“Ominous Signs for Religion”

✔ Reminding the Bible student of the prophecy at Revelation 17:16, concerning the world empire of false religion and the political powers’ eventually turning against such religions, is an article by Associated Press writer George W. Cornell, which appeared in the Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News of February 1, 1963: “The world’s environment is spotted today with ominous signs for religion. They keep showing up, week by week, like shadows across the horizon of our times, threatening men’s rights to practice their faith. Missionaries are expelled from the Sudan. Another seminary is closed in Russia. Nuns are ordered out of Ceylon. Christian schools are ‘arabized’ in Egypt. Ministers are barred from Angola. Others are banished from Nepal, executed in Morocco. An antichristian massacre erupts in New Guinea. Mostly, the events are isolated, scattered here and there, not extensive in themselves, but adding up to a somber testimony about the modern era. . . .

“It is an era marked not only by the neo-nationalistic opposition to Christianity in many African and Asian areas, but the antireligious drive throughout the vast Communist orbit. . . . Dr. Paul Anderson, consultant on international affairs of the National Council of Churches . . . said that even in the martyrdoms under pagan Rome in the first four centuries of Christianity, the persecutions involved ‘one religion by another,’ but now the attempt is to ‘eliminate any concept of God.’ It is the vastest attack on religion, and involves more people, than ever before, he said.”