Signs of the Second Coming of Christ
By Prof. G. W. Rine
THE question, Is the world growing better? is not infrequently heard. How much we all wish this old, sinful world were growing better. But is it? Some answer, Yes; others, No. Human opinions clash. They are not, therefore, dependable. Hence how thankful we should be that we have access to a source of universal information which is unfailingly trustworthy. Of course I refer to inspired revelation—the Bible. What is the Lord's answer to this mooted question? His answer must certainly be accepted as final. Our Lord, when announcing the most important signs of His second advent and of the end of the world, declared: "And because iniquity [literally lawlessness] shall be multiplied, the love of many shall wax cold." Matt. 24:12. Lawlessness implies more or less violence. In the days of Noah, the earth was filled with violence. See Gen. 6:11, 13. And did not the Son of God affirm that as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man? Matt. 24:37, 38. Note further the catalog of sins that would especially mark the "last days," as recorded in 2 Tim. 3:1-13. Among the heinous sins there enumerated are lack of self-control, fierceness, and implacableness. A. R. V. Let us inquire then: Are these days in which we are living characterized by lawlessness with its attendant violence? Dec. 26, 1907, despatches were sent out from New York to the press of the nation, stating that notwithstanding the fact that six criminal courts were in operation in New York City, they could not keep pace with the crime wave which was and had been sweeping over the city for a number of years. At the time the despatch was sent out, there were 1,271 cases on the criminal calendar, while several years before there were on the calendar but 541 cases. The warden of the city prison, reporting on the crowded condition of the Tombs (the prison), stated that unless the people stopped committing crimes, it would be necessary to build, without delay, an addition to the city's picturesque prison. The despatch stated further that the commission of crime had become epidemic, and was breaking all records as to number. In the World's Work of April, 1907, Judge Thomas, of Alabama, reported that during 1906, there had been in the United States 118 homicides for every million of population. This ratio is nearly ten times as large as it was in 1881. He avers that the American people have not been taught respect for law, human or divine. Only three in twenty of those who commit murder are convicted and punished. He declares that the consequences of law-breaking are not sufficiently certain, swift, and terrible to deter and hold in check those who are criminally inclined. The prime cause of the unprecedented reign of crime is declared to be "our national disregard for law, perhaps one might even say our national contempt for law." Other causes are maudlin sentiment, expenditure of vast sums of money, pressure of the political machine, the pleading of relatives, and the agitation of the press. The judge declares that we shall soon sink to the level of Mexico, where 145 are slain every year for each million. Not long ago the San Francisco Chronicle printed a list of thirty-five burglaries, nineteen highway robberies, and fifty-seven thefts by pickpockets, which had occurred in San Francisco during the preceding thirty days. "The plunder of some thirty passengers disembarking from the steamer 'Mongolia' was truly spectacular. The wharf must have been thronged with professional thieves. The known value of the property secured during that period was over $82,000." The Chronicle affirms that this does not begin to tell the story, as the number of arrests for important crimes is insignificant. Gambling dens are more numerous than ever before. The existence of gambling dens, says the writer, can mean only one thing, and that is corruption in the police force. "The orgy of burglary and highway robbery can mean only the inability of the police to round up the professional criminals who are evidently among us in grand force. . . . San Francisco is a den of thieves." Speaking of the phenomenal increase of the population of Chicago during the past decade, Dr. Josiah Strong says: "Its increase of crime has been even more astonishing than its growth of population. We read of a dozen highway robberies on its streets in a single night, and of 128 homicides in a single year. During 1906 there were 253 homicides and 707 suicides in New York City—nearly 1,000 murderous deaths in a single year! No moral failure is more significant in a democracy than a spirit of lawlessness, which, there is reason to fear, is on the increase in the United States. . . . It would seem to be sufficiently clear that the moral development of the American city has not kept pace with the material; and, generally speaking, the larger the city the greater the disproportion. An inadequate intellectual growth is serious enough, but moral failure is much more so. It was the latter, so history shows, which proved fatal to the great civilizations of the past. Greece had no lack of intellect; hers was a moral failure. The same is true also of Rome." Statistics everywhere show a widening torrent of bloody crime. But the startlingly characteristic crimes of these latter days are apparently not bloody or violent. They are crimes perpetrated against the great body of the people by the organized masters of industry, trade, and politics. In the piquant phrase of Prof. E. A. Ross, "the darling sins that are blackening the face of our time are incident to the ruthless pursuit of private ends. . . . The victims are used or sacrificed not at all from personal ill-will, but because they can serve as pawns in somebody's little game. . . . We see on all hands monstrous treacheries, —adulterators, peculators, boodlers, grafters, violating the trust others have placed in them." Many of the leaders of our social and industrial life to-day are picking pockets with a railway rebate, murdering with an adulterant instead of a bludgeon, committing burglary with a "rake-off" instead of a jimmy, defrauding with a company prospectus instead of a deck of cards, and cheating the honest tax-payer by "swearing off" their property to dodge paying an honest tax. Again I quote Professor Ross: "To-day the villain most in need of curbing is the respectable, exemplary, trusted personage who . . . is able from his office chair to pick a thousand pockets, poison a thousand sick, pollute a thousand minds, or imperil a thousand lives. It is the great-scale, high-voltage sinner that needs the shackle. To strike harder at the petty pickpocket than at the prominent and unabashed person who in a large, impressive way sells out his constituents, his followers, his depositors, his stockholders, his policy-holders, his subscribers, or his customers, is to 'strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.'" In 1881 twelve in every one million of population in the United States committed suicide; in 1907 the ratio of suicides had leaped to 126 in each million of population, or a total of 10,782. The total in 1881 was 603. If the present rate of increase be maintained, we shall lose by suicide in the next five years nearly as many lives as were lost by the Union army in battle during the four years of the Civil War. In the United States and Europe, there is a suicide every six minutes; in the world as a whole there is one every three minutes. Suicide has cost Germany 158,000 lives since 1893; the United States, 120,000 since 1890. In Saxony, there occur 324 suicides each year per million people; in Japan, 209 yearly for each million of population. Between 1883 and 1903, not fewer than 1,125 school children (under fifteen years of age) in Germany committed self-destruction. During the past twenty years the ratio of self-murder has increased throughout the civilized world more than tenfold. How long can human society bear up under this stupendous weight of moral turpitude, of lawlessness, of crime? Every sign in the current history of our sin-devastated world, every latter-day prophecy of Holy Writ, points unmistakably to an imminent world-revolution—a revolution that can be effected by nothing less than the advent in glory of the Lord Jesus, who will then "destroy the works of the devil" and create "new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." Shall we not all pray and work that His kingdom may come6and His will be done on earth as it is done in heaven? In that endless kingdom there will be no lawlessness, but a free, glad, universal conformity to the law of love, and light, and life. And “the glory of the knowledge of Jehovah shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.”