Will Never Be ‘Over’

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 17, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 32.

“Will Never Be ‘Over’”

MR. H. G. WELLS, who is usually optimistic in all that he says, affirms concerning the present war, “This war and its consequences will never be ‘over,’ and we have not even begun to realize what it has cost us.” He furthermore says that “there never was so blind a superstition as the belief that progress is inevitable,” and he reaches the climax of his gloomy utterances in the expression:

“It is quite conceivable that ours is the last generation for many generations that will go freely about the world, that will have abundance of leisure and science and free speech and abundant art and much beauty and many varied occupations.”

The outlook in the world must be very sad indeed to all intelligent people who do not have the blessed assurances of the prophetic Word to illuminate their minds and hearts; for it is perfectly evident, to any one who is really intelligent concerning present-day conditions, that this old world of ours is facing dissolution, social, moral, and physical. We are having such storms of various kinds as are causing the stoutest hearts to tremble; society is breaking to pieces through its corruptions, its strifes and profligate debaucheries; and the nations at large, instead of manifesting the peace that the “civilization of the twentieth century” has promised, are insanely mad with the furies of war.

The stoutest hearts are trembling as they contemplate these conditions; but to him who has been following the light of the prophetic Word, all is clear. A great conflict lies just before us; but this conflict is nothing more than the dying agonies of sin and the rebellion against the righteous government of God. It will end very soon in the glad and glorious fulfillment of every promise of the second coming of our Lord and Master.

Let it be known everywhere that the richest and the fullest joys lie just ahead for all who are prepared to receive them. He who has never had his heart touched by the blessed assurances of the sacred Word, that the Master’s coming is very near, has never tasted of the fullest contentment and peace that can come to the soul. Those who will live for God to-day, will soon hear from the Master’s own lips at His coming, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”