Great News for the World

[Resource Manager]

 

GREAT NEWS FOR THE WORLD

 

Alan Hayward

 

By the same author

 

GOD’S TRUTH

A scientist shows why it makes sense to believe in the Bible.

 

PLANET EARTH’S LAST HOPE

The Christian answer to the environmental crisis

 

Christadelphians Worldwide

Dept. 153B

3 Regent Street

Birmingham B1 3HG

 

Copyright © Alan Hayward 1976

First Published 1976

Reprinted 1976

 

All rights reserved

 

0 9504436 0 3

 

Printed in Great Britain by

Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd

Ayelsbury, Bucks

[Resource Manager]

CONTENTS

 

	Acknowledgments	6
1.	First the bad news	7
2.	Rescue operation	13
3.	Flight path for a nation	20
4.	All change	29
5.	Jailbreak	39
6.	The dotted line	49
7.	Into the unknown	59
8.	Plan for a planet	67
9.	An ancient faith in modern dress	81
10.	Can we afford it?	90
	Notes and references	93
	Publishers’ note	96

 

 

 

 

 

[Resource Manager]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

The Scripture quotations in the book, except where otherwise stated, are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946 and 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

 

A few quotations, indicated by the abbreviation TEV, are taken from Good News for Modern Man - The New Testament in Today’s English Version, copyrighted 1966 by the American Bible Society, New York.

 

A few quotations, indicated by the abbreviation NEB, are from the New English Bible, Second Edition © 1970 by permission of Oxford and Cambridge University Presses.

 

Permission to use these is gratefully acknowledged.

 

Quotation from the King James (Authorised) Version are denoted by KJV, and those from the Revised Version by RV.

 

The globe on the cover is copyrighted © Rand McNally & Com­pany, R.L. 75-Y-97.

[Resource Manager]

1 - FIRST THE BAD NEWS

 

Sometimes when I am playing with my three year old grand-daughter a lump comes into my throat, and I think of words spoken by Sir Winston Churchill some twenty years ago.

 

The British Government had just decided to go ahead with the manufacture of hydrogen bombs. Some members of parliament were opposed to this, and a debate took place in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Churchill made a speech defending his decision, in which he said to a hushed chamber:

 

‘What ought we to do? Which way can we turn to save our lives and the future of the world?

 

‘It does not matter so much to old people. They are going soon, anyway. But I find it poignant to look at youth in all its activity and ardour, and, most of all, to watch little children playing their merry games and wonder what would lie before them if God wearied of mankind.’¹

 

Churchill was right. It is our little children who have the most to lose, and the prospect for their future is horri­fying. The fearful weapons that he saw with his imagina­tion are now reality. Britain, America, Russia, China, France, India and Israel, already belong to the World Suicide Club (membership open to all who possess atomic bombs) and other nations are queuing up to join.

 

But the position today is even worse than Churchill feared. An explosive situation is developing all over the world, because a horrifying new dimension has recently been added: famine. No sensible nation would ever start a nuclear war. But hunger sometimes drives people to do crazy things.

[Resource Manager]

Shortages of Everything - Except People

 

It simply had to happen, sooner or later. During the past forty years the world’s population has doubled. That means two thousand million extra mouths to feed.

 

There would have been a disastrous famine long before had it not been for one thing. During the same period the world output of food has roughly doubled, too.

 

But the world’s farmers cannot keep on increasing their output like this. Their success over the past forty years has been due to several factors. New land has been brought under cultivation; dry areas have been made more pro­ductive by large-scale irrigation schemes; and the use of fertilisers and of agricultural machinery has been drama­tically increased.

 

Unfortunately, none of these advances can be repeated. There is hardly any more good agricultural land lying un­used, waiting to be brought under cultivation. Most of the earth’s rivers have already been harnessed, so that there are already signs of a world shortage of water. Both ferti­lisers and fuel for farm machinery are scarce, and their prices have recently increased by several hundred per cent.

 

Farsighted farmers are becoming increasingly con­cerned. Modern agriculture is totally dependent on the products of modern technology. These, in turn, depend upon the world’s supplies of mineral resources which are very limited.

 

Fertilisers cannot be made without phosphates. But we have been mining the world’s phosphates for years and years without a thought for the future - and now we are beginning to run short. To build tractors you need metals like tin, zinc, platinum and copper - and now we are gradually running out of those metals. To run tractors you need oil - but the world’s oil looks as if it will all be used up within a few tens of years.

 

It is not surprising that world food production has been more or less at a standstill for the past three years. This means that the amount of food that barely fed the world’s 3,800 million people in 1973 must be stretched to feed 4,000 million in 1976. And next year there will be another 75 million wanting a share, and a further 76 million the year after, and yet another 78 million the year after that...

 

Thanks to pollution, even pure air and pure seawater are becoming scarce. Dr. Jacques Cousteau, the world’s leading expert in oceanography, told a conference in 1975, ‘The oceans could be dead in less than 50 years.’ Omin­ously, he added, ‘Ecologists know very well that the human species cannot survive if the oceans die.’²

 

These are the basic facts behind the economic problems facing Britain and the USA and every other nation today. Prices were bound to rise, and are bound to go on rising. Prices always do rise in times of shortage, and the world is short of nearly everything—except people.

