A Terrible Outlook for the World
By Heyman Wreford.
I HAD a Booklet placed in my hands by a Christian friend called “A Great Event Just Ahead,” by J. A. Towers. I read it with great interest, and I felt I must pass on some of the things recorded there, as they are very striking, and deal with what is going on all around us at this time. It speaks of the condition of the world today, as seen by men who are classed among the thinkers of the world. Men of marked individuality, some believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and some not, but all impressed with the great fact that most momentous things are happening, and are going to happen, and that unless something that they know nothing of intervenes the outlook for the human race, and the world in which we live, is dark indeed.
Listen to what some of the World’s great men have been saying lately: — “We have come to the crossroads and no one knows the way out.” — H. G. Wells.
“The future is very dark. We have reached the twilight of civilization.” — Dr. H. L. Brailsford.
“No man, unless he is drunk with optimism, can deny that the world is very sick, and it may be a sickness unto death.” — Sir Philip Gibbs.
“A new chapter opens in the history of Europe, and the world with a climax of horror such as mankind has never yet Witnessed.” — Lloyd-George.
O, “These are days of great perplexity, when a great cloud hangs over the world. It seems as if great, blind, material forces had been released which had for long been held in leash and restraint”― President-Wilson...
“I am afraid that unless something intervenes there may be in the world again a catastrophe, but not like the last one. The next war may well destroy civilization unless something or somebody does something.
“We seem now to be passing through space at an accelerated speed. I wonder where we are going. The outlook is both anxious and disconcerting.” — Lloyd-George.
“Everyone would like to believe that another great war is a remote contingency, but the fact cannot be ignored that one may come at any time, unexpectedly from any quarter.
“It may involve the whole world. If another war comes, it will be more terrible than the last.” — Field Marshal Foch of France.
What a terrible outlook for the world is revealed by these uninspired men, who judge the world and its future from what they know and read of its history, as recorded in the newspapers of the World, dealing with the awful sins of today.
To quote again from the Booklet, Mr. Towers says: ―
“In second Timothy, third chapter, vs. 1 to 4, we read: ‘This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.’ And in the thirteenth verse, ‘Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.’
“The newspapers bring proof of this Scripture to our eyes every day. It is plain to be seen that the ‘waxing worse and worse’ is already upon us, for these awful things enumerated, and worse, if possible, abound everywhere. Children in cold blood murdering the mother that bore and nursed, them, and parents murdering their own offspring; husbands and wives proving unfaithful and murdering each other; such stupendous robberies as never were heard of before.
“‘Here are a, few statistics along that line, quoting from Current History of October, 1925, and January, 1926: ‘Last year there were 10,000 murders in America and more than, 300,000 robberies and hold-ups. Chicago recently attained first place with a murder a day. There are at the present time 135,000 murderers at liberty in the United States. In the year 1914 the number in the Atlantic penitentiary was 722, and in 1925 there were 3,228. Crime has increased 400 per cent. since 1910. Social diseases kill 300,000 annually in the United States.’ These are but a part of the awful list given. And now in 1932 all prisons and penal institutions are full to overflowing.”
This is only a sample of what is going on in almost every country in the world. The riot of sin is filling the whole earth with a succession of horrors that have never been known before in such awful intensity.
And every sin will have its judgment. The thunders of Sinai are still rolling their awful warnings over the world. Skies are darkening to the Judgment Day. “The soul that sinneth it shall die” is the fiat of a holy God.
Unless the Voice from Calvary is heard — and the story of the Cross has changed the outlook of human lives — unless faith in the Redeemer’s sacrifice for sin and sinners has brought us the forgiveness of our guilt — there can be no star of hope to illume the awful darkness that hangs over all the destinies of man.
Thank God there are millions who can call the Lord Jesus. Christ their Saviour and their God. There are millions who are waiting for one Great Event, that will bring about the most momentous change this world has ever known.
We are on the eve of the Second Coming of Christ. Read 1 Thessalonians, fourth chapter. Christ may come at any moment. He may come as you are reading this.
