The Fabulous
Future
Nearly every American president of recent years has had a slogan to characterize the objectives of his administration. All of these slogans have held out to the people new hope and anticipation of a better life tomorrow. With Franklin D. Roosevelt it was "The New Deal" — Harry Truman, "The Fair Deal" — John F. Kennedy, "The New Frontier" — Lyndon Johnson, "The Great Society."
In spite of the darkening storm clouds on the horizon, man is preparing today for a fabulous future. The frontiers have changed from earth to space, from land to air, and from horsepower to nuclear power. Amazing scientific advances are rapidly leading to an era of unparalleled scientific wonders.
The anticipated projections of this fabulous future would have made Franklin D. Roosevelt stagger. We are told that the future belongs to the scientist. In transportation, time will shrink to almost nothing as rocket ships transport travelers from New York to London in less than an hour. We shall live in plastic houses completely open to the out of doors and hearted by solar energy. Food processing will bring exotic delicacies from all parts of the earth. Communication advances will provide electronic telephones that we shall carry in our pockets and purses. Our newspapers will roll out of a facsimile machine and be available in our homes through television.
The planning for this fabulous future, however, has one fatal flaw! It is materialistic, secularistic, and humanistic. It does not
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take into account man's moral sickness and it has made little provision for God! The planners have not taken into account the words of Jesus: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). Today man eats continually of the tree of the knowledge without partaking of the tree of life, and he is still under the Satanic delusion that he will become like God.
We base our hopes of this fabulous future on our present progressive and scientific educational process. The late Justice Robert Jackson said: "It is one of the paradoxes of our time that modern society needs to fear . . . only the educated man."1 The reason for this fear lies in the fact that we are developing mentally without an equivalent morality.
Danger from Within
President Theodore Roosevelt said: "When you educate a man in mind and not in morals, you educate a menace to society."
Science is learning to control everything but man. We have not yet solved the problems of hate, lust, greed, and prejudice, which produce social injustice, racial strife, and ultimately war. Thus this fabulous future is threatened by many dangers, such as the nuclear destruction that hangs, like the sword of Damocles, over our heads.
However, the greatest danger is from within. Every other civilization before us had disintegrated and collapsed from internal forces rather than military conquest. Ancient Rome is the outstanding example of the fall of a civilization. While its disintegration was hastened by foreign invasions, in the opinion of Arthur Weigall, a world-famous archeologist, it collapsed "only after bribery and corruption had been rife for generations."
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The Great Wall of China, which took twelve hundred years to build, did not fall. It didn't need to fall. Three times the enemy walked through the gates simply by bribing the gatekeepers.
No matter how advanced its progress, any generation that neglects its spiritual and moral life is going to disintegrate. This is the story of man and this is our modern problem.
The Christian believes in a fabulous future, even though the present structure of modern society should disappear and all its progress should be wiped out by self-destruction as a result of man's failure and folly.
There is a sense in which the Kingdom of God is already here in the living presence of Christ in the hearts of all true believers. There is also, however, the ultimate consummation of all things, which is called the Kingdom of God. This is the fabulous future! It will be a future in which there will be no war. There will be no poverty. There will be happy and peaceful human relations. There will be full and ample opportunity to exploit all our abilities. There will be a state of complete reconciliation between man and God — between race and race — between nation and nation.
God's Intervention
The fabulous future that we Christians are looking for will not be the natural development of history. It will not come by political structuring. It will not be the result of education or science alone. It will come in the establishment of the Kingdom of God by God's direct intervention!
There is a great emphasis in the churches on applying the principles of Jesus Christ to the social order in terms of a social gospel. It is thought worth trying to bring our democracy a bit nearer to the ideal of the Kingdom of God on earth.
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I firmly believe in the application of the Gospel to the social order, for the Gospel must speak to social concerns of our day. In many respects the best aspirations in modern life are a by-product of the Christian faith, but their Utopian objectives lack the means of achievement because they do not reckon with the unregenerate human heart. In fact, they often pursue a millennium on earth with no room for God or the fulfillment of His spiritual requirements. Even the clamor for social justice, which is a Biblical concern, seems today to seek an ideal mass society of highly privileged sinners who keep God at a great distance. But when the Kingdom of God is established, it will not be established by social reforms, democratic principles, or scientific achievement alone. It will be established by the hand of God in the midst of the ruins of our social and governmental institutions. This establishment is pictured in many places in the Bible. One of the most graphic is in the prophecy of Daniel, who saw the culmination of God's Kingdom on earth as an act of God and an event originating in heaven.
Daniel saw "that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became life the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:34-35).
This great image represents the nations of the world. It was crushed by a stone. This is symbolic of the establishment of the Kingdom of God and it is "without hands" and from heaven. It is God's doing, not man's.
