Over 1,900 years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ (surveying with the all-seeing eye of omniscient God just what the conditions would be on earth prior to His own coming in a cloud as Son of man, with power and great glory) defined most clearly the state of things in these few words:
In all things our Lord Jesus is to have the preeminence; already the prophets of this "present evil world" are paying unwitting tribute to Him. Some years ago, one of its own prophets wrote a book entitled, "The Outline of History," a book that ignored what God has had to say in His Word as to man's origin and destiny, a book that exalted the creature and forgot the Creator. This same man, H. G. Wells (after surveying the swiftly moving course of events in later years), reversed himself in statements that startled even his own admirers. We quote him:
"This world is at the end of its tether.
"The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded....
"People are discovering a frightful queerness has come into life. Even unobservant people are betraying, by fits and starts, a certain wonder, a shrinking, fugitive sense that something is happening so that life will never quite be the same....
"... Writers are convinced there is no way out, around or through the impasse. It's the end....
."Hitherto, events have been held together by a certain logical consistency as the heavenly bodies, as we know them, have been held together by the pull of the golden cord of gravitation.
"Now it is as if the cord has vanished and everything is driving anyhow to anywhere at a steadily increasing velocity.
"The limits of the orderly, secular development of life... has been reached and passed into hitherto incredible chaos...."
Let us hear once more the voice of Scripture: "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star [the hope of the Lord's coming for His own as a realized thing in the soul] arise in your hearts." 2 Pet. 1:1919We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: (2 Peter 1:19).