Our family life is SICK!
Nearly one in three marriages ends in divorce!
MILLIONS are unhappy, frustrated.
It's time you knew WHY — time you looked candidly at
YOUR marriage — time you KNEW what marriage is.
WHY it is and HOW to make your marriage happy!
SHOCKED onlookers in Los Angeles watched a man pursue a fleeing woman, shooting as he ran. The 30-year-old woman fell to the floor, mortally wounded. She was Mrs. Lorena Clark, mother of 2 children — she died en route to Central Receiving Hospital shortly after the wild shooting.
Witnesses said her estranged husband, Mr. Lawrence Clark, had fired two or three more shots at her prostrate body before running from the crowded State Employment Office!
Why?
Did you know the majority of murders are NOT committed by professional hoodlums in connection with a robbery? Did you know MOST murders are committed by "friends" or RELATIVES of the victims?
And did you know that even two years ago the F.B.I. reported MORE THAN ONE-HALF Of ALL MURDERS INVOLVING DOMESTIC SITUATIONS in the United States were committed by husbands and wives? And did you know that nationally, in 1963, 31 percent of all willful killings occurred within the family unit?
What's happening? Why such VIOLENCE? Why so much anger, so much hatred between marital partners?
Old-fashioned "tiffs" and "spats" between married couples have given way to fist fights, knifings, beatings, shootings! Husbands and wives involved in murder-suicide, or homicide, are increasingly in the news. But why? What terrible changes are occurring among our families? Why are so many MARRIAGES falling apart? What are the pressures that drive marital partners who once said they LOVED each other into the venomous vortex of HATE?
Millions of husbands and wives live together today as if total strangers. Divorce is on the increase. Separations, disappearances, desertions are becoming commonplace.
What about YOUR home? What about YOUR marriage? If you're not married — do you sincerely hope some day to become married — and then divorced? Do you LOOK FORWARD to a FAILURE in one of the most serious steps in your physical lifetime? Of course not.
If you're presently divorced — do you know WHY? Do you know what happened, REALLY, to bring about such a tragedy?
If you are one of the MILLIONS of couples who have deep marital TROUBLES — whose lives are not really happy — don't be ashamed to ADMIT it — and seek to do something about it, before it's too late.
Our modern marriages are deteriorating. Couples today find it difficult to converse, to share, to sincerely blend together as a family unit.
It's common, today, to see husband and wife sitting at a table in a restaurant — each staring at others about them, dolefully, disinterestedly — and see them silently finish their meal, pay the check, and leave.
Our marriages are going mad. Thousands live together who literally HATE each other. Others just barely "tolerate" an unhappy marriage — disgruntled, frustrated, MAD most of the time.
WHY? What is it that turned these marriages upside down? How does it come to be that two people, who, while only years before were breathing terms of endearment to each other — proposing, making marriage plans, caught up in the joys and thrills of young love — are now in the throes of ANGER and VIOLENCE?
What MAKES a marriage "go sour"?
Believe it or not, the answers are fairly simple. Marriage counselors admit they don't know. Judges, lawyers, friends of the family are all a little bewildered. Each, in his own turn, has a try at talking a couple out of a divorce — some succeed, but most fail.
But let's begin at the beginning — and discover the real answers.
There are many causes for the growing number of divorces among our peoples — many excuses, too. But it's time you asked who invented marriage — what are the laws establishing, safeguarding and regulating it?
Are those laws important?
In a society of degenerating standards, relaxing morals, increasing lawlessness and violence — it is obvious those laws are ignored. But those laws are VITALLY IMPORTANT TO YOU — IF you want a happy marriage!
Our Decaying Societies
A Harvard expert on human behavior says we are becoming "victims of a sex mania as malignant as cancer and as socially menacing as Communism. Prof. Pitirim Sorokin, in a book titled The American Sex Revolution, says we (and it's just as true, if not more so, of Britons, Africans, Australians, Canadians or Swedes) are drifting toward sex anarchy in the same manner that marked the downfall of earlier societies, including Rome and Greece.
"We are completely surrounded by the rising tide of sex which is flooding every compartment of our culture, every section of our social life," he wrote.
He cited, as reflecting our people's "sex obsession," the rising divorce rate, the upsurge in sex crimes, the emphasis of sex in radio and television, stage plays, movies, popular songs, pictures, reading matter and advertising — in short, in every facet of life.
"Our morals," said Sorokin, "have changed so notably that continence, chastity and faithfulness are increasingly viewed as oddities, as the ossified survival of a pre-historical age."
And that's tantamount to saying happy marriages are only fossil relics of the past.
Pressures of society continue to gnaw away at the foundation of society — as if society meant to destroy ITSELF!
In nearly all entertainment media — marriage is stultified. The picture of middle-aged couples celebrating their golden wedding anniversary gratifies no one. But DIVORCE is praised.