The reason for this divine establishment of the final phase of history lies in the nature of history itself. History is not infused
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with the factors and forces that can produce a glorious end. History does not carry its own happy fulfillment. The human equation is too evident. Man is too prone to depravity. This is not to say that God has no purpose in history between the fall of man and the second coming of Jesus Christ. His purpose is to reconcile man to Himself: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). Thus the message of every true Christian to his fellowman is "Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5: 20). All of God's plans and purposes are centered in His Son Jesus Christ. While God rules and overrules in history, the center of His activities is not in secular history per se, which is doomed by its spiritual revolt against the Lord of history.
The story of the Bible is the history of man at variance with God. Individual men are born in sin and alienated from God. Nations are at variance with God, and their glory is in ruins strewn across the highways of history. Their end will be a gigantic assemblage of nations, not to create the perfect state, but to receive the judgment of God for rejected truth. "For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath" (Rev. 18:3). Jesus taught it: "And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats" (Matthew 25:32). "and the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come . . . that they should be judged" (Rev. 11:18). According to the Scriptures, the world is heading toward judgment.
The Bible nowhere teaches that the church will ultimately convert the whole world to Jesus Christ. There has never been a generation in history, nor will there ever be a generation, in which the majority of the people will believe in Christ. Statistics indicate that the church is rapidly losing in the population explosion. There are fewer Christians per capita every day.
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The Great Day
Throughout the Bible there is an expression used many times by the writers. They refer to "that day," or "the day," or "the last days." When the Allied Forces invaded Normandy, it was called "D Day." When Japan surrendered to the American forces, it was called "VJ Day."
The writers of the Bible were looking for a climactic day, which they called "that day." The early New Testament Christians continually talked about and looked forward to "that day." For example, the Apostle Paul says: "For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Tim. 1:12). The Apostle, was saying that all of his past sins had been forgiven because of Christ and that God was able to keep him until some climactic day in the future.
In 2 Timothy 4:8 the Apostle, referring to crowns and rewards the Christians will receive in the future for their faithfulness here, said: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day."
What kind of a day were they looking for? What is this climactic day in history that the entire Bible talks about and to which almost every New Testament writer refers? What is this "D Day" of Holy Scripture? What is this "X Hour" the Bible promises the Christian and about which it warns the sinner?
Our political leaders warn us constantly of the danger of World War III breaking out with all of its terrifying nuclear destruction. Is the possibility of an all-out destructive war what the New Testament writers had in mind when they
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talked about "that day"? No, not at all. "D Day" and "X Hour" to the New Testament writers meant the glorious second coming of Jesus Christ to the earth again.
The Scripture says: "God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you" (2 Thess. 1:6-10). This does not sound as if education and science are going to triumph. Indeed, the Bible teaches the very opposite, that the world is heading toward destruction and judgment, but that out of the ruins God will establish Utopia.
Jesus Himself said: "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Matthew 24:37-39).
Certainly no one would claim that the world was converted in the days of Noah. Yet as it was then, so shall it be when Christ returns.
The Apostle Paul wrote to young Timothy about those last days. "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them" (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
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Here is an explicit description of the condition of affairs immediately preceding the coming of Christ. There is nothing in any of these passages to indicate that the Kingdom of God is going to be brought to the world by natural causes.
Many people are confused by taking isolated passages out of their context and quoting them. For example, "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" (Psalm 2:8). Or Isaiah 11:6, 9: "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 . . . the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
A careful, contextual examination of the above-mentioned and similar prophecies will reveal that their fulfillment will be accomplished by terrible judgments. For instance, the things prophesied in Psalm 2:8 are thus introduced in the following verse: "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." The context of Isaiah 11:6-9 indicates the same thing: "But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked" (Isaiah 11:4).
Secular writers have alluded to man's ultimate failure. In the preface to his History of Europe, H.A.L. Fisher wrote, "Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave."
T.S. Eliot expressed it another way in his poem, The Hollow Men:
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a
whimper.2
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These men were right, but they were also utterly wrong! It will come, but as John Baillie said: "Not by any long road, not by any painless process of education, not by any natural evolution, not by any gradual and easy progress. All the facts give the lie to such Utopian dreams."3 The world system of evil as we know it is going to come to a dramatic end — but this is not "the end." The longings and dreams of mankind will be fulfilled as God establishes His glorious kingdom on earth for the enjoyment of mankind. Many students of the Bible and history believe that we have now entered the final phase of human history as a record of man at variance with God.
