Flames Out of
Control
A few years ago the trees on the mountains behind our home caught fire. The flames were discovered by forest rangers who keep a twenty-four-hour lookout from a nearby mountain. The fire was already out of control and moving rapidly toward our home when we were told to be ready to evacuate. Fire fighters came, and we fought the fire all night until it was brought under control.
Our world is on fire, and man without God will never be able to control the flames. The demons of hell have been let loose. The fires of passion, greed, hate, and lust are sweeping the world. We seem to be plunging madly toward Armageddon.
Not long before he was killed in a plane crash several years ago, I visited with Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld in his office at the United Nations. He seemed deeply depressed during our conversation. Looking from his window across New York he said quietly: "I see no hope for permanent world peace. We have tried so hard and we have failed so miserably." Then he paused a moment, looked at me, and said: "Unless the world has a spiritual rebirth within the next few years, civilization is doomed."
This is the generation that will pass through the fire. It is the generation, Holiday magazine said, "under the gun." This is the tormented generation. This is the generation destined to live in the midst of crisis, danger, fear, and death. We are like a people under sentence of death, waiting for the date to be set. We sense that something is about to happen.
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We know that things cannot go on as they are. History has reached an impasse. We are now on a collision course. Something is about to give.
Jean Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist said: "There is no exit from the human dilemma." Sir Winston Churchill spoke of the world's dilemma in these words: "Our problems are beyond us." The flames are licking all around our world — the roof is about to cave in — man is caught in a fire raging out of control.
What are some of these flames that are threatening to destroy us?
The Demographic Flame
This is the current population explosion, which baffles our finest minds. The population increase is frightening. This dilemma is analyzed by the eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee, who believes that if we have a nuclear war, too few people will be left alive to maintain civilization; but if we do not have such a war, too many people will make life on this planet both intolerable and impossible. Statistics overwhelm us when we take into account the rapidity with which births are exceeding deaths.
The population of the world at the beginning of recorded history is estimated to have been 125,000. At the time of Christ there were only about two-thirds as many people on the whole earth as live in the United States alone today. So fast has the population grown since then that three percent of all human beings who ever lived since the dawn of history are on the earth today. By the end of this century in 2000 A.D. the world's population will have exceeded six and half billion people.
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The world now faces a biological problem as well as a political one. Are we capable of mustering the will, the wisdom, and the compassion to cope with this mounting problem of overpopulation? No present or future schemes of socialistic or altruistic welfare to share the wealth can mean much if there are more people than there is wealth to be shared. Thus people themselves have become a weapon which could ultimately destroy them. Sexual energy is one of the flames out of control.
The Flame of Lawlessness
The Bible teaches that sin is transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). This word "transgression" could be translated "lawlessness." Jesus indicated that as men approached the end of history there would be a worldwide rebellion against law and order. Rebellion and lawlessness are already present on a scale such as the world has never known. Children rebel against their parents until many parents are actually afraid of their children. Young people rebel against their teachers. University students rebel against administrative authorities. There is an organized attempt to downgrade the policeman, to make fun of him and despise him. All this is part of a general disrespect for law and order.
It ought to shock us that in many countries organized crime is the biggest business of all. In fact, one of America's leading racketeers casually boasted a short time ago: "Organized crime is bigger than the United States Government."
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Crime grosses close to 10 percent of the American national income and forms virtually a state within a state. It costs us more than all our educational and welfare programs combined. Organized crime, with its syndicates, underworld, racketeering, and the Mafia, almost controls some of the world's major cities. In addition, there is unorganized crime, and it is just as bad if not worse.
Crime is increasing with such rapidity that we are now close to open rebellion and anarchy. It is dangerous to walk the streets of almost any city in America after dark. In some areas people live in fear and terror. It is as though some sinister, supernatural force were loose. Our city streets are turned into jungles of terror, mugging, rape, and death. The blight of criminality threatens to engulf our society; as the crime rates rise, the moral foundations of the nation crumble. The chief of police of one of our larger cities confided in me recently: "Crime definitely pays." He said that more than half of all criminals in his city eventually go free. Most of them are undetected; as for those who are caught, the police have a difficult time proving anything to the satisfaction of the courts.
