What will it be like?
How different from today's world will it be?
WHEN President Johnson steps into the four-year term of office as President of the United States on January 20, he brings with him a plan for building this world's "Great Society."
Following on the heels of Kennedy's "New Frontier," the Johnson plan calls for the rebuilding of cities, cleaning up and beautifying the countryside, and improving education on all levels. The successful execution of this three-point program is hoped to bring about the President's great, over-all goal: wiping out poverty.
The big question is: WILL IT SUCCEED?
Already considerable time and effort have been spent investigating what can be done in the cities, the countryside, and the schools. A massive program designed to make this costly American-style Utopia a reality is now being launched.
What's Wrong With Today's World?
Despite his optimism, Mr. Johnson admits, "It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long. There is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all, expansion is eroding the precious and time-honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference. Our society will never be great until our cities are great."
The President knows!
Looking at conditions in rural America, the President warned: "We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing. A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the Ugly American. Today we must act to prevent an Ugly America."
Nor is this all. Describing our educational system, the Chief Executive added: "A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There our children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination.
"We are still," he continued, "far from that goal. Today eight million adult Americans have not finished five years of school. Nearly 54 million — more than one quarter of all America — have not even finished high school. Each year more than a hundred thousand high school graduates, with proven ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. . . .
"In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. . . .
"But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in quality as well as in size . . ." (Mr. Johnson's address, taken from Saturday Evening Post, October 31, 1964, pp. 30, 31).
The President's analysis pinpoints grave problems. But are these ills really ALL that's wrong? Are they the cause of the woes plaguing America — or only the results of the real causes which, unless overcome, bar us forever from a "Great Society"?
Why Today's Sick Society?
Engulfed in the glitter and gleam, the gaud and the gadgetry of a shallow and superficial society, people today no longer stop to just plain THINK!
Assaulted by a relentless barrage of double-talk, distortions, half-truths and unadulterated LIES from advertisers, politicians and the clergy alike, it is simply too much work for most individuals to sift through this confusing maze of propaganda. The quest of the TRUTH about why they are here, what life is all about and where they are going, is forgotten.
How much easier to lose oneself in a ready-made daydream behind the TV set or at the movies! This, of course, is exactly what Satan, the deceiver of this entire world, and the author of this Babylonish, competitive system WANTS (Rev. 12:9).
But it's high time YOU were different. It's high time you began to THINK — deeply and objectively, responsibly and realistically! It's high time you dared to look at the situation as it REALLY is and to realize that it's not just a matter of an isolated "problem" here and there. Rather it's a matter of an ENTIRE SOCIETY coming apart at the seams!
You live in a society: where family life is rapidly disintegrating. Where one out of four marriages ends in divorce. Where more murders take place between husbands and wives than in any other category. Where children are considered a burden best left to shift for themselves or to be farmed out. Where adultery, fornication, homosexuality and wife-trading vie with television as popular forms of entertainment.
You live in a society: where respect for all constituted law and authority is GONE! Where police, not allowed to enforce the law, serve as targets for public abuse and the savage attacks of teenage hoodlums. Where racial violence and strife is assuming ever-larger proportions. Where crimes of every description — rape, murder, assault, theft and dope addiction, to name but a few — are running so rampant it is futile to try to quote statistics because they are outdated by the time they come off the press. Where cities are asphalt jungles infested with human "rat-packs," making it unsafe for either men or women in many areas, even in broad daylight. Where teaching is a dangerous profession and police are stationed in the halls of schools because students carry switchblade knives. Where the syndicate runs the city so completely that even the Federal Government is helpless to intervene. Where courtrooms are overcrowded with lawyers and criminals searching not for justice but for some loophole in the law. Where to be a cold-blooded killer is to be "temporarily insane" or "socially maladjusted." Where to be "civilized" is to enjoy watching a helpless old man get stabbed to death by a thug on a busy street corner — and then calmly go home to watch several hours more of killing on Tvs. Where to give birth to illegitimate children is an acceptable means of earning a living, with a graduated income plan for each child thus born.
