WHAT MAY WE EXPECT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 12, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 28.

WHAT MAY WE EXPECT.

WE are told, constantly told, that the world is getting better; that the warning alarms which are raised are utterly uncalled for; that the world is rapidly progressing to that time which Tennyson predicted when

"the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. "There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law."

But out of what is this condition to come? What is there in the present which bodes the birth of such a time? We grant that there is a good time coming; but how can it be evolved out of present conditions? Like begets like. Sin will not, can not, beget righteousness.

True, we have passed out of much that is coarse and ugly and rough in the civilization of the past, but is there less of evil and sin? Is there not less of conscience, less of the keen sense of right, less of integrity, less of a sense of responsibility to God, less of faith in the eternal verities? We do not know how, in the light of the overwhelming revelations of wickedness, fraud, trickery, debauchery, in high places, an intelligent person can come to any other conclusion; they must see that the times are perilous, and the world is rapidly drifting on to ruin.

Simply to refer to a few instances: Take Bailey Millard's article in the May Everybody's on "The West Coast Land Grafters," in which he shows that many of the great holders of land in the west have obtained it through fraud, perjury, and debauchery of governmental officers. Hundreds,—Christians among them, Christians even who profess the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,—have perjured their souls for a few paltry dollars to help the great land sharks. They have sworn that the bogus applications they have made for land were made in good faith, for the purpose of actual settlement and cultivation, and not for the benefit of any other person or corporation; that there was no collusion with any person to give him the benefit of the land; that no agreement must be entered into with any other person by which the title to the land applied for should inhere in part or in whole to any other person save the applicant.

Mr. Millard designated the conscience which permits men to so perjure themselves a "Land Conscience;" and he tells us further that, "Land Conscience is one of the most self-deceptive of human attributes." But before the great Bar of God there will be no such discrimination. The false oath will be a false oath, and the damning thing will have left its searing, distorting mark upon the character.

Mr. Millard tells us that to name the wealthy men who had been benefited by such means "would be a sort of roll-call of nearly all who have secured large holdings of fertile lands in Oregon and California."

And the late Federal Grand Jury in Oregon, by the time it had adjourned, "had uncovered such a mass of fraud, nearly all of recent occurrence, as to make honest hearts sicken, and its indictments had fallen on the lowest places and the highest," among whom was Senator Mitchell of Oregon. We are told that volumes could be written on the land frauds and steals, and grafts, and swindles, and grabs.

But the meat trust and the "System," the insurance companies, and a score of other big concerns, each seems to have its special brand of elastic, resilient, convenient conscience. We have the Hog Conscience, the Standard Oil Conscience, the Policy Conscience, the Steel Conscience, the Copper Conscience, and no one knows how many other brands which are unaffected by any sort of compromise of righteousness and integrity.

The tide of undermining evil is so strong that men like the Rev. Thomas B. Gregory, whom no one can call a pessimist or a radical reformer, are forced to admit it. He declares in the San Francisco Examiner of June 17:

"Not only in this country but in every other land within the pale of Christendom, the men and women who should be striving after truth and honesty are living the lives of dissemblers and hypocrites. "Life is getting to be a great big masquerade in which each one is trying his or her best to deceive the others. "Honesty, frankness, sincerity, the open-eyed Truth which looks at you without blinking, are becoming rarer than five-leaved clovers, and the recognized order of the day is to lie and deceive as persistently and as successfully as you can! "Paint, pretense, bluff, bluster—in a word, lying and hypocrisy—have driven the old-fashioned truth and square dealing to the woods, and instead of the face-to-face and heart-to-heart way of living that once prevailed, we have the great game of 'Peek-a-boo,' in which no one knows whose voice he is listening to, or whose eyes are looking at him through the holes in the doughfaces."

The very condition of things noted above God has explicitly told in His Word, the most up-to-date book to-day. Read Isa. 59, a picture of this time. Read 2 Tim. 3:1-5, another vivid portrayal of the days of hypocrisy in which we live. Note that it mentions eighteen different sins, universally prevalent to-day; note that these sins are to be found among those professedly religious; and note also that because of these cherished sins in the church the times are perilous. Read:

"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away."

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Blind our minds as we will, America is following in the pathway of ancient Rome, and disintegration and ruin must inevitably follow the decadence of essential morality.

There is but one remedy, the old-fashioned Gospel of Jesus Christ. Repentance, forsaking of sin, separation from the world, self-denial, and obedience to God in faith and love—only in these is there salvation. God's call is to His "everlasting Gospel." Rev. 14:6, 7. The good time, the world of peace, lies beyond His second coming.