Novels make light of divorce. Jokes, cartoons by the scores pockmark the pages of men's and women's magazines — impugning the home, licensing divorce, or suggesting with tongue in cheek that mates are to be killed, rather than loved.
Millions flocked to see the motion picture, "How To Murder Your Wife!" It was just "good clean fun" according to most — but regardless as to how well camouflaged, regardless as to the "sick" humor so many seem to enjoy today — the story was built around a man who was trying to do just that.
Motion pictures concern themselves with every possible evil, investigating every twisted avenue of perversion — gnawing away at the vitals of home life. A normal, wholesome, "average" courtship with resultant marriage, and the establishment of a balanced HOME life would attract No one. But DIVORCE? Triangles? Unfaithfulness? These are "box-office!" These sell seats!
Sick societies breed sick homes — it's a contagion.
And whether people's "standards" change or not; whether "societies" change or not; the LAWS GOVERNING HAPPY MARRIAGES DO NOT CHANGE! They remain inviolable — absolute! People can BREAK those laws — societies can IGNORE those laws — but the penalty will be exacted, nevertheless!
What IS "MARRIAGE"?
Marriage is something that occurs ONLY in the HUMAN family.
But WHY?
Just what is there about marriage that makes it so universally "sacred"?
Stone-age tribes in New Guinea exact the penalty of DEATH for fornication — premarital intercourse. Unfaithfulness among African tribes is punished swiftly and surely! Chastity before marriage is held up as of TREMENDOUS importance among the Nepalese.
Why such UNIVERSAL belief in the "sacredness" of marriage? Why are WEDDINGS usually occasioned by CEREMONY? Why is marriage such a LEGAL matter? Ever think about it?
Because marriage is the foundation of EVERY society — it's the backbone and muscle of a nation; the head and heart of a tribe; and it PICTURES a union on a SPIRITUAL plane!
LAWS govern marriage.
And those laws are living. They're just as inexorable as the laws of physics or chemistry. Just as all-POWERFUL as the law of gravity, or inertia, or the laws of thermodynamics. You can't SEE "gravity." But you can FEEL ITS EFFECTS!
You can't "see" (though you can READ about them) the laws of marriage — but the PENALTIES are SWIFT AND SURE when those laws are broken. God is the great Lawgiver. He INVENTED marriage.
Not only did God set invisible LAWS in motion which exact PENALTIES when broken — He ordained tremendous REWARDS and BLESSINGS for obedience to those laws!
It's the same in every facet of life!
Your body is a marvelous mechanism. Obey the LAWS that govern its health and well-being, keeping fit by RIGHT foods, plenty of sunshine, fresh air, exercise and adequate sleep, and your body can experience RADIANT and JOYOUS health — filled with vitality.
But violate the laws of your body, and headaches, backaches, night sweats, hallucinations, fears, worries, aches and pains, colds, flu, arthritis, hernias, corns and bunions, constipation, fatigue, and a monumental host of strange diseases is the result!
It's the same with your marriage!
Do you resent one another? Do YOU argue, disagree, become disgusted, annoyed, irritated, or short-tempered with your mate? Do YOU "get fed up" with the actions of your partner in life? Do certain personal habits of your mate irritate you? Do you fight? Do you BRAWL? Do you even CURSE one another?
MILLIONS DO!
And no wonder!
They're SMASHING the laws of marriage — TRAMPLING UNDER FOOT the very rules of marriage that COULD produce such JOYS as they have never known before!
Animals don't marry. Humans do. And while marriage is PHYSICAL in nature — it was instituted by a SPIRIT Being, God the Father, and is SPIRITUAL in origin!
When God first created man on this earth (and HE DID CREATE MAN — and you can PROVE it!) He said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help ANSWERING [perfectly FITTING; exactly compatible] to him" (Gen. 2:18).
It was GOD who ordained marriage.
He made man and woman to be perfectly compatible one toward the other — the PERFECT team — mentally, physically and spiritually.
Since God INVENTED marriage, it was HE who had the prerogative to lay down the inexorable laws concerning it. Those laws protect the home — BIND the partners together by a SPIRITUAL CONTRACT!
Though societies demand licenses, blood tests, justices of the peace or ministers — it is GOD who BINDS the marital partners together for life!
Notice it! "Have ye not read, that He which MADE them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?' Wherefore they are no more twain, but ONE FLESH. What therefore GOD hath joined together [not man, or the lesser LAWS of man!], LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER!" (Matt. 19:5, 6)
Marriage, then, is a physical UNION — but it IS DIVINE in ORIGIN, and it is a SPIRITUAL CONTRACT, HIGH above the lesser laws of human societies. Once BOUND in heaven, that contract is UNALTERABLY IN EFFECT TILL DEATH!
Marriage is SERIOUS!
Marriage is PERMANENT!
Marriage is for adults!