WHY The Crisis In Cities Threatens Rural Areas
Plain Truth Magazine
October 1968
Volume: Vol XXXIII, No.10
Issue:
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WHY The Crisis In Cities Threatens Rural Areas
Ambassador College Research Department  

Congestion, pollution, decay, crime and violence. These have become the common lot of big cities around the world. Now even remote rural areas can no longer escape the costly impact of urban problems. Is there a solution to the mounting crisis?

   ALL OF A SUDDEN — what's happened? It was never like this before!
   It's unsafe to walk on the streets — in city or in town! Your house may be broken into if you're away! Crime is rampant, even in high-class residential areas!
   Pollution of air and water bewilders scientists and engineers attempting to combat it. New pollutants are added to the environment faster than the old ones can be dealt with.
   As one sociologist observed:
   "The growth of cities is perhaps the biggest single problem facing man in the second half of the Twentieth Century."
   One international conference after another, attempts to get at the root of urban ills.

A Call for Immediate Action

   One such conference convened recently in Paris. More than 250 scientists and delegates from 62 countries and 38 international organizations gathered for the United Nations-sponsored conference on "The Rational Use of the Biosphere."
   These experts — in their concluding summary, September 13 — called for a world drive to meet the "terrible threat" modern urban civilization poses to its own survival.
   Conference vice president Professor Carlos Chagas of Brazil surprised newsmen at the end of the nine-day conference. He quoted a statement by Professor Rene Dubos of the Rockefeller Center that some cities are becoming so polluted that "human life may become impossible in a decade or so."
   Dubos has also warned that action must be taken soon or "we may find that half the populations in these cities will be sick and the other half will be engaged in giving them medical treatment."
   These are men who know! They fear the direction in which large urban complexes are headed. They are demanding a dramatic reversal of events.

Soon — World 75% Urban!

   Other international conferences are critically examining the full scope of the urban crisis.
   At the 1968 Delos Symposium in Greece, a group of internationally renowned city planners, scientists and scholars met for one week. In a declaration issued at the end of their conference, these experts concluded:
   "Within 30 years, the population of the earth will have more than doubled to reach 7 billion. Half of these people will be under 25. If present trends continue, the present half of the world's population who now live in the cities will have risen to three-quarters."
   The impact of this coming crush of humanity, most of it focused on existing and developing cities, is already beginning to have devastating effects. As the Delos declaration stressed:
   "Unless far-reaching and immediate steps are taken, the cities of the world — large and small, ancient and modern — will be grievously unprepared to receive them," it said.
   "We will have to build approximately twice as many new habitations as man has built from the beginning of history. Even if immediate and successful action is taken to halt the population explosion and to moderate migration into the cities, the tasks we face are enormous."

Rural Areas Affected

   For the United States, the population explosion into the cities is already following the same relentless course. By the turn of the next century, say the experts, 4 out of every 5 Americans will be crammed into metropolitan areas.
   Existing cities are foreseen by city planners as fusing together into giant megalopolises with the countryside in between being absorbed. The exodus from the small towns to big cities continues unabated, contributing to the cities' woes. And it aggravates the problems of rural America.
   Within each urban complex, the "secondary migration" of middle Bass residents to the suburbs will certainly not abate in the near future. Not with heightened racial tensions within the "Inner City."
   Worst of all, the entire panorama of dilemmas within our cities today — much of it caused by present already overcrowded conditions — can only intensify!
   The crisis in the cities is not limited to urban society. Increasingly, rural America, rural Britain, rural Canada, Australia, South Africa and rural other countries, feel the impact of the woes of the big city.
   The tax burden to support big city needs is destined to increase for all citizens — urban, suburban, and rural — as federal government programs are developed to attempt cures for urban ills.
   Some planners have estimated that it would take the expenditure of perhaps TWO TRILLION DOLLARS in order to rehabilitate America's cities and to plan ahead for future urban growth, and the plight of British and European cities is almost as bad. It is a worldwide problem.
   Countless billions have already been spent. With seemingly little to show for it, except for clogged expressways and crowded high-rise buildings. The quality of life in the big cities is eroding faster than ever.
   But more money will be spent nevertheless. And it will come from the pocket of the farmer, the suburbanite and the factory worker.
   Other budding crises are destined to leave their mark on the "man on the farm." Big city social sicknesses are spilling over rapidly into rural districts. One example: Crime.
   Crime is now a serious threat everywhere in the United States. The latest FBI crime report reveals a startling 21% increase in nationwide crime the first half of this year over the same period in 1967.
   Broken down, the rate zoomed up 24% in cities with more than 250,000 population. Big city suburbs registered a 21% upswing. But notice the leap in crime in smaller cities and rural districts! The crime rate in cities and towns less than 10,000 population shot up 17%. Rural areas registered a 14% rise.
   Worldwide, all the ills of the city are gradually infused throughout the entire countryside. The city is the nucleus of any society. When the city degenerates, the whole society is certain to follow!

