| Highlights of DAWN | January 1977 |
A World Without Wars
AS WE come to another milestone in man’s journey through life on this troubled planet, we find humanity bearing into the new year the burden of virtually all the problems that weighed so heavily on it during the year now closing and in the years preceding that. They are numerous, they are difficult, and they are universal; and, in spite of man’s best efforts to find answers, they just don’t seem inclined to go away.
The threat of mass starvation is still with us; indeed, it grows with every passing year. An article in U.S. News & World Report (July 5, 1976) ominously states: “The ‘third world’ nightmare is moving toward reality. With the world’s population exploding, experts estimate that it will reach 6.3 billion by the year 2000, compared with 4 billion today. Almost all of that increase, more than 2 billion, will be concentrated in the poor countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the nations least able to feed their people even today. … Fantastic turmoil and famine on a mass scale are deemed virtually inescapable. Some students of foreign affairs see the combination of too many people and too little food as the principal source of international instability in the future.”
Inflation? Or Unemployment?
Another of these persistent, nagging ailments is inflation, working hardship on poor people and poor nations. One of the principal sources of this malady is the federal government with its unchecked spending of public funds and recurring budget deficits. Reader’s Digest recently published a chart showing that it had taken 173 years (until 1962) for federal spending to rise to $100 billion a year. Astonishingly, it took only nine more years (to 1971) for it to double to $200 billion a year, and only four more years (to 1975) to reach $300 billion. And now in 1976, almost unbelievably, the annual spending of the federal government of the United States has broken through the $400 billion mark! The interest alone on the vast $630 billion federal debt thus created comes to over $40 billion a year and amounts to a weighty 10 per cent of the total budget.
But this official debt constitutes only a fraction of the government’s total financial commitments. Beyond that huge debt Washington has promised to pay off more than $2.2 trillions, if required to do so under certain circumstances. These vast additional liabilities relate to insurance on bank deposits, mortgage insurance, guarantees on veterans’ and other pensions, and numerous other obligations. One writer states that unless this “deadly trend” is halted “we’ll eventually wake up to find ourselves living in a fool’s paradise.”
Despite these continued budget deficits, the ostensible purpose of which is to shake the economy out of the doldrums, the ranks of the unhappy unemployed continue stubbornly and dangerously high. Thus Washington finds itself on the horns of a dilemma: to increase the federal deficit to stimulate the economy is to add fuel to the inflationary fires; to hold the line of spending may mean continued high rates of unemployment and a sluggish economy.
Diminishing Sources of Energy
The whole world is now painfully aware that its supply of oil is finite and may well become inadequate to meet the needs of industry, transportation, and homes within the lifetime of many now living. While coal is still abundant, its use adds to the pollution of the world’s already tainted atmosphere. Natural gas, an important source of energy, is also in short supply in many areas.
Many experts are urging a combined crash program by the industrial nations of the world to devise some means of reducing drastically the West’s dependence on expensive Mideastern oil. But even as officialdom delays action on an energy program, the Arabian oil producers are urging the OPEC cartel to raise the price of their product. If this is done, as seems probable, it is likely to aggravate further the problems of inflation and unemployment.
Many Problems, Few Answers
We here call attention to just a few of the difficulties that afflict not only our own nation but the whole world. But there are many others. Pollution, terrorism, crime, corruption, immorality, and a host of other evils plague the world and are the cause of deep concern and actual suffering to millions of human beings all over this unsettled planet.
Even at the local level the multitude of problems is mind-boggling. The New York Times recently stated that “New Jersey’s laundry list of problems under study leaves the researcher breathless.” Now being scrutinized by the New Jersey Legislature are the high rates of cancer, the skyrocketing cost of state and local pensions, and another hundred or so other matters such as child labor, the energy crisis, gasoline supplies, conditions in state prisons and county jails, drugs, fraud, and so on, ad infinitum.
Doubtless every state in the union, every county, and every city could produce a similarly discouraging list. And doubtless so could every nation in the world.
The Triumph of Selfishness
Of course, the characteristic response of civilized man to these situations has been to call a conference or to appoint a committee. But we have seen, all too often, the futility of such a course. Because conferences are composed of men, and because men are selfish and imperfect, the cause of universal good almost invariably suffers defeat at the hands of selfishness. As a result, such conferences frequently become struggles to gain and not attempts generously to share or to give.
Thus, we have had world conferences to supply food to less fortunate nations, with meager results, and conferences to establish working rules for all nations to share equitably the resources of the oceans, with similar sparse results. Thus, too, we have seen the original League of Nations selfishly wrangle itself into extinction, and we are now viewing the like impotence of the successor United Nations to solve world problems, for similar reasons. Statesmanship, equity, humanitarianism—these are rare visitors to the halls of such assemblages.
War—the Final Recourse of Man
As a result, frustrated nations often decide to take unilateral action to remedy real or fancied wrongs. And too often such action leads to costly, agonizing wars between nations. “War, which generally occurs only when arbitration, mediation, or negotiation have failed to remove its cause, is a confession of the finality of force.” So states the Columbia Encyclopedia (p. 2105). “It thus appears as a manifestation of the human struggle for existence and satisfaction of desires, aggravated by the complexity of modern social organization.” Economic, racial, and religious factors; imperialism, nationalism, and militarism: all these operate to cause wars.
When nations cannot peacefully and equitably settle their differences over the conference table, they try to gain their ends by the power of the sword. This, in spite of the fact that history teaches that the inevitable fruit of war is despoiled lands and cities, crippled minds and bodies, moral, economic and financial bankruptcy, and undying hate. Millions upon millions of humans suffer and die; but the hate that is created by the conflict lives on and on through succeeding generations.