In the interest of self-preservation, the Charter of the United Nations said in its preamble: "We the people determined to save succeeding generations from war . . ." Can the United Nations save the world from war? The answer is No! It was conceived and created by statesmen who know little of the significance of the Biblical concept of history and the nature of man. When the perspective is wrong, the whole viewpoint will be wrong. When the premise is wrong, the logic will be folly. I have supported the United Nations because it offered some hope at least of solving some problems and postponing some major hostilities. It is man's best attempt in generations, but the human equation is still there. The basic problem has not been touched. You cannot build a superstructure on a cracked foundation. The superstructure of the United Nations, in its gleaming building on the East River of New York City, has been built on the cracked
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foundation of human nature. At best, it is only a temporary stopgap.
For a succession of many centuries every form of government, from family and tribal administration to despotic dictatorship and democracy, has been tried. No form of government has been able to establish righteousness, justice, and peace, the three elements without which we can never have continued national prosperity or international peace.
America has probably been the most successful experiment in history. The American dream was a glorious attempt. It was built on a religious foundation. Its earliest concepts came from Holy Scripture. God honored and blessed America as few nations in history. However, in recent years the nation has been moving away from its religious heritage. Whether it knows it or not, it is in deep trouble both at home and abroad.
The sinful, proud, rebellious heart of man can never, in its present constitution, muster intelligence enough to save the present world system. We may engage in delaying action by our international organizations and disarmament but we cannot produce lasting peace. Jesus Himself said there would be wars until the end of the age, and He indicated that these wars would get larger and more intense as "the end" draws nearer.
Cain lived not by God's design but by the law of tooth and claw, and we follow his pattern today. Civilization was born outside Eden in the skepticism and immorality of a man who was self-willed, who chose to follow his own passion and reason rather than God's revelation. It was this man and this mood that produced civilization without God. And although we have added far higher forms of life to this early primitiveness, and although we have established far higher levels of civilization, we are still building with bricks without mortar. We are still moving in a direction away from God.
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God Is No Absentee
As the Christian with the Bible in his hand surveys the world scene, he is aware that we do not worship an absentee God. He is aware that God is in the shadows of history and that He has a plan. The Christian is not to be disturbed by the chaos, violence, strife, bloodshed, and threat of war that fill the pages of our daily newspapers. We know that these things are the consequences of man's sin and greed. If anything else were happening, we would doubt the Bible. Every day we see a thousand evidences of the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Every day as I read my newspaper I say: "The Bible is true."
No matter how foreboding the future, the Christian knows the end of the story of history. We are heading toward a glorious climax. Every writer of the New Testament believes that "the best is yet to be."
As John Baillie has said: "The Bible indicates that the future is in God's hands. If it were in our hands, we would make a mess of it. The future is not in the devil's hands, for then he would lead us to destruction. The future is not at the mercy of any historical determinism leading us blindly forward, for then life would be without meaning. But the future is in the hands of One who is preparing something better than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or has entered into the heart of man to conceive."
The Psalmist said: "The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1).
The story is told of a boy traveling alone in a railway compartment in England. At one of the stations an elderly gentleman
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engaged the boy in conversation, and the following dialogue ensued:
"Are you traveling all alone, Sonny?"
"Yes, sir."
"How far are you traveling?"
"To the terminus."
"Are you not afraid taking such a long journey all by yourself?"
"No, I'm not."
"Why not?"
"Because my father is the engineer."
No wonder the boy had such great confidence and feared nothing. His father was in control, and his father knew his son was somewhere on the train. God, our Father, is in control of the world, and He knows "His own" on this planet in rebellion.
It is recorded that Oliver Cromwell's secretary was dispatched to the Continent on some important business. He stayed one night in a seaport town and tossed on his bed, unable to sleep. According to an old custom a servant slept in his room and on this occasion slept soundly enough. The secretary, at length, awakened the man, who asked how it was that his master could not rest. "I am so afraid something will go wrong with this trip," was the reply. "Master," said the valet, "may I ask a question or two? Did God rule the world before we were born?" "Most assuredly He did." "And will He rule it again after we are dead?" "Certainly He will." "Then Master, why not let Him rule the present too?" The secretary's faith was stirred. Peace was the result, and in a few minutes both he and his servant were in sound sleep.
History is going somewhere. The Christian says with David: "My times are in Your hand" (Psalm 31:15). And we know full well that He who does all things well will bring
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beauty from the ashes of world chaos. A new world is being born. A new social order will emerge when Christ comes back to set up His Kingdom. Swords will be turned into pruning hooks, and the lion will lie down with the lamb. A fabulous future is on the way.
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1. William Buckley, God and Man at Yale (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1951).
2. The Hollow Men in Collected Poems 1909-1962.
3. John Baillie, A Reasoned Faith (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963).