Britain's Crowded Cities

   Many recent newspaper and news magazine articles have highlighted the worsening state of America's cities. Little attention has been devoted to Britain's part in the deepening worldwide urban crisis outside of her own press media.
   Britain was the leader of the Industrial Revolution. As industrialization progressed rapidly, most English, Welsh and Scottish towns were simply unprepared to cope with its resultant by-products — overcrowding, poor housing, traffic congestion, air and water pollution.
   What has already happened to industrial Britain has gradually occurred to nearly all the Western world. Now the same ills threaten to be the fate of many overcrowded underdeveloped nations as they rush heedlessly into a virtually unplanned industrial society! The lessons of what has befallen Britain and the United States are going unlearned.
   "The growth of cities is perhaps the biggest single problem facing man in the second half of the twentieth century," says Dr. J.K. Brierley in the book, Biology and the Social Crisis.
   In Britain this is a problem of considerable magnitude.
   Town planners are troubled at the state of British cities. "In little more than a century, the quality of our urban life has tragically deteriorated. The deterioration is now gathering momentum, and will, we believe, disintegrate our cities unless immediate action is taken." This is the startling conclusion of the first report of SPUR, the Society for Planning and Urban Renewal. SPUR is a body of architects, planners and sociologists formed to wake up and inform the public of the urgency of the problems of urban renewal.
   Urbanization presents special, crucial problems in Britain. NINE OUT OF EVERY TEN persons in Britain live in towns. And HALF of all Britons live in the seven great conurbations of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle. (Central Office of Information booklet — Town and Country Planning in Britain, p. 25)
   London is the major area of population concentration. In a tiny area comprising only a sixtieth of the land mass live a sixteenth of the British people. (The Future of London, Edward Carter, p. 90) Britain has 50% more people per square mile than teeming, populous, but rural, India. (Figures from Pears Cyclopaedia) How did the country reach this condition?
   The last century has witnessed an amazing surge of people from the land to the cities. In the early 1800's the British population was largely rural — 65 to 70 percent. (Life Threatened, by A.T. Westlake, p. 4) Fifty years after the first census in 1801, the population had doubled to twenty million people. Half were now living in towns. (The Wastes of Civilization by J.C. Wylie, p. 37) This was a condition that had never before occurred in any country in the history of the world, says John C. Wylie in his book, The Wastes of Civilization. Today only 2% of the British labor force is employed in Agriculture. (Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1967)
   How did it all come about? What was the magnetic force of the towns?
   By the early nineteenth century Britain was already firmly launched on the Industrial Revolution. New machines put Britain in the forefront of the textile trade. And with her natural supplies of coal Britain rapidly achieved a powerful iron and steel industry. These spawned a mass movement luring people away from the country to work in the factories and offices. Cities sprang up seemingly overnight. Workers were forced to live huddled up and crowded together in row upon row, street upon street of monotonous, squalid terrace houses.
   Others were not as fortunate. The crudest and worst jerry building could not produce housing fast enough. The labor demands of industry were insatiable. People were crowded in unventilated cellars and draughty attics. Ten families plus lodgers often lived in a ten-roomed house.
   Men, women and children worked into the night. Women pulled trucks in the mines through knee-deep mud. Children slaved ten-hour days in factories. (The Wastes of Civilization, by J.C. Wylie, p. 37)
   The nation moved into a new age — an industrial society. Britain had almost entirely given up her predominantly agricultural economy.

