How We Will Have the Millennium
THE past hundred years is a period that has been marked by much discussion of a promised millennium. There are many people who actually believe that the world will become completely converted, that there will be no more war, nor any of the distresses that come through sin. Men have preached it, men have written it, and it has become a popular sentiment. At the same time, these men see the necessity of great reforms before the millennium can arrive; so they are talking, in these days, of bringing these reforms about by votes, and by general popular discussions that will create great waves of popular sentiment. When a thing becomes popular, people will fall in with it, oftentimes, whether they believe it or not. And after the popular enthusiasm has gone about so far, it is an easy thing for people to be hypnotized with the thought that they have actually brought about their proposed reforms, and that the world, after all, is converted, and that everything is all right. And we may expect that in this way the world at large will finally be led into the delusion that it is converted, the same as we are already suffering under the delusion that we have our Christian nations. And yet the deluded people will still be loaded down with the sins that will merit their destruction. In speaking of the times when the day of the Lord is imminent, the apostle says: “When they are saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall in no wise escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” If that text says anything, it declares that there is to be a time of great spiritual darkness, when men will be saying all is peace and safety, and yet they will be saying that in the midst of conditions that call for the sudden outburst of God’s destruction. We must not allow our eyes to be blinded to the actual conditions in these times. We must see things as they are, and recognize the facts that are pointed out so clearly to us in the Book of Him with whom is infallibility and hence no possible mistake.