p. 3 | Stop! Look! Listen! by R. M. Kilgore

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 25, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 17.

Stop! Look! Listen!

By R. M. Kilgore

THE railroad companies, seeing so many accidents and collisions at their country road crossings, offered $300 for the shortest and most comprehensive danger signal. Several were proposed. This one, “Stop! Look! Listen!” obtained the prize.

The demand for such a warning signal suggests that this is an age of reckless dash, blind rush, and determined push. The movements of to-day, in every walk of life, are in marked contrast to the calm, slow-measured tread of our fathers who trudged along on foot, and in ox carts. In those times no danger signals were needed; there were no collisions at the crossings, no approaching express trains to kill the unwary. To-day every nerve is stretched to its highest degree of tension; everything is at fever heat. Those on the highways forget that that signal says “Stop”; the engineer forgets to blow his whistle, and there is a collision, a smash-up, loss of life and property. They were in too great a rush. The signal was in place, the warning was not heeded. “What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.”

At this time business interests involve much more than in the past, and so engross the time and attention of those enlisted in them that they have no time to consider things eternal, or to give a serious thought in regard to the end of their reckless driving through this world. With this fascination attending commercial work, when much of it is transacted through the phone, and by wire, and without the wire, sometimes hundreds and thousands of miles; then calling into action, for shipping, the trolley car, the automobile, the lightning express, and the air-ship (now projected), so that unless the tension is let off, and these souls be returned to their right minds, there can be no hope of avoiding disaster and eternal loss in the end. Can not the danger signal which was erected so long ago be placed a little higher up, and athwart their track?—“Stop!” “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” “Listen!” “Hear, and your soul shall live!”

In this age when our cities are vying with each other in all that makes them up-to-date corporate and independent bodies, by which to increase their population and power, when the dwellers in them are in a race to erect more elegant and costly mansions than their neighbors, while others, whose ambition is to be exalted above others, seeing that the heavens are cheaper than the earth, decide to pile their stories high upon one another till the top scrapes the sky (the latest being 909 feet above the curb); a word of caution to these high-minded and forgetful ones may enable them to remember Shinar, and the fate of those who assayed to make for themselves a great name, and attempted to build a tower: “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.” “Wo to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!” “Wo unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work; that saith, I will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows; and it is ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion.” “Stop! Listen.” Phil. 4:5; Hab. 2:12; Jer. 22:13-15.

When corporations, unions, and combines are multiplying their organizations to increase their power of control over the rich marts of the world; when men are tumbling over each other in their mad rush to amass colossal fortunes in a day, or to increase their illgotten gains by heaping together their accumulated treasures; while this epidemic is raging, we would cry aloud, calling the attention of those who are afflicted with this contagion to the Signal already in place, “Listen!” “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God.” “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.” “For in one hour so great riches is come to naught.” We are in a time when iniquity abounds; crime is on the increase, and hides not its face for shame. Anarchy unblushingly raises its head, and asks for recognition. Evil men and seducers “wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived;” the love of many is growing cold; faith and piety are waning and fading into a kind of penumbra; the Bible is being relegated to the good old days of our fathers, and is largely supplanted with heathen philosophy, higher criticism, and a growing popular infidelity.

The world is certainly drifting, going down with the current, and the multitude sleeping while before it is the fatal precipice. There is sure destruction if the danger signal is not heeded. “Stop! Look! Listen!” “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

R. M. KILGORE.