BIRTH PANGS OF THE NEW AGE

Rev. Bertrand Comparet

 

   Very few people are satisfied with the present age.  Even the mat­erialists want to change it: hence they are easy prey to Communism, for they have no ideals or principles but "Let's get all we can by any means possible."  But WE want something much better: not just more pay for longer strikes under Marxist dominated labor unions, more time to watch worse tele­vision programs, more money to buy synthetic whiskey, bigger and more deadly traffic jams.  We want the true liberty, the real good, which can come only in the Kingdom of God.

   But there is no way to bring in the true good while the evil forces of the present age still rule the world.  What chance has any good thing a third of the world has it's thinking controlled by the Zionists. ­ There is no political party left in these United States which even pretends to represent the majority of its people?  While Labor and Capital alike would gladly sink the Ship of State if only they can steal a bigger piece of the wreckage for themselves?  It has reached the point where man alone can't clean up the mess he has made: only God's strong hand will suffice. 

   In the past, God has allowed evil to destroy itself: He has used one group of evil men to overthrow another‑‑‑ for example, He used pagan Assyria and Babylon to overthrow apostate Israel and Judah.  Somewhat the same thing may underlie the present grouping of the pagan and godless na­tions of the world against the Christian nations which have allowed the aliens who hate Jesus Christ to come in, infiltrate every activity, business, schools, churches, government, and turn them away from their loyalty to Jesus Christ and our racial way of life. Individually, the great majority of our race are still Christian; but we have allowed control of all phases of our lives to slip out of our hands until our nations have lost their proudly Christian character.  Such conditions must be cleansed: God's protection Is given to those who are loyal to Him, and the rest must be pur­ged I away. Hence, the terribly destructive conflict now approaching will be God s means of separating the wheat from the chaff.  The evils of the pres­ent time must go before the New Age can come; this will be a continuing process over a period of time.  The death agonies of this age are the birth pangs of the New.

   The 24th, chapter of Matthew is one of the most important chapters in the Bible, for it gives Jesus Christ's description of the warning signs of the end of this Age, and of His return.  He tells us that "as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:37)   I need not labor the point that we are today living in  conditions much like those of Noah's day: you have only to read your daily newspaper to see that.  In Genesis 6:5.11, it says: "And God saw that the wicked­ness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. * * The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."  But there is another important likeness here: Noah received TWO warnings of the im­pending judgment: the first came a century before the flood, telling him to build the ark; the other was just seven days' warning to finish load­ing the ark and get aboard.  So also we can expect to receive two warn­ings: one, early, to prepare; the second, at the last moment, to seek shelter.  It would be well for us to examine these warnings, so we can recognize them when they come.

   In this 24th chapter of Matthew, Jesus Christ lists seven signs which would be warnings of the approaching end of the age.  These were: (1) false Christs and false prophets (v. 5, 11, 23‑27); (2) wars and rum­ors of wars (v. 6‑7); (3) famines, pestilences and earthquakes (v.7); (4 persecution of Christians (v. 9‑10); (5) widespread lawlessness (v.12); (fl the Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached; and (7) the Abomination That Maketh Desolate in the Holy Place.  WE HAVE ALREADY SEEN THE FIRST SIX OF THESE!

1.   “False Christs:”  There have been, beginning with Simon Bar Kokba, in Judea, in the year 135; and in our own days Barabba, Baha, who claimed to be "the Messiah of all religions"‑‑‑even of those religions which don't have any Messiah‑‑‑the Negro who called himself "Father Divine" and claimed to be God, and the Hindu boy whom the Theosophists introduced as "the reincarnation of Christ."  And as to "false prophets"‑‑‑one of our large organizations, the National Council of Churches offers them in quantity.

2.   "Wars and rumors of wars:"  These have come through the centuries, and Christ told us not be become prematurely alarmed at these.  "See that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."  However, wars were listed as one of the signs, so there must be something recognizable in them.  In our own times, we have seen the First World War, in which every major nation of the world was involved, for the first time in history; then the Second World War, again involving every major nation, plus the introduction of a previously undreamed of weapon, the Atom Bomb; and now the Third World War stands at our elbow.  Surely these are significant enough to be the second sign.

3.   "Famines, Pestilences and Earthquakes:”  The last 40 years have seen major famines, killing hundreds of thousands of people, in Russia, India and China. As to Pestilences, only the Black Death of the Middle Ages can compare in deadliness with the Influenza epidemic of 1917‑18; and we can only try to imagine the results of Bacteriological Warfare in the next war. And as to Earthquakes, all previous recorded history can show few, if any, more major earthquakes, raining cities and killing great numbers of' people, than have occurred in this century. So the 3rd sign has occurred.

4.  "Persecution of Christians:"  I need not remind you how Christians have been persecuted in every land behind the Iron Curtain‑‑‑far over 30 million of them having been murdered in Russia alone ‑‑‑in persecutions greatly exceeding anything under the pagan Roman Empire. And persecutions of Christians goes on today, much nearer home than that. In New York State, while it is permissible to advertise "Kosher food served here", any hotel keeper who advertises that his hotel is "near churches" is heavily fined or sent to jail and they are trying to get this same law here in Calif­ornia.   So don t think that you are safe as long as you stay away from Russia: the same people who brought Communism to Russia are trying to bring it here, also.

5.   "Widespread lawlessness:"  If you read the daily papers at all, you already know more about this subject than I could tell you in 2 hours. Never has the world seen crime on such a scale. There have always been hardened criminals among the grown people, and some criminal gangs; but to­day, the average age of criminals in the state prisons is in the early twenties, and juvenile delinquency"‑‑‑a polite name for every kind of vicious crime ‑‑‑is increasing rapidly. While there has always been a cer­tain amount of crime, the sudden, great increase of it in our time, like the change in the character of warfare, and coming at the same time as the other signs, makes the lawlessness, also, recognizable as a sign.