But the lesson of the futility of war has not yet been learned by man. In World War I some 10,000,000 were killed; in World War II it is estimated that about 15,000,000 lost their lives. Yet today, as widows, children, and families still mourn their loved ones lost in the latest war in the Far East, the threat of a new and devastating conflict hangs heavy over the peoples of the whole world—a war whose potential for destruction and suffering is beyond comprehension.
While ostensibly holding periodic and serious conferences to limit the use of military weapons (SALT), the two great superpowers of earth are openly engaged in a frantic race to create new devices of unimaginable destructive power, while lesser nations align themselves with one or the other of the mighty antagonists. Meanwhile, the Middle East is boiling over, Africa is a shambles, Eastern Europe is seething, and the Far East is unsettled. A misstep or miscalculation at any one of these vital points could easily precipitate the dreaded conflict.
A Nuclear War?
Should there come a war between the two great adversaries, it is likely it would be such as no other war ever fought. Indeed, it would probably be the most awesomely destructive war ever engaged in by man. The array of weapons possessed by both sides and the destruction and misery they can inflict are appalling. These include land-based missiles, missile submarines, missile-armed bombers, cruise missiles, laser ray guns—the missiles, of course, all armed with nuclear warheads. These are possessed and at the ready by each side in sufficient numbers to destroy the other totally many times over, along with many of the inhabitants of the rest of the world, from the contaminating nuclear fallout.
Humanity is still horrified at the physical destruction and the awful human misery wrought by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. But the power of the nuclear bomb to destroy and maim is incomprehensibly greater, and the effect on earth’s atmosphere could be catastrophic. In the event of a nuclear war between the two great powers, one can only speculate how many human lives would be lost outright, or condemned to months or years of intense suffering.
It is the possibility, not altogether remote, of just such a horrifying conflict that so deeply concerns all thoughtful people the world over. It is the possibility of such a conflict that is, beyond any doubt, the world’s greatest problem, and its greatest dread.
Will such a dreadful conflict come about? Would God permit so great a calamity to befall mankind? Does the Bible predict a world disaster of this kind and magnitude?
“I Have Long Time Holden My Peace”
We can only call attention to certain prophecies of the Bible relating to the end of this “present evil world.” (Gal. 1:4) The great Lord God of the universe has been long-suffering toward the disobedience and sin of mankind, but he indicates through the prophet that the time has now come for another phase of his great plan of the ages to be initiated. He says, “I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now I will cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once.”—Isa. 42:14
We learn that the time when he will take this corrective action toward the world is in the Day of the Lord [Jehovah], and that the purpose of it is to destroy sin forever. Isaiah writes, “Howl ye; for the day of the Lord [Jehovah] is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt: and they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord [Jehovah] cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. … And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. … Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.”—Isa. 13:6-13
The Prophet Daniel speaks of this period as “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” (Dan. 12:1) Our Lord Jesus quoted this prophecy of Daniel’s and identified it as marking the end of this present age. He said, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”—Matt. 24:3,21
When we consider both the extraordinary magnitude and the special uniqueness of the troubles that presently afflict the world, there can be little doubt that we are now in that period of time described by Daniel and by our Lord Jesus as marking the end of the age. For never before in its history has the world been faced as it is today with a population growth so great that it challenges imperfect man’s ability to provide sufficient food. Never before in the history of humanity has pollution threatened man’s existence on this planet. Never before has man possessed the means to destroy his civilization and himself, as he now possesses it in the nuclear bomb. Never before has the literal earth itself been threatened with nuclear contamination that could last for thousands of years. Surely, we are in the “time of trouble such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time.” It is being permitted to come upon a sinful world “in order that sin might be shown to be sin.”—Rom. 7:13, RSV
Beyond the Trouble—A New World!
We are not given exact details of the events of this great time of trouble to be experienced by the world, but we are not left in any doubt as to what follows it. When this present evil world passes away, we are assured by the Apostle Peter that God will introduce a glorious new world, a world “wherein dwelleth righteousness.”—II Pet. 3:10,12,13
This will be the wonderful time when Christ’s millennial kingdom will be established in the earth for the blessing of all the families of the earth. (Gen. 22:18) All who are in their graves shall be called forth to be given an opportunity to obey the righteous laws of the kingdom and thus to gain everlasting life on earth.—Dan. 12:2; John 5:28,29; Acts 3:19-23; Isa. 35:1-10; Rev. 20:6
The full measure of joy and happiness, the total freedom from hunger, strife, sickness, death, and wars for which man so fervently longs, will come only when man again seeks after the Lord to love and reverence him, to do his will, and to love his neighbor as himself. And this is precisely what God has so long planned shall be man’s ultimate lot.
In Christ’s righteous kingdom there shall be no more want or hunger. “They shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.” (Isa. 65:21) And of course it will be a world of peace! Today, imperfect man cannot gain peace. “Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none.” (Ezek. 7:25) But speaking of the glorious time to come, the psalmist tells us that wars shall be completely and forever abolished from the face of the earth. How joyfully we cherish the promise, “He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.”—Ps. 46:9
In that new world to come all men will truly be good neighbors, for the strictly enforced law of the kingdom will be love. “These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor.”—Zech. 8:16,17
Even the animal world will be at peace! “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”—Isa. 11:6-9
They Shall Learn War No More
Beyond the troubles of the present time, what a glorious prospect is in view for the world of mankind! What blessings shall be poured out by the Heavenly Father with a bountiful hand in that wonderful kingdom of Christ! What imperfect, sinful man has been unable to achieve through his own efforts, God in his infinite love and boundless mercy will accomplish for him, through the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus and the restitution work of the kingdom.
Then will finally and joyously come to pass the prophecy of the heavenly host at the time of Jesus’ birth almost two thousand years ago, when they proclaimed, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”—Luke 2:14
“Many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, … and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”—Isa. 2:3,4