What Problems?
What problems could possibly be so insurmountable as to even suggest this grisly "solution"?
The "reasons" for committing suicide are as manifold as the ways chosen to perform it. For some it is ill health, domestic troubles, financial difficulties, unwanted pregnancy, and for others it is loneliness or dejected feelings of uselessness.
The underlying theme present in the majority of cases is an overwhelming sense of futility in the face of difficult circumstances. No HOPE! NOTHING LEFT TO LIVE FOR.
People are trapped by circumstances — held captive by their own environment, job, habits and personal problems. They spend millions each year in search of that elusive, intangible feeling called HAPPINESS. Our highways are jammed with people rushing madly from one place to another in hopes of attaining the sought-after goal. We slaughter each other by the hundreds on our highways over long holiday week-ends. We struggle, crowd and push one another at packed beaches and lakes.
But then the long week-end is over. The same dreary old grind once more faces us, and the realization of the utter futility of it all is driven home.
THERE IS NO PEACE OF MIND! Desires well up within us, but once they are fulfilled there is no satisfaction and we want more.
We Aren't the Only Ones
The United States isn't the only nation to be plagued with the curse of overindulgence and its accompanying futility.
With the highest standard of living in Europe, Sweden also has one of the highest suicide rates. West Berlin, the showplace of democracy, the goal for which many have died, the example to the East of what wealth can do, carries the highest suicide rate in the world. Not a very good example to hold high to Communism!
Japan, one of the leading nations in the economic field, is also a leader in self-inflicted death, with Austria, Denmark and Great Britain following close behind.
It seems that wealth and affluence are the companions of grisly suicide. WHY? What is it that wealth and security cannot buy? What is it that people the world over are so vainly searching for and when it can't be found, despair so greatly that they will take their own lives?
Wealth isn't the answer. Medicine and medical treatment isn't the answer. What then is the answer? We are able to make nuclear bombs, rockets, space ships and send men in orbit around the earth. We plot courses across millions of miles of space to bring our technological instruments close to the planet Venus. In every way, we are advancing in technological skills and abilities.
Yet we are unable to chart the course of human life in the paths of happiness.
Religion the Answer?
Not many years ago, suicide was so frowned upon by the organized religions of the world that one who had taken his own life was refused the right to be buried in "hallowed, consecrated ground."
One council, which represents 15 denominations and some 1,500,000 members expressed the over-all viewpoint of the group in this manner: "Death by suicide ends all opportunity of repentance. Anyone then who has taken his own life would be denied the rewards of the saved" — whatever those rewards might be.
Today however, the attitude of the major churches of Christianity borders on tolerance, apparently considering suicide a MERE sickness!
One typical theologian of this group reported that he always buried suicide victims in consecrated ground. The reason being — according to this minister — that no man in his right mind would commit suicide. Therefore, he would have to be insane and not accountable for his actions, thus removing the distasteful stigma attached to the death.
Does our present-day religion then hold the key to this problem? NOT REALLY! There is far too large a gap between the twentieth century religion as it is preached in most of our churches, and the first century religion taught by Jesus Christ and His Apostles.
The man who has to face the everyday realization of the threat of nuclear war, the increasing danger of racial strife and the ever-present problems of this hectic modern-day life finds it extremely difficult to recognize the presence of a REAL GOD.
Can God Help?
Is God actually interested in our modern-day problems, or was He only concerned with the people of the ancient world? It is GOD — not modern-day religion — who has the answer to this increasing problem in the United States, the British Commonwealth and the Democracies of northwestern Europe.
How would God answer the depressed individual who has nothing but hopelessness and a seemingly futile life ahead of him?
Would He tell our nation to get rid of its wealth and national blessings and join the "have-not" nations of the world who aren't having to face this problem?
Jesus Christ talked to His disciples about these very things. ". . . Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" (Matt. 6:25)
Christ wasn't telling them it was wrong to have these things. He was telling them it was wrong to LUST after these things and overly concern themselves with thoughts of physical welfare. He went on to say in verse 32:
". . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." If He will provide for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, how much more will He provide for His very greatest creation — MAN?
