| Highlights of Dawn | February 1971 |
Come Ye to the Waters!
MORE and more these days one hears and reads of the growing financial crisis that threatens the cities of this land. The achievement of balanced budgets becomes ever more difficult and elusive. As a result, the manpower of police and fire departments falls below safe levels. Services to the citizens are curtailed on every hand—garbage collections are skipped, safety and health inspections of buildings and general municipal housekeeping duties are neglected. Unsightly weeds grow in parks lined with broken, unpainted benches; discarded rubbish disfigures the city streets and highways; abandoned autos affront the eye, while the discharge of untreated or partially treated sewage renders the parks along city waterfronts offensive to the nostrils. Hospitals operate with depleted staffs; museums are closed; the construction of new schools falls far behind schedule; recreation areas for young and old are put under lock and key. At the same time, conditions in the ghettos continue to deteriorate and fester.
The reason for this sorry state of affairs is, of course, the simple fact that the seemingly unmanageable costs of running the cities are increasing faster than their revenues. Municipal employees at every level—executives, office workers, policemen, firemen, teachers, sanitation, transportation and social workers—all demand and get ever higher wages, often striking, or initiating so-called “job actions”—which are really an unsuitable form of strike—to gain their ends. In the, last decade the cost of constructing schools, hospitals, streets, bridges, water supply and other municipal facilities has skyrocketed, while the rise in welfare costs seems to have gotten altogether out of control.
While their costs continue to rise, the beleaguered cities find themselves unable adequately to increase their income. The Federal Government collects nearly two-thirds of all tax revenues, and the state governments impose their taxes on top of that. Thus, the cities find that their sources of raising revenues are limited, relying, in the main, on real estate taxes, sales and business taxes and in some cities, on limited income taxes. In many areas any increases in these taxes might well produce not more, but lower revenues, for these taxes are already at levels which are forcing some residents and businesses out of the cities into the suburbs and rural areas, and any further increases would surely accelerate this trend. A despairing official recently stated: that, “the goal of city and local governments today may be summed up in one word—and that word is, survival.”
In their frustration, the cities appeal to their state governments for assistance, only to find that the states themselves are faced with very much the same problem, different only in magnitude. New York City, for instance, anticipating a deficit in the current fiscal year of something in the range of $300-million, turns to the State of New York for help, only to find that the state itself faces a possible $400-million deficit in the coming year. For the states, like the city governments, are also beset with the like problem of expenditures outstripping revenues. Hopelessly, New York State’s Governor Rockefeller recently used such words as “disaster,” “bankruptcy,” and “revolution” in speaking of the present condition of the nation’s cities and states.
And so the states, in turn, appeal to the Federal Government for relief. Since the central government skims off the top so large a proportion of the available revenues, leaving the city and state governments to pick over what is left, these are now demanding that the Federal Government return to them a larger share of the federal take. And the answer the states get to their pleas for assistance from Federal Government must sound unhappily similar to what they themselves have been telling the cities within their borders. Calling attention to the $10-billion federal deficit of the last fiscal year, a member of the Ways and Means Committee of the United States Congress recently said, “The Federal Government has nothing to share with the states except a federal debt of $380-billion.” The states, of course, do not appreciate that type of sharing.
The Federal government is, indeed, having its own financial troubles. Prospective fiscal surpluses all too often turn into deficits, while the federal debt gets larger and ever larger. The United States Department of Defense is currently spending at the fantastic rate of $73-billion a year, much of it in Southeast Asia. But it is now being suggested, almost unbelievably, that expenditures of the Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare (HEW) will exceed even those of the Department of Defense before the decade is done. In 1953 HEW disbursements amounted to about $2-billion for the year; this is no small sum, but it is now estimated that these will approximate $60-billion for 1971, and these expenditures are multiplying seemingly unchecked. The same unhappy trend is true of the other multitudinous departments of the Federal Government.
Superimposed on this difficulty of rising expenditures is the price and wage inflation that further seriously aggravates the problem, not only for the cities, but also for the State and Federal Governments. When Mr. Nixon took office at the beginning of 1969, he recognized the danger of the growing inflation, and he very soon tightened credit in a bold effort to bring it under control. A slowing of the economy followed, and unemployment rose; but to the chagrin of the money managers, and contrary to expectations, the price inflation which these measures were calculated to correct, persisted, largely fueled by wage increases wrung out of unhappy employers by the powerful labor unions in excess of any foreseeable increase in productivity per man hour. This type of wage inflation adds to the price inflation.
Rising prices are always politically unpopular; they are doubly so when coupled with rising unemployment. Even in its less virulent form, inflation works grave hardship not only on governments, but on vast numbers of the poor; and in democratic countries, at least, the poor are also voters. As a result, the Administration, with an eye on the 1972 elections, has been easing credit in the hope of putting the economy back into a rising trend, thus relieving the unemployment problem. This has given rise to fresh fears on the part of some economists that the inflationary trend will not taper off, but will continue its alarming upward spiral.