A Worldwide Crisis

   The move to the cities is not only in England. It is apparent throughout the world. Compare these figures!
   A hundred years ago, Europe was mainly rural. Then only 26% of French people were city dwellers, 21% of Denmark, 15% of Norway, 10% of Sweden, and 36% of Germany. Today these nations are all predominantly urban. France 53%, Denmark 67%, Norway 50%, Sweden 56%, and Germany 74%. (Fraser Brockington, World Health, p. 129)
   The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed Britain — and the world — ugly, blackened, shabby cities with spreading, grasping suburbs. This is the price paid for industrial greed. "The Industrial Revolution," says Professor Fraser Brockington, "has left the world with a legacy of outworn towns, sprawling suburbs and disfigured countryside." (Fraser Brockington, World Health, p. 129)
   British cities today are crying out for renewal. In a government White Paper it was revealed that one house out of fourteen in 1967 was condemned as a slum. (Survey Magazine, 10 May 1968, p. 494) Of those remaining, nearly 30% lack such amenities as an indoor lavatory, a fixed bath, a wash basin and a hot and cold water system. (Op cit. p. 493) All this despite the boom in new housing!
   In one district of 2-million population, comprising the greater part of London county, between 30 and 80% of families live in shared dwellings! (Herbert Commission, 1960 quoted in The Future of London p. 116) It is estimated that 43% of the houses in Liverpool are unfit (slums) and 33% of Manchester. (Slums of Social Insecurity, p. 116)
   Vast sections of Britain's cities are old and insanitary. Yet in these cities the bulk of British people live. Remember 90% of Britons are town and city dwellers! There are 55 million crowded on a small island only three-fifths the size of California!
   How much further can Britain go with her congested, slum-ridden cities? Will we soon reach the maximum these islands can accommodate?

Frightening Menace of Traffic

   British cities are also being stifled by congestion from another source — TRAFFIC. In 1961, traffic congestion alone probably cost the country £250 million. (Traffic in Towns, Penguin edition of government Buchanan Report, p. 22) On one weekend recently, there was a traffic jam for 17 miles. (27th July, BBC News)
   The rapid increase in the number of vehicles on the road aggravates the problem. In ten years the number increased by 150%. (Town and Country Planning in Britain, by Central Office of Information, p. 25) Today there are about thirteen million vehicles in Britain. (Daily Telegraph, August 23, 1967) By 1980, it is estimated, there will be three times as many cars on the road as there are today. (Traffic in Towns, p. 11)
   British cities and roads were not designed to cope with such an onslaught.
   Accidents occur at an alarming rate. An average of one driver in three will have a crash on Britain's roads this year. The odds of being killed or injured in a lifetime of motoring are a terrifying one in two. (Traffic in Towns, p. 11)
   Total road casualties in Britain run with alarming consistency at about 400,000 per year with about 8,000 deaths. (Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1967) Almost 75% of these occur in urban areas. Why?
   Drive, the Automobile Association magazine, says: "British accidents are costly because we drive too fast on roads which are too crowded and more antiquated than those in almost any Western country." (Traffic in Towns, p. 11) Britain now has the highest traffic density in the world (27.4 vehicles per road mile compared with 20 in U.S.A. and 17.3 in West Germany) (The Future of London, p. 153) The problems of our roads are approaching insolubility.
   A government publication called the growth of motor traffic the most disruptive force that ever assailed British towns in peacetime. (Town and Country Planning. loc. cit)
   Sir Geoffrey Growther, in the preface of the Penguin edition of the governmental Buchanan Report "Traffic in Towns," says: "I call it a national emergency... Few of us in Britain realize in what an early stage of the Motor Age we still are, or with what speed the full emergency is advancing on us...
   It is impossible to study the traffic problem without being at once appalled by the magnitude of the emergency that is coming upon us..."
   In British cities, however, traffic moves at an average speed of only 11 m.p.h. (Traffic in Towns, p. 22)

Our Fouled, Poisonous Atmosphere!

