Diseases of the City
Urbanization brings with it a host of problems affecting public health and morals. The list of social diseases linked with city living is alarming.
Neuroses are especially prominent in the highly industrialized world. The suicide rate, divorce, and child delinquency, are all affected by city life. (World Health, p. 34) "Towns have tended to relax restraints. . . They have fostered prostitution, spreading gonorrhea . . ." (World Health, pp. 123-124) "This year over 160,000 people [in Britain] will visit V.D. clinics — one out of every 300 people in the country. The number of gonorrhea cases has doubled in a decade; those of infectious syphilis trebled in the seven years to 1965. . . Experts — even professionally optimistic administrators — see no hope in beating the disease. Factors blamed for the upsurge [are] . . . increased extramarital sex, greater mobility of people, and growing resistance of gonorrhea germs to antibiotics." (Observer, 18 February 1968, Brit. N.R. 22 March 1968)
"Poor housing correlates to a high degree with rates of illness and death, with rates of mental illness, with juvenile and adult delinquency, and with other social problems such as chronic drinking and illegitimacy." (Slums and Social Insecurity, p. 143)
Robbery — with violence — is perhaps the greatest menace which has to be faced in London today. (Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for the year 1966, p. 8) Glasgow with a fifth of Scotland's population has more murders and attempted murders than the rest of Scotland put together. (Sunday Times, 31 December 1967, and N.R. 23 February 1968) About thirty percent of crimes of violence in Britain are committed by teenagers! Thirty percent of housebreaking and burglary is committed by 14 or 15-year-olds! (British News Release 23 February 1968)
Now Look at Scottish Slums
One in three persons in Scotland lives in either a substandard house or one unfit for human habitation. If Scotland is generally bad, Glasgow's slums are the worst in Europe. For its one million population there are 10,000 unfit houses, 75,000 so substandard they cannot be reasonably improved, and 49,000 substandard houses which could be repaired. About 40% of Glasgow houses lack a fixed bath or shower. (Ill London News, 9 December 1967)
At the current rate it would take 95 years to improve all inadequate houses in Scotland or 45 years to merely knock them down! (And this ignores the problem of continued deterioration!) (The Times, 3 February 1968)
One economist calculates it would cost £18,000 million — that's $43 billion — to reconstruct British cities for traffic. Even with a proposed increase in annual expenditure on roads it would take 130 years to achieve this "moderate" scheme.
A London County Council plan for a motorway ring and links around London costing £450 million would take several hundred years to build even at an increased budget.
Why Today's Sick Cities?
Engulfed in the glitter and gleam, the gaud and the gadgetry of shallow and superficial cities, people today no longer stop to just plain T-H-I-N-K!
Assaulted by a relentless barrage of double-talk, distortions, half-truths and unadulterated LIES from too many advertisers, politicians and clerics, 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 our civilization is headed, is forgotten.
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 of our cities 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 — urban and rural — 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 urban and rural children are too often considered a burden best left to shift for themselves. Where adultery, fornication, homosexuality and wife-trading vie with television as popular forms of entertainment.
You live in an urban society: where respect for all constituted law and authority is GONE! Where police, too often in the U.S., are not allowed to enforce the law, and 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 in urban and rural areas that it is futile 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 American 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 TV. 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?
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 unequaled 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 fully half of all 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 today's cities — and in all the world!
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 putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment" (Isaiah 1:4-6).
What a vivid description of our urbanized society today!
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 book The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy), there is the bright prospect, the happy outlook of The WORLD TOMORROW — God's Great Society — His kind of city.
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 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 Tomorrow's World Will Be Like
God has not left you in the dark about the details and plans for His kind of city, His kind of Society. Believe it or not — chapters — portions of entire books — of the Bible are devoted to a description of that wonderful world.
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 city and national Government, and all mankind will 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.
At that time there will be true justice. And God's Headquarters in the city of 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 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" (Isaiah 32:17-18).
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!
The Cities under God's Government
What will happen to our cities when God intervenes to save humanity out of hydrogen bomb war? The few who escape will return to their former land and build the cities anew! The right way!
"And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste CITIES" (Isa. 61:4). "And the CITIES shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded . . . and I [God] will settle you after your old estates [in your former locations], and will do better unto you than at your beginnings" (Ezek. 36:11).
Yes, you can be sure that when GOD directs the rebuilding of our cities it will be done RIGHT. It will be done according to design and plan, with beauty as well as utility in mind — not in the chaotic, hit-and-miss fashion of many buildings in today's cities.
God says, "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place" (Isa. 5:8). In God's cities people will have room to live. Jamming together as many uninspiring, cheaply-constructed dwellings as possible WILL NOT BE PERMITTED!
In God's cities people will no longer have to be AFRAID of their neighbors. They won't have to worry about living next door to someone who is mentally "off," a pervert, or a killer. Old people won't have to fear being senselessly attacked and brutally beaten by some hoodlum out looking for "fun." Instead, "There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem . . . and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof" (Zech. 8:4-5).
Juvenile "hoods" will no longer roam the streets and organized crime will no longer run the city while the city officials helplessly look on.
"Again there shall be heard in this place . . . even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant, and without beast [because of the captivity and bombing], the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the Lord of hosts: for the Lord is good; and His mercy endureth for ever" (Jer. 33:10-11).
This is only a brief look into the happy cities of the WORLD TOMORROW.
What a wonderful world that will be. And to think you can be there and have a part in rebuilding tomorrow's world and its cities!