WG-07-8. THE FAILURE OF THE SCHEME
8. THE FAILURE OF THE SCHEME
TRULY, this world-system is a marvelous affair—stupendous, gigantic, remorseless, terrifying! Seemingly composed entirely of human elements, it is yet strangely unmanageable and perverse in human hands. If we study any number of the individual human beings of which this prodigy is composed, we shall be utterly unable to discover in them an explanation of some of its characteristics and of its behavior as an organization.
Though composed apparently of human beings and existing presumably for human beings, it nevertheless devours men, women, and children placidly and for trifling considerations. Society will do what individual members of society would be incapable of doing. The world has been aptly compared to a slave-ship in which a few favored passengers dance and make merry on deck, utterly oblivious of the groans of a dense mass of suffering humanity beneath.
Those who occupy the positions of worldly advantage are for ever soliciting the admiration of mankind at large for this gigantic world-machine. They never tire of calling attention to the wonders of its construction and operation, and to the many ingenious improvements which are from time to time introduced into it. To bow down and worship the Thing is, with many, an act of religion; and the multitude are intellectually sand-bagged into accepting the doctrine of the “progress of man.”
If anyone ventures to question this creed, and to call attention to facts tending to show that the progress of the world is not upward, but downward, he is instantly denounced as a "pessimist” to whom no heed should be paid. And yet observers do note that the machinery of the vast affair creaks fearfully at times, and manifests strain at every joint; that there is a woeful lack of harmony and co-ordination among the various parts, and that only by the most vigilant attention and by incessant repairs is the thing kept in operation at all! It is undeniable that, in spite of expedients and experiments, and of all the care and labor bestowed upon the affair, its parts are constantly getting out of gear, and working havoc with human life and human projects. The only reason why the centrifugal forces of evil have not long ago disrupted the whole affair is because their tendencies have been checked by the Divine agencies which are in the world, but not of it. These restraining influences are reserved for consideration in a later chapter; but it is pertinent here to remind the reader that he “who now hindereth will hinder until he be taken out of the way,” and that then shall come the full disclosure of evil in the person of “that wicked one” (2Th 2:7-8).
Why, then, notwithstanding the manifest imperfections and failures of the system, does the gospel of “progress” find such ready acceptance among men? Upon the assumption of the truth of Scripture the answer is clear and satisfactory. It is because that is the gospel which was accepted by humanity at the beginning of its present career. Having chosen it, man is reluctant to confess that he committed a fatal blunder in so doing. He rather clings to it with all the tenacity of superstition, and tries to persuade himself that he likes the result of his choice. But even so, the true character and tendency of the world-system would be recognized by the majority of thoughtful men and women, if they were not under the blinding influence of the egregiously erroneous notion that God, and not Satan, is running the world. Ignorant but well- meaning persons evolve such pleasing sentiments as that “God’s in His heaven, all’s well with the world’’; or they misquote (by partly quoting) Rom 8:28, saying that “all things work together for good”; and the careless multitudes accept these as Bible truths. There is no deliverance from the bondage of such errors except in embracing the truth clearly taught in Scripture— that Satan, and not Jehovah, is the god of this present evil age; and that Satan, not Jehovah, is directing its present activities. This teaching accounts completely for everything which, on any other hypothesis, is mysterious and perplexing. The god of this gigantic world-system displays great ingenuity and fertility in devising new expedients for temporarily curing the innumerable defects which crop out in all parts of the organization. We see activity on all sides, a patient building up of one place while another falls into decay, a never-ceasing but never successful effort to prevent the decay of nations, the failures of government, the oppressive use of power, the moral decay of the prosperous classes, and the universal spread of selfishness and corruption. Chiefly are the activity and ingenuity of Satan exercised in the multitude of expedients whereby the minds of men are occupied and diverted from contemplating and inquiring into the reason of the inherent rottenness of the world-system and the certainty of its ultimate destruction.
It is evident enough to those who will but give themselves a chance to think, that something is vitally wrong with the system. Death is entrenched at its heart. Crime and cruelty and misery in many forms pervade it. Nothing is permanent. “Change and decay in all around we see.” The presence of these grim advance-agents of destruction is detected in all things wherein man has a part. Yet somehow the presiding genius of this world-system contrives to keep men busy in one way and another, and to keep alive the delusion that, as a general proposition, “things are getting better.” Thus do the sons of Adam continue to exhibit their inherited predisposition to the acceptance of that pleasing doctrine: “Ye shall not surely die; ye shall be as God.”
How admirably are all these world-activities and occupations (which those who should know better are accustomed to ascribe to Almighty God) calculated to accomplish the great Satanic purpose of hiding from men the Gospel of Jesus Christ! How admirably do they serve the end of confirming men in the fatal belief that humanity does not need a Savior! Let anyone try to conceive a state of things which would better accomplish this object than that state of things which prevails in the world to-day, and he will speedily give it up as an impossibility.
How illuminating then are the words of the Apostle in 2Co 4:3-4 : —“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost” (or rather, as in the R.V., “them that are perishing”), in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.,, This is the meaning of it all; and we never could have discovered that meaning for ourselves. God alone could reveal it to us. But now that He has done so, we are without excuse if we refuse to believe Him; and we have miserably failed in the use of our natural intelligence if it does not, upon examination of the conditions around us, confirm His revelation.