   The air we breathe in the cities is a slow poison. Cars in Britain are a major source of air pollution. In running an average car over seven years the exhaust pours out enough carbon dioxide to fill St. Paul's dome twice over; enough carbon monoxide to fill nine three-bedroom bungalows; enough oxides of nitrogen to fill three double-decker buses; and enough lead to make a chest weight for a deep sea diver. (Drive Magazine, Spring 1967) As well as this it emits pounds of sulphur dioxide, aldehydes and complex organic compounds. (Life Threatened, by Aubrey Westlake, p. 56)
   Sixteen million tons of carbon monoxide are added to the British atmosphere every year. (Evening Echo, [Hemel Hempstead], 18 July 1968) It is suspected of being a hidden factor in unexplained road accidents. (Drive Magazine, Spring 1967) It dulls the mentality and slows down reactions. (Daily Telegraph, 23 August 1967) "In any street, especially on a still summer day, most people in cars are in a partially poisoned state," says Dr. G.M. Mackay of Birmingham University's transportation study group. The symptoms are exactly the same as those caused by alcohol. (Drive Magazine, Spring 1967) A London driver takes in enough black smoke to turn his lungs permanently black. (Evening Standard, [London], April 10, 1967)
   How much damage do pollutants do? No scientist really knows. But considerable sums of money are being spent to find out because the two indicators of respiratory damage — bronchitis and lung cancer — are rising in Britain. (Evening Standard, [London], April 10, 1967)
   Sulphur dioxide is an irritant and a poison. It is probably a major contributor to the chronic bronchitis incidence in England. (Life Threatened, p. 55-56) The mortality rate from bronchitis — "The English disease" — is much higher than any other country. It is as much as forty or fifty times greater than in Scandinavia or the United States. (Evening Standard, [London], April 10, 1967; Control of Air Pollution, by Alan Gilpin, p. 9) Between 35-40 million working days are lost because of it. (Evening Standard, [London], April 10, 1967) (Approximately ten percent of all periods of absence are due to bronchitis). (Control of Air Pollution, by Alan Gilpin, p. 9)
   Lung cancer death rate in Britain has shot up in the last half century. In 1906 there were 200 deaths from lung cancer. In 1966, there were 27,000 — much of it attributable to pollution of air by smoking.
   Twenty-four million tons of filth are poured into the atmosphere every year. A governmental committee estimated conservatively that air pollution costs £250 million — that's $600 million — a year (�150 million in direct costs paid out and £100 million in loss of efficiency and production).
   This is equivalent to £10 ($24) for every man, woman and child in black areas and £5 ($12) elsewhere. (Op cit. p. 14-15) These figures do not include the extra work housewives need to do to keep the home bright and their families in clean clothes — nor in fact for the cost of ill health. A recent estimate has doubled these figures. Half of the natural light may be stolen by smoke haze over cities. (Op cit. p. 15)
   In heavily industrialized areas of Britain, over 1000 tons of grit and dust fall on each square mile each year i.e. about 2 pounds on each square yard. A million tons of grit and dust, 2 million tons of smoke and over 5 million tons of sulphur dioxide are produced each year. (Pesticides and Pollution, by Kenneth Mellaney, p. 74)

And Now — NOISE!