What is the answer to the problem of crime? Is it more police work, more education, stricter punishment? Why is it that in the most affluent society in history (our nation) leads the world in crime?
We have taught during the past few decades that morals are relative, and now we are reaping the harvest. The tendency of the educational system, the courts, and the mass communications media is often to ignore the victim of a crime and to coddle the criminal. In some cases, we even make the criminal a hero. I find that law enforcement officers
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throughout the country are discouraged. They feel that the courts are not giving them cooperation. The crime statistics are astronomical. Law enforcement agencies do not have the money or the personnel to apprehend even a fraction of the criminals. No one seems to have the answer. It is another flame out of control!
The Racial Flame
Premier Chou En-lai of China said recently in an English broadcast from Peking: "The colored people of the world outnumber the white 12 to 1. Let's wipe them out." An eminent sociologist confided recently that he believes we will be involved in a bitter racial war within the next few years. Men of the stature of Dr. Martin Niemoller, one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches, and Sir Hugh Foote, a member of the British Labor Government, have joined in warning about the possibility of race war.
In New York City a Negro boy of seventeen was arrested recently for murder. He was called "Big Giant." His mother said he used to be such a wonderful boy, but that the black nationalists made him hate the white man. She said he was brainwashed.
There is no doubt that racial tension is increasing throughout the world. In some areas it is already flaming into underground warfare.
Being born black in some parts of the world — or Jewish in other parts — or Oriental in others — or white in some places — imposes intolerable burdens, while those who are accidentally born to the ruling majority enjoy advantages they have not always earned and of which they seem to have little appreciation. To hate, to discriminate against, and to restrict those who look different, who talk differently, who have different national backgrounds, or who act differently from the dominant group is a consistent and universal trait of human nature extending beyond national barriers. Racial prejudice is not limited to the Southern part of the United States or to South Africa. I have observed it almost everywhere. Wherever two races live side by side, there exists prejudice. It is found among the Israelites and the Arabs, the French and the Algerians, the Indonesians and the Malaysians, the white South Africans and the coloreds.
I was in one country that claimed to have solved its race problem. Indeed, on the surface it looked like a racial paradise. However, I found that the darker a man's skin, the less advantage and opportunity he had. There were certain clubs he could not get into, and he could not serve as an officer in the Armed Forces of that country.
I went to another country where they claimed that their race problem was solved, and it did seem that they had no racial prejudice. They constantly condemned racial strife in the United States, British Guiana, and South Africa. Then I realized they had only one race, for they adhere strictly to an "all-white" policy.
Great Britain has always prided itself on being free of racial prejudice. However, when thousands of colored peoples moved into the British Isles, the Britons found that they had plenty of prejudice. Even British elections are affected by racial prejudice. The same is true in the Soviet Union. Even though there were a relatively few African students studying in the Soviet Union, many of them have left, complaining of racial discrimination. Thus racial prejudice is a world-wide problem.
There is so much hypocrisy on the subject of racial prejudice that it is difficult to know where to start. Christ has taught the dignity of man and the possibility of the brother-hood of man in Himself.
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Wherever there is discrimination, Christ is at work with His sword cutting out hatred and intolerance. The Bible says plainly that God is no respecter of persons. This cuts across the theory of racial supremacy and makes all men equal in the sight of God. This Biblical position tends to create dissatisfaction among those who feel they are discriminated against. It also creates a guilt complex among those who do the discriminating.
We are not told in the Bible where the various colors of skin began. There are some who think the races began from the three sons of Noah, but there is no proof as to which one of these sons was dark and which one was white.
The Christian faith is often in conflict with tradition. Jesus' greatest concern was with the Pharisees, who were motivated not by love but by regard for their traditions. Likewise bound by tradition are those areas where discrimination is greatest.
How can we solve this great national and world problem? Even a fool can see that we cannot settle the racial problem by legislation alone.
A day or two after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was passed, the then Senator Hubert Humphrey came over to the table where I was sitting in Washington and said: "Billy, legislation alone can't do it. It must ultimately come from the heart." How right he was! It takes love, understanding, forbearance, and patience on the part of both races.
