BY THE REV. W. GRIST, M.A.,
Vicar of St. Philip and St. James, Ilfracombe. (Continued)
Whither the World?
THE present times are both sinister and significant—sinister in that we see an activity of Satan working through human instruments, expressing his unmasked qualities of lying, murder and hate. Significant are these times in that they bear closest parallel with the conditions described by Christ and the Bible, as marking the days of the end of the present age of man’s misrule and neglect of God, prior to God’s intervention in the new order, the world government by the Lord Jesus Christ in His personal administration.
To understand the present times, mark that the world as it now is, is not the world of God’s original creation, but a fallen world, ruined by man’s introduction of sin. As though a province of our Empire had rebelled against the Crown, so is this world a rebellious province of the Kingdom of Heaven. The King’s writ does not run, evidenced in that His Word is denied, and His day dishonored. His laws too are broken. The movement of God overruling this rebellion of man is to restore this world to His obedience, and hence to peace and blessing. This it is His revealed purpose to do in the Divine Man, Christ Jesus, the world’s rightful Prince, whose place has been usurped in the allegiance of men by the false prince Satan, “the god of the world.”
Before that rule of Christ is established, the world is to witness the logical consequences of its rebellious attitude to God, and this will be seen in an intensification of those marks which our Lord indicated would characterize the age of His absence— “wars and rumors of wars—nation rising against nation, famines, pestilences, earthquakes; all these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matt. 24:4-84And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8All these are the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24:4‑8)). This time, so characterized, would lead to a period which Christ calls “the tribulation of those days,” and it is “immediately after” this that “they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 24:29-3029Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 30And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Matthew 24:29‑30)). Then will be world peace, and truth and justice shall flourish in the earth.
The significance of the present times lies in that it would appear that the present war is shaping the conditions which the Bible indicates as marking the time of this “tribulation of those days,” which Christ’s return is to terminate. Like the making of a jig-saw puzzle, various world events are fitting in one by one and the picture seems amazingly to be growing to completion—on the obverse of the picture is a new European alliance of nations; a Northern Russo-German league, Jewish persecution; the growing influence of a quasi-religious political power; aerial armaments and militarization of the weakest nations. On the reverse side is the Head of the coming Crowned Prince of Peace. Keep Him before your mind, and peace and confidence shall be your portion.
(To be continued)