   Another pollution of the air is NOISE. In a noisy office the efficiency of a typist is reduced by one fifth. At the same time the brain work of her boss is reduced by one third. Spread over the country this represents £1000 million ($2.4 billion) in lost production.
   Excess noise harms the ear. Deafness can be produced by a loud noise — an explosion of 130-160 decibels in a short time. Or it may occur through continued exposure to a noise level of 85 decibels, as is obtained in many factories. This type of deafness occurs in one person in ten of those exposed. (Life Threatened, p. 65-66)

Rivers Turned to Open Sewers

   The wastes of today's cities find their natural outlet into the atmosphere or the rivers. The director of the Anglers' Cooperative [Clean Water] Association acknowledged privately to our editors that probably 95% of Britain's rivers are seriously polluted. (Exclusive interview, 26th July, 1968) It is estimated that the population produces 4500 million gallons of sewage per day. More than THREE-QUARTERS of this together with a similar proportion of industrial wastes are discharged into inland waters. (Biology of Polluted Waters, by H.B.N. Hynes, p. 7)
   Britain uses — million tons of detergent — nearly twice as much per person as America. Foaming presents problems on many rivers. (Water and Life, by Lorus and Margery Milne, p. 65) At a weir in one town large volumes of foam are produced. If there is a wind in a certain direction, large amounts of foam are blown over the roofs of houses into the main street.
   The Tees River is believed by some to be beyond redemption. (Exclusive interview, 26th July, 1968) The Tame has been called "the waste pipe of the Midlands." In a tributary stream an official recently burnt the skin of his hand when he took a sample. (Times, 16 May, 1966)
   Scientists told Trent officials it was possible for a glass of water to be drunk eight or ten times before entering the sea. (Times, 16 May, 1966) It is thought that Thames water is drunk seven times over on its way to the sea. (Exclusive interview, 26th July, 1968) The water supply that reaches London has been affected by the effluent discharge from places like Reading, Oxford and Luton. The Deputy Director of the Water Pollution Research Laboratory at Stevenage reported to our editors, "Some reuse of effluent whether accidental or deliberate is almost inevitable in this country... A large proportion of flow in one or two rivers is composed of treated effluents. So that reuse of water is... an essential part of the water economy of the country." (Interview, 24 July, 1968)
   While many of the rivers are being polluted, natural resources of water are disappearing. Demand for water might well be 2-times the present rate by the end of the century in London and the south east. (Daily Telegraph, 6 September, 1966) Yet in London and the Colne Valley natural underground supplies are steadily shrinking. (Guardian, 17 February, 1967)
   Much of water shortage can be blamed on increased urbanization. Large areas have been covered with impermeable tarmac, concrete and buildings. The result is that England has been compared to a vast roof, off which rain water pours dangerously fast without being absorbed in the soil. This causes flooding and at the same time, a growing shortage of underground water. (Editorial, Daily Telegraph, 12 July, 1968)

Diseases of the City

   Urbanization brings with it a host of problems affecting public health and morals. The list of social diseases linked with city living is alarming.
   Neuroses are especially prominent in the highly industrialized world. The suicide rate, divorce, and child delinquency, are all affected by city life. (World Health, p. 34) "Towns have tended to relax restraints... They have fostered prostitution, spreading gonorrhea..." (World Health, pp. 123-124) "This year over 160,000 people [in Britain] will visit V.D. clinics — one out of every 300 people in the country. The number of gonorrhea cases has doubled in a decade; those of infectious syphilis trebled in the seven years to 1965... Experts — even professionally optimistic administrators — see no hope in beating the disease. Factors blamed for the upsurge [are]... increased extramarital sex, greater mobility of people, and growing resistance of gonorrhea germs to antibiotics." (Observer, 18 February 1968, Brit. N.R. 22 March 1968)
   "Poor housing correlates to a high degree with rates of illness and death, with rates of mental illness, with juvenile and adult delinquency, and with other social problems such as chronic drinking and illegitimacy." (Slums and Social Insecurity, p. 143)
   Robbery — with violence — is perhaps the greatest menace which has to be faced in London today. (Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for the year 1966, p. 8) Glasgow with a fifth of Scotland's population has more murders and attempted murders than the rest of Scotland put together. (Sunday Times, 31 December 1967, and N.R. 23 February 1968) About thirty percent of crimes of violence in Britain are committed by teenagers! Thirty percent of housebreaking and burglary is committed by 14 or 15-year-olds! (British News Release 23 February 1968)

