A society that is rotten to the core, violent, crime-ridden. It eats, drinks and goes about the selfish pursuit of life studiously ignoring the warning of God! The entire society of mankind is committing suicide — COSMOCIDE!
THE WORLD in Noah's time was destroyed! That's why we're concerned and worried. Because we notice some similarities to today's world. Christ forecast, "As things were in Noah's days, so will they be when the Son of Man comes. In the days before the flood they ate and drank and married, until the day that Noah went into the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away. That is how it will be when the Son of Man comes" (Matt. 24:37-39, New English Bible). Now if Christ were really going to return, and come back at a time when the whole earth is the way it was in Noah's day, and if our newspapers were to say that's the way the world was now — we'd be concerned! So we are. Because He is. Because society is living Noah's day all over again. Here's how.
A Population Explosion
"Now a population explosion took place upon the earth" (Gen. 6:1, Living Book of Moses). That's the first thing we read about the immediate pre-Flood world. How many people did the earth have then? Pre-Flood population probabilities go something like this: Present population growth is 2 percent per year (3.5 percent births minus 1.5 percent deaths), and doubles every 35 years. If we take a fairly conservative rate of growth for pre-Flood society (10 children per couple in a 123-year generation), this figures out to a 1.3 percent yearly increase, just two thirds of today's growth rate. That's doubling every 53 years. What do we find? That at the time of the Flood — 1657 years after the creation — there would have been 6.5 billion births (and that at a conservative estimate) of which only 18,400 people would have died by natural causes Apply the current-events test and see the comparison with our super-saturated planet now. "Massive collapse of nations. A billion people starving to death. Poisoned oceans, killer smogs, riots, plagues and a succession of wars pitting the 'have-nots' against the 'haves.' This is the scenario for the seventies, the world of tomorrow that has been envisioned by a frightening young man named Paul Ehrlich [of Stanford University's Department of Biological Sciences].... The trigger to this catastrophe, declared Ehrlich, is OVERPOPULATION. 'Mankind is breeding itself into oblivion,' he warns" (Frontliners 1970). "More warnings have been uttered by scientists on the perils of overpopulation than on any subject in modern times... If mankind does not control its fearsome fecundity, it will drown in its own flesh" (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 8, 1969). "Sir Julian Huxley, the famous British biologist, has said: 'This problem of population is the problem of our age.' And Dr. B. R. Sen, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization until last fall, succinctly summarized the problem when he said: 'The next thirty-five years... will be a most critical period in man's history. Either we take the fullest measures to raise productivity and to stabilize population growth, or we will face disaster of an unprecedented magnitude. We must be warned... of unlimited disaster'" (Population Reference Bureau, May, 1968). "The greatest population growth the world has ever encountered will take place in the second half of the 1970s, a United Nations report said..." (UPI release, Oct. 30, 1969). Delve deeper and see a primary inevitable consequence of a population explosion. Each person is, to begin with, an explosive package — in a different way. Barring the intervention of God, each human individual grows up to become enmeshed in his own carnality — oriented toward "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (I John 2:16). So what happens when the world fills up and becomes compacted with packages of "all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity"? (Rom. 1:29.) What happens when the socially destructive life-directions of millions of "backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things" are crowded together, elbow-to-elbow, over the planet? (Verse 30.) What is the cumulative impact of people upon people who are "without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful"? (Verse 31.) The result is — VIOLENCE! Crime. Humans in their carnality unabatedly inflicting hurt, pain, and misery upon other humans.