 

In the wealthier nations rising prices will lead to infla­tion or to increasing unemployment, or to a fall in our standard of living - or, quite probably, to all of these.

 

In the poorer countries of Asia and Africa and Latin America the effects will be far more disastrous. Hundreds of millions of their inhabitants are already spending al­most their entire incomes on food. Rising prices can mean only one thing to them: starvation.

[Resource Manager]

The Way We Are Going

 

No one can be sure what the next few years will bring. Only one thing is certain. Unless mankind can work out some sort of solution within the next few years we shall all be facing catastrophe.

 

Many westerners are puzzled by the population explo­sion. Why, they ask, don’t the famine-stricken nations of the Third World curb their fantastic population growth?

 

There are three good reasons why they do not. In the first place, a population explosion is rather like a runaway train. There is no way to stop it suddenly, you can only slow it down gradually. Two-fifths of the population in countries like India are under 15 (compared with one-fifth in countries like Britain). This vast army of children will become parents themselves within a few years.

 

Secondly, trying to persuade people in the Third World to limit their families is as soul-destroying a job as selling raincoats in the Sahara. Poverty-stricken peasants depend on their children to support them in old age. Naturally, they are all determined to have as many children as pos­sible.

 

Finally, many Afro-Asian governments resent even the suggestion that they should solve the world crisis by con­trolling their own populations. They fail to see why they should take drastic steps of this kind just so that the wealthiest one-third of the world can go on consuming two-thirds of the world’s food and resources.

 

As they see it there is only one fair way of tackling the problem. They think there ought to be a drastic redistri­bution of the world’s wealth; in other words, that we Europeans should deliberately reduce our living standards so that they can increase theirs.

 

This may seem a monstrous impertinence to us. But everything depends upon one’s point of view. To the man in the rice paddy it sounds a perfectly reasonable sugges­tion. What he regards as an almost incredible piece of cheek is our suggestion that he should limit his desire for children, while we go on indulging our apparently limit­less appetite for food and comfort!

 

So the vicious circle remains unbroken. The tropical nations cannot and will not reduce their enormous rate of population growth. The wealthy nations will not volun­tarily reduce their extravagant use of the earth’s limited resources. The situation calls for co-ordinated, unselfish action by every nation and every individual; but there is not the slightest hope that this will happen.

[Resource Manager]

Countdown to Catastrophe

 

Meanwhile time is running out. Every time the dock ticks the world’s population is increased by two. Ten thousand additional hungry mouths join us every hour.

 

There is no longer any question as to whether a major world disaster is coming. The only questions are when and what form it will take.

 

Will our economic system stand up to the increasing strains being placed upon it? Can our democratic way of life survive, or will social unrest and violence escalate into revolution?

 

Will the population problem be solved eventually by a hundred million people starving to death each year? Or by the horrors of an all-out nuclear war?

 

Increasing numbers of influential sources are now giv­ing gloomy answers to questions like these. In 1975 the leading British newspaper, The Observer, began an article which was afterwards reproduced as a widely circulated booklet with these words:

 

‘We and our children are approaching a world of mounting confusion and horror. The next 25 years, pos­sibly the next decade, will bring starvation to hundreds of millions, and hardship, disorder or war to most of the rest of us. Democracy, where it exists, has little chance of survival. Nor in the longer run has our indus­trial way of life. There will not be a “better tomor­row” beyond our present troubles.’³

 

Frightening though The Observer’s predictions may be, other writers are even more pessimistic. Some are afraid that the famous last prophecy of the futurist writer H. G. Wells will soon be proved true:

 

This world is at the end of its tether. The end of everything we call life is dose at hand and cannot be evaded ... There is no way out or round or through the impasse. It is the end.’⁴

 

Happily, it can be said with absolute certainty that Wells was wrong in his conclusion. So are all the present-day prophets of doom.

 

This is not to say that they overestimate the dangers facing mankind. The situation is indeed desperate. The problems confronting our generation are quite beyond our ability to solve. An appalling disaster really is looming up ahead of us, and there is nothing that we can do to avert it. But the doom-mongers generally overlook one vital fact. Two thousand years ago, when the human race was sunk in obscenity and wickedness, someone called Jesus of Naz­areth came to me world’s aid. He only taught for about four years, but he changed the whole course of human history. And he left behind him a promise that one day he would come to the world’s rescue a second time, when all mankind was in dire need of his help.

 

This is not wishful thinking. As we shall see in the next chapter, it is plain, well-attested historical fact that he made this promise. And as Chapter 3 will show, there is a great deal of compelling evidence that his promise will be fulfilled - soon!

 

Truly, this is Great News for the World.