Now Look at Scottish Slums

   One in three persons in Scotland lives in either a substandard house or one unfit for human habitation. If Scotland is generally bad, Glasgow's slums are the worst in Europe. For its one million population there are 10,000 unfit houses, 75,000 so substandard they cannot be reasonably improved, and 49,000 substandard houses which could be repaired. About 40% of Glasgow houses lack a fixed bath or shower. (Ill London News, 9 December 1967)
   At the current rate it would take 95 years to improve all inadequate houses in Scotland or 45 years to merely knock them down! (And this ignores the problem of continued deterioration!) (The Times, 3 February 1968)
   One economist calculates it would cost £18,000 million — that's $43 billion — to reconstruct British cities for traffic. Even with a proposed increase in annual expenditure on roads it would take 130 years to achieve this "moderate" scheme.
   A London County Council plan for a motorway ring and links around London costing £450 million would take several hundred years to build even at an increased budget.

Why Today's Sick Cities?

   Engulfed in the glitter and gleam, the gaud and the gadgetry of shallow and superficial cities, people today no longer stop to just plain T-H-I-N-K!
   Assaulted by a relentless barrage of double-talk, distortions, half-truths and unadulterated LIES from too many advertisers, politicians and clerics, it is simply too much work for most individuals to sift through this confusing maze of propaganda. The quest of the TRUTH about why they are here, what life is all about and where our civilization is headed, is forgotten.
   But it's high time YOU were different. It's high time you began to THINK — deeply and objectively, responsibly and realistically! It's high time you dared to look at the situation of our cities as it REALLY is and to realize that it's not just a matter of an isolated "problem" here and there. Rather it's a matter of an ENTIRE SOCIETY — urban and rural — coming apart at the seams!
   You live in a society: where family life is rapidly disintegrating. Where one out of four marriages ends in divorce. Where more murders take place between husbands and wives than in any other category. Where urban and rural children are too often considered a burden best left to shift for themselves. Where adultery, fornication, homosexuality and wife-trading vie with television as popular forms of entertainment.
   You live in an urban society: where respect for all constituted law and authority is GONE! Where police, too often in the U.S., are not allowed to enforce the law, and serve as targets for public abuse and the savage attacks of teenage hoodlums. Where racial violence and strife is assuming ever-larger proportions. Where crimes of every description — rape, murder, assault, theft and dope addiction, to name but a few — are running so rampant in urban and rural areas that it is futile to quote statistics because they are outdated by the time they come off the press.
   Where cities are asphalt jungles infested with human "rat packs," making it unsafe for either men or women in many areas, even in broad daylight. Where teaching is a dangerous profession and police are stationed in the halls of schools because students carry switchblade knives. Where the syndicate runs the American city so completely that even the Federal Government is helpless to intervene. Where courtrooms are overcrowded with lawyers and criminals searching not for justice but for some loophole in the law. Where to be a cold-blooded killer is to be "temporarily insane" or "socially maladjusted." Where to be "civilized" is to enjoy watching a helpless old man get stabbed to death by a thug on a busy street corner — and then calmly go home to watch several hours more of killing on TV. Where to give birth to illegitimate children is an acceptable means of earning a living, with a graduated income plan for each child thus born.
   Is that the kind of world you want?
   Where it's acceptable to steal your employer bankrupt. Where the goal of many manufacturers is to see how cheaply and poorly a product can be made. Where in a time of unequaled prosperity the average family is less than three months from bankruptcy. Where going deeper into debt is the panacea for all personal, business and government economic ills. Where food growers feel no responsibility whatsoever toward their fellow man and will use any kind of poison spray imaginable in quest of the "almighty dollar." Where new land is plowed up and chemical fertilizers are dumped on overworked land in a greedy effort for quick gain. Where new drugs are produced by the hundreds, but still can't keep up with the new diseases. Where people desperately try to buy health in pills and peace of mind in tranquilizers. Where fully half of all hospital beds are filled with mental patients.
   Is this kind of world God's world?
   You live in a society: where ministers condone sin instead of preaching against it. Where insipid, watered-down religion admits it doesn't have the answers. Where the ministers vie with college students for the suicide record.
   This list doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the plague upon plague, curse upon curse, woe upon woe, SIN UPON SIN to be found in today's cities — and in all the world!

