Milestones to Disaster

Just the other day, I read this and felt compelled to share it with you—a brilliant assessment of our times:

The year…reached almost the end of its third quarter under the promise and appearance of increasing prosperity, particularly in the United States. Extraordinary optimism sustained an orgy of speculation. Books were written to prove that economic crisis was a phase which expanding business organization and science had at last mastered. “We are apparently finished and done with economic cycles as we have known them,” said the President of the New York Stock Exchange in September. But in October a sudden and violent tempest swept over Wall Street. The intervention of the most powerful agencies failed to stem the tide of panic sales. A group of leading banks constituted a…pool to maintain and stabilize the market. All was vain.

The whole wealth so swiftly gathered in the paper values of previous years vanished. The prosperity of millions of American homes had grown upon a gigantic structure of inflated credit now suddenly proved phantom. Apart from the nation-wide speculation in shares which even the most famous banks had encouraged by easy loans, a vast system of purchase by installment of houses, furniture, cars and numberless kinds of household conveniences and indulgences had grown up. All now fell together. The mighty production plants were thrown into confusion and paralysis….the grievous pangs of falling wages and rising unemployment afflicted the whole community, engaged till this moment in the most active creation of all kinds of desirable articles for the enjoyment of millions. The American banking system was far less concentrated and solidly based than the British. Twenty thousand local banks suspended payment. The means of exchange of goods and services between man and man was smitten to the ground, and the crash on Wall Street reverberated in modest and rich households alike.

It should not however be supposed that the fair vision of far greater wealth and comfort ever more widely shared which had entranced the people of the United States had nothing behind it but delusion and market frenzy. Never before had such immense quantities of goods of all kinds been produced, shared, and exchanged in any society. There is in fact no limit to the benefits which human beings may bestow upon one another by the highest exertion of their diligence and skill. This splendid manifestation had been shattered and cast down by vain imaginative processes and greed of gain which far outstripped the great achievement itself. In the wake of the collapse of the stock market came…and unrelenting fall in prices and consequent cuts in production causing widespread unemployment.

The consequences of this dislocation of economic life became world-wide. A general contraction of trade in the face of unemployment and declining production followed. Tariff restrictions were imposed to protect the home markets. The general crisis brought with it acute monetary difficulties and paralyzed internal credit. This spread ruin and unemployment far and wide throughout the globe….Government, with all their promises behind them, saw unemployment…bound up in their faces from one million to nearly three million. It was said that in the United States ten million persons were without work. The entire banking system of the great Republic was thrown into confusion and temporary collapse. Consequential disasters fell upon European countries. However, nobody starved in the English-speaking world.

It is always difficult for an administration or party which is founded upon attacking capital to preserve the confidence and credit so important…

Although contrary to their declarations, the Government abandoned the gold standard…

And very soon in these four years came Hitler.

You may have thought that you were reading today’s news, but these words were penned by Sir Winston Churchill in “Memoirs of the Second World War, An Abridgement” excerpted from pages 21-23. The multi-volume set from which the abridgement was taken was printed in 1948-1953.

When I read these pages, it put a chill down my spine. Can we not see where we are headed? All you must do is look at history—the Sacred and the secular, or as George Santayana famously said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Dear child of God—pray for this nation. Pray for our world. Pray for our children. Pray for our future. Pray passionately, persistently. Unless we repent and revival comes, there only remains ruin—an hour of darkness will fall across the land beyond anything known before. It seems as though Christ’s return is at the door when He comes for His church and then judgment falls upon this planet. Do we throw up our hands in despair? No, let us raise our hands in prayer! Do we sit down and give up? No let us get to work and look up! We know what the final outcome will be for the believer and for the world. The Bible is clear on that general outline. What we do not know are many of the details of how we get to that point. What is America’s role? How bad will things get before the rapture? Will there be one great turning to God before the final countdown? We might only speculate and still be completely wrong. Here is what I am very sure of: whenever or whatever happens, I need to be found faithful! In the end, victory is assured!