[Resource Manager]

2 - RESCUE OPERATION

 

Nevil Shute’s best-seller, No Highway, is a novel about a scientist in the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Shute wanted to portray his hero as a weird eccentric. So he depicted him as a man who didn’t know what a dishmop was for; and what’s more, a man who actually believed in the second coming of Christ.

 

The reading public lapped it up. Of course, anybody - especially a scientist - who believes in the Second Coming must be very odd!

 

In fact the only odd thing is the attitude of the public. No one regards the kings and queens of England as odd, or the archbishops of Canterbury, either. Yet for centuries every new British monarch, right down to the present queen, Elizabeth II, has been crowned by an archbishop uttering the words:

 

‘I give thee, O Sovereign Lord (Lady), this crown to wear, until he who reserves the right to wear it shall return.’

[Resource Manager]

Queen Victoria Was Not Amused

 

At least one British ruler has taken those words very seri­ously. A year after Queen Victoria died, Dean Farrar spoke in Canterbury Cathedral about a conversation between himself and the late queen.¹

 

‘Oh, how I wish that the Lord would come during my lifetime!’ she remarked.

 

‘Why does your Majesty feel this very earnest desire?’ asked the Dean.

 

The queen replied: ‘Because I should so love to lay my crown at his feet.’

 

Queen Victoria was not alone in holding this belief. President Abraham Lincoln used to attend a meeting place in Washington where lectures were given about the return of Christ.² In our own day, Dr. Billy Graham has told how the late President Kennedy asked nun to explain the Second Coming to him; the President already believed in it, but wanted to learn more about it.³

 

Scientist Sir Isaac Newton’s religious writings contain many references to the Second Coming.⁴ To him, Christ’s return was evidently as real and as important for mankind as the law of universal gravitation that made Newton famous.

 

In the very early days of Christianity everybody in the church believed in the Second Coming. As the historian Gibbon puts it, ‘Those who understood in their literal sense the discourses of Christ himself were obliged to ex­pect the second and glorious coming of the Son of Man.. .’⁵

 

In theory all the great churches have always believed in the Second Coming. They all subscribe to the very ancient statement of Christian belief known as ‘The Apostles’ Creed’. And the Creed, which millions of people recite every week, proclaims:

 

‘I believe ... in Jesus Christ ... he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.’

[Resource Manager]

Queen Victoria Was Not Amused

 

At least one British ruler has taken those words very seri­ously. A year after Queen Victoria died, Dean Farrar spoke in Canterbury Cathedral about a conversation between himself and the late queen.¹

 

‘Oh, how I wish that the Lord would come during my lifetime!’ she remarked.

 

‘Why does your Majesty feel this very earnest desire?’ asked the Dean.

 

The queen replied: ‘Because I should so love to lay my crown at his feet.’

 

Queen Victoria was not alone in holding this belief. President Abraham Lincoln used to attend a meeting place in Washington where lectures were given about the return of Christ.² In our own day, Dr. Billy Graham has told how the late President Kennedy asked nun to explain the Second Coming to him; the President already believed in it, but wanted to learn more about it.³

 

Scientist Sir Isaac Newton’s religious writings contain many references to the Second Coming.⁴ To him, Christ’s return was evidently as real and as important for mankind as the law of universal gravitation that made Newton famous.

 

In the very early days of Christianity everybody in the church believed in the Second Coming. As the historian Gibbon puts it, ‘Those who understood in their literal sense the discourses of Christ himself were obliged to ex­pect the second and glorious coming of the Son of Man.. .’⁵

 

In theory all the great churches have always believed in the Second Coming. They all subscribe to the very ancient statement of Christian belief known as ‘The Apostles’ Creed’. And the Creed, which millions of people recite every week, proclaims:

 

‘I believe ... in Jesus Christ ... he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.’

[Resource Manager]

What Jesus Said

 

As Gibbon pointed out in the passage quoted above, if you take the teaching of Jesus Christ seriously you can’t help believing that he will return. He promised it so often.

 

Once when Jesus spoke of his second coming he referred to the following passage from the Old Testament:

 

‘And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered.’ (Daniel 12:1)

 

This frightening picture of a ‘time of trouble such as never has been’ strikes a chord. It sounds remarkably like a description of where our own civilisation is heading. Moreover, Jesus himself applied these words of Daniel to his second coming in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24.

 

Jesus once began a discussion with his disciples by pro­phesying that the great temple in Jerusalem would be de­stroyed. (And so it was, when the Romans sacked Jeru­salem about forty years later.) Horrified, the disciples asked two questions in one:

 

‘Tell us, (1) when will this be, and (2) what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?’ (verse 3.)

 

The Lord Jesus spent the rest of Matthew 24 answering those two questions. Part of his reply relates specifically to the first question, but most of it is concerned with the other - question, which was about his second coming. A few verses seem to be an answer to both questions at once. Here are some of the things that he said about his return in this chapter, with a few comments in brackets.

 

‘Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Christ”, and they will lead many astray.’ (verses 4,5.)

 

(This actually happened in the early days of Christian­ity. The early Christians had such a fervent belief in Christ’s return that unscrupulous impostors tried to cash in on it.)

