Questions From Readers

● Instead of greater political and religious immorality, could it not be that we of this generation are more willing to discuss crime and corruption, that we give these conditions greater publicity than did past generations?—D. G., United States.

Never before, in all man’s history, has there been such an utter disregard for truth, integrity and honesty in every branch of society as there is now. Big-time crime today is so thoroughly organized that it is syndicated into a giant international cartel, with tentacles reaching into almost every state capital and in practically every country, even behind the Iron Curtain.

The Reader’s Digest reported that the crime syndicate has “become so powerful that it threatens to take over the governments of several of the nation’s key cities.” U.S. News & World Report said editorially: “Political morals seem to have taken a turn for the worse. Bad as they have been in the past, this era appears to have become tainted even more with the use of money to buy influence and special favor.” U.S. Senator Kefauver, certainly an authority on modern political morals, said: “As a realist I still cannot shut out completely a feeling of fright as I contemplate how close America has come to the saturation point of criminal and political corruption which may pull us down entirely. . . . I say that we are dangerously close to that ruination point.”

As for religious morals, cleric Timothy J. Flynn was quoted by the New York Times as saying: “The world is sinking into an abyss of paganism. . . . We live . . . in an atmosphere of heathenism, where the truths of moral living are shrugged off as inconsequential and sanctity is scoffed at.” U.S. News & World Report of April 2, 1954, stated editorially: “For the decay in present-day morals and the deterioration of moral principle in governments throughout the world is perhaps due to the fact that many clergymen have been grossly negligent in their devotion to spiritual tasks. They have been diverted from their real duty. They have not fulfilled their true mission.”

So what we are witnessing in the world is not a freer discussion of morals, but a moral breakdown in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. What befell ancient Jerusalem is now befalling its modern counterpart, Christendom. The prophet Micah denounced the rulers, priests and prophets that “abhor justice, and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet they lean upon Jehovah, and say, Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? no evil shall come upon us.”—Mic. 3:9-12, AS.

Evil shall come upon all immoral nations at Armageddon, and Christendom shall not escape. Corruption gone to seed bespeaks the nearness of this world’s collapse.