The End of the World

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 7, 1909

The End of the World

In the September issue of the Technical World appears an article by Winthrope Packard, under the title “The End of the World.” The article is profusely illustrated with striking astronomical views of star clusters and nebulae and an enlarged photograph of the sun and moon. The writer asks the question, “What will be the end of the world?” Before giving his answer to the question, he proceeds to throw discredit upon the prophecies of the Bible relating to that event. He says:—

Such prophets and prophecies have all been proved erroneous, and the Millerites and their kin have all been laughed out of serious consideration. Science has taught us better; and yet science, which seeks always new facts and revised reasoning, is now teaching us that our faith in the safety of the solar system is misplaced.

Science has also taught us that faith in the Word of God is unreasonable; that the world was not created, but evolved; that man was not created, but came up through a long process of evolution from a tiny wriggling speck in ocean slime to what we see him to-day. Science has also taught us that the Bible is unreasonable in its teachings and untrue in its history, and has created out of its own imagination, standards of morals which it considers better, and interpretations of history which it considers truer. Yet the morals of the people based upon the teachings of the scientists have been deteriorating in about the same ratio that the scientists lost faith in the divine Word; but the picks and shovels of the excavators are proving the Bible history true, and the criticisms of Bible history unfounded.

“Science has taught us better,” say the scientists; but in the same sentence they are compelled to admit that the foundations which they adopt must be continually revised. That leaves them without a solid basis upon which to rest. The faithless astronomer, the faithless evolutionist, and the faithless higher critic are all turning their guns upon the Rock of Ages, and yet it stands and will stand, and they who trust in it will find shelter, of which the faithless would gladly avail themselves when the unerring prophecies of God’s Word culminate in “the end of the world.” The very doubtings of the scientists and critics confirm the prophecies they seek to discredit.