Christ said in another place, John 10:10, that the very reason He came to this earth was that we might have LIFE, not death, and that we might have it more abundantly. Again He said, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest PROSPER AND BE IN HEALTH, even as thy soul prospereth" (III John 2).
JESUS CHRIST MEANT WHAT HE SAID! He wants us to have an abundant life. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with the wealth and prosperity with which our nation has been so bountifully blessed.
An Individual Problem
The problem lies with the individual himself.
Nearly all the doctors, psychiatrists and social workers who have made a study into the circumstances surrounding this problem agree that it is absolutely useless to exhort a depressed man to "snap out of it." To be depressed is exactly what he wants. He WANTS to feel sorry for himself and to be filled with melancholy and self-pity. He doesn't want to see the bright side of things.
His pessimism is easy to understand. Our newspapers are continually filled with stories of unhappiness, murder, violence and the complete futility of man's life the way he is living it.
There Is Hope
Can you imagine it? LIFE, the most precious, wonderful, exhilarating, thrilling possession of each human creature — LIFE, with its marvelous opportunities, its challenges and adventures, its sorrows and joys, its successes and its failures — and, above all, its AWESOME POTENTIAL for the future — LIFE cast worthlessly to the ground by suicide!
How FAR we have departed from God! Many is the suicide victim who TRIED RELIGION! He HEARD all the wonderful things about "salvation," "sanctification," and "deliverance." He HEARD all about Jesus Christ as his personal Savior, and about the HAPPINESS he was supposed to experience! But STILL HE COMMITTED SUICIDE!
WHY!
Because He didn't HEAR THE PLAIN TRUTH OF ALMIGHTY GOD! He heard an insidious COUNTERFEIT, masquerading as God's "truth," but without the real POWER to CHANGE HIS LIFE!
Just as medical science ADMITS FREELY there is not one cure on the market today, of any size, shape, color, smell, or description that DOES ONE WHIT OF GOOD TOWARD CURING THE COMMON COLD — so it is true that the source of TRUE happiness, release from your fears and worries, and the key to the REAL abundant life IS NOT FOUND IN THE MANY CONFLICTING "BRANDS" OF THIS WORLD'S RELIGIONS!
You either have the TRUTH, or you do not. You are either in real contact with the REAL GOD — or you are not!
It's time YOU KNEW where the only source of peace and happiness is to be found — knew where TRUE security and safety is to be found for you and yours — knew where GOD IS DOING HIS WORK!
Jesus came preaching the message of the Kingdom of God! He foretold our days — telling exactly how this pulsating time of history would end! He is, at this moment, beginning to intervene in human affairs! He will soon RETURN to this earth, to SET UP HIS OWN KINGDOM upon it — and BRING the world, FORCIBLY, release from its brain-chilling problems that lead to the heinous crime of self-murder!
God offers each person LIFE! Life that is meaningful, interesting, JOYOUS, happy, abundant — right here and now, and LIFE FOR ALL ETERNITY, in the Kingdom of God!
Peter mentioned this life in I Peter 1:3, ". . . By His great mercy we have been born anew to a LIFE OF HOPE through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (Moffat translation).
What is this life of hope Peter holds out to us? It is the life in the KINGDOM OF GOD! In that Kingdom there shall be NO MORE SICKNESS, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped . . . the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa. 35:5-6).
Imagine that! The muscular dystrophy clinics will be closed. There will be no need for the Community Chest, Red Cross or any other such organizations. The blind, deaf, crippled shall all become normal and enjoy life to the full.
THERE WILL BE NO MORE WAR! (Isa. 2:4). No more killing one another and taking one man's freedom away from him. No fear of atom bombs, H-bombs, or any other kind of bomb, for they won't be allowed.
There will be no more emptiness and uselessness.
AND THERE WILL BE NO MORE SUICIDE! Everyone will WANT TO LIVE in the glorious world tomorrow! Everyone will know the REAL PURPOSE in life and the REASON for his existence.
If you don't as yet understand your real PURPOSE for being here on this earth, write NOW for the amazing, breath-taking booklet which will show you the reason for your existence and the only real answer to the problem of suicide — THE REALIZATION OF WHAT LIFE IS ACTUALLY ALL ABOUT!
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