 

‘You will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the sufferings.’ (verses 6-8.)

 

(Notice how Jesus warned his followers to be patient. He knew that people would frequently make the mistake of expecting him too soon, and so he gave this warning that many unpleasant things had to happen first.)

 

‘This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.’ (verse 14.)

 

(We have had to wait until the twentieth century to see this prophecy fulfilled. But thanks to the work of the Bible societies, and to radio and television, the words of Scripture are being read or heard today in every country on earth, including those behind the Iron Curtain. So now, at last, we may expect that ‘the end will come’.)⁶

 

‘Then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.’⁷ (verses 21,22.)

 

(Thus Jesus foretold, nineteen centuries ago, what  thoughtful men and women are only just beginning to realise today: that nothing less than the Second Coming can save the human race from extinction in the coming holocaust.)

 

‘Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened (so it will be literally ‘earth’s dark­est hour’, as well as figuratively!) ... then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.’ (verses 29,30.)

[Resource Manager]

More Promises of Christ’s Return

 

There are dozens of places in the four Gospels where Jesus referred to his return. Here are just three of them, one each from the other three Gospels:

 

‘Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time’ will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Watch therefore - for you do not know when the master of the house (Jesus) will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morn­ing - lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.’ (Mark 13:33-36.)

 

Then the Son of man will appear, coming in a cloud with great power and glory.’ (Luke 21:27, TEV.)

 

‘Jesus answered him, “If I want him to live on until I come, what is that to you?”’ (John 21:23, TEV.)

 

After the Gospels comes a book called The Acts of the Apostles. Here also the promise of the Second Coming rings loud and clear. In the very first chapter we are told how Jesus went up into heaven. As his apostles watched him go, two angels appeared to them with this message:

 

‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’ (Acts 1:11.)

 

The apostles were quick to learn. Only a couple of pages later we find them preaching that God was bound to ‘send the Christ... whom heaven must receive until the time.’ (Acts 3:20,21.)

 

In their letters, which make up most of the rest of the New Testament, the apostles spoke of the Second Coming something like a hundred times. Here are three examples:

 

PAUL: ‘The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command.’ (1 Thessalonians 4:16.)

 

PETER: ‘Set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.’ (1 Peter 1:13.) 

 

JOHN: ‘Abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.’ (1 John 2:28.)

[Resource Manager]

The Book of Revelation

 

The last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, is in a class of its own. Its first verse tells us its purpose: ‘To show to his (Christ’s) servants what must soon take place.’ In other words, it is a book of prophecy about the future -and especially about the Second Coming and the events leading up to it.

 

It starts talking about the Second Coming on its first page: ‘Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him.’ (Revelation 1:7.) And it goes on talk­ing about it until one verse before the end of the book: ‘He who testifies to these things (Jesus) says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (Revelation 22:20.)

 

In between, the Book of Revelation tells us of many terrible and exciting events that were to take place before Christ’s return to the earth. It also contains numerous passages describing the Second Coming itself. Here is one of them.

 

‘Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshipped God, saying, “We give thanks to thee, Lord God Almighty, who art and who wast, that thou hast taken thy great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but thy wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, for rewarding thy servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear thy name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”’ (Revelation 11:15-18.)

 

This shows that the following things will happen when Christ comes back to rule over the earth:

 

(1)   The nations will rage.

(2)   God’s punishments will fall upon them.

(3)   The dead will be raised to judgment.

(4)   God’s true servants will be rewarded.

(5)   Those people who are destroying the earth will themselves be destroyed.

 

Now you will know why I spoke so confidently at the end of Chapter 1. H. G. Wells was hopelessly mistaken. Life on earth will not be wiped out, after all. God Himself says so.

 

His Son will return when the world needs him desper­ately. He will be just in time to destroy those men who, if left to themselves, really would destroy the earth.

[Resource Manager]

3 - FLIGHT PATH FOR A NATION

 

Today, more than ever before, the human race needs God’s help. But how can we be sure there is a God? And even if He does exist, what proof is there that He has any active interest in our world?

 

These questions demand an answer. Before trying to provide one, let me tell you about the time I was invited into the flight deck of a big jet flying across Africa. The captain made me very welcome — almost too welcome for comfort, in fact. Turning his back on the flying controls he chatted away as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

 

‘Don’t worry,’ he smiled reassuringly. ‘The automatic pilot is in full control. That will do my job for me for the next hour or so better than I could do it myself.’

 

Since I knew a bit about these electronic gadgets I had no reason to question him. But suppose that I had been doubtful, and had asked, ‘How do I know there is such a thing? Can you show it to me?’

 

He might well have answered something like this. ‘Sorry, I can’t. It’s too thoroughly boxed in. And even if I could, you wouldn’t know what you were looking at. But I can prove to you that it’s there, all right - and that it’s work­ing perfectly.’

 

‘How?’

