TV Fills "Need"
For vast segments of the American and British public, television fills the need for vicarious thrills and violence.
For frankness — indeed, sheer openness — it is hard to top some of the shows on the "telly" in Britain. Almost unbelievable references to lewdness, perverted sex and depravity are as open and unabashed as an ordinary news report.
In the U.S., network executives assure us this "fall season" will see less violence portrayed on the television screen. But violence sells goods, so any drop will be a small one.
Staff members of a large American newspaper recently tabulated the violence in the prime evening hours for seven consecutive nights. Their result? — 81 murders and killings and 210 incidents or threats of violence.
One congressman recently quoted a study which found that the average American child, between the ages of 5 and 15, watches the violent destruction of 13,400 persons on television!
Just like the Romans, watching the gory spectacles in the arenas, our young people are "learning nothing but contempt for human life and dignity" (Daily Life in Ancient Rome, p. 243).
Stage and Screen
Have you seen a movie lately? Or better yet, have you seen the latest newspaper ads for movies and "off Broadway" type stage plays? Have you noticed what's for sale at the corner newsstand? Undoubtedly many of you who live in rural areas have little conception of what's really going on in the big cities!
In our calloused, "shockproof" societies, entertainment has taken on new and sinister meanings.
An almost unbelievable avalanche of sex, perversion, pornography, "blue" films, sadism, masochism, bestiality, murder, rape and brutality has flooded into the public view through motion pictures, stage productions and lurid magazines and pulp novels.
It was much the same way in Rome before that great empire was swept into oblivion.
"Almost from the beginning the Roman stage was gross and immoral. It was one of the main agencies to which must be attributed the under-mining of the originally sound moral life of Roman society.
"So absorbed did the people become in the indecent representations of the stage that they lost all thought and care of the affairs of real life" (Rome, Its Rise and Fall, Myers, pages 515, 516).
Did you hear about the throngs of people who lined the streets for blocks outside a New York City theater to see an import film so raw that it was said to "permanently shatter many of our last remaining movie conventions"?
Scraping the bottom of the barrel of utter depravity, recent stage productions have gone far past mere nudity to include on-stage simulation of intercourse and, in at least one case, bestiality.
Unless you've been completely sheltered from society, you've heard of the nude scenes in "Hair" and other plays.
Pornography alone, in the United States, is Big Business! Enough pornographic books are sold each year to more than fill the Empire State Building five times over — and most of these books find their way into the hands of youths.
Self-indulgence today has reached new lows!
Multiple billions of dollars are spent by the lust-driven public each year to satisfy the senses!
And the Cheering Stopped Samuel Dill, writing in Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, page 58, said this:
"Salvianus . . . assures us that Christians were indulging in the madness of the circus and the wantonness of the theatre, when the arms of the Vandals were ringing round the walls of Carthage and Cirta; and that the applause of the spectators was mingled with the groans of the dying and the battle-cries of the besiegers."
Now, that's the ultimate in escapism! And did he say Christians — Christians reveling in debauchery?
That should be no surprise. After all, aren't our nations still Christian-professing societies?
Like some of the Romans, will our people, too, be living it up — right until the day the enemies storm our gates?
It makes you wonder.
Exact Conditions Foretold
Incredible though it may seem to many, the Bible — "the book that nobody knows" according to Bruce Barton — actually predicted the paradoxical escapism of today.
God said mankind simply would not face the plain truth about world conditions. He prophesied men would turn to PHYSICAL PLEASURES in the face of imminent national DESTRUCTION!
He said men would become licentious, lewd, lascivious, filled with SELF-love as never before — and during the exact time of the greatest collection of urgent problems this world had ever seen!
Paul told Timothy, "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures MORE than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away"! (II Tim. 3:1-5)
And you have witnessed, with your own eyes, this very prophesied social revolution in the past two decades!
You have seen, and you know you've seen, more degeneration, more public blasphemy, more truce-breaking, more self-love, more disobedience to parents (juvenile delinquency), and more love of pleasure than at any other time in all history!
The Bible means what it says!
No one will ever escape the certainty of the coming calamities by kidding himself they don't exist. No one will really find protection, real escape, by refusing to face the awesome facts of this day in which we live.
But there is a way to really escape! And we're not talking of some type of "sanctimonious," "self-improvement" or "positive thinking" course!
We mean literal escape. Escape from the horrors of war. Escape from race riots, from drought, famine, disease epidemics. Escape from the ravages of weather and other "natural" calamities that will soon strike this earth in increasing fury! Witness the terrible destruction and loss of life caused by Hurricane Camille.
Our article "If World War III Comes — There Is a Way of Escape," shows how you can find security and safety in the tumultuous days yet ahead of us. Write for it. It's free, of course.
It's about time you faced reality squarely — and found out how you may escape.