There is only one possible solution to the race problem and that is a vital personal experience with Jesus Christ on the part of both races. In Christ the middle wall of partition has been broken down. There is no Jew, no Gentile — no black, white, yellow, or red. We could be one great brotherhood in Jesus Christ. However, until we come to recognize Him as the Prince of Peace and receive His love in our hearts,
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the racial tensions will increase, racial demands will become more militant, and a great deal of blood will be shed. The race problem could become another flame out of control!
The Red Flame
Communism is a dangerous threat, not only to the West but to Christianity everywhere. George Meany, America's great labor leader and president of the AFL-CIO, said: "The conflict between Communism and freedom is the problem of our time. It overshadows all other problems. This conflict mirrors our age — its toils, its tensions, its troubles, and its task. On the outcome of this conflict depends the future of all mankind."
In the great debate currently raging in the West concerning the Communist peril there are two concepts. One of these concepts views the Communist peril as something almost entirely external from either Chinese or Russian military aggression and territorial expansion. This view is strengthened by the rapid and frightening advance that China is making in nuclear and missile developments. Some experts believe that when the Chinese have the capability of delivering nuclear warheads by missiles, they will strike. The other concept views the Communist peril as something internal, a danger from subversion and infiltration. Both perils are real. And if our missile stalemate reveals anything and if historical evidence teaches any practical lessons, it would seem that the Communist conquest might come through nonmilitary aggression. Many Communist leaders have said openly that they intend to have the whole world under their control by 1975. It would seem that their present plan is to try to take it by infiltration and subversion, while maintaining
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military pressure, and they are gaining in many countries.
Whatever the method, Communism is real and it is dangerous! The Communists believe in, they plan toward, and they work for ultimate triumph. This is what we might call the eschatalogical aspect of Communism. It is the feature that binds them together and helps them endure the frowns and grimaces from the West. Their sense of destiny has almost a religious aura about it, a faith in their ability to triumph. Motivated by such a fanatical, burning desire to win, the Communists find no sacrifice too great to make for their cause.
Theirs is an "end justifies the means" philosophy. Wrong though they are, they have a goal, a purpose, and a sense of destiny. It is clear that we can never cope with Communism simply by fearing it and hating it. We must recapture our own national sense of purpose, our devotion to a great cause, and a vital faith, if we are to vie successfully with a foe who is making plans to bury us.
We speak of Communism being a great challenge to Christianity, and ideologically it is; but no system can be seriously threatened by an enemy "without" until it has been weakened by some enemy "within." While I am diametrically opposed to Communism per se, I am more concerned about the lack of zeal for Christianity than I am about the zeal and purposes of the Communists.
Communism can never succeed unless Christianity fails. Lenin once said: "Religion is a kind of spiritual gin in which slaves of capital drown their human shape and their claims to any decent human life." The mistake that Lenin made was to ignore history and to remain ignorant of the teaching of the Bible. The Russian church under the Czars had given Lenin and his followers only a caricature of true Christianity. Thus what he said was in part right when viewed
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in the context of the place and the times in which he lived.
How many professing Christians in America and Europe consider Christ and the church, not as a central loyalty, but as a shot in the arm, administered in a brief visit to the church on Sunday morning? It becomes a duty, and often a painful one, like going to the dentist, and the patient heaves a sigh of relief when the pastor says "Amen" and the weekly treatment is over. Though Lenin by no means presented the whole picture, he was right when he said that for many people religion is a spiritual cocktail that helps to dull the pain of living. Unless we can prove Lenin wrong by an awakened sense of consecration that can equal or excel the dedication of the Communists, we are fighting a losing game.
The Communists' goal is to liquidate religion, for they hold the concept that religion is a product of the capitalist system. Here is another error of Communist reasoning. The Christian religion was begun by Jesus Christ, who was by no stretch of the imagination a wealthy American or European. He was a poor, Middle Eastern carpenter. The Bible says: "Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich" (2 Cor. 8:9). He was born in a borrowed stable. He had no home to call His own. He said: "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Luke 9:58). He celebrated His last supper in a borrowed room. He rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey. He was crucified on a borrowed cross and buried in a borrowed tomb.