 

‘By telling you what the flight path is, so that you can check it for yourself. In about a quarter of an hour you will see a great stretch of water dead ahead. That’s the lake behind the Volta Dam. We fly right over the water, and in thirty-two minutes from now we shall cross the dam. Thir­teen minutes later you’ll see the Atlantic coastline in the distance. When that happens we shall be nearly at Accra Airport. I’ll take over the controls myself, then.’

 

There is a parallel to this in the way that God has been dealing with man. More than 3,000 years ago He began to reveal the ‘flight path’ that He had mapped out for the world.

 

He did not disclose the whole future history of every nation on earth. That would have been unnecessarily com­plicated. All that He needed to do was to map out the entire future history of one key nation, the Jews. He began like this, in about 1300 BC:

 

‘If you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his stat­utes which I command you this day, then all these curses shall come upon you ... You shall be plucked off the land which you are entering to take possession of it.

 

‘And the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other ... And among these nations you shall find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the Lord will give you there a trembling heart, and failing eyes, and a languishing soul; your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, and have no assurance of your life.... 

 

‘And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a by­word, among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.’ (Deuteronomy 28:15,63-66,37.)

[Resource Manager]

According to Plan

 

All this happened exactly according to plan. The Assyri­ans and the Babylonians began to carry off the Jews into exile, six or seven centuries before Christ. The Romans finished the job during the first two centuries AD. From then until modern times the Jews were an extraordinary, unique people: the only nation on earth without a home­land.

 

Just as the prophecy quoted above (and numerous others) foretold, the life of the Jews in their exile was made wretched by persecution. In the twentieth century Adolf Hitler tried to get rid of the Jews. But he was only the last, and the most ambitious, of a long line of Jew-murderers.

 

All through the Christian era there has never been a century when the Jews were not being persecuted or mas­sacred somewhere. They have always been on the move. Sometimes this was because they were being forcibly de­ported, and sometimes because they were fleeing for their lives. And always they were despised, envied, suspected, hated.

 

This was the path that the Old Testament mapped out for them. This was the path they actually trod for twenty centuries or so. Can we reasonably doubt that some Un­seen Pilot has been in control?

 

With so many people trying to exterminate the Jews, you might have thought they would have disappeared long ago. But no, God’s ‘flight path’ laid it down very dearly that the Jews would outlive all their persecutors. These words were written some 8,500 years ago:

 

Fear not, O Jacob my servant, says the Lord (Jacob was the other name of Israel, who gave his name to the Jewish nation, his descendants) for I am with you. I will make a full end of all the nations to which I have driven you, but of you I will not make a full end. I will chasten you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished.’ (Jeremiah 46:28.)

 

When this prophecy was uttered it must have sounded wildly improbable. It was almost as if an aircraft captain were to announce:

 

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to tell you that we are in for a dangerous and unpleasant journey. There are hijackers on board who will do us quite a lot of harm. 

 

‘Also, we shall be flying through a most appalling storm. Bigger and stronger planes than ours are going to be forced down. But don’t be too alarmed. We shall keep on flying, and we shall arrive eventually at our proper destination.’

[Resource Manager]

Home - But Only Just

 

Admittedly, it says nothing about the Jewish nation reach­ing a destination in the verse quoted above. But in the previous verse it does. This reads as follows:

 

Tear not, O Jacob my servant,

nor be dismayed, O Israel;

for lo, I will save you from afar,

and your offspring from the land of their captivity.

Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease,

and none shall make him afraid.’   (Jeremiah 46:27.)

 

This prophecy needs to be split in two. The first half-down to, and including, the words in italics - has already been fulfilled.

 

Twentieth-century Jewish history, like all the rest of Jewish history, has been quite astonishing. The prickly little state of Israel, with its population of less than three million Jews, is one of the most influential nations on earth. Yet thirty years ago it did not exist.

 

In 1897 the land of Israel was known as Palestine. It was a province of the Turkish Empire, and its inhabitants were mostly Arabs. That year a group of wealthy Jews in Europe and America launched a new movement called Zionism for buying land in Palestine and settling Euro­pean Jews upon it.

 

The scheme was an immediate success. By 1914 there were already 100,000 Jewish residents in Palestine. Then the Turkish government became unfriendly, and many of the Palestinian Jews had to leave in a hurry.

 

In 1917 the tide turned again when the British army defeated the Turks and occupied Palestine. To secure Jewish support in World War I, Britain then authorised Lord Balfour to promise Palestine to the Jews as a ‘national home’. (Diplomacy being the devious business that it is, Britain also promised Palestine to the Arabs at about the same time, through Lawrence of Arabia. The Arabs have never forgiven Britain for playing this double game.)

 

Between the two wars Jewish immigration continued steadily. Hitler’s persecution gave it a tremendous boost, until in 1948, when Britain pulled out, there were 650,000 Jews in the land.

 

They declared themselves to be ‘The State of Israel’, and fought for their very existence. To the world’s astonish­ment they won. The new nation of Israel was born and has since survived attack after attack, despite the fierce opposi­tion of Arab nations with more than a hundred times Israel’s population.

