What Can Be Done to Save the Earth?
Will Earth Be Ruined in Nuclear War?
THE enormity of the peril should be driving men to dismantle their nuclear arms. What, then, drives them on in an opposite course? Do you hope and trust that world leaders will yet sit down in council and outlaw nuclear arms?
What prospects are there that they will ever do such a thing? When in history did men ever outlaw the more horrifying weapons of war? Permanently? This generation learned how to split and fuse the atom. Can man any sooner outlaw this knowledge from himself than he can disarm matter? Can he keep such knowledge from the next generation?
The sons of Adam have reached out, like their father, to take to themselves the determination of what shall be good, what shall be bad. The knowledge of how to split the atom spreads. It crosses boundaries, dividing society into hostile factions, boundaries involving sovereignties. What then?
In all-out nuclear warfare there simply is no place to hide. Shelters are futile. To evacuate is to flee from one mushroom cloud to another. The two nuclear superpowers suspect that nuclear missiles, cocked and aimed on submarines, can reach each other’s coastal targets within ten minutes. Intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from within each country can arrive fifteen or twenty minutes later. Long-range bombers can follow through in hours. Yet the earliest warning possible to be given either of the two populations will be fifteen minutes after missiles have been launched. That is five minutes after the bombs start falling.
Why do men accept the idea that to practice violence is innate in human nature? That is not how we were meant to be. “God made mankind upright, but they themselves have sought out many plans.”—Ecclesiastes 7:29.
Does it appear to you that a force beyond what is human is driving men toward disaster? The Bible identifies such an influence.
That force emanates from an unseen spirit person. That is the same unseen one who engineered the rebellion in Eden. He is identified in Scripture as “the great dragon,” or devourer; “the original serpent,” or deceiver; the slanderer and adversary of God called “Devil and Satan.” And the Bible says he “is misleading the entire inhabited earth.”—Revelation 12:9.
Believe it, Satan is no mere figure of speech, no allegory. He is a person. He is the grand master of liars. He is the original murderer. (John 8:44) He is joined by other rebel spirits, demons. They constitute “the world rulers of this darkness,” “the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places.”—Ephesians 6:12.
Have you wondered why agelong empires of oppressive political rule have dominated mankind? They are the workings of Satan, “the god of this system of things,” who “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” (2 Corinthians 4:4) These governmental systems are pictured in Scripture as beastly monstrosities. Demons, the Bible says, speak “unclean inspired expressions” through them.—Revelation 16:13, 14, 16; Daniel 8:20-22; Revelation 13.
Satan has also established over the kingdoms of the earth a whorish paramour of false religion, “Babylon the Great.” She too “has become a dwelling place of demons.”—Revelation 17:5, 18; 18:2.
At the time of the end of the world great woe is caused to mankind, “because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.”—Revelation 12:12.
Do you have a better explanation for the times we’re living in? If so, how will men bring a halt to this dead-set course of doom? Let’s say they appeared to break up this scenario in some momentary hiatus of “peace and security.” Would their proclaiming “peace and security” usher in tranquillity or destruction?—1 Thessalonians 5:3.
If earth is to abide for the meek to inherit, then it must be rescued from ruin by help from outside—outside any force operating in men or demons. No political parliament, no religious council, no school of philosophy, no science, no technology holds out a single ray of hope. These human forces too are deadly missiles, misguided, backfiring on the ones that launch them as well as blasting any hope of survival wherever they land.
To whom can we turn to save the earth? We will have to turn to the One who created it.
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Does it appear to you that a force beyond what is human is driving men toward disaster?