This inflationary disease is not confined to the United States; it is afflicting most of the Western nations, and parts of the communist world. In mid-December the angry citizens of three cities in Poland staged a demonstration in protest against the imposition by the government of higher prices, during which six people lost their lives, hundreds were injured in battles with the police, and many arrested. The authorities urged the rioters to cease the demonstrations, referring to them openly as “anarchy.”
Remembering the two disastrous inflations suffered by Germany following World War I and World War II, one would suppose that that nation above all nations would do all in its power to head off any slightest hint of a repetition of those experiences. But there is something heady about inflation, as least in its early stages; and it seems that Germany, like the United States has now decided to blind herself to the dangers, of inflation, rather than to risk an unpopular recession and rising unemployment.
But the grave perils inherent in rising inflation trends are not lost on the financial experts of the Western World, many of whom have believed for some time that the rise in wages and prices has been approaching the point whet it may get out of control, with disastrous results. The unpalatable prescription of these financial doctors is continued doses of tight money in spite of the ensuing economic slowdown and unemployment that it causes. But since these suggested remedies are politically risky, there would seem to be little hope of expecting statesmanship to overrule political expediency, even here in the United States. Should the inflationary trend continue its upward surge, as seems likely, serious-minded men of the world will not contemplate the possible consequences with indifference.
And it could well be that there is sound scriptural, as well as economic basis for their fears. Notice the words of the Prophet Zephaniah, as he foretells the conditions that will prevail in the world during the day of the Lord: “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against’ the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against’ the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealously: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.”—Zeph. 1:14-18
Serious students of the Bible know that the “day of the Lord” here mentioned by the prophet is that period of time at the end of “this present, evil world” during which the iniquitous institutions of this world are to be destroyed, prior to the establishment of Christ’s thousand-year kingdom. It is here described by the prophet as a day of trouble, distress, and desolation on the land and the, inhabitants so awful that their silver and gold will be valueless. It is the day of the Lord’s wrath and vengeance upon the nations because of their iniquity.
No doubt there will be many factors which, taken together, will bring the destruction of this present evil world during the day of the Lord to its ultimate terrible climax. Some of these factors may not even be discernible today, as the nuclear bomb was not in existence a short generation ago. But we do know that, because of selfishness, man has not succeeded in living at peace with his fellow man; he has not learned equitably and justly to share earth’s rich bounties with his fellows; he has failed to preserve the purity and beauty and the life-sustaining qualities of his divinely arranged, God-given environment. All this is setting nation against nation, race against race, rich against poor, young against old. And now again, because of his single-minded devotion to self, and self-interest, man may well be on the way to adding an additional element to the terrible brew—a chaotic collapse of his financial-economic world—a collapse so complete that it would render money a worthless commodity, as has virtually happened in other historic inflations.
The Prophet Ezekiel also tells of this same dreadful day of the Lord’s wrath in graphic language. The entire seventh chapter of his prophecy paints a vivid picture of this awful time, but we will not quote it all. “Behold, the day! Behold, it comes! Your doom has come, injustice has blossomed, pride has budded. Violence has grown up into a rod of wickedness; none of them shall remain, nor their abundance, nor their wealth; neither shall there be preeminence among them. The time has come, the day draws near. Let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon all their multitude. For the seller shall not return to what he has sold, while they live. … All hands are feeble, and all knees weak as water. They gird themselves with sackcloth and horror covers them; shame is upon all faces, and baldness on all their heads. They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing; their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. … According to their way I will do to them, and according to their own judgments I will judge them; and they shall know that I am the Lord.”—Ezek. 7:10-27 RSV
Selfishness, pride, and injustice have been “the stumbling block of their iniquity”; and these are to bring down the Lord’s mighty wrath on the world. So awful will that time be that all will finally be overtaken with remorse and shame. Their money will neither deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath, nor will it satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs. But all will then recognize that the vengeance coming on them is from the Lord, because of their iniquity.
The Lord further confirms the distressful conditions of the day of the Lord through his Prophet Isaiah: “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low … and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols [of wealth] he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold … to the moles and to the bats.”—Isa. 2:10-20
Man has truly striven to heap up treasures on the earth, making idols of his silver and his gold. But when the Lord “shakes the earth” man will learn the lasting lesson that his life, happiness, and security are not to be found in earthly riches, but in the Lord, who, alone, shall be exalted in that day.
Following the destruction of the selfish systems and social arrangements that make up this present evil world, Christ’s kingdom will be established in the earth. In that glorious kingdom there will be no poverty, no fear of inadequate wages or exorbitant prices, no need, indeed, of money; for the Lord will abundantly and freely supply all the needs of man for his well-being, happiness, and everlasting life. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”—Isa. 55:1
And the faithful overcomers of the Gospel Age, the footstep followers of the Lord, the bride of the Lamb, will share in extending that life-giving invitation to all the willing and obedient of the world of mankind, risen from their graves, in those wonderful times of restitution: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” (Rev. 22:17) May thy kingdom soon come, Lord!