 

Thus Jeremiah’s prophecy that ‘Jacob shall return’ was fulfilled, incredibly, despite overwhelming odds. Clearly, the Unseen Pilot was still in control.

[Resource Manager]

The Final Scene

 

The last part of the prophecy from Jeremiah quoted above shows no sign of being fulfilled yet. To the average Israeli, ‘Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease and none shall make him afraid’, sounds like a sick joke.

 

But this is only because the average Israeli does not understand his Old Testament. Take the following pas­sage by the prophet Ezekiel:

 

‘When the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their doings ... So I poured out my wrath upon them ... I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries ... But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name … ‘Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned ... For I will take you from the nations, and will gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. ‘I will sprinkle dean water upon you, and you shall be dean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone.’ (Ezekiel 36:17-26.)

 

There is a great deal to be learnt from those three para­graphs.

 

The first paragraph foretold that the Jews would be just as ungodly in their exile as they were before. This has undoubtedly come true.

 

Do not make the mistake of regarding Israel as an ex­ceptionally wicked race. Every nation on earth falls a hundred miles short of God’s high standards. The point is that Israel, the People of the Bible, were supposed to set the rest of the world an example. But they haven’t. They are as bad as the rest of us.

 

The second paragraph reveals that God would bring the Jews back to their homeland despite their ungodliness, and not because they deserved any favours from Him.

 

This also has come true. Most Israelis are thorough­going materialists - just like most Europeans and Ameri­cans. Many of them are irreligious, and quite a lot are atheists. Of course they have not yet found the promised ‘quiet and ease’ - they are not yet fit for it.

 

The third paragraph explains what has still to happen. Only a miracle could transform the Jewish and Israeli peoples. Yet that miracle will take place. God has pro­mised it: ‘A new heart I will give you.’

 

This amazing change will occur when Israel’s great Divine King (‘Messiah’, as they call him) appears. As an­other prophet says:

 

‘I (God) will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”’ (Jeremiah 23:5,6.)

[Resource Manager]

Where Jesus Comes Into Jewish History

 

Here are just a few of the things the Old Testament pro­phesied about the Jewish Messiah:

 

(1)   The Jews would reject him and kill him. (Isaiah 53:1-9; Daniel 9:26.)

(2)   He would rise from the dead. (Psalm 16:9-11; Isaiah 53:10,11.)

(3)   He would ascend to heaven, dwell with God for a time, and eventually return to earth as king. (Psalm 110:1,2; Isaiah 53:12.)

 

All these prophecies, except, of course, the last part of No. (3), were fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth. So were many other Old Testament prophecies about Messiah, but un­fortunately there is no time to consider those now.

 

The evidence of this great collection of fulfilled prophe­cies is conclusive. Jesus really is the Messiah, and will soon return to earth as King of the Jews. Their return to the land of Israel is a wonderful sign that his return is also near.

This agrees with the Lord Jesus Christ’s own teaching. He spoke of the coming exile of the Jews like this:

 

‘They will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trod­den down by the Gentiles (non-Jews), until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.’ (Luke 21:24.)

 

Note that word ‘until’. This is Jesus’ way of saying,

 

‘Watch the Jews. Watch the land of Israel. Watch Jeru­salem t When it becomes a Jewish city again (which it did in 1967) you will know that world history is approaching its tremendous climax.’

 

Jesus immediately went on to say:

 

‘Portents will appear in sun, moon, and stars.¹ On earth nations will stand helpless, not knowing which way to turn from the roar and surge of the sea; men will faint with terror at the thought of all that is coming upon the world; for the celestial powers will be shaken.² And then they will see the Son of man com­ing on a cloud with great power and glory.’ (Luke 21:25-27, NEB.)

 

Look closely at the phrases printed in italics, bearing in mind that ‘the surging sea’ is a Bible metaphor for great hordes of men raging in fury, (see Isaiah 17:12,13.) The whole passage is a remarkable picture of the state our world looks like reaching within a few years.

 

Thus Jesus not only linked the return of the Jews with his second coming. He also revealed that his return would be to a world at its last gasp.

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Prepare for Landing

 

Come back for a few moments to that airliner over Africa. We have flown the length of the Volta lake and passed right over its great dam, exactly as the captain had said we should.

 

There is no longer any room for doubt. Beyond all ques­tion, there must have been an automatic pilot keeping the plane on its prescribed course.

 

Now, exactly at the right time, we have just had our first glimpse of the Atlantic coast. Eagerly we return to our seats and fasten our belts. We know what that landmark means. Any minute now we shall start our descent for landing.

 

Mankind’s journey through time is rather like that. Can we really doubt that there is an unseen God piloting our-harassed world to a safe landing? He told us the flight path that He had mapped out for one special nation, and they have followed that path with astounding precision.

 

Now, at exactly the right time, just as our crisis-ridden civilisation is sinking towards catastrophe, we have seen the final landmark. After nearly 2,000 years the land of Israel has become a Jewish homeland again, and Jeru­salem a Jewish city.