Violence for the Sake of Violence
"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)...." Moreover, "the earth also was corrupt with violence" (Gen. 6:5, 11). Or, in slightly different words, "the crime rate was rising rapidly across the earth" (Gen. 6:11, Living Books of Moses). So goes the description of Noah's time — and it's a vivid and accurate picture of our age! "Are violence and terror becoming a way of life in much of the world?" asked an AP special correspondent on August 26, last year. "There has been something akin to an epidemic of bombing, political kidnapping and murder, urban and rural guerrilla warfare, torture killing, organized terror, sabotage, killing and maiming of innocents. Plus street war, looting, rioting, near anarchy, senseless cruelty and general noise and confusion.... The American Psychiatric Association {views} the growth of violence as a matter of 'urgent concern' for the whole world. "Today, terror and violence do not simply dot the map here and there. Sometimes it seems even aimless or haphazard, as if it were violence just for the sake of violence." Another commentator talks about "the problems of uninhibited violence exploding around the earth." He reports that "in almost every corner of earth a spirit of internal lawlessness is manifested by violent riots, murders, kidnappings, piracy and hijacking of airplanes" (C. L. Sulzberger, New York Times, April 8, 1970). "Violence — Worldwide Problem" read the title of a U. S. News 6 World Report article last year (Sept. 28). "Violence is growing in many countries ... becoming more political, more organized — also more spectacular, more terroristic."
Population Pressure!
A recent Associated Press release informs us that "Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize... says the population explosion is producing stresses because of overcrowding. 'These stresses may lead us into complete chaos,' he said." Wherever we look, we find the same sad state of affairs. In the U. S., "crime during the nineteen-sixties outstripped our population growth by over 11 to one," stated J. Edgar Hoover, "and this trend would appear to show no sign of abating in the foreseeable future" (UPI release, December 27, 1969). A district judge in Denver, Colorado, stated that "crime is experiencing its greatest ascendancy in the history of this nation. During the last 10 years our police departments have been beset by a crisis of such staggering proportions as is unparalleled in the history of American law enforcement" (Rocky Mountain News, Denver, September 19, 1969). That's your world! That was Noah's world. "As seen by God, the WORLD WAS ROTTEN TO THE CORE...ALL MANKIND WAS VICIOUS AND DEPRAVED"! (Genesis 6:11-12, Living Books of Moses.) Now for the most significant common characteristic between Noah's day and our time. Notice Matthew 24 again, verses 38 and 39, the world was "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark. And KNEW NOT until the flood came, and took them all away." People didn't know violent mass death was coming — but they COULD HAVE! Because there was a continuous warning message from God — calling the earth to repent, to turn away from evil, violence, crime, lust and greed! Noah himself was used to herald that warning message — Noah, a "preacher of righteousness"! (II Peter 2:5.) That same message that Noah preached — to change, to turn to God — is going out today! God is offering His Spirit, that man can be freed from vanity, lust, greed — the cruel bonds of man's carnal mind. Unless that message is heeded, our society is doomed to disaster as it was in Noah's time! God urges, "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:16-18). But Satan has deceived the whole world, and therefore mankind continues headlong along its turbulent trail toward utter destruction. The rat race for survival, comfort, pleasure, sex, entertainment and sensual saturation goes on, as the foundations of modern society are violently torn apart! Now Christ said that in Noah's time people continued this heedless pursuit till the very day of destruction — in a pandemic refusal to get excited about God's state-of-the-world message! And today society has universally and progressively become utterly unconcerned about the state of the world — and retreated more and more inwardly into mass-produced epicureanism and escapism. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" is the order for today — and forget about tomorrow! Packaged experiences, store-bought daydreams, and catered selfishness — not concern about the tragic condition of mankind — are injected in massive doses. TV, movies, fantasy, novels, gambling, spectator sports, innumerable forms of pseudo-love and perverted sex, crass materialism. No previous generation has been exposed to one tenth the amount of vicarious merrymaking, and mental and sensual escapism that our generation lavishes on itself. All this — as the world rapidly approaches its deathbed! Oh, some get concerned about world conditions. Some are appalled by pollution, excited about wars, involved in racial problems, heartbroken over the tragic state of national governments — provided they're allowed their solution, their time, their way! Everything except heeding the warning message to repent and turn to God! Eight persons were saved in the destruction of Noah's world (II Peter 2:5). A remnant will be saved in the destruction of our society (Ezek. 6:8) — a destruction that can only be forestalled by national repentance! God pleads in Ezekiel 18:31-32: "Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye"!
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