History Repeating Itself
By E. W. Farnsworth
IT has been said that like causes produce like results. This is doubtless true. About the only use the study of history can be to us is that we may see the effects certain causes have produced in the past, and thus learn to discard those which produce evil results. God's seers of old saw the judgments that were sure to come upon the people, long before those judgments were visible to the natural eye. The sins of the people were pointed out, the judgments that were coming were described, and a call to repentance was heard throughout the land. The ancient prophets saw more than their own people and time. They spoke to their own generation, but also for those who would live in the future. Therefore the truths they taught are for us. "They are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." HE DESCRIBES OUR TIMES TOO
Fifty-seven years before the northern kingdom of Israel was carried away and destroyed, the prophet Amos described conditions existing at that time, and we have in his words a complete picture of things as they now exist. He says: "Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes." Amos 2: 6. To sell a man, in one sense, is to take the products of his labor and sell them, and by fraud deprive the laborer of his just due. "That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor." Verse 7. What stronger language could be used to describe "earth hunger"? And what sarcasm is used in describing it! The monopolist is represented as actually "panting" after the dust on the head of the laboring man, or on the neck of an untidy schoolboy. What a picture of our own time! Individuals, nations, corporations, are all earth hungry. See the "spheres of influence" in Africa, the scramble of the nations leading to war and bloodshed, the consuming desire for a foothold in Turkey! The earth is literally searched over and over by the nations for some little corner of which they can get possession. Corporations and syndicates are all anxious for more land. The insatiable "earth hunger" has seized all men. THE OPPRESSION OF THE POOR
In connection with this exhibition of covetousness is also seen the oppression of the poor, and they are deprived of their rights. "Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from his burdens of wheat. . . . For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right." Amos 5: 11, 12. All can see the nature of this oppression. The poor are defrauded. Bribes are taken by him who sits in "the gate"—the place of judgment; and fraud and violence prevail. The prophet continues: "Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?" Amos 8: 4, 5. No truer picture of our social and commercial world was ever drawn than this. It515is not confined to one nation or people, but it is the spirit of the age the world over. And as that was the presage of the downfall of the kingdom of Israel, so now the same conditions are prophetic of the downfall and destruction of all the nations of the earth. The Lord continues: "Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; . . . and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day." Verses 7-10. Then is given a description of the great world-wide famine that is to come: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it." Verses 11, 12. When that time comes, God's Spirit will have ceased to strive with men. Probation will be past, the end will have come. That great famine is just before us.