 

We know what that means. Any time now, Jesus Christ! will be coming in to land.

 

Hadn’t we better get out of our armchairs and prepare, to meet him?

[Resource Manager]

4 - ALL CHANGE

 

The last time our friend Evelyn¹ came to see us she brought along her pet rat Cleopatra.

 

My wife and I, like most other people, have always felt a revulsion for rats. Previously, we could never under­stand how anybody could grow fond of a rodent. Within half an hour Cleopatra changed our attitude. But then Cleopatra is no ordinary rat.

 

To begin with she is beautifully clean, well groomed and fully house-trained. Her standards of personal hygiene would put any dog to shame, and many cats, too. Evelyn has given her a thorough examination in the pathology lab at her college, which Cleopatra passed with flying colours. She was found to be carrying far fewer germs than the average healthy human.

 

Cleopatra is surprisingly affectionate. When she snug­gles under her mistress’ chin, or rolls over so that her tummy can be tickled, she looks a picture of contentment. Watching her, you feel that here is a creature who has reached the summit of ratty happiness.

 

She has come a long way from her cousins living a paw-to-mouth existence in garbage dumps and sewers, riddled with vermin and disease, and in daily peril from traps and poison, dogs and cats. But if you were able to communi­cate with a wild rat and offer to turn him into a pet like Cleopatra, he would probably laugh at the suggestion.

 

‘What, give up my way of life and take on a new one? No fear! I don’t want to be washed and disinfected and trained and bossed about by some human. I’m all right as I am. I’m free to do just what I like, and I want to stay that way, thank you. Freedom - that’s the life for me!’

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Prisoners All

 

We must not press the parallel too far, because human be­ings are not rats and in many important ways are very dif­ferent indeed. Yet the fact remains that many people do have an attitude very like that of the indignant rat.

 

They talk about freedom as if they possessed it. But they don’t. None of us do, not even in the most liberal democ­racy on earth. Like the sewer rat, we are all prisoners of our environment.

 

If I am blinded in a car crash, or if a terrorist bomb blows my legs off, there is nothing I can do about it. I should have no choice but to go through life horribly disabled. If I contract leukaemia when I am young, or my heart fails when I am old, then I am not free to do any­thing but die.

 

If I see the world drifting towards a nuclear holocaust I am free to weep at the prospect of an end to civilisation. But I am powerless to prevent it. Even if I were a prime minister or a president I should still be a prisoner of cir­cumstances. Freedom, real freedom, just does not exist in this complex world of ours.

 

Above all, we are the prisoners of our own tempera­ments. Everybody knows what Paul meant when he wrote:

 

‘Though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it. I don’t do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do ... What an unhappy man I am!’ (Romans 7:18-24, TEV.)

 

It is not only religious people who sometimes feel like that. Agnostics and atheists are aware of the same sort of conflict within them. The ability to think in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is one of the qualities that distinguishes man from the animals.

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Fair Play

 

This possession of a moral faculty is one of the most re­markable things about human nature. But even more extraordinary is the way that nearly every human being on earth seems to feel quite strongly about what is usually called ‘fair play’.

 

A sense of fair play is not the same thing as a sense of right and wrong, although, of course, the two are related. Different civilisations have always had very different ideas as to what constitutes right and wrong. So have different individuals within any group. But there has always been an astonishing measure of agreement among mankind as to what constitutes fair play.

 

For instance, people differ as to whether a man should have one wife, or several. People differ as to whether it is permissible for a married man to have affairs with other women. But everybody, everywhere, agrees that the man who leaves his middle-aged invalid wife to starve, while he runs off to the Bahamas with a wealthy young widow, is a rotter.

 

Similarly, people argue as to whether it is right to drop bombs on enemy cities in wartime, knowing that lots of innocent women and children will be killed. But every­body, everywhere, agrees that the soldier who betrays his own comrades in the middle of the war, just because he sees his own side losing and wants to move over to the win­ning side, is worse than vermin.

 

Then again, opinions may differ as to whether the legendary Robin Hood was justified when he robbed the rich to feed the poor. But everybody, everywhere, despises the rich man who steals the pennies from a blind beggar’s tray.

 

These three examples all point to the same conclusion: a dirty trick is a dirty trick, all the world over - and, so far as history can tell us, it always has been so.

 

Perhaps this seems to you such an obvious fact that you wonder, why make so much fuss about it. There is, in fact, a very good reason for stressing this point.

 

We live in a world where Christianity has been on the defensive for a hundred years or more. Atheist philosophy has made it difficult for millions of people to believe in God. The importance of the fact outlined above - this stubborn, inescapable fact that practically all men, every­where, despise dirty tricks - is that it cuts atheism down to size.

 

The main plank in the atheist platform is the belief that the theory of evolution explains all the mysteries of life. There is no space here to discuss whether evolution is a satisfactory explanation for the existence of the lower forms of life.² All I can hope to do now is to show that man cannot possibly have evolved from the animals, because evolution would have been bound to produce a race of men that admired dirty tricks and despised fair play!

