “ tragic failure” present man has made in every department of human activity. It comes from the pen of a well-known popular writer, one of the editors o f The Los Angeles Times —Harry Carr: & You can’t laugh this off: The white race has made a tragic failure o f ruling the world. W e have been a failure in every department and phase o f life—political, indus trial, sociological, mechanical, ethical, and scientific. POL IT ICAL—In Europe, there are wide stretches o f land with similar climatic conditions, inhabited by pop ulations with identical interests and needs. Any one with the brain o f a peanut vender would realize that one gov ernment should regulate all these problems and adjust ments. Instead, the illuminated white race has erected an intricate system o f artificial boundary lines and taxes itself to the edge o f starvation and ruin to keep groups sep arated. Imagine the idiocy o f people slaughtering each other until the ground is soaked with blood, to decide the position of an imaginary line on a map! GOVERNMENTAL—W e tax ourselves to the point of ruin to pass laws which we refuse to obey; then we tax ourselves still more cruelly in the attempt to force ourselves to obey our laws. INDUSTR IAL—Our industrial system borders on group-idiocy: nations starving because they have too much food ; voting enormous sums o f money to support farmers whose crops have failed; then making bonfires of mountains o f superfluous foodstuffs. SOCIOLOGICAL—Even the dumb wild animals o f the jungle have a better knowledge o f sociology. They do not jam themselves into cities away from food sources, or expect the hunter animals to provide food for “middle men.” Also, they do not make j ungle rules for the mating o f the sexes and then erect an elaborate and expensive system for breaking these rules. The law o f the jungle is absolute, unchanging; violations are punished by death. MECHANICAL—W e are enormously proud o f hav- 1 ing invented machines which deprive men o f an oppor tunity to work, machines that have brought restless dis content in place o f placid contemplation. ETH ICAL—W e have voted ourselves into a position wherein we are all criminals—criminals against liquor laws, traffic laws, marriage laws. W e have turned our selves into perjurers and oath-breakers. SCIENTIFIC—W e have located stars a trillion times ten trillion miles away, but we can’t penetrate the natural law which has already fixed the kind o f weather that will prevail in Los Angeles on April first. Brethren, we may deem well (which I very much doubt), but we are too dumb to try to rule the world. What an indictment upon this boastful, “ scientific age” ! “ Too dumb to rule the world” ! Well, that may be, but will men ever come to know that their “ dumbness” is the result of a vain attempt to rule, without God, them- •selves and the world ?
The A . B . C .’s o f Prophecy
W m ago , when the writer took his first instruction in the great prophetic revelations of the living God who from the beginning beholds the end, his very first lesson dealt with the seven ages: 1. Age of InnocenCy, ending with man’s expulsion from Eden. 2. Age o f Conscience, ending with the flood. 3. Age of Human Government, ending with the dis persion at Babel. 4. Age of Promise, ending with Israel’s bondage and the passover judgment in Egypt. 5. Age of the Law, ending with Calvary. 6. Age of Grace, to end with “ tribulation, the great.” 7. Age o f the Kingdom, to end with the judgment at “ the great white throne.” No one knows even the A. B. C.’s of prophetic truth until these divisions of time, as set forth’ in the counsel of God, become clear to him. The plans and purposes o f God, so far as man’s sojourn on this present earth is concerned, all are set forth and are within these seven dispensations. The first fact we must come to understand is that each age runs the same peculiar course; that is, it begins with God’s giving to the world a clean slate, a new revelation, and a fresh start. It ends with the world proving itself to be lawless and a complete failure in government, with no way out except across “ The Bridge of Sighs” to judgment. A re W e Nearing the End o f our A g e ? ractically all students of the prophetic Word are agreed that man has been living for the last nineteen hundred years in the Age of Grace. Moreover, they are generally agreed that we are approaching the closing hours o f this age. If so, and the age is running true to form, we must expect to see a general collapse of all gov ernmental arrangements—a world unable to find its way back or out, with no way forward but to certain judgment. Judgment is the inevitable result of human failure. The Collapse o f Nebuchadnezzar's Image hose familiar with the image that stands upon the me ridian of prophetic truth—Nebuchadnezzar’s image— will recall that this image brings before our vision the rise and fall of empires from the days of the Babylonian monarch to the day when the Monarch from heaven will come and set up “an everlasting kingdom” that will not pass away. In other words, the image visualizes human government down to the end o f the present age. And what is the vision o f the end ? It is the vision o f ten nations, try ing to save man’s highest “ civilization” by forming a giant federation under one great head, a superman, who knows no god above himself (Dan. 7:24-26; Rev. 17:12, 13). But mankind’s final superstate will prove to be but “ iron mixed with miry clay,” lacking completely in the elements of Nebuchadnezzarian strength and power, inas much as the princes of this superstate “ shall mingle them
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