Insight on the News
“One Morning in 1914”
● “Suddenly, unexpectedly, one morning in 1914 the whole thing came to an end,” declared Britain’s former prime minister Harold Macmillan in a speech at Yale University. He said that the great war that began in 1914 marked the end of “100 years of peace and progress” and signaled “the end of an era.” Before that the world seemed to be in an age of “automatic progress,” where “everything would get better and better,” said the 86-year-old statesman. “This was the world I was born in.”
Macmillan then noted that the League of Nations was “an attempt to reproduce in the new age something of the stability created by the great nations” before 1914. But the League failed, he said, because there no longer existed “any sense of unity which had prevailed in the previous 100 years of peace.”
Hence, another respected authority adds his voice to those of numerous statesmen and historians who, in looking back, recognized the significance of the year 1914. Yet, decades before that year arrived, dedicated students of Bible prophecy were able to identify 1914 as a climactic turning point. (The “Bible Examiner,” October 1876, pp. 27, 28) These Bible prophecies also reveal that the “generation” that saw the events beginning in 1914 would also see the “conclusion of the system of things.”—Matt. 24:3, 7-22, 32-35.
Do “Supergerms” Evolve?
● Have you ever had an infection that stubbornly resisted the antibiotics your doctor prescribed to treat it? This unpleasant experience sometimes occurs because certain common germs apparently become immune to drugs that ordinarily would kill them. Evolutionists sometimes claim that mutations are responsible for such “supergerms.” They assert that similar “beneficial” mutations resulted in the evolution of man.
However, do ordinary germs commonly mutate into supergerms? Not according to biologist Richard P. Novak, writing in the December 1980 issue of “Scientific American.” “For several years chromosomal mutations were mistakenly assumed to be responsible for clinical antibiotic resistance,” he observes. Why? Because in laboratory cultures of bacteria, mutants do sometimes appear that resist antibiotics. But at what cost to the general health of the bacteria? “The resistant mutants are evolutionary cripples,” admits Novak, “and under natural conditions they rapidly die out.”
Actually most antibiotic-resistant supergerms that doctors encounter are not mutations, according to Dr. Novak. Such germs obtain their resistance from tiny organisms called “plasmids,” which apparently give the bacteria immunity to drugs. Scientists do not really know where the plasmids come from, but it is significant that there may not be nearly as many “beneficial mutations” as some evolutionists think there are.
“Has Religion Gone Too Far?”
● In a recent radio editorial, news director Jim Branch of station WRFM spoke on the subject “Has Religion Gone Too Far?” Branch noted religion’s deep involvement in the past U.S. presidential election, saying: “They really want to go back to the good old days when the church and state were not separate, and religion ran the show both on local and higher levels.”
Branch says the churches seem to justify their political involvement “on the basis of God is everywhere, but someday they may face a judge who says, ‘Oh, no, he’s not . . . not from a legal point of view.’ And then the judge will define God and religion and its limits. And so religion will find the tables turned. After so many years telling the secular world what to do, the secular world will tell religion what to do.”
In a graphic depiction of a catastrophic change in the churches’ status, the Christian apostle John quotes false religion, or “Babylon the Great,” as saying: “I sit a queen, and I am no widow, and I shall never see mourning.” The prophecy continues: “That is why in one day her plagues will come, death and mourning and famine, and she will be completely burned with fire.”—Rev. 18:7, 8.