Signs in the Social World by L. L. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 13, 1916

Signs in the Social World

By L. L. C.

Signs of Christ’s Coming — No. 6

Signs in the Social World

One of the conditions to prevail in the last days is presented in the words of the angel who told the prophet Daniel to seal up the words of the book of his prophecy. The angel said,—

“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Dan. 12: 4.

Of the discoveries of the last seventy years, the Scientific American in its seventieth anniversary number, June 5, 1915, says,—

“When the Scientific American was established [1845], . . . the telegraph and the reaper had just been born. There was no telephone, no motion picture machine, no oil-refining industry, no electric incandescent lamp, no wireless telegraph, no flying machine or airship, no typewriter, no automobile, no electric railway, no Bessemer steel, no phonograph, no passenger elevator, no steam turbine. Why continue the list any further? Much of the transformation which has marked the last seventy years has taken place within the lives of men still with us. The amazing rapidity with which industries have grown and conveniences multiplied may be attributed to the very nature of invention and research. Hardly was one discovery made when a vista to a whole series of new discoveries was opened, and each of these in turn disclosed bypaths to still newer fields. So development has progressed with the rapidity of wildfire. . . . What a period of scientific activity we have lived through! When . . . the Scientific American was started, it took three weeks to send a message from New York to Liverpool, and three months to Calcutta. . . . Only yesterday we marveled at the application of ether and chloroform to surgery, at the feat of telegraphing across the ocean without wires, at the bigness of the Panama Canal, at the opportunity of viewing the skeleton beneath the living flesh with the X rays, and the spectacle of a man flying in the air swifter than any bird. When we think that it has been our privilege not merely to see these and many other miracles and to translate them into print, so that the wonder of them and the beauty of them might strike all men, who can blame us if we contemplate our future task with a feeling almost akin to awe?”

Since the invention of the steamship and steam railway, the running to and fro has been made easy, and all forms of knowledge have been more widely disseminated. This invention has come in the providence of God to facilitate the carrying of the gospel message to the whole world in this generation. As Dr. Edward Lawrence says,—

“There was one other force which was needed to fully equip the church for its universal activity, and to draw the nations of the world together into a net, as the peoples of old had been drawn into the Greco-Roman Empire. That was the power of steam, which was to bind the lands together with bands of steel, turn the oceans into a Mediterranean, make the locomotive an emissary of God’s kingdom, and the steamer a morning star to herald the day. That invention was not ready to begin its task of annihilating space until the dawn of the nineteenth century. But it was ready in time, for not until then was the purified church itself roused to a fidelity grand enough to undertake the work for which God had been preparing this equipment. It was in 1807, while the young men at Williamstown were praying and studying about missions, that Robert Fulton was making the first trip of the ‘Clermont,’ from New York to Albany.”— Introduction to Foreign Missions, p. 20.

Christ, speaking of the conditions which will prevail in the last days, says, “As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” Luke 17: 26. The time before the flood was marked by pleasure seeking and wickedness. The same conditions exist now. There is a close connection between pleasure seeking and the evils of modern society. As M. Comte, the editor of Relevement Social [French], writing just before the European war broke out, said, “Unrestrained passion for pleasure is bringing a terrible train of evils into modern society.” (Quoted in Record of Christian Work, July, 1914.)

Pleasure seeking is most pronounced in the great cities, and so is crime. The pleasure seeker must have money. The obtaining of money by unlawful means is the object in a great majority of crimes. The increase of crime in New York City is very striking. We quote the following from the Washington Herald of Dec. 6, 1914:—

“Greater New York is engulfed in a crime wave of appalling proportions. Murderers can be hired like taxicabs, for the day, hour, or job. To hire a murder neatly and expeditiously done involves less risk of detection and punishment than to carry a lighted cigar into the subway. Police Commissioner Woods is responsible for the statement that there were seventy-three homicides here in September, October, and November, with 623 felonious assaults, any one of which might have resulted fatally, in the same period. Bomb throwing also is flourishing, and the police are almost powerless to check it. Between September 16 and November 26 there were nineteen bomb explosions, and only four men were arrested, three in one case and one in another. The perpetrators of the other seventeen dynamite outrages are still at large, without a clue to their identity. In the week between October 18 and 25 there were eight murders in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn alone, with two revolver assaults, where the assassins failed to kill. And on September 23 there were four murders.”

Last summer the same paper gave a summary of convictions for crime in New York State.

“In the State of New York in 1914, 80,698 men, women, and children were convicted in courts of record and special sessions. Based on a population of 10,000,000, this is an average of one conviction to every 125 inhabitants. The total number recorded in 1913 was 68,337. Male convictions totaled 67,268, compared with 56,772 in 1913. Female convictions were 4,782, as against 4,190 reported two years ago. These figures seem to suggest that it would be worth while to discover what it was that drove so many New Yorkers to crime or misdemeanor last year.”— Washington Herald, July 28, 1915.

And New York is not the only State where crime has been increasing. As one considers the great increase in hasty and ill-assorted marriages and equally hasty divorces, together with the social evil and its hideous white slavery, one can but see the fulfilment of the words of the apostle Paul,—

“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, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.” 2 Tim. 3: 1-6.

Let us, then, recognize that we are indeed in the last days, and that while by the grace of God individuals will be brought to repentance, society as a whole cannot be permanently bettered till Christ comes to destroy sin and sinners, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.

L. L. C.