God's Stern Warning

   As God Almighty has said: "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel into anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken anymore? Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is SICK, and the whole heart FAINT. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment" (Isaiah 1:4-6).
   What a vivid description of our urbanized society today!
   And yet, in spite of this bleak and pessimistic outlook for the immediate future — the painful lessons that must yet be learned by a rebellious and sinning mankind — there is GOOD NEWS AHEAD! Beyond the catastrophic events destined to take place within the next few years (all fully explained in our free book The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy), there is the bright prospect, the happy outlook of The WORLD TOMORROW — God's Great Society — His kind of city.
   Just as man has reached the end of his rope and is about to blast himself into nothingness, God will intervene and STOP man's hellish inhumanity to man. He will send Jesus Christ back to this earth to CRUSH man's rebellion and to establish God's Government on this earth once and for all — to FORCE mankind to be happy, healthy and prosperous.

What Tomorrow's World Will Be Like

   God has not left you in the dark about the details and plans for His kind of city, His kind of Society. Believe it or not — chapters — portions of entire books — of the Bible are devoted to a description of that wonderful world.
   In God's Society, HE will be the Supreme Ruler, aided and assisted by those who qualify in this lifetime for a position of rulership with Him. You can be one of those who qualify for such a position if you meet the conditions God has set forth.
   The TEN COMMANDMENTS Will form the basis of all law in God's city and national Government, and all mankind will obey that law. Punishment will be meted out swiftly and severely on transgressors, for only as these laws are obeyed can there be perfect peace and happiness. All the suffering and misery in today's world can be traced directly or indirectly to breaking the points of this law.
   At that time there will be true justice. And God's Headquarters in the city of Jerusalem will be called the "habitation of justice, and the mountain [a symbol of government] of holiness" (Jer. 31:23) — the "city of TRUTH" (Zech. 8:3).
   "And many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain [government] of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for THE LAW shall go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Micah 4:2-3).
   And what will the effect of this system be?
   "And the work of righteousness shall be PEACE; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever. And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places" (Isaiah 32:17-18).
   No more will there be fears, worries, tensions, frustrations and INSECURITY! No more will there be a dog-eat-dog society of such fierce cut-throat competition that people will want to escape from reality. Instead there will be security, peace — HAPPINESS! How WONDERFUL it will be!

The Cities under God's Government

   What will happen to our cities when God intervenes to save humanity out of hydrogen bomb war? The few who escape will return to their former land and build the cities anew! The right way!
   "And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste CITIES" (Isa. 61:4). "And the CITIES shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded... and I [God] will settle you after your old estates [in your former locations], and will do better unto you than at your beginnings" (Ezek. 36:11).
   Yes, you can be sure that when GOD directs the rebuilding of our cities it will be done RIGHT. It will be done according to design and plan, with beauty as well as utility in mind — not in the chaotic, hit-and-miss fashion of many buildings in today's cities.
   God says, "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place" (Isa. 5:8). In God's cities people will have room to live. Jamming together as many uninspiring, cheaply-constructed dwellings as possible WILL NOT BE PERMITTED!
   In God's cities people will no longer have to be AFRAID of their neighbors. They won't have to worry about living next door to someone who is mentally "off," a pervert, or a killer. Old people won't have to fear being senselessly attacked and brutally beaten by some hoodlum out looking for "fun." Instead, "There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem... and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof" (Zech. 8:4-5).
   Juvenile "hoods" will no longer roam the streets and organized crime will no longer run the city while the city officials helplessly look on.
   "Again there shall be heard in this place... even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant, and without beast [because of the captivity and bombing], the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the Lord of hosts: for the Lord is good; and His mercy endureth for ever" (Jer. 33:10-11).
   This is only a brief look into the happy cities of the WORLD TOMORROW.
   What a wonderful world that will be. And to think you can be there and have a part in rebuilding tomorrow's world and its cities!

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Plain Truth MagazineOctober 1968Vol XXXIII, No.10