RAPID DEVELOPMENTS by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 24, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 21.

RAPID DEVELOPMENTS.

By T.

IN this age of steam and electricity everything is rushing. Men can no longer brook delays. Everything must come around with a whirl, else there will be a storm of impatience manifested.

The great inventions of this time have set the whole world to gossiping, discussing, and quarreling. Every country seems to lie just next door to every other country, and whatever the people may be doing in one part of the world is immediately known everywhere, and freely and often vigorously commented upon.

In order to meet the requirements of this driving age men have resorted to every kind of stimulant and nerve-excitant that the science as well as quackery of the day can produce. Everybody is in a hurry. They have scarcely time to be civil.

With society at such high tension, discussions of whatever topics may arrest the public attention are intense in earnestness and often even vehement. Men think fast; they quickly form conclusions in harmony with their best knowledge of truth, or with their sordid, selfish interests, as the case may be.

Now it must be evident to any one, if he takes a calm moment to think about it, that such pent-up feelings as characterize this time will soon burst out somewhere. The conflicting opinions, the clamoring voices, the intense sentiments of to-day will surely bring forth a great social storm in the near-to-morrow. A foreboding of this is upon every mind. Talk with men and women wherever you will and you will find that they are resting under an irresistible conviction that there are dangers and calamities just ahead of us that they would gladly see dispelled; but they can see no way of doing this. Inevitable and imminent doom seems to be hanging over the world.

And in the face of all these manifest dangers, men seek to drown their anxieties in the wildest pleasures, follies, and vices. And this intensifies the possibilities of speedy calamities; for every danger signal that may be raised, every warning that may be given, is received with the imbecile sneer of the hilarious and intoxicated. When men can not be led to seriousness in the face of the rumblings of the social and political tornado that must surely fill the earth with desolation and distress, what can be done for them?

While Satan is madly working to stir up all this strife and evil that we see in the world, God is working with omnipotent power to impress men with the meaning of it. You may sneer at the thought. You may ridicule the idea if you will. Yet nevertheless you know that in your sober moments of reflection you are deeply impressed by the movings of the unseen Spirit of God that the end of all things earthly is right at hand. The convictions of this divine Spirit follow you everywhere and seek to lead you to the shelter from this bursting storm—the shelter so kindly provided by the tenderest care of a loving Father.

In the very nature of things the crisis must soon be reached; for everything is driving with a constantly accelerated whirl and rush. Men are plunging into every form of vice and crime to-day with an abandon the like of which has never been seen. Society is split up into factions, and clubs, and unions, and is ready for some one to give the word, or take the lead, and then such scenes of uncontrollable terrors will begin as the eye of man has never looked upon, except in prophetic vision.

We are already in the borders of that time of trouble spoken of by the prophet Daniel, such as never was since there was a nation. And at the furious pace at which everything is going, how long can the time be delayed before we are in the very storm center of all the perils so vividly described by the pen of prophecy, that are to crowd these last days with heart-failing fears? T.