Although He refused to put class against class, we read that the common people heard Him gladly. Yet He was as concerned for the bourgeois as He was for the proletariat. He had as much time for the rich young ruler as He had for the blind beggar, and He was as concerned for Nicodemus
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as He was for the poor lame man at Siloam's pool. An East German pastor told me about the suffering of Christians in East Germany. He said: "Many of us have memorized the Thirty-seventh Psalm." This Psalm says: "For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth . . . the wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming . . . I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not."
While the Communist peril is real, the Christian prospect is also real. Communism does not have the ultimate answer or the final hope. With whatever vigor and effort Communism may attack the problems of the world's disinherited masses, it has no answer for man's real problem — the problem of the human spirit in search of God. This is one of the reasons why Communism will ultimately fail.
There is comfort in Christ's words: "Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). If the church remains strong, vital, warm, and Spirit-filled, we have the promise of our Lord that even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; but if we allow our Christian faith to be adulterated with materialism, watered down by secularism, and intermingled with a bland humanism, we cannot stand up to a system that has vowed to bury us.
Is the church to turn its preaching and teaching facilities over to an all-out fight against Communism? This is not the church's mission or task. In the time of Christ and the early church, the great peril of Christianity was imperial Rome and the succeeding threats of the Goths and Mongols, but this did not mean that the church was to marshal all its forces simply to fight these enemies. It had a distinctive mission
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to the world that was neither national, ideological, nor political. It was to bear witness to Jesus Christ. This witness was not to employ any kind of state power or to receive any measure of state support. It was not to take the sword and employ force. It was to preach the transforming Gospel of the grace of God and to use such means of social relief as would minister to the present needs of man. As Christians, we are to live and minister under all forms of government — and to die for our faith if necessary.
It is my opinion that God may be using Communism as a judgment upon the West. The sins of the West are now so great that judgment is inevitable, unless there is national repentance. God has done this before. The Bible says: "And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees" (2 Chron. 36:15-17). Here we have a picture of God's allowing a wicked, godless, atheistic government to bring judgment upon His own people. His people had sinned against great light, and judgment was inevitable.
We see a similar situation in the world today. America and Western Europe are on a moneymaking, pleasure-mad spree unparalleled in the history of the world. God is generally ignored or ridiculed. Church members in many cases are only halfhearted Christians. Judgment is coming. God could use atheistic Communism to bring about this judgment. Thus the greatest threat of Communism is not Communism itself, but the spiritual apathy of the people of the West. Meanwhile the Communist flame becomes evermore dangerous — and in some areas of the world it is out of control!
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The Flame of Uncontrolled Science
It is an ironic fact that science, dedicated to solving our problems, has itself become a problem. Science has given us the electric light, the automobile, the airplane, television, and the computer, but science has also give us the hydrogen bomb. We can use automobiles profitably for transportation and pleasure, but the other side of the coin is that tens of thousands of people in America alone die by automobile accidents every year. When scientists first split the atom and released the power of its nucleus, the first use of this great scientific achievement was to rain suffering and death on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The problem of science lies in its misuse. The blessing of knowledge becomes a curse when we pervert it. Because man is what he is, scientific achievements are often used destructively rather than constructively. Because our morality does not match our intellectuality, the misuse of science can be greater than the use. Not until man's moral progress catches up with his intellectual progress can we hope to solve the problems posed by science. While science has achieved the ultimate in destruction, it still lies prone and helpless before the really great problems of life.
Our Western civilization may die with all of its political economic, social, and scientific achievements. Indeed, the latter may be the cause of its death. This is the generation that produced DDT to kill bugs, 2-4-D to kill weeds, formula 1080 to kill rats, and E=MC2 to wipe out populations.
"Advances in the sciences are doubling accumulated information every ten years. As the experts contemplate the future, they are disturbed by the potentialities of evil that might arise from the application of their findings. Already
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biological research is in a ferment, creating and promising methods of interference with natural processes which could destroy or transform nearly every aspect of human life which we value."1
Compounding our problems is the worldwide longing for peace, which is constantly threatened by nuclear war. General Omar Bradley said: "Our plight is critical, and with each effort we have made to relieve it by further scientific advance, we have succeeded only in aggravating our peril. Missiles will bring antimissiles and antimissiles will bring anti-antimissiles, but inevitably this whole electronic house of cards will reach a point where it can be constructed no higher . . . have we already gone too far in the search for peace through the accumulation of peril?" He concluded: "If we are going to save ourselves from the instruments of our own intellect, we had better soon get ourselves under control and begin making the world safe for living."
