06 - The Special Triumphs of the Age

If now we inquire what are the particular triumphs of the age, and especially those latest achievements which render our own times to illustrious, the spirit of the age would direct our attention to the faster railway trains, larger and swifter steamboats, taller buildings, more powerful battleships, more destructive guns and explosives, to the more numerous and potent corporations, the gigantic manufacturing enterprises, increased commerce, colossal individual fortunes, etc. etc.³

We do not hear it contended that the age is conspicuous for righteousness or that the dominating motives of men are purer and more unselfish than those of bygone days. What then is “progress”? Is it faster railway trains, bigger steamboats, more powerful battleships, more crowded cities, more numerous accidents, crimes and suicides, vaster fortunes, taller buildings? We have already in New York City twenty-four storey buildings, but these have not raised the standards of honesty, decency, and civic righteousness. They have not brought men nearer to God. A forty-six story building is now in course of erection. When completed, will the standards of life be raised? How tall must buildings be, what speed must trains and automobiles attain, how far must the influence and reach of the great corporations extend, how many “Dreadnoughts” must be put into commission, before men become righteous and cease to be lovers of money, lovers of pleasure, and lovers of themselves, rather than lovers of God? It is not difficult, dear friends; to understand what this all means if we are willing to turn the light of Scripture upon the world-system, and to “believe in the light.” All these things of which men boast, upon which they are toiling so arduously, so pathetically, and to which they are looking so credulously to transform the world and make it a tolerable abiding-place for humanity, have back of them the directing agency of the god of this age, and are carried forward with the single purpose of blinding men’s minds, so that they shall not look for the coming glory of Christ, but for a glory to be reached by the advancement of civilization. Its object is to deceive men into looking, not for the coming of Christ as the only thing that will bring blessing to the earth and its inhabitants, but to the working out of a few more centuries of progress of science, of education, civilization, legislation, sanitation and medication. These are the things to which we are bidden to look for the deliverance of humanity from its wretchedness, sorrow, pain, misery, poverty, disease and vice. These age-movements are charged with a tremendous power of deception, so much so that many of the wisest and best of men have been and are deluded into the belief that the condition of the world-system is really improving, and that eventually, as the result of the gradual operation of these beneficent movements, humanity will be delivered from its wretched plight. Such deceptive power has this gospel of the age that many who profess faith in God’s word believe the gospel of the age notwithstanding the many declarations of that Word that the present age will close in the most awful state of wickedness, violence and apostasy that the world has ever witnessed. This is the reason why the doctrine of the post-millennial coming of Christ is so much in favor. That doctrine harmonizes perfectly with the gospel of the age, and is utterly irreconcilable with Scripture. It announces that the world is making such splendid progress, as the result of the beneficent forces operating within the system, that we shall have, after a while, a millennium without Christ. A millennium is to be ushered in by the development of automatic machinery. Well has the wise preacher exclaimed: “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions” (Ecc 7:29).

³And now to the latest triumph of human genius, the flying machine.