BIBLE LECTURES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 73, 13 May 1946, Page 8

BIBLE LECTURES

“TRUTH FOR THE TIMES”

CHRIST’S RETURN Mr A. F. Cook continued his Truth for the Time campaign on Sunday night with a lecture on the important subject “Will Christ Come in Our Day.” He started by quoting the Bible statement “Of that day and hour we know not” and drew attention to the fact that it was impossible for any one to pin-point the exact day of Christ’s return. However, by a large number of fascinating Bible prophecies, the Word clearly made known the generation that would be permitted to see all the signs of Christ’s coming fulfilled and the Saviour’s return. Mr Cook referred his audience to the 24th Chapter Matthew where the disciples, at one time were anxious to know the outline of future events and the signs of Christ’s Second Coming. They said: “Tell us when shall these things be and what shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world.” The chapter went on to record the words of Christ on that occasion. He told his hearers that before His return, there would be “wars and rumours of wars . ~ • but the end is not yet.” This in itself was not a sufficient sign since throughout history there had been “wars and rumours of wars.” But the next words of Christ brought us to our day, for He went no to say “For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.” In no other generation had we seen such things take place. In past ages, wars had been fought by a fe\y professional soldiers .without very much concern being taken by the masses of the contending countries. But in our day we had seen whole nations and whole kingdoms with every sinew and muscle tensed, locked in titanic death struggles. Winston Churchill had said “Mankind has never been in this position before.” We had become familiar with the meaning of the words “total war,” and civilians miles behind the lines had in some way or another been made to feel the effects of war.

From the sth Chapter of James, Mr Cook drew attention to another interesting prophecy which would find its fufilment “in the last days.” This chapter spoke of the economic troubles of the world—the amassing of huge fortunes by a few to the detriment of the many.

He said that James went on to speak of the Capital and Labour conflicts and difficulties that would arise as a result of this state of affairs. The voice of the trade unions crying for redress against any injustice was also portrayed.

• Mr Cook showed also that our age of speed, travel and knowledge was portrayed by the prophet Daniel as being peculiar to ' “the time of the end.” (Dan. 12:4.) Today men travelled great distances in a few hours and thought nothing of it. The speed of travel had increased to such an extent that today we held our breath and asked with awe “Where endeth these marvels?” Mr Cook read the account of a young aviator who actually exceeded the speed of sound. Knowledge had been increased beyond comprehension. Today humanity stood shuddering on the brink of the greatest discovery of all times —the secret of the atomic world, vances in learning, the Bible stated that the knowledge and love of God in the earth, would wane at an alarming rate. (Matt. 24:12). In Tim. 3, a whole list, was to be found of moral conditions that would eixst “in the last days.”

In Luke 21:11 (Also Matt 24:7) our Saviour had said, “Great earthquakes shall there be in diverse places and famines and pestilences and fearful sights.” He had said that these things were signs of His near return. Mr Cook stated that today we were witnessing a literal fulfilment of every word of the prophecy. Earthquakes were more numerous and more devastating than ever before 'in history. We were in the midst of the greatest famine of-'all times before which file. great Bengal Famine and the famine following the last war, paled away into insignificance. With famine, the grim spectre of pestilence and disease stalked across Europe and in fact the whole world. Mr Cook asked, when before had the world seen such “fearful sights” as whole cities destroyed by a single bomb? When had we seen such wholesale cilivian slaughter?

He read an interesting statement concerning the atomic bomb from Dr. Oliphant, Britain’s leading atomic bomb expert who, speaking in Birmingham, England, had said: “The smallest atom bomb that can now be made, is equal to 20,000 tons of TNT—the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima —but much bigger bombs, equivalent to 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 tons of TNT, “are just around the corner” and will be sufficient in explosive force to obliterate such cities as Birmingham, in England or New York.” Concerning the condition in Europe, Mr Cook read an extract from the New York Times which described the ‘famine and fearful sights’ at present ruling on the Continent.

Joel 3 9:14 told of the great awakening of the heathen nations. It showed how the nations of the world would convert their “ploughshares into swords and their pruninghooks into spears.” Japan had within an incredible short time, awakened from her medaeval sleep and speedily converted thousands of tons of scrap iron from implements of peace to weapons of war. Micah 4. (1-3) said that “many nations” would talk peace plans and that they would propose to reconvert the weapons of war to peaceful imlements once more. According to the first verse, this was to happen “in the last days.”-

Another interesting prophecy from Luke prefigured “distress of Nations with perplexity” and “men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming upon the earth.”. Mr Cook suggested that the present perplexity and fear among the nations due to the discovery of atomic secrets was an ample fulfilment of these predictions. II Peter 3:4 referred to “scoffers in the last days” trying to deny the soon return of Christ by discounting the signs of His coming and claiming that everything was still progressing as it always had. In fulfilling this prediction the scoffers were themselves a last day sign. The prophecy of Math. 24:14 was also referred to, stating that the gospel message would be preached “to all the world for a witness unto all nations” just before the end. This was being literally fulfilled in our day with the Bible-in 1941 being printed in 650 languages. \ The accumulated evidence of all

these signs pointed to our age. In Math. 24:34 Christ had said that the generation that saw all these things take place would not pass before the returned.' It was encumbent on us all to recognise the fact that the Lord of Glory would return to earth in our day. "We must prepare to meet Him.