One of the San Francisco papers has the following significant heading: “Seven Held Up in a Night in City Streets—Footpads Work Boldly—They Slug and Beat Victims in Various Sections of the Town—Homes Also Are Looted.” Such conditions are common in all of our large cities, and they are permitted to flourish because the officers of the law have become corrupted and are a party to the thievery and looting. Honest citizens are grappling with conditions of this kind everywhere; but men ignore such facts, and pass right on humming over to themselves the song that the world is getting better and better. If men would only exercise their ordinary faculties, instead of allowing themselves to be hypnotized by prevailing sentiment, they would awake to the fact that the people of this world are moving with awful strides in the direction of ruin and destruction. A person who points out these things is not an alarmist in the sense of being one who is making a stir about nothing. He is merely stating fact; and if the facts as they exist alarm people, surely people ought to be alarmed, for there is really occasion for it. Indeed, the conditions become such, just before the close of time, that God says: “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.” Joel 2: 1, 2.
God calls for an alarm to be sounded among His own people. Many of them are not awake to the situation. They are disregarding God’s plain warnings, which tell them the meaning of the conditions that surround us in the world. Sooner or later each individual will become alarmed. If we allow ourselves to be alarmed in time to forsake our sins and to avail ourselves of the great plan of salvation, we will be prepared for the final climax when it is reached. But how sad it will be for those who refuse the warnings until the final awakening comes, when it is forever too late for them to prepare for the crisis that is hanging over this world! The second coming of Christ is even at the doors. The conditions in the world everywhere are calling for His personal presence. And when He comes, He comes to save those who are ready; but the Book says that all the wicked will be destroyed by the brightness of His glorious appearing.