A Fulfilment of Prophecy by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 8, 1906

A Fulfilment of Prophecy

By C. M. S.

The modern city is a fulfilment of prophecy. The days that were before the flood were a type of the days that would precede our Lord’s return to this earth. They were sinks of iniquity then; they are certainly nothing less than that at the present time. There may be cities in this world that are honestly ruled from highest officials down; but there are few who will dispute the statement that the municipal machine is operated for “graft” in the vast majority of cities.

The world in the antediluvian days was teeming with vice and lawlessness; and while iniquity is abroad in the land to-day, it is found centralized in every large city. Whatever antediluvian cities were, the cities of to-day are; whatever was found in Sodom and Gomorrah seems to be indigenous to city life to-day. “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” Every evil thing that has been turned into gold in days of old is making that same transformation to-day, only the transformation is accelerated by the impetus of the accumulated years and the educated keenness of experienced wicked men.

Statistics that are before us show that there is a much more rapid growth in the population of the cities than there is of rural communities; and as the strife for existence becomes more keen, meaner and more degrading and unlawful pursuits are engaged in. Children arrested for picking pockets accuse parents or guardians of teaching them to do that unlawful work. Common thievery is taught the young by those older in years and experience. Official statistics show that in many cases, in the Old World, parents dwelling in cities have compelled their own daughters to lead lives of shame to add to the family income.

Listen to this fearful arraignment of city life in New York by Jacob A. Riis:—

They [lawless landlords] have a grievance, for the law which they hate now puts a fine of a thousand dollars upon the tenement that harbors prostitution with the knowledge of the landlord. We have heard it until it has made our heart sick, how they traffic in virtue, these vultures, that their pockets may bulge and their diamonds blaze while mothers weep; how girls are snared for the bagnio, and sold by their seducers into a slavery from which death is the only escape; for while they live, they must help fill with the wages of their shame the bottomless coffers that buy elections and our liberties. There came in my mail to-day a reprint of a paper read before the American Medical Association by the assistant surgeon of the Good Samaritan Dispensary. It tells of the new horror of children of tender age coming to the hospital with unnamable diseases; and I know that it is all true, for I have seen it.

Mr. Riis declares that the political issue there should be whether New York shall continue to stand before the world as a silent partner of the most infamous conspiracy of any day, to which nothing is pure, nothing sacred; which drags down with one polluting hand innocent womanhood, and with the other collects blackmail impartially from “the prostitute it has made, the friendless peddler, the sweeper in the street, the policeman on his beat. On the very buttons on his coat they have set a price which he must pay, or pay the penalty.”

But New York City is not by any means alone in this. In some degree, and in a larger degree than realized, it is carried on in nearly all, if not all, the large cities, and in many of the smaller cities and villages. The growth of the cities at the expense of the rural communities is not imaginary, but is proved by statistics to be rapid and continuous; and with this increase, the distressful conditions also continue to increase. The soil which makes that increase possible is becoming more mellow and productive.

The Word declares that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,” and this was to be in the last days. The records of these present days identify them as the days to which Inspiration refers. Wicked men and seducers are fulfilling that prophecy to-day as never before.

In view of these things are we not warranted in assuming, as many do, that there is a glorious temporal future before this and succeeding generations? If that assumption be true, God’s Word can not be. We see now the duplicate of those sin-breeding days of Noah’s generation, and by that sign know that we are in the days of “the coming of the Son of man.” We are living to-day in the most solemn hours of this earth’s history. The moral conditions of the world, together with what God has said concerning them, show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the time of Christ’s return is near at hand. The very wickedness of the world is a warning to its inhabitants that the end of sin’s dominion is near at hand. It is a sad fact that the great city so recently shattered by earthquake and seared by flame has risen up out of her ashes more wicked than before. We know that other cities will similarly suffer, and we have no reason to expect that they will remember the punishment long enough to practise the righteousness which it ought to teach.

The increase of wickedness will go on with the increase of city growth until the cup of this world’s iniquity is full; and the intensified workings of the mystery of iniquity and the renewed intensity of missionary zeal among the people of God are both indications that the day of Israel’s deliverance is near at hand.

C. M. S.