The Christless are in danger every moment. “What a heart-rending time it will be,” says Mr. Towers “on that next morning after Jesus has come and taken His own. A man that has been blessed with a true Christian wife, but he himself unsaved, will awake to find her gone from his side — her garments will lie where she laid them when she retired, but she herself nowhere to be found. In another family a true Christian son or daughter is missing from the family circle. In another home they wait in vain for the summons to the morning meal, and on investigating they find the Christian cook is gone.... Railroad trains are speeding, across the continent, and suddenly come to a halt in the desert, or mountain gulch, and the converted engineer of fireman is not to be found, and so it will be in all the walks of life the world over. It will be beyond the power of words to describe the feelings of those who are left when at last it dawns on them what has taken place. Such awful remorse as men have never known before will seize their hearts. Oh, the awful anguish and regret of those who awake to find themselves left to go through those fearful years of judgment and tribulation — to realize that the door is shut, and the day of grace is past. Then they will remember when it is too late, what God’s Word has been telling them all their lives, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation.” All you have to do to be left and lost is simply to neglect the salvation God has provided for you.... How awfully cheap and faded will be those things you esteem so highly now — the gold and silver — the bank account — the houses and lands — the oil and mining stocks — fine apparel and honor and pleasures of this world. If you owned all that this world contains you would be glad to exchange them all for a readiness to go with Jesus and the people of God.”
Oh! Woe to the Christless! — Woe! if they are left behind when Christ has come, and the Holy Ghost and all the saints have left this earth for heaven.
They will be left to face the awful fate spoken of so solemnly in 2nd Thessalonians, ch. 1, vss. 7, 8, 9 and 10....
They will have to face the Great Tribulation — the reign of Antichrist — with satanic power supreme everywhere.
“Woe to the Christless! — Woe!”
No use then to call upon the rocks and mountains to cover and hide you — there will be no hiding place from wrath for the Christ-rejecter then. There will be no covert from the storm in the Day of His Wrath.
Placid Christians tell us that the Lord will have His own. They are often annoyed at the zeal of those who are alive to the state of the world in which they live, and who are humbly seeking to exalt the precious Name, and boundless love of the Only One who can bless mankind today.
The hosts of evil are opposed in close array to the Christ of God — they are working as one, night and day, against the Father and the Son. We see it everywhere — we feel it all around us. We get letters and appeals from earnest men and women all over the world, whose hearts are bleeding and almost broken at the ravages of Modernism, and other phases of infidelity.
Woe to the Christless! — Woe!
“The love of many shall wax cold” is a sign of the last days — and the waxing cold of Christians to the work of God leads often to opposition against those who seek humbly to follow Christ and work for Him.
There are none so critical as a cold Christian, and none so cruel oftentimes.
It was only the burning flame of the Apostle Paul’s love for Christ that enabled him to shine as a meteor for Christ when all forsook him because of his absorbing love for his Saviour, and His eternal truth.
Arctic indifference and calculating opposition only made him rejoice the more that he found his all in Christ. “For to me to live is Christ.” To know Him and the power of His resurrection — “to be found in Him” — “to be with Him” — these were some of the watchwords of his constant life, and when the Diotrophes, and the Demases had done their work, Christ was dearer to him than ever.
None can destroy what is indestructible; and in fighting against or hindering the people of God men are fighting against God Himself. God says to His own: “Fear not, I have redeemed thee; thou art Mine.” Mine for time and Mine for eternity. Toil-worn and weary as you may be, Christ says, “Follow thou Me.”
“Paul the Aged” followed Christ, and the deep pathos of those three words, “Paul the Aged,” have been enshrined in the Holy Scriptures, that also tell us of the crowning of those gray hairs with the crown of righteousness. Philemon, vs. 9, and 2 Tim. 4:88Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:8) verse.
There is no loneliness when we are alone with Christ — it is good to be alone for Christ. The consciousness of power divine is never felt so much as when the failure of human help is brought home to us.
Oh! to be a voice in these last days to proclaim the glories of His Person and His finished work. Oh.! for the broken heart over sinners for His sake! Oh! for our eyes to be fountains of tears to weep with Him who wept over Jerusalem — lamenting as He wept the unbelief and hatred that cast Him out — to weep with Him who wept at the grave of Lazarus, because sin had come into the World and death by sin — and He must be made sin to take sin away, “and so deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
What joy to suffer with Him and for Him down here, and then to reign with Him forever.
What Has the Future in Store for You, My Reader?
Even unbelievers are speaking of the terrible outlook of the world today. Christians know from the Word of God that at any moment the world-sin-cursed, may be left without those who are redeemed out of the world by the precious blood of Christ — may be left without the Holy Ghost — left to the terrific judgment of unsparing wrath — left to the absolute slavery of the devil and his hosts. Antichrist will be revealed, and the Great Tribulation will have to be faced by all who will not acknowledge the Lord Jesus as the Saviour of the world, and their Saviour before He comes.
Woe to the Christless — Woe!
To be Christless is to be lifeless — to be hopelessly foredoomed to the loss of all that Christ would have given you. Listen! “I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.” “My peace I give unto you.” “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’
Oh! come to Christ, and escape the doom of the Christless; but remember, Woe to the Christless — Woe!