WHAT SHALL WE EXPECT? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 1, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 44.

WHAT SHALL WE EXPECT?

By Editor

Does the Passing Time Predict Destruction or Regeneration?

WE were recently impressed with the force of a common proverb in listening to an earnest woman speaker on reform work. That proverb is, "The wish is father to the thought." She talked truly, bravely, and eloquently of the increasing evil of intemperance and impurity and their results in sin and crime, patent, obvious facts they are to the candid observer. She talked of the prostitution of marriage to base lust, of the increase of divorces, of the sad, constant records of marital troubles in high life and low. Alongside of these she might have marshalled the dishonesty, the fraud, the grafting, the embezzlement, the trickery, the robbery, in high life and low life, in private life and public life. The newspapers have been gorged with the revelations of these pits of overwhelming, widespread corruption. The public, always curious to know evil, has been satiated with the news till it is indifferent, and no revelation of wickedness, crime, or corruption could seemingly now move it. The great papers endeavor to make it the sensation of the week; it is hardly that of a day.

And this indifference to the amazing moral corruption is one of the saddest signs of the times.

Yet the speaker above referred to thought there was a good time coming. Parents would be spiritually regenerated, and they would generate godly children. Somehow, some way, by some means, the world is to be converted. "Why, there were never so many hospitals, never so many lectures on purity and temperance, never so much money spent for the betterment and uplifting of humanity; surely all this will tell for the world's regeneration."

This is the thought, the dream, of those who wish it so, but who depend on their desire for evidence, and not on the Word of God. Sad disappointment will come when the world reaps in the seven last plagues and the battle of Armageddon her awful harvest of sin's sowing. Then it shall be to those who have solaced themselves with the fantasy of a world's conversion "as when a hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite."

There is a mighty Saviour, but He can not regenerate the world when it substitutes for His creative power a theistic and atheistic evolution. He would point out the sin and quicken dead conscience if the world and a worldly church would recognize the standard of the holy law; but God declares that instead of standing "in the ways" and asking for "the old paths," that they may find "the good way," "they have not harkened unto My words; and as for My law, they have rejected it."

The high profession, the much profession, the works of charity, the display of benevolences, were all manifest in Christ's time as never before perhaps in the Jewish nation; but that generation put to death the Son of God and died in their sins. We are paralleling that time to-day.

The prophets declare that wickedness and the beast power will be overwhelming, alive and rampant, when Christ comes, and the spirit of war will possess the earth. Isaiah 59; Micah 7:1-4; Dan. 7:20, 21; Jer. 25:15-33; Joel 2:1; 3:9-14.

Paul declares that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived;" that all the sins of heathendom will be prevalent among professors of Christianity; that just previous to Christ's coming Satan will work "with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness;" that there will be the cry of peace and safety when "sudden destruction" is impending, and much more. See 2 Tim. 3:13, 1-5; 2 Thess. 2:8-10; 1 Thess. 5:3, et al.

Jesus declares that many will go in the broad road to destruction, while few will pursue the narrow path to life; that the wheat and tares—the righteous and wicked—will grow together till "the harvest,"—"the end of the world,"—and then the wheat will be garnered in and the tares burned; that when He comes faith will be almost wanting; that many false christs and false prophets will be deceiving many, and much more of the same import. Matt. 7:13, 14; 13:24-30, 37-43; Luke 18:8; Matt. 24:24; 25:31-46.

"Be not deceived." "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the straw to the wheat? saith Jehovah." Jer. 23:28.

It is better to know of the coming evil, that we may hide in the Rock of Ages.