A World Convulsed

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jul 12, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 28.

A World Convulsed

THE awful moving picture of a distracted world is before us in some phase every hour of our wakeful lives. Journalism has exhausted itself of adjectives and similes by means of which to describe the days in which we live. A Jewish rabbi sums up our whole existence in the one word “godless”; a world-famed journalist resorts to such phrases as “the dominion of darkness has spread over Europe, and a slimy progeny of cruelty, of bestiality, of insensibility, of egoism, of violence, of materiality, has crawled into the light of day,” of which “noisome brood,” he concludes, “it will be long before we can dispossess ourselves.” These are the words of Sisley Huddleston, in the Atlantic Monthly of May, 1920, in an article entitled, “The Menace of the World.” Is it, then, any wonder that a religious journal such as the Bible in the World sums it up thus:—

Once more we look out on a world convulsed with more appalling evils—lawless savagery and the negation of all that is righteous—than history has ever known on so vast a surface of the globe. Among ourselves, too, beside the sorrow and suffering of multitudes of men, women, and little children, we witness the still more grievous spectacle of thousands who ask, in their loss of faith in an ever ruling Providence: “Was the heavenly fatherhood a dream? Is there any God?” On all sides there is evidence of reckless folly and of the wild gayety which makes merry, for tomorrow there is death; and amid the revelry is heard the cry, “The churches have failed; let us try Endor for proof that man survives and for assurance—of the resurrection!”

In the conditions so graphically described the man of the world sees nothing but despair; to him this dark cloud of trouble has no silver lining. But the child of God sees in it all a wonderful fulfilment of prophecy—a hope-inspiring sign of the coming Christ. He remembers the words of the prophet in 2 Tim. 3:1-5; he reads the descriptions of these days written by earth’s greatest men; and he knows that we live today in the historical counterpart of the prophetic picture.

God has promised to redeem His faithful—and that shortly; so let us press on in faith and courage until the Christ shall come.