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‘Survival of the Dirtiest’

 

The basis of the theory that man evolved from lower ani­mals is the principle of natural selection, or, as it is often called, ‘the survival of the fittest’.

 

In very simple terms natural selection is thought to operate like this. Every so often some chance reshuffling of molecules (technically known as a ‘mutation’) occurs. This causes an animal to be born with some advantage over its fellows. For instance, a lion might appear with a heavier jawbone and stronger jaw-muscles than the other lions.

 

In normal times this well endowed animal gets more to eat than his neighbours. In time of famine he really comes into his own. Then the strong-jawed lion grabs the only available piece of meat from his weaker, hungry brother. The well-fed lion gorges himself and lives to reproduce his kind, while the hungry one starves to death.

 

A dirty trick? Of course! That is how natural selection is supposed to work. The survival of the fittest really means, so far as the higher animals are concerned, the sur­vival of the dirtiest and the trickiest.

 

How, then, did man come by his love of fair play and his hatred of dirty tricks? If atheist philosophy is correct, our ancestors survived because they excelled at dirty tricks. Yet we have acquired a deep distaste for dirty tricks — a revulsion against the very process that is supposed to have formed us! Clearly, the atheist has a tremendous problem on his hands.

 

Taking the argument a stage further, how is it that a great many men and women have a respect for unselfish­ness, kindness, compassion and conscientiousness? They may not practise these virtues very often themselves, but at least they admire them in others.

 

Yet these high moral ideals are a positive handicap in the struggle for survival. If the atheists’ explanation of our origin is correct, then these virtues should have died out long ago, along with our love of fair play. Like the strong lion, the iron-hard men whose watchword was, ‘Might is right, and I don’t give tuppence for anybody else’, should have been the only ones to survive.

 

Their brash, self-centred descendants should now be occupying the whole earth, if - IF - the atheists were right.

 

As it is, mankind’s widespread respect for what has been called ‘The Law of Decent Behaviour’³ shows that man must have been created by some great Lawgiver.

[Resource Manager]

The Explanation that Fits

 

There is an account of man’s origin in the early chapters of the Bible that makes remarkably good sense. Though there are problems in reconciling Genesis with science it can be done,⁴ and the outcome is an explanation that really does fit all the facts.

 

It begins in Genesis 1, which tells us that the first man was created in God’s own image, (verses 26,27.) This im­mediately sets the human race apart from the rest of crea­tion. Man alone can commune with God, understand what God requires of him, and consciously obey God - or dis­obey God, if he chooses. Man alone was created in a very close relationship with his Creator - ‘Adam the son of God’, he was called. (Luke 3:38.)... No wonder man has a sense of fair play!

 

Then God put this first man, Adam, to a simple test. God said:

 

‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’ (Genesis 2:16,17.)

 

We do not know what would have happened if the first man had obeyed God. The fact is that he did not. Genesis 3 tells us that our ancestors sinned, were sentenced to death, and were expelled from God’s presence.

 

These events are presented to us as historical facts. Jesus Christ evidently accepted them as actual history, and I have never seen any convincing reasons why we should not do so, too - even though we do not know their date or their geographical location.

 

This record in Genesis is extremely important because it teaches a lesson affecting all human life, including our lives today. What happened to Adam and Eve happens, in one way or another, to every one of us also. As the New Testament explains:

 

‘Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.’ (Romans 5:12.)

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Children of Adam

 

So the whole human race is in the same unhappy position as Adam. He started off on the wrong foot, and the whole of mankind has been on the wrong road ever since. He went astray, and received his double punishment: immediate banishment from God, and the certain know­ledge that one day he would die.

 

No doubt Adam went out from the presence of God sorrowfully, his mind filled with memories and with thoughts of what might have been. He never for one moment would have imagined he was gaining his free­dom. He knew he was losing it.

 

Eden, the place where God walked, was the place of freedom. To him, the rest of this wonderful world had become one great prison, a place to live in sorrow until at last God’s sentence of death took effect.

 

It is tragic that so many people nowadays are unaware of their real position. They cannot see that they are in just the same situation as poor Adam - sinful, condemned by God, and thrust out from His presence.

 

Yet there is powerful evidence that this is so. We still bear within us the signs of both our lofty origin and our tragic fall. Our deep-seated love of ‘fair play’ is the evi­dence that we really were once created in the image of God. And the way we keep tripping up, failing to ‘play fair’ despite our good intentions, is proof that we belong to a blighted, sinful race.

 

These facts about the origin of mankind explain why so many of us go through life dissatisfied. It is as if we are always searching frantically for something that eludes us.

 

Materially, men and women in the western world are better off than ordinary people have ever been before. But they are still discontented. The real prizes, peace of mind and lasting happiness, are always just out of reach.

 

This is because we have forgotten what we are searching for. We know that something is amiss, but we don’t know what it is. We have lost sight of the fact that the world is really a prison, and that we are the prisoners serving out our sentences.