Is that the kind of world you want?
You live in a society: where the economic fate of the nation is in the hands of covetous, irresponsible union leaders. Where it's acceptable to steal your employer bankrupt. Where the goal of many manufacturers is to see how cheaply and poorly a product can be made. Where in a time of unequalled prosperity the average family is less than three months from bankruptcy. Where going deeper into debt is the panacea for all personal, business and government economic ills. Where food growers feel no responsibility whatsoever toward their fellow man and will use any kind of poison spray imaginable in quest of the "almighty dollar." Where new land is plowed up and chemical fertilizers are dumped on overworked land in a greedy effort for quick gain. Where new drugs are produced by the hundreds, but still can't keep up with the new diseases. Where people desperately try to buy health in pills and peace of mind in tranquilizers. Where the overwhelming majority of hospital beds are filled with mental patients.
Is this kind of world God's world?
You live in a society: where ministers condone sin instead of preaching against it. Where insipid, watered-down religion admits it doesn't have the answers. Where the ministers vie with college students for the suicide record.
This list doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the plague upon plague, curse upon curse, woe upon woe, SIN UPON SIN to be found in America — and all the world — today.
God's Stern Warning
As God Almighty has said: "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel into anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken anymore? Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is SICK, and the whole heart FAINT. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment" (Isa. 1:4-6).
What a vivid description of our society today!
Far from moving upward to the great and powerful society, America and the British Commonwealth are rapidly plunging downward in a snowballing crescendo from a sick and degenerate society, a demented and depraved society, a society ROTTEN TO THE VERY CORE, to total ANARCHY AND OBLIVION!
And yet, in spite of this bleak and pessimistic outlook for the immediate future — the painful lessons that must yet be learned by a rebellious and sinning mankind — there is GOOD NEWS AHEAD! Beyond the catastrophic events destined to take place within the next few years (all fully explained in our free booklets The United States in Prophecy and 1975 in Prophecy), there is the bright prospect, the happy out-look of The WORLD TOMORROW — God's Great Society!
Just as man has reached the end of his rope and is about to blast himself into nothingness, God will intervene and STOP man's hellish inhumanity to man. He will send Jesus Christ back to this earth together with thousands of His angels and saints made immortal to CRUSH man's rebellion and to establish God's Government on this earth once and for all — to FORCE mankind to be happy, healthy and prosperous.
What God's "Great Society" Will Be Like
God has not left you in the dark about the details and plans for His "Great Society." Many verses and chapters — portions of entire books — of the Bible are devoted to a description of it.
In God's Society, HE will be the Supreme Ruler, aided and assisted by those who qualify in this lifetime for a position of rulership with Him. You can be one of those who qualify for such a position if you meet the conditions God has set forth.
The TEN COMMANDMENTS will form the basis of all law in God's Government, and all mankind will be forced to obey that law. Punishment will be meted out swiftly and severely on transgressors, for only as these laws are obeyed can there be perfect peace and happiness. All the suffering and misery in today's world can be traced directly or indirectly to breaking the points of this law.
Instead of looking for loopholes in the law, Jesus Christ Himself will "execute judgment and righteousness in the land" (Jer. 33:15).
"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him [Christ], the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord . . . and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears: but with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth . . . and righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins" (Isa.11:2-5).
Yes, at that time there will be true justice. And God's Headquarters in Jerusalem will be called the "habitation of justice, and the mountain [a symbol of government] of holiness" (Jer. 31:23) — the "city of TRUTH" (Zech. 8:3).
"And many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain [government] of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for THE LAW shall go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Micah 4:2-3).
And what will the effect — the fruit — of this system be?
"And the work of righteousness shall be PEACE; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever. And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places" (vs. 17-18).
No more will there be fears, worries, tensions, frustrations and INSECURITY! No more will there be a dog-eat-dog society of such fierce cut-throat competition that people will want to escape from reality. Instead there will be security, peace — HAPPINESS! How WONDERFUL it will be!