Introduction
At 5:30 A.M. on July 16, 1945, a light brighter than a thousand suns illuminated the desert sands of New Mexico. One scientist who was watching wept. "My God," he exclaimed, "we have created hell." From that day on our world has not been the same. We entered a new era of history — perhaps the last era.
This book attempts to describe our modern world on fire. Fire can either purify or destroy.
The world has been in flames before, but only in a limited sense. Today our world is a common neighborhood, all of it reachable in mere hours by physical flight and in seconds over the airwaves. This accessibility increases the spread of tension and dissension. Thus when the fires of war and lawlessness break out, they leap the national boundaries and cultural differences to become major conflagrations. The whole world is filled with riots, demonstrations, threats, wars, and with a rebellion against authority that threatens civilization itself.
It is not the purpose of these pages to identify all the different fires that change and shift with kaleidoscopic speed, but rather to examine the cause of the tensions and conditions feeding them. Newspapers, television screens, and radios portray the unfolding crises of our times. Over and over we ask ourselves, Why? What is the cause? What has happened to our world? Can we do anything about it?
It is the assumption of some economists that the cause of a world aflame is to be found in monetary inequities.
Page xiv
Redistribute the wealth, they say, and we shall solve our problems. But as Justice Whittaker has pointed out: "Even the distribution of wealth would not solve or long alleviate the human problems that plague us."
It is the assumption of some diplomats that the cause of world tension is political and that, if we could attain good will and friendship with all nations, we should solve our problems. In the United Nations we have tried desperately to do just that. Yet the United Nations is proving to be almost as ineffectual as the old League of Nations. The diplomat ignores the evidence that international diplomacy is a record of broken dreams, broken promises, and broken treaties.
It is the assumption of the sociologist that bad environment, in the form of poor living conditions such as urban slums and rural poverty areas, is the breeding ground of evil and trouble. Here again Burnham is right when he says that these bad environmental conditions will continue to exist because their substitutes will inevitably turn bad. A slum is not composed simply of run-down buildings. Skid rows can be torn down, but the same people remain to create new ones. Indeed, some of the greater social problems we now face
Page xv
are found in the more affluent areas of suburbia. We are beginning to realize that the problem is deeper than bad environment.
In this book my thesis is based on the Biblical philosophy of man and of history. The more I have traveled around the world the more convinced I have become that the Biblical revelation about man, his origin, his present predicament, and his destiny is true. This book is intentionally controversial. I hope that something of what I have written will shock readers out of apathy into the reality of our desperate condition individually and socially.
Christians must never fall into the trap of thinking that a Bible-based philosophy of world events and world destiny will parallel the world's philosophies. For example, there are few philosophers, politicians, economists, or sociologists who accept Jesus' prophetic account of history as recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. To one who accepts the Biblical account it is exciting to pick up a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other hand and to watch the almost daily fulfillment of prophetic events. Man is precisely what the Bible says he is. Human nature is behaving exactly as the Bible said it would. The course of human events is flowing just as Christ predicted it would.
As a Christian, I am under no obligation to attempt to reconcile the Bible's teachings with modern philosophy. Biblical truth does not parallel human opinion of any generation; it usually opposes it! We are to be witnesses, not imitators. The prophets who spoke to their generations for God did not please and conform; they irritated and opposed.
The Bible's philosophy of man in history begins with God as the Creator of the universe. The Bible presents man as being in rebellion against God. This began when, in an overt act of self-will, our first parents rebelled against divine law. In this experience man ruined his divine image, became alienated
Page xvi
from God, and started on a course of action that produced civilizations and cultures saturated with crime, lust, hate, greed, and war. The earth is a planet in rebellion.
The Bible reveals that in spite of man's rebellion God loves him. Thus God undertook the most dramatic rescue operation in cosmic history. He determined to save the human race from self-destruction, and He sent His Son Jesus Christ to salvage and redeem them. The work of man's redemption was accomplished at the cross.
Ultimately, the Bible looks into the future to foresee a new world in which peace and righteousness prevail. There is to be world peace. There is to be a new social order. There is to be a new age. There is to be a completely new man in whom will be no false pride, hate, lust, greed, or prejudice.
This will be the climax of human history. This age will be unlike anything the world has ever known. The Kingdom of God will triumph. The Scripture says: "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Peter 3:13).
Until the coming of the new social order in God's direct intervention, the world will continue to plunge from crisis to crisis. In the midst of these trials and tribulations, we must determine which way God is moving in history — and then get in step with God!
In World Aflame I can touch only the high spots. I could have written an entire book on the subject of each chapter, especially in those chapters where I discuss the end of the world. I have left much unsaid. Someday I hope to write a book on the subject of "The End."
In theory, the people of the West have various forms of democracy based on a belief in God as well as on a general acceptance of moral law. However, in practice we are beginning to resemble the Marxists, who have little respect for moral law or religion. Our interests are centered in ourselves.
Page xvii
We are preoccupied with material things. Our supreme god is technology; our goddess is sex. Most of us are more interested in getting to the moon than in getting to heaven, more concerned about conquering space than about conquering ourselves. We are more dedicated to material security than to inner purity. We give much more thought to what we wear, what we eat, what we drink, and what we can do to relax than we give to what we are. This preoccupation with peripheral things applies to every area of our lives.
World Aflame is an attempt to speak to man in his present situation, to show him how he can find victory over his environment and conquer the downward pull into the infernos of our time.
Today the whole world is on fire! These pages present what I believe to be the Biblical answer to world conflagration.
