Lining Up!

Prof. K. Warren. Trowel & Sword. June 1981

Preamble: This article could have been written last week instead of 44 years ago. Talk of Nuclear war, atomic annihilation, World War 3, has recently and consistently been hitting the airwaves. Add to that the constant scare mongering about the end of civilisation due to “climate change”, or a celestial body smashing into the Earth, or even the threat of an alien invasion and we have fertile ground for the growth of the “Survivalist” and “Doomsday Preper” industry. There are always those who look to profit from the insecurities of others. Prof. Warren had, and still has some interesting things to say about this whole phenomenon.

Lining Up!

The word ‘ survival’ is beginning to take on a new meaning, I think. Or rather a more intense meaning. For some people the word is even having an urgency about it; ‘survival’ is quite high on their list of priorities.

Survival from what? Armageddon! Nuclear war! Atomic annihilation! 

Survival from what? The final, fiery end for millions. But not the end for the survivalists. They will be safe, in their hide-outs in the bush, or wherever.

When at last the American and Russian warlords will push THE button, and dozens of missiles start their brief journey of doom, death and destruction; ah… the survivalists will survive! To live on and build a new existence on the ruins. We are reading more and more about it. Newspapers, magazines, even on T.V.

In the United States there are tens of thousands of people fully prepared. Concrete underground shelters in a secret place. Just for me and my family! We’ve also got guns to keep the undesirables away, in the hour of total panic. Shelters, way out in the bush. Stockpiled with dehydrated foodstuffs, it will last us for years.

There are even business firms who will give expert advice in case it is your strong desire to be amongst the few who will survive World War III. An economy model shelter, or would you like to have it a bit more luxurious? You may as well survive in style. Three bedrooms and a study?

Also in Australia you can have your underground shelter custom-made. Under $2.000 for the bare concrete shell. Digging the hole, and fitting it all out, that’s your own responsibility.

What a great weekend hobby! It’ll bring out the very deepest instincts in some of the home handymen. Fitting out our own, our very own survival cubby. It’s a challenging hobby, while at the same time it answers our most basic instinct: self-preservation. Beats painting the house any time!

Tens of thousands of T.V. viewers were told last month where would be the safer suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney whenever “the big one” would be dropped. Would this also become a factor affecting the price of real estate? One gets the uncomfortable feeling that the news media have us all at their mercy: To generate a whole-scale panic would be all in a day’s work. The hysterical reaction of the American people to Orson Wells’ radio-play in 1939 about the end of the world still serves as a powerful reminder that the media will be well advised to play it cool.

But then again: ratings are their idol and the George Orwellian 1984 horrors is just the stuff for a timely story. The movie- makers no doubt will move in too. Watch it happen!

But also in the Christian scene there’s money to be made. Big money. The popularity of Hal Lindsey’s ‘The late Great Planet Earth’ proves the point. Lindsey appears to have all the answers; his chapter on World War 3 even gives some maps of the Middle East indicating how the Russian and other armies will move to attack. Spectacular! Speculative too!

His book was a hit with the Christian public, and it made Lindsey an ‘eschatological millionaire’, so to speak. The end of the world, the final war, the Antichrist, 666, the tribulation, Gog and Magog, it all has very much the interest of many Christians.

And why not, you will say. It’s in the Bible, so we better be interested in it. Right you are! But it all depends how our interest is moulded, guided, directed. There are far too many well-meaning Christians who are so easily given to speculation, or try to convince us of dispensationalist thinking. And I’m not even speaking now of those who are doing their ‘crackpotty’ (sic) thing on the fringes (or beyond it!) of the Christian spectrum.

The history of the Church even becomes some-what monotonous reading when one takes note of all the failed human predictions, which once were firmly believed to come true. Montanus; some of the Anabaptists; William Miller, the ‘forerunner’ of 7th day Adventism; Jehovah’s Witnesses; Herbert W. Armstrong, and hundreds more.

Even Martin Luther, in the early 1500’s, apparently believed that the last day was near at hand. He wrote: “… it often occurs to me forcibly that the last day will break before we can completely turn the Holy Scriptures into German. For it is certain from the Holy Scriptures that we have no more temporal things to expect. All is done and fulfilled: the Roman empire is at an end; the Turk has reached his highest point; the pomp of the papacy is falling away and the world is cracking on all sides almost as if it would break and fall apart entirely.”

I have no prophetic gifts, but it would be quite safe to predict that this whole scenario of expectations, predictions, survival, doomsday, World War 3, panic, missile-phobia, and what have you, will become much more intense the closer we come to the year 2000. There are some fascinating stories about some of the hysteria that went on in Europe when the year 1000 came closer and closer. Bands of self-styled prophets wandered around, sowing fear and panic in the hearts of peasants and craftsmen. The millennium, the new Jerusalem, the judgement, the final end, and other topics like that were in the focus of attention.

The year 2000 will hold plenty of potential for similar pandemonium. 

What a good thing that we have such Reformed authors as Veldkamp, Hendriksen, Hoekema, to give guidance in these difficult passages of Scripture. Buy their books, or have the church library buy them. Read them, study them, together with the open Bible.

And let us be alert. Wide awake. For the Bridegroom comes. 

KEITH V. WARREN

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