It has come to pass, as Guy D. Newman, president of Howard Payne College, has observed, that "Man's knowledge has surpassed his wisdom. He is afraid of what he knows." The age of automation threatens every phase of man's dignity, personality, and individuality. It, too, has become a flame out of control.
The Flame of Political Dilemma
A European statesman said recently: "If the devil could offer a panacea for the problems of the world, I would gladly follow the devil." This is precisely what the Bible predicts will someday happen. When the world can no longer solve its problems, the great Anti-Christ will appear with a charm and a cleverness never before known. The whole world will follow him and even worship him.
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Meanwhile the modern political era is dominated by the events and changes that took place as a result of the First World War of 1914-1918. This marked the era of crashing crowns and toppling throwns. Democracy began to blossom, but so did dictatorship. We all remember when President Franklin Roosevelt promised the four freedoms for the entire world, yet today there is less freedom than ever. Instability has entered into the changing political climate of the entire world until today the world is a seething political cauldron. Riots, demonstrations, and revolutions occur somewhere almost every day. Even in Britain and America the people have become addicted to sitting, squatting, demonstrating, and striking for what they want!
History speaks with thundering words to say that no state or government devised by man can flourish forever. It is also true, as Will Durant said: "No great nation has ever been overcome until it has destroyed itself." Republics, kingdoms, and empires all live their uncertain lives and die. In America we are now on the verge of seeing a democracy gone wild. Freedom has become license. Moral law is in danger of being abandoned even by the courts. To what degree can we expect immunity from the inevitable law of regress that sets in when nations defy the laws of God?
This, then, is the modern international scene with its problems of population, crime, racism, Communism, science, and politics. These are complicating modern existence and making the world into which our young men and women are going one where personal liberties are hedged about by all sorts of limiting regulations. As the world gets smaller, our problems grow larger. Our freedoms disappear and our danger increases! Trouble and danger lie ahead. This present generation of young people can expect nothing but crisis, bloodshed, war, hate, greed, lust, and struggle as the world tries to readjust without the climate of peace.
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The modern world moves amidst its baffling dilemmas. While we know more economics than ever before, the world has more poverty and hunger than ever before. With our space program readying a flight to the moon, we have not yet solved the basic problems of earth. The threat of war and revolution hangs over our heads like a sword of Damocles. While psychiatry and psychotherapy promise us a whole personality, there are more nervous disorders and mental illnesses than ever before.
What is the trouble? What is the answer to our problems? Without God, man is worse off than a flower severed from its stem. We forget that we are finite. We have paraded our arrogance to the very precipice of a tragic end. The problem now is Can we recover ourselves, clear our minds, and regain our composure, and change our direction before it is too late?
Most of the current experts, analysts, historians, scientists, philosophers, and statesmen agree that man is sick. But the crucial question is Are we beyond saving? Are we beyond hope? Some of our greatest minds privately agree that we have already passed the point of no return.
The people who ask these questions and express these forebodings are the experts, not the rank and file of the people. In a declining culture, one of its characteristics is that the ordinary people are unaware of what is happening. Only those who know and can read the signs of decadence are posing the questions that as yet have no answers. Mr. Average Man is comfortable in his complacency and as unconcerned as a silverfish ensconced in a carton of discarded magazines on world affairs. He is not asking any questions, because his social benefits from the government give him a false security. This is his trouble and his tragedy. Modern man has become a spectator of world events, observing on his television screen without becoming involved. He watches
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the ominous events of our times pass before his eyes, while he sips his beer in a comfortable chair. He does not seem to realize what is happening to him. He does not understand that his world is on fire and that he is about to be burned with it.
Into this cacophony of the voices of doom comes the Word of God. The Bible says that it is not too late. I do not believe that we have passed the point of no return. I do not believe that all is black and hopeless. There is still time to return to the moral and spiritual principles that made the West great. There is still time for God to intervene. But there is coming a time when it will be too late, and we are rapidly approaching that time!
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1. Gordon Wolstenholme, ed., Man and His Future (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963). From the jacket.
