p. 404 | Ruin Is Possible by F.

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jun 28, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 26.

Ruin Is Possible

By F.

WHEN the Bible doctrine of the second coming of Christ and the destruction of earth is mentioned to some people, they laugh the idea to scorn and dismiss it with a sneering “impossible.” That our mighty “civilisation” could be disposed of in a day; that with all our knowledge and our inventions, this earth and its inhabitants should be rolling to disaster—this is a picture which many people refuse to see, declaring that such a notion is absurd, improbable, and impossible. To those who read current history thus we reply in the words of Nicholas Murray Butler:—

Do not forget that it is perfectly possible to destroy civilisation. Civilisation has been destroyed before, and it has taken a two thousand years to repair the damage done in a generation or two. Civilisation might conceivably be destroyed again. It would be destroyed again if enough men were to become so filled with this selfish notion of their own interests and their own importance, and of a class struggle and a class consciousness, that they started to make war on all their fellows in order to advance that notion. It would be perfectly possible to wreck civilisation, and none would suffer more when the pillars of the great temple should fall and its roof should cave in, none would suffer more than the very men who would have brought about that destruction.—Forum Magazine, January, 1920.

Moreover, not only is this destruction “conceivable,” but it is unpreventable. Says Sisley Huddlestone, writing under the heading, “The Menace of the World,” in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly:—

Resort to violence is not the final thought, but the first. Attacks which are in some sense provoked are easily paralleled by completely unprovoked crimes. Robbery is not the comparatively “gentle” business it was. Human life has become of no consequence. Who has not read of the motor-car bandits who, like condottieri, ravage a district of France? The German papers are full of horrors. The British journals record revolting incidents daily. This is no mere coincidence. It is a phenomenon which has its roots in the war.

I find the following main reasons set out by an English writer to explain this crime wave, and I do not disagree:—

That many men who had criminal instincts, but also a horror of killing, before the war, are now more or less devoid of that horror.
That many men who had embarked on a career of crime before the war were liberated from prison during hostilities, and entered the army, and that these are now free again to resume their depredations against society.
That unemployment and the high cost of living have forced many men who would otherwise have been law-abiding citizens into criminality.
That the general feeling of unrest which is permeating all classes is responsible for much crime.

Students of these world conditions may differ as to the actual causes of the rampant lawlessness; but the Bible student, through a study of prophecy, is able to point out the results, which is of far greater importance. He who knows and believes his Bible can look beyond the picture of a troubled world and see the great Prince of Peace returning to earth to fulfil His promise and to complete the salvation of the righteous. He left us word that He would come again; He gave us a description of the conditions that would herald His approach; those conditions